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[moviesanddelight]

Which Harry Potter characters are bashed the least?

Cedric Diggory gets few complaints. I’ve only heard someone (fairly) call him a stock character. Lack of character development does that to a character - and can sometimes save them from getting bashed too much.

Luna Lovegood seems beloved by many. She’s certainly the least bashed of all the female characters. I think it helps that she was never a love interest for any of the main characters. However, I still find it a bit surprising that she receives so little bashing. That’s not to say that I don’t think she’s a great character, but I don’t think she’s the best character out there either.

Regulus Black seems to have a small group of people who really love him. Otherwise, he doesn’t seem to garner all that much attention. I don’t see him talked about negatively very much. Of course, this could be because the only thing we really know about him is a heroic act. (Sort of the opposite of the James Potter/SWM effect.)

[moviesanddelight]

How did Baylan Skoll know that Darth Vader was once Anakin Skywalker?

There are a couple of ways Baylan Skoll knew that Vader was once Anakin Skywalker

The first possible way is that Baylan, like Tarkin and others, discovered the secret on his own considering he knew Anakin and presumably fought with him during the Clone Wars.

Skoll himself said that Anakin spoke well of Ahsoka and Baylan seems to be a man who doesn’t lie. If that is true then Baylan knew Anakin well and would recognize his fighting style.

Baylan presumably has seen Vader fight as well and recognized the close similarities. Skoll may have even crossed paths with Vader.

Also, Anakin grew quite close to the Chancellor and I’m sure it wasn’t lost on Baylan that Vader was the Emperor’s Apprentice.

Also, since Skoll was hired by Lady Morgan Elsbeth sometime ago, he might have met Thrawn as well. Thrawn knew Vader’s secret as well.

Grand Admiral Thrawn himself had encountered Anakin during the Clone Wars. This was discussed in both books Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Ascendency.

In fact, it was Thrawn name dropping Anakin to the Emperor that initially persuaded Shiv to allow the Chiss into his presence in the first place.

Thrawn deduced Anakin was Darth Vader and in Thrawn:Alliances called Vader, Anakin on a number of occasions. Thrawn may have shared this knowledge with Morgan Elsbeth who passed it on to Baylan.

Or Thrawn may have told Baylan himself if the two ever crossed paths. Such information could be useful in the future.

[moviesanddelight]

In Harry Potter, Muggles cannot be inside Hogwarts. What happens if they were forced inside?

Muggles can, in theory, be inside Hogwarts. The contingency is a remote one because the castle and its surroundings are heavily warded with muggle repeling charms. These charms don't physically block muggles from passing, or harm them in any way. Instead, muggles find that they don't want to pass the barriers, a strong disinclination to proceed.

If they did push through and go on to the grounds they would see an illusion of ‘mouldy old ruins’ rather than the magnificence of Hogwarts, along with a sign to keep out. Should a particularly strong willed muggle push on into the ‘ruins’ they would doubtless be very surprised to find them occupied by hundreds of school children but would likely be intercepted by a teacher and have their memory modified in short order.

You see Jacob looking puzzled at the back of shot? This is a still from Fantasic Beasts, the Crimes of Grindlewald. The scene is on a bridge just outside of Hogwarts. Although the movie doesn't elaborate on it it seems to me he is confused, most likely by the fact that they have come all the way to Scotland to stand in front of a ruined castle.

So in answer to your question; if a muggle was forced inside of Hogwarts they would be very confused, but that's about it.

[moviesanddelight]

What are some movies that have plot twists as big as the one in Sixth Sense?

People tend to forget this one just because they REALLY don't like the twist, but: The Matrix Reloaded.

The first Matrix movie told an incredibly thrilling story. A group of freedom fighters “wake up" to the invisible system that is holding them down and keeping them in line, and once they have freed their minds, they acquire downright amazing superpowers, and eventually The One unlocks the ability to remake the world without the oppressive forces that have turned human beings into unwitting slaves.

THEN, the directors double-down on that raucous crowd-pleasing anthem of a story with a “it all comes down to this" sequel. Morpheus, the mentor character, gives big, gaudy speeches about providence and deliverance. The bad guys seem to be making one last desperate push. The superpowered savior rallies the freedom fighters for the one big, complicated “heist" that will take down their enemy once and for all! And then…

“Please.”

The enemy that has remained unseen for 2 movies calmly sits there and, in way more words, tells the savior:

“Yeah, you dope, we've known exactly what you were doing the whole time, and humans' idiotic capacity to believe in things like prophecy and chosen ones is a weakness we've been exploiting for generations to let you think you're winning. We not only don't care that you unlocked your mind and achieved superpowers, that's actually been part of our plan all along. You now have 30 seconds to decide if you'll play ball and keep this arrangement going, or do you want us to just kill everybody this time?”

To an audience that had spent 2 full movies completely giving themselves over to the prophecy, fantasy and badassery of The One, that was one hell of a kick in the nuts.

To this day, I still love it.

[moviesanddelight]

What did the Harry Potter movies get wrong that drives you insane?

Ugh, where to start? I just re read the books and there are plenty things that the movies got wrong.

Here are my four top pics.

The labyrinth in the Triwizard Tournament

The Triwizard Tournament’s final test was way more interesting in the books. The labyrinth was designed to test the champion’s ability in battle as well as their intellectual skills. An example of the latter was Harry’s standoff with a sphinx-like creature that challenges Harry with a riddle.

In the end, what happened in the movie happened in the book as well, but there were a few differences:

The labyrinth itself is more dynamic and not just a boring maze of bushes.

Cedric does not defeat Krum in battle. Rather, Harry surprises Krum using the Cruciatus curse on Cedric and quickly incapacitates him.

Cedric is not dragged down by the maze’s roots and does not beg Harry to help him. That was pathetic. Book version: after their encounter with Krum, both Harry and Cedric are attacked by a huge spider. They manage to defeat it, but Harry is left incapacitated with a severe leg injury. The cup is just meters away from both of them at this moment.

Harry and Cedric DO NOT race each other to the cup. They go on a heated exchange as to who is more deserving of the cup based on how much they helped each other. Despite the fact that Cedric seemed greatly tempted to take the cup for himself and that Harry was unable to stand on his own, Cedric steps farther and farther away from the cup while arguing with Harry. Once Harry proposes taking the cup together as Hogwarts champions, Cedric helps him get up and they go for it together. We know what happened next.

My greatest discomfort here is that Cedric’s gentle and fair character is not at all shown in the movie. This is important, given that the guy was murdered 5 pages after this. By this point, book readers probably cared a lot more about Cedric than movie watchers did or at least held him in high regard, which made Cedric’s death a more uncomfortable moment in the book than in the movie.

2. The battle at the Department of Mysteries

Oh dear god, I could write a whole book about it and I probably will. Book 5 was not the greatest, but the ending kicked ass. It featured one of the best action scenes in the entire saga, and the movies… well, blundered it.

Here comes my long list of grievances:

Lucius Malfoy and the Death Eaters are never, ever scared nor intimidated by Neville’s bravado. For Christ’s sake, we are talking about the cartels of the wizarding world. The movies did little to respect the Death Eaters.

Rather than just chasing them through the prophecy corridor, the Death Eaters fight Harry and his friends across the utterly bizarre rooms in the Department of Mysteries in a series of cool action scenes. Slowly but surely, they incapacitate each and every one of Harry’s friends, with the exception of Neville. This is in stark contrast with the Death Eaters just suddenly appearing in the veil room and holding Harry’s friends captive. Boring.

Bellatrix uses the Cruciatus curse on Neville to force Harry to give them the prophecy. Just as Harry is about to give it to Lucius, the Order arrives and engages the Death Eaters.. The prophecy is destroyed later in the battle.

Lucius and Sirius never cross wands. I wouldn’t have an issue with this were it not for the fact that it seemed to replace Sirius’s duel with Bellatrix. Speaking of which…

Bellatrix does not show up out of nowhere to cowardly deliver a killing curse to Sirius. She first incapacitates Tonks, then faces Sirius one-on-one in a fair fight and finishes him off.

Speaking of which, Bellatrix does NOT kill Sirius with the killing curse. What actually killed Sirius was the fact that Bellatrix’s curse sent him flying through the mysterious veil. While we never get an explanation in the books, we can infer that this veil is a one-way portal to the world of the dead. Hence, crossing the veil is what killed Sirius.

NOTE: Someone on the comments section mentioned that Rowling confirmed that the curse itself killed Sirius. I find this a bit confusing, because after Sirius was thrown beyond the veil, Harry was expecting him to return from the other side of the veil and continue his duel with Bellatrix. Why would he believe that if he had been hit with a deadly curse?

Dumbledore shows up actually before Bellatrix killed Sirius. He helps the Order round up the Death Eaters and capture them.

Bellatrix’s escape was not hassle-free after killing Sirius. Kingsley tried to stop her as well, but not even the experienced Auror was a match for her. This is when Harry snaps and decides to chase her on his own.

It is worth mentioning that Dumbledore threw a curse at Bellatrix as she tried to flee…which she deflects.

Ugh, here comes the worst part. When Harry does catch up with Bellatrix, he basically hides behind a statue to try and land a curse on her. After Bellatrix makes fun about killing Sirius, Harry loses it and successfully lands a Cruciatus curse on her. Rather than wimpering like a coward, the curse does little to Bellatrix, who quickly gets up and fights Harry again, much to the latter’s dismay.

Brief pause.

Sorry, but Bellatrix looking imploringly at Harry just infuriated me. Book readers… what do you think about Bellatrix being scared of Harry in the movie?

It is insulting. Derogatory.

Moving on…

Harry kept hiding behind the statue, trying to catch Bellatrix off guard. Naturally, he failed miserably. Their “duel” is interrupted by the appearance of Voldemort, who of course does not encourage Harry to kill his best lieutenant. He barely speaks to Harry and moves in for the kill.

This is when Dumbledore faces off against Voldemort. Dumbledore quickly moves a statue to protect Harry and instructs another one to trap Bellatrix during his duel with Voldemort.

Dumbledore vs. Voldemort was more even. I got the feeling that in the movie Voldemort was superior. In the book, Dumbledore never loses his cool and Voldemort actually decides that this is a battle he cannot win and opts to escape.

Here comes another horrible crime. Harry NEVER FUCKIN’ EVER tells Voldemort this “I feel sorry for you cuz you don’t feel love” crap. Voldemort does try to possess Harry in an effort to bring him immeasurable pain and have Dumbledore kill him out of mercy. However, Harry starts thinking about Sirius and these feelings of love are what “ejects” Voldemort from Harry’s body.

There’s way more cool details that happened here that I missed. You may have noticed that I mentioned Bellatrix a lot. This is because I believe that was the main point of this scene: to introduce us to Bellatrix Lestrange.

Movie watchers… did you really feel that Bellatrix was an overpowered witch? Did you think she was horribly cruel? Did you feel raw hate as the entire chapter unfolded?

If you did, you felt it 10x less than book readers, trust me.

After this scene, I was seething with rage. For one, I found her use of baby tones unbearable. Secondly, I was pissed off by how powerful she was and how she all but defeated the Order’s finest.

On top of that, she had the gall to survive the encounter!

Nah, this didn’t happen. What actually happened was that Neville got tortured by Bellatrix in front of Harry.

“Give us the prophecy, Potter, or watch your friends die the hard way!” - Bellatrix Lestrange, after using Crucio on Neville.

Bellatrix was way scarier than Voldemort. The movies did not make full use of Helena Bonham-Carter’s skills to accurately depict this unbearable villain.

3. Snape and Draco’s escape in the end of Book 6

I would not say the movie ruined this scene, but I did find it a bit more interesting in the book.

Draco does not let in a half-dozen Death Eaters to Hogwarts… he lets in a whole battalion. A battle ensues between them and the Aurors patrolling the castle, as well as some students.

Thankfully, Bellatrix was not present in this battle.

Harry did not witness Dumbledore’s murder from below; he did so a few meters away, immobilized under his invisibility cloak. What he thought happened was that, while being disarmed by Draco, Dumbledore’s jinx hit him by accident. We can all infer that Dumbledore purposefully immobilized Harry so he would not interfere in his self-planned murder.

As I mentioned, this was not a quiet thing. There was a huge battle going on in the Great Hall. Snape urged the Death Eaters to flee, as the job was already done.

When the Death Eaters set fire to Hagrid’s place, he’s actually there. He bravely defends his home by literally tossing away the invaders.

Harry vs Snape went more or less the same. It is slightly more meaningful in the books, as Harry consistently calls Snape a coward. We all know now Snape was anything but a coward. This kind of pisses Snape off, who finishes Harry off with a bit of Sectumsempra. That did the trick and Snape escaped.

I do not have that much beef against how it was done in the movie. Rather, I was a bit surprised. Movie versions tend to make things a lot more visually attractive, and a full battalion of Death Eaters fighting Aurors and Order members in the Great Hall was a great opportunity for some epicness.

My guess is that they did not want to “reuse” scenes. After all, in Book 7 we get the battle of Hogwarts in all its glory. It might have been less special for movie watchers to see our beloved Hogwarts under siege in movie 8 if you had already seen something similar in movie 6.

4. The final battle

Ah, best for last. If something was horribly different in the movies it was the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort. My list of grievances here is also long, so bear with me.

The battle doesn’t restart with Harry “coming back to life” in front of everyone. The Death Eaters don’t find this so frightening that they decide to flee. Again, show some respect to these guys! The battle restarts with a classical deux machina moment, when all sorts of reinforcements appear out of nowhere to fight the Death Eaters, who are overwhelmed and have to retreat to the castle.

Harry does NOT show himself at this moment. He uses the diversion to get up, hide himself with his cloak, and hex Death Eaters and protect people from Voldemort’s curses.

The Death Eaters are quickly outnumbered and outgunned. Only two people remain fighting: Voldemort and Bellatrix. Voldemort fights McGonagall, Kingsley and Slughorn at the same time while Bellatrix fights Hermione, Ginny and Luna at once.

Bellatrix does NOT FUCKING TURN TO CONFETTI when she dies! While I hated that it was Molly who killed her (wtf), the way she died was okay-ish. She gets killed while mocking her much less powerful foe, making fun of how she would kill her family after killing her. Molly’s spell hits Bellatrix straight on the chest, her lips still half-smiling. Guess who died in the exact same way? Sirius.

Witnessing his best lieutenant get wacked infuriates Voldemort, who sends his three combatants flying away and tries to kill Molly. Harry blocks him and it is until this moment that he finally shows himself, in front of Voldemort and ALL remaining survivors in the middle of the Great Hall.

And here comes the good stuff…

The final battle between Harry and Voldemort in the books is… a conversation, really.

Harry thoroughly explains Voldemort how he is wrong about everything, how Snape was never his man, how Dumbledore planned his own death to keep him from getting the Elder Wand.

Harry calls him “Tom” the whole time, which greatly infuriates our narcissistic villain.

Another curious thing that our hero attempted was to try and get Voldemort to feel some remorse, to repent. After all, during his visit at “King’s Cross”, he saw the part of Voldemort within him that died. He knew what would become of him and he was now certain he was going to kill him.

More interestingly, Harry goes into a lot of detail as to why HE is the master of the Elder Wand and not Voldemort. In short, he kind of says: “Dear Tom, because of XY events, which led to Z, I am the master of the Elder Wand and not you. You should not attempt to kill me with it.”

Voldy, being Voldy, completely snaps and throws an Avada Kedavra at Harry, while our hero counters with Expelliarmus.

Lo and behold, Harry was right! The Elder Wand refused to kill his own master. Voldemort’s killing curse goes straight back to him, reminiscent of his very first encounter with Harry. With no horcruxes left this time, the killing curse hits Voldemort and kills him for good, the Elder Wand flying straight into Harry’s arms.

When he dies… Voldemort DOES NOT TURN TO FUCKING CONFETTI! He becomes a rigid, stupid corpse.

This is how it went in the books. Voldemort is killed by Harry in the Great Hall in front of everyone. He does NOT turn into confetti.

So, movie version better? Perhaps visually. It is of course more epic to have a heated battle between the hero and the villain. However, this was not the point.

Harry was never to be a match for Voldemort, man-on-man.

Rather, it was Voldemort’s own arrogance that got the better of him. He was still arguably the most powerful wizard that ever existed. Having Harry fight him on equal terms in the movie was a bit insulting of Voldy’s capabilities.

My deepest complaint here is the fact that both Voldemort and Bellatrix turn to stupid confetti when they died. WHY?! SERIOUSLY WHY?!

Why am I so obsessed with this?

Despite all his rhetoric and immortality efforts, in the end Voldemort was just a man who could die. Seeing his spread-eagled corpse was a sign for everyone witnessing the event that the great Lord Voldemort was unequivocally dead.

Same goes for Bellatrix.

There is a degree of humanization in seeing a rigid, lifeless corpse. It speaks of our fragility and inevitable mortality, something that not even Voldemort could escape from. It was very fucking important that everyone - students, Order members and Death Eaters - witnessed Voldemort’s demise and gazed at his probably ridiculous-looking corpse.

Why the directors missed this is beyond me.

Also, as mentioned by Gimi R in the comments section: there were no witnesses to Voldemort’s death in the movie, nor a corpse to show as proof. I find this very relevant. Imagine the following scenario:

“Harry, you did kill Voldemort right?”

“Yes, I owned the nose-less bastard.”

“Great! So, where is his body? We did not see you actually kill him.”

“Oh, his body disappeared. He turned into confetti.”

“Umm…his body disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“Kinda like when he attacked you 17 years ago in Godric’s Hollow? When everyone else thought that he was dead despite not having a body to show as proof?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

It was important for people to witness the event and see his corpse to understand that Voldemort was really dead this time. It would have been the ultimate morale booster for the good guys and the final shock to demoralize the Death Eaters who worshipped him as a God.

Ah yes, this is much better.

That’s it! There are a lot more things worth mentioning. Other top contenders would be the character of Barty Crouch Jr, the aftermath of Sirius’s death at Dumbledore’s office and Harry’s subsequent grieving, the whole scene at Malfoy Manor...

My main beef with these changes is that they altered the nature of the characters themselves, sometimes considerably.

It is of course unrealistic to expect that the movie would be 100% true to the book… or even 50%. Adjustments had to be made, but you can make those while staying true to the characters’ natures and traits.

[moviesanddelight]

What could Ron do that’s not out of character, that would make Harry end their friendship permanently in my Fanfiction?

This:

Dying for Harry. Sacrificing his life for Harry or Hermione or Ginny or anyone else that he loves. Ron has shown many times in the books that he is ready to die for his friends.

[Ron] stepped forward, and the white queen pounced. She struck Ron hard across the head with her stone arm, and he crashed to the floor —

Only this time, Ron doesn’t wear his plot armor anymore. He is not safe simply because he’s the protagonist’s best friend. The chess board does the work it was supposed to do - keep intruders away from the Philosopher’s Stone.

This time, when Ron is hit hard with a stone arm and crashes to the floor, he never wakes up. He dies before Madame Pomfrey gets the chance to heal him.

.

Or else, he could stand up in front of a crazy mass murderer, like he did in his third year. Say:

“If you want to kill Harry, you’ll have to kill us, too!”

But this time, the murderer doesn’t turn out to be Harry’s nice, innocent godfather. It is an actual Death Eater, Bellatrix perhaps. She raises her eyebrows and thinks, what are you doing, you stupid* child? You’re a pureblood - get out of the way and save yourself. But Ron doesn’t get out of the way, of course he doesn’t, because he is a brave and loyal friend.

"Did you hear me? You'll have to kill all three of us!"

And so, Bellatrix simply smiles and hits him with the “unblockable” Killing Curse.

.

There’s so many examples of scenarios where Ron could have died for Harry and his other loved ones. It’s impossible for me to go through all of them. But no matter how it happened, Ron is not the main character, so he won’t get the chance to go back.

When he sacrifices himself, he is gone permanentely. And so is his friendship with Harry.

-

Update: Just to clarify, I don’t think Ron is stupid at all. That is Bellatrix’s point of view, not mine.

[moviesanddelight]

Why are superhero secret identities less critical in film than they are in the comic books?

Robert Downey Jr.

The trend of not really caring about secret identities is more of a Marvel thing, and that only happened thanks to RDJ’s actions filming Iron Man 1.

As the story goes, the original ending to the film was Tony Stark keeping his identity a secret. But as they were filming, RDJ jokingly threw out a version where he admitted he was Iron Man. Jon Favreau was excited by the idea, talked to Kevin Feige, and we have the famous “I Am Iron Man” ending. Feige was then inspired to change the Thor movie, which was originally about a guy who turned into Thor instead of the actual god.

Marvel kept going with that streak to the point where the only people with proper secret identities are Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel.

[moviesanddelight]

What were some noteworthy understated scenes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The creation of Stormbreaker (more specifically, when Eitri gazes at the melting ingots in the smelter)

Thor’s almighty dying star scene stole the show but that distracted us from the actual suspense of the weapon.

Given the task of creating such a weapon, Stormbreaker was nearly impossible to make. Much like Dr. Strange, Eitri lost his hands/ability to perform his craft. Eitri was never supposed to be able to create a weapon again, but help from the God of Thunder himself, Eitri was able to manage an incredible feat of creating Stormbreaker for Thor.

The handle for Stormbreaker wasn’t even created! Groot saved the purpose of the weapon.

So in reality, all four characters present on Nidavellir was the ONLY reason Stormbreaker was possible. So when Thor, Rocket, and Groot depart from Quill’s ship and head for Nidavellir, they unknowingly take exactly who they need for Stormbreaker to be made.

Considering Thor was about to go alone, Stormbreaker was actually more of a miracle than shown on film. It wasn’t just Thor and the star… it was everyone.

Just imagine the scene from Eitri’s perspective… he was about to die alone and in sadness. He had no more purpose for living, then a group of guys suddenly show up requesting for a weapon fit for a God, refilling that purpose to live once more. With his stone hands and help from the group, he is able to see Nidavellir in working condition again. This is why Eitri’s reaction to the melting ingots is everything. He never thought he would see that ever again. His purpose to live was reborn.

[moviesanddelight]

What is something you noticed in Avengers: Endgame that you believe others have missed?

At first I was puzzled as to why Nebula kindly carried Tony to sleep at the beginning of the movie. Days later, I realized that Tony letting Nebula win paper football was actually a pretty big deal to her.

Whenever Nebula had a contest against Gamora, she would always lose and Thanos would torture her. This made Nebula resent Gamora because she felt that, as her sister, she should have cared enough to let her win sometimes to prevent her suffering.

I’m sure, while they were trapped in space, Nebula told Tony about her relationship with her sister. Tony gave Nebula the win she never got and it meant a lot to her.