I'm not trying to pull some comic book guy move. I want to love it. I really do. I read the spoilers and absolutely hated it. The hp podcast I listen to (mugglenet) had the same thoughts I did. Hopefully the script reads better that the spoilers and if the play ever comes to the US, I'll see it.
Rowling has never really done anything with Harry Potter that wasn't executed extremely well... Check out the pics of the play, it looks like an amazing and accurate continuation of the world and the story. Podcast nerds are always extreme dorks and awkward as hell. They nitpick and find reasons to be upset... I listened to like one episode of Collider one time and wanted to kill myself while listening to those virgins critique Civil War (and that was with them loving the damn movie)
Supposedly Warner Brothers have bought the trademarks potentially hinting at the possibility the play moves to the big screens.
Fair enough. Like I said. I really hope that when I finally experience it, that it changed my mind. Just curious, did you read the spoilers?
More Potter is always great- I'm excited for Fantastic Beasts. I've read nothing about it outside of the reviews today, which mentioned the timeline and such.
I'm planning to either have it deliver by Prime Now between 12-2AM tonight, go to Walmart at midnight or go first thing in the morning to get it. If it was a play in the US we would be much more excited. My cousin is in London and saw it and I'm incredibly jealous of him
He just saw Part 2 yesterday and is coming back so I haven't had a chance to talk to him Edit: checked his Facebook "It was an amazing story and the actors were brilliant. I can't stress enough just how well done it was"
Also, went ahead and ordered 2 copies on Prime Now (1 for my sister in law) to be here 12-2AM. I'm excited
Truman da gawd. Already reading bitches Minor Book spoiler below Spoiler hermione and her kids went with the hyphenated last name. Nice work ron.
If it's getting such positive reviews, I'm thinking(hoping) the spoiler plot review posted last month was bs
Nope. It was spot on. I'm 2/3 the way through. Spoiler my complaints are still the same. But it is well written in that it is entertaining, but the plot holes are still massive and the stakes don't feel real because they are so wild. Yea everything has gone to hell and Harry Potter is dead, but at no point do I feel like he is going to stay dead because it would essentially be JK throwing away everything that happened in books 5-7. That's the issue with going back to the time turners. As a semi-intelligent person, I know at the end everything is going to be back to normal because there is no chance JK makes a substantial change to the original story in a damn play. Because of that obvious fact, the entire story feels empty with the only real result of the story is that we learn Harry is a shitty dad who doesn't know how to connect with his loner son (which is ludicrous enough ok it's own).
Spoiler To be fair what could have been done though? In any future Harry Potter setting how are you going to make a story without a return to the dark side? In a play setting the more I think about it this was the only thing that could have been done. It was rushed and it ends back where we all started. As to the plot holes not really sure how they were massive? If you didn't have any issues in time turners being used in the third book, their usage wasn't any more extraordinary in this one. And it showed the side effects which didn't reer their ugly head in the first book. And also more believable given it was two teenagers meddling with time with no real thought on how everything may change going back that far. The biggest plot hole I suppose (outside of it being magic) is the reformation of the time turner which doesn't even seem that far fetched given they had to be invented in the first place. To me reading this enforced the idea there really is no future in the Potter world for her (which she confirmed in interviews). The first seven are written so well and done so perfectly you have to come up with rehashed plot points to create a future. This was the best there was to give more Potter and still have no implications on the results of the book and keep it short. We all would love to get past books about Dumbledore, the Marauders or Voldemort. However I would think that wouldn't appeal greatly to her given the restrictions placed on it given the ultimate story has been told. I think the only universe she writes on would be the US wizarding world that could be untapped by the new movie but even that seems doubtful. EDIT - I suppose the largest plot hole could point to Albus being in Slytherin which was very lazy.
Spoiler They could have done a lot of things differently. For one, they should never have brought back the time turners. There was a reason she had them all destroyed. She never should have returned to the past. As soon as we did that, it told me there were no real stakes to the storyline. Nobody was dying, nothing was changing, etc. She wasn't going to erase her life's work in a 2 day play. If she wanted to do something with voldemort's kid, fine. There is a theory out there that makes it all plausible, (cliff notes, sometime between book 5 and 6 Voldemort and Belatrix had a kid which was the reason why belatrix is absent at the escape from hogwarts at the end of book 6. However, how is it that nobody knew Voldemort's right hand woman was pregnant? It makes ZERO sense. You mean to tell me a tight knit group of 30ish death eaters were completely oblivious to the fact that the #1 death eater had a baby bump? Again. It was unbelievably lazy writing. Back to the story itself, assuming she wanted a child of Voldemort to be the antagonist, fine. I can live with that. But couldn't there have been any other story that could have been told that didn't require a trip into the past? Why couldn't she try to be a dark wizard on her own and gathering up the remaining death eaters for one last attempt to overthrow the Ministry? You could have done a whole storyline of scorpios being torn between his best friend albus and following in his grandfather's footsteps. Then when the final battle happens, I could actually believe JK is about to go through with her original plan of killing off one of the trio. But since we were back in time, I knew it was never going to happen. Albus in Slytherin made absolutely no sense. He doesn't have any of the qualities of a slytherin. The only reason it was done to make the split between albus and harry more obvious and to give off more of a loner vibe for albus. As for other plot holes... 1) Harry being a shitty father who doesn't know how to connect with a loner kid who feels he doesn't fit in. That was the first 11 years of Harry's life. If anyone understands what Albus is going through, it is Harry. 2) The rumors about Scorpios being Voldemort's bastard son. I could see how it could have been a school rumor that ran out of control which caused scorpios to feel alone or whatever before someone like McGonagall steps in and puts it to rest but not before it bonds albus and scorpios as friends. But as for it being a legit rumor throughout the whole wizarding world, I mean really? Muggles can figure out how to do a paternity test, but we are expected to believe that Wizards are incapable of coming up with their own way to prove paternity or that they can't simply do the same thing muggles do? Instead you have malfoy begging harry to make a statement that all the time turners were destroyed while having one of his own the entire time. It was such a hacky plot point that it felt like a 14 year old came up with it. 3) Cedric becoming a death eater. This one probably bothered me the most. Are we really expected to believe that being "humiliated" in the Tri-Wizard tournament caused one of the noblest kids in the school to turn into a death eater? This is the same guy who tried to give away a rare quidditch victory by his house because harry fell off his broom when attacked by death eaters. The same guy who told harry how to get through the 2nd task to make up for harry helping him. Now because he lost in the tri-wizard tournament he loses his mind in shame, becomes a death eater, and kills neville? Yea, I don't buy it. I get that the story needed to have some reason for the future changing, but this was another lazy choice. Overall, I disagree that the potter universe is tapped out. There are stories to be told. But she needs to do like star wars and move away from the Original stories. Keep the characters that everyone loves, but put them in a non-featured role. Like shaun said. It read and felt like harry potter which made me very happy. But at the same time this was a very flawed story that felt like it was written to scratch an itch to return to the HP universe instead of an actual desire to resurrect the series and dive headfirst in to it again.
I don't even need a continuation of the mainline series. I want to read and watch the continuing adventures of Newt Scamander. Same universe, different stories.
Spoiler And what real stakes were there anyway? I mean she isn't going to kill off Ron/Harry/Hermione (even if the reader thought it may happen) or any of the important characters for a two hour play. She has mapped out everything too well after the events and has publicly said she thought about killing one of the trio off and decided against it. Even though I hoped this plot story was false like shaun said it was Harry Potter and she wasn't going to make a cliff hanger off a two hour play. As for Voldemort's kid how would Bellatrix ever not be noticed? You are telling me when the Death Eaters were more kept up and in the dark (during the 6th book as opposed to the 7th) and many of them were more scattered that no one would have noticed her pregnant then? I find it more plausible that her being kept by herself when she was essentially alone at Malfoy Manor a few others as opposed to many people coming in and out at a time like they would have done in Book 6 when they were still underground. Either way it is pretty suspicious no one knew of her but I am guessing the explanation is that there were guesses that something happened as Harry acknowledged it had been a rumor for a while. So someone must have said something along the way. Again I agree Albus doesn't really have any of the Slytherin traits, although throughout the play he shows plenty of resourcefulness and ambition although in a different way than we usual see. On the other plot holes: 1) Meh that is trying to nitpick. Completely different scenarios as it is easy to envision that Harry couldn't connect to someone who couldn't stand Hogwarts and wasn't good at handling pressure. James handled it perfectly and was normal while Albus struggled and that had to be a shock for Harry. 2 & 3) That is a fair point and yes I would think pretty easy for Draco to verify that it is his kid and not Voldemort's. As well as Cedric turning on everything because he is humiliated by the Triwizard Tournament was pretty terrible. As for the future I don't know. To me any story featuring Harry and his kids should be left alone. Outside of doing good vs. bad again or some small pocket of the Death Eaters rebounding I just don't see enough material to make it worth it without being lazy. Which I agree this was. I think if she goes back to the Potter universe it should be something like Newt Scamander as mentioned above. She did the good vs. bad aspect of the story so well and so perfectly anything else will pale in comparison .
Spoiler so essentially we pretty much agree. It was good to have more harry potter and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it was pretty lazy writing and had some major issues which is not what we have come to expect from JK Rowling.
Spoiler I suppose although given the format and how well developed a 7 book series maybe my expectation wasn't sky high. If this was a 300+ page novel it may be a little bit different but I think it was meant to give the next generation a 'new Potter story', all while keeping the final book at a good spot. She essentially confirmed it before and especially after now that she has announced this was the end of the Potter saga. To me it was bound to be lazy regardless based on that, just not enough time to develop anything.
In an interview about the play: It seems a little more adamant tone compared to 'never say never' and talking about how 10 years down the line she may be revisiting the world. I would think/hope she would explore other components of the world just nothing about Potter or the family as that seems to be at the max of intriguing possible story lines.
For those that read, or are currently reading, the new book: how off putting is it to read it script style? I just glanced at a few pages and it seems like that would really bug me and make it a difficult/less enjoyable read.
Finished Order of the Phoenix and am now about to start Half Blood Prince. Order was a pretty slow read at times but I couldn't put it down at the end
Yeah Order had some side stories that could have been cut or at least trimmed down. Umbridge is an all time great villain though and the ministry chapters are awesome culminating in the epic Voldemort Dumbledore duel. While the movie nailed the duel they really fucked up the ministry part. The excess stories combined with Harry's whiny ass (even though it makes sense why he's so angry all the time in the end) make it one of my least favorite HP books. One of the "worst" HP books is still better then 95% of everything else though.
agree with all of this. OOTP is the one where it was obvious that Rowling needed a "no" person to reign her in. She had that early on and it really helped her first books be very streamlined and tight. Goblet had a lot of same problems as Order but it's just such a great premise that I can forgive how much time is spent on SPEW. Order is a very small plot with one amazing villain character that is stretched a little too much with too much fluff that could have been trimmed. Half-Blood Prince solves all the problems I had with OOTP, incidentally. It's the tightest and smoothest read of all the "big" ones in the series.
Hermione staying up late every night knitting hats and Doby taking and wearing ALL of them is fantastic and if you disagree you are not friend.
loved SPEW, my point is that it was a big plot detour. it was good though, so it didn't matter. OOTP had a bunch of big detours but they weren't as good as in Goblet. She needed an editor to trim the fat.
in the process of listening to them all on audio book. It is amazing how the movie series has white washed so many people's memory of some of the side plots from the books.
I was ok with SPEW but Grawp could have been cut especially since it didn't really lead to anything/anywhere.
He was essential to Harry and Hermione getting away from the centaurs...they were mad at the two of them when they believed Hermione just used them to get rid of Umbridge