DD or Gandalf - who is greater?

[Carol]

Susan McGee wrote:
<snip post I agree with completely>
>
> Gambon works the least well of all the adult characters for
me..PARTICULARLY compared with Alan Rickman, and Maggie Smith, or 
Robbie Coltrane!

Carol responds:

I think it's because Gambon has never read the books. Someone told him
that DD dies in HBP--that's all he knows about canon DD. I only hope
someone tips him off about Snape's true loyalties and he doesn't play
the tower scene as if Snape has betrayed him! I hate having him
confined to that single, unDumbledorean costume, too, but it's scenes
like the one where he shakes Harry and shouts at him in GoF that
really make him seem miscast. However, he'll probably fit nicely into
the more Machiavellian role awaiting him in "The Prince's Tale," if
that crucial chapter makes it onto the screen. It seems to me that DH,
despite a few  cinematic references (an allusion to Krum's facial
hair, a nod to "Equus," and the line from "Alien" given to Molly),
that DH will be harder to film than HBP.

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To get back to the subject line, I think that Ian McKellen is right.
Gandalf is incomparably greater than Dumbledore, just as Sauron is
incomparably greater than Voldemort. Rowling's characters are just men
with magical powers whose attempts to overcome death are futile.
Tolkien's characters, at least the two I named, are Maiar (an order
equivalent to wingless angels), to all intents and purposes immortal.
(Sauron doesn't die; he just fades away, too weak ever to take bodily
form again.) Voldemort is a serial killer and terrorist leader;
Sauron, if not thwarted, will enslave or destroy the entire world.
Gandalf returns from something like death; Dumbledore is reduced to a
voice in a portrait giving orders (or counsel) to one man, with a
brief appearance in the afterlife, but he can't return to the world of
the living or affect events there except through Harry, who isn't dead
and can return. Anyway, Ian McKellen sounds as if he's a bit resentful
of Richard Harris and doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of a man
who criticized him, and it's doubtful whether he's read the Potter
books, or if he had, he was probably judging them by the first two,
but I do think that Dumbledore is a step down from Gandalf, both in
terms of greatness and goodness. Dumbledore would have succumbed to
the One Ring. (IMO.)

Carol, hoping that it's okay to discuss the films here and trying to
get back OFF topic as befits this list