So my travel companion decided that we should go on the Harry Potter Magical Movie Studio Wonder Tour. I’m very excited. As you all know, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. I haven’t seen any of the movies or read any of the books (I hope the tour is spoiler-free) but I have followed all of his exploits in the media quite closely. I remember the fire that burned down Hagrid’s birdcage set, the untimely death of Principal Dumbledore’s human, real-world counterpart Sir Richard Harris, the series’ worldwide lifetime box-office gross, the food poisoning incidents, and other things.
If the tour does have spoilers, I hope they’re for a series of movies I have seen.
When I get back to Ottawa on Monday I’m going to call in sick for the rest of the week and watch all the movies. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now and I think the time is right. And the best part is: I’ve decided that I will watch them all…
sequentially.
Even having not seen the films, I do take one issue with the Harry Potter universe: the magic. From what I can tell, all the characters have access to it but they are unable to use it to solve any of their problems. For example, why can’t Hermione just use a spell to remote-kill Voldemort? The school-age experts to whom I’ve repeatedly asked this question all tell me the same thing, “It’s because there are rules that govern the magic – it’s all in the books. You should read them. Stupid.”
Yeah, I’m the one that’s stupid, Miss I-believe-in-unicorns.
See this is where the problem is: phenomena that is governed by a set of rules is called physics and by definition, magic is something that operates outside the laws that restrict everything else. I will submit to you that it may be magic to the non-magical, but for the wizards and she-wizards who practice it and (for God’s sake) study it in school – it follows a set of rules, ergo it’s just another science class.
With all this in mind, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to enjoy the films. To give you a better idea of where I’m coming from, imagine what it would be like if in one of the movies Harry, Hermione, and Fred were in London and they jumped on a bus that looked like this:
It would kinda ruin the magic for you, no? Well, that’s exactly what happened to me when I heard that one of the characters (the “smart” one) had access to a goddamn time machine and she used it to help study for her A-levels instead of going back in time Terminator-style to kill the guy bent on murdering her best friend and enslaving humanity.
And don’t give me any of that philosophy crap for my time-travel assassination plot being morally and ethically wrong – going back in time to kill someone who, in the present day, is trying to come back from the dead to go on a killing spree is not just morally acceptable, it’s the right thing to do.
Tour’s about to start. More later.
* as in “I have a bone to pick” – get your mind out of the gutter.
Die Hard Three 
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