Did ya think?

Most movies have a certain level of “shut the fuck up and enjoy”.  There are movies that we can ignore the obvious and accept the fantasy but there are also movies that we enjoy that much later on, there are small problems that become “duh” moments.  Not quite the “fridge horror” of the Luke/Leia kiss but smaller things…

Like:

If the bad robots in Transformers found Shia la Beef through his eBay account and they wanted the glasses so badly, why didn’t they just bid on them?  They are smart enough to hack into top level government systems onboard Air Force One and all but they got auction-sniped for an old set of reading glasses?

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When Dorothy wakes up and it was all a hallucination, they’re still coming for Toto.  Nothing in Oz changed that.  Dog bites Gulch, Gulch gets a court order, Dorothy runs away, returns home, gets hit on head, wakes up.  Nothing changed, Toto dies.

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Indiana Jones and Sallah get excited because the Nazis don’t have the full instructions from the amulet.  Their staff is too tall and “they are digging in the wrong place”.  At this point, wouldn’t it have been infinitely smarter for Indy to wait until the Nazis gave up or moved on before going after it themselves?  They are digging within sight of the Nazis, of COURSE they were discovered!  Idiot.

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In the Keaton/Nicholson version, Batman, in full costume, holds on to the Joker and says, “You killed my parents!”  The Joker responds with “Hey bat-brain, I was just a kid when I killed your parents.”  So the Joker knows the true identity of Batman as Bruce Wayne.  Why isn’t this more important in the movie?

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Wouldn’t it have been a little smarter for Jor-El to send a boy AND a girl to Earth?  I mean, not to borrow an argument from Mallrats but Superman can’t mate with humans, he’d blow his load through Lois’ back like a shotgun blast.

I’m not big on my Superman mythology.  Almost everything I know about Superman involves Christopher Reeve.  I know Ursa was a Kryptonian woman and Supergirl makes an appearance somewhere but neither of them were in his head when Jor-El sent Superbaby off in that star-comet library.

Maybe the comics covered it, maybe the TV shows covered it but in the 1978 movie it was kind of short thinking.

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And the worst offender of all time:  ”Hold your fire. There are no life forms on board. It must have short-circuited.”  Why didn’t they just shoot the damn thing?  They were in the middle of a battle after capturing a ship, you’d think maybe someone put something in there they didn’t want you to have.  But even if you didn’t think of that…  You live in a universe populated by sentient droids!  Why aren’t the scanners set up to scan for signs of droid life?  Or if not, why scan at all?  There may not be humans on board but what about the hundreds of droids that could possibly be in there?  This one is almost as dumb as ET and R2D2 forgetting that know how to fly when it’s convenient for the plot.

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My favorite has always been the finale of It’s a Wonderful Life.  Oh we’re all singing, bells are ringing and people are smiling but when the smoke clears, someone ripped us off for $8k.  I like the SNL skit where they pistol-whip Potter with his wheelchair but unless they find a way to prove Potter took the money, George is going to prison for embezzlement.  Merry Christmas.

I have not abandoned you.  I have been off-planet and upon my return I was informed that no, the world does not go on without me and I had a LOT of work to clean up before I get to play again.  So I will come back here and make some trouble but it looks like it will be at least a few more days before I can.

Until then, chew on these:

I re watched ”Thor”. It sucked worse than I thought it did.  My first viewing disappointment was invalid: I wanted a gritty dark mythology saga and got the comic book space-dealio and I KNEW that was what I was going to get.  It’s as dumb as buying a microwave pizza and getting pissed off that it’s not a ribeye.  So after my first viewing I just kept my mouth shut.  My second viewing disappointment was more valid: I wanted acting.  I got sappy cheese lines worthy of a elementary school play, written by a student.  Thor sucked and Natalie Portman was such a shitty actor that watching this actually made me long for her performance in the Star Wars prequels.  On a higher note, Captain America was much better but honestly I’ve been over the comic-superhero movies for a long time now.  I’m not even sure I’ll go see the Avengers.  I think it depends on how much Nick Fury/Samuel L Jackson is in it.

Speaking of Sam, I had an image come to me in a dream.  Attention all graphic artists: We need a nicely done photoshop of Samuel L Jackson in a bishop’s robe and mitre.  Preferably with a staff and walking in a lush green meadow.  Of course this will be a St. Patrick’s Day image, the caption being his famous line from Snakes on a Plane, “Enough is enough, I have had it with these MF snakes on this MF island!”  I’m not sure of the title should be the informative “St. Jackson drives the snakes from Ireland” or go for the subtle joke, “Black Irish”…

I didn’t write down my smart-ass play-by-play notes on HP 4, 5 or 6. I thought my comments were funny, others take this shit way too serious. But a couple of you said you were disappointed that I gave in so I went ahead and took notes for the last two movies. This post is exceptionally long. If you’re the type that loves Harry Potter so much that me poking a little fun at it would bother you, move on, there’s nothing to see here today…

Friday, 1-20-12 8pm: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

• The new Minister of magic looks familiar. If only Crispin Glover were British.
• Harry looks younger here than he did in the last movie.
• What. The. Fuck. was that intro all about?
• Ya know, maybe if ValDeMorte went to a plastic surgeon for that nose…
• What’s with the wands? Why are they so scared? If Hitler said, “Hey, I’m going out to kill FDR, I need one of your Lugers.” I imagine half the room would offer theirs.
• The flashback to Dumbledore falling just reinforced how much he looks like Gandalf when he fell.
• Will Dumbledore the Grey return as Dumbledore the White during the final battle?
• One sip of Polypotion is enough? I though they had to drink more than that before.
• Having Hagrid as the protector of the “real” Harry is fucking stupid. Why bother with the subterfuge then?
• So, I missed something, why aren’t the bad guys watching the house?  Oh, so we can get a nice air-battle scene. Fighting on the ground would have been too ordinary?
• If you’re going to do the MIB tunnel scene I want an Elvis soundtrack.
• The baddie killed Harry’s owl, smiled, and flew away… Why didn’t he take a second shot AT THE TARGET?
• But you didn’t make the other guy answer an imposter-proof question.
• And the bad guys don’t know where the Weasels live either? Bad record-keeping at that school.
• I put my soul in seven WhoreCrotches once. Most expensive night of my life.
• “He left you his deluminator, may it show you the light in the darkest of times…” Is Galadriel just off-screen playing Cyrano?
• What we need right now is the evil bad guys crashing the wedding party.
• Holy shit, how many new characters are you going to cram in here!?
• Aaaaannnd queue the baddie wedding crash… Have I been surprised once in 7 movies? Once?
• She had the Mary Poppins purse in earlier films dude, why are you so surprised at it?
• The shootout at the diner was pretty damn cool!
• If Obliviate exists, why do they kill? Why not simply have an “executioner” that obliviates the bad guys and lets them start over?
• Ah yes, his full name on the door giving you the initials RAB, where as the other door simply said “Sirius”. No last name, no middle name…
• I know I made a joke about Dobbie and Gollum but this other elf (Creature?) is lunging for the locket and changes his voice, gets angry when he talks about it (precious), talks about himself in 3rd person. He really IS Gollum…
• I thought that bitch got gang-raped by Centaurs.
• “Magic is Might” Sooo 1984 and they wasted John Hurt in a one shot in the 1st movie.
• Right, out of the thousands of employees at the Ministry of Magic, the one I encountered just happens to be the one on the front page of the newspaper that just happens to be on the floor right here…
• Oh my god, I FINALLY understand the bathroom stall graffitti that says “Enter the Ministry of Magic” with an arrow pointing to the bowl. I thought it was some glory-hole jargon…
• We need to do the cartoon trick of knocking people out and impersonating them. So the first people they come across is a group of three. A ginger, a brunette and a woman; just like the three of them. How convenient.
• Just so I know, we ARE going with the “Nazi/Jews” thing with the Muggles and Mudbloods?
• Distracting the Min of Magic with smoke/horn bombs seems kind of like pulling out a water pistol to hold up an NRA meeting.
• I’m not into “Magic the Gathering” but those cards look very collectible…
• The creatures that were vaporous flying demons a second ago are now stopped by a gate that I could get my entire fat arm through?
• They lie on the ground after escaping to the woods… wouldn’t you worry about one of the hundreds of people searching for you taking the same escape route you took? Maybe hide behind a tree for a few minutes until it looks like you’re safe?
• Unless you’re TRYING to go Lord of the Rings, why else would you insist on wearing the precious around your neck? Especially when you are noticing it makes people cranky and irrational (just like the ring did)
• Okay, I’m glad I didn’t see this in a theater. When she said, “Take it off” in that tone of voice, I actually hollered out, “Oh yeah!”
• We’ll take turns wearing the ring (Just like Sam and Frodo)
• Oh my god damn, will you people get the fuck out of the woods already?
• Harry, it’s bros before hoes dude, you can’t work Herminy like that.
• And Ron pops back in just as Harry and Herminy kiss in 3…2..1… … … Ahhh, I was wrong! For once they didn’t go with the obvious… Someone call M. Night Shamaling, alert the press!
• Overhead shot, pan down over the footsteps in the snow and reveal the kids standing there. Make sure you get that lightpost in the frame. There, now we can finally finish our camera work on “Narnia”. Dude, this is Harry Potter. Oh. Shit. Just stick it in anyway, no one but some cynical fat-ass will notice.
• The old buildings, the empty snowy streets, the “fakeness” of the set. I’d pay a dollar to have someone throw open a window and yell, “Boy, do you know the poulterers on the corner, the one with the prize goose?”
• Yeah, we get it Batman, no parents. You’ve told us this at least twice in every movie. Can we move on now…?
• He’s 17. The attack happened 17 years ago. And the burned out husk of a house is still standing? Must be “magic” snow that doesn’t melt into water and seep into the wood rotting the house from the inside out. No sense of prime real-estate in the Potter universe is there? I barely believed it in Forrest Gump, that place was in the middle of nowhere. This place looks rather centrally located.
• When she started shaking and wailing, why is Harry doing anything OTHER than killing that old woman? She gave him a clear five second warning and he just stood there… Herminy didn’t trust her. You live in a world where everyone has magic wands, You’ve been fooled by polypotion on a number of occasions and in fact have over-relied on that same potion to further your own plot… Why would you trust ANYONE in that world?
• Mother fucker! Back in the goddamn woods again!?
• If you insist on sitting in the woods for two hours, I will insist you shut the fuck up when I mention that that’s all they did in “The Two Towers”, you know, that LORD OF THE RINGS MOVIE!?!
• If the sword appears when it is needed, why the search and why under a fucking lake? Why not just appear in his goddamn hand?
• That bitch has got tents, changes of clothes, condoms… everything in that bag. Maybe should have thought of packing some of that gillyweed we saw earlier so Harry could get the sword without almost dying.
• Hey, um, not for nothing Dark Lord and all but what was the point of goading Ron like that? If you had stopped fucking with him about halfway through, maybe threw in a line about killing Harry, maybe we would have gotten what we wanted. But you were having so much fun with your nude Harry/Herminy puppet show that you pissed him off until he struck it with that giant fucking sword he was holding and defeated the actual purpose of getting “in his head”.
• Teresa’s right, in these scenes Herminy looks just like Bella from Twilight.
• “It’s only a 10 inch wand, nothing special” All three of us in unison responded “That’s what she said!” We’re a fucked up family.
• This “Tale of Three Brothers and the Deathly Hallows”… Very cool. I could have watched that all day long. They should make a short film about that, I’d watch it. Unless they tried to split it into eight movies…
• Ron’s showing some brains, don’t be here when the old man gets back. … And Ron was right. Late, but right.
• Dobbie sounds like that creepy pedophile from Family Guy. Also, the CGI looks fucked up. Did they hit the uncanny valley? Because it looked better in the last movie we saw him in. Now he just looks… fake.
• Maybe that sledgehammer to the forehead would have hit me a little stronger if the “Mudblood” on her arm had been a tattoo… In blue ink…
• Seven people just went into a portal, she threw a knife after them. Who’s it going to hit? Well it’s got to be the guy who just made the rousing speech of being free and unafraid.
• Yup.
• Where the fuck did they get a shovel? She packed “the essentials” in the Mary Poppins purse but how does one decide a shovel is “essential”?
• Nice, he’s grave robbing but he has time to role-play from his childhood, “By the power of GreySkull!”

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Alright, that’s it for Part 1. We took a small break, I got a bowl of cereal and went right on with Part 2.

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• Starts with a clip show. Nice. More Master of the Universe comments.
• Yes I am an unusual wizard, I’m the new world order!
• Ha! I’ve been saying for 6 damn movies that Snape has got to be a good guy! Six damn movies and FINALLY he’s getting some screen time, finally I’m vindicated. Of course, I expected he’d turn out to be Harry’s real father but they keep saying how much he looks like James so… I guess I’ll be wrong on that. But at least Hans Gruber is a good guy!
• Now? Now you bring John Hurt back in? And he’s playing the frail old man straight out of Indy4?
• Okay fuckit, Ron looks pretty damn cool in that henchman getup. (Just after writing this, Teresa says the same thing but uses “hot” instead of “cool”)
• Bank vault ride. Part of the Universal ride? How could it NOT be?
• Barbaric?! How do YOU propose we keep a dragon? PITA bitch, I’ll bet she tries to free the dragon doesn’t she?
• If everything multiplies at the rate those first ones split, that room should have filled up much quicker than that. Especially after they started “swimming” in them.
• Herminy saves the day by opening the garbage chute and telling Han and Chewbacca to get in.
• Teresa and Becca just “awwwed” at setting the dragon free. How do we know this isn’t some rampaging demon of a dragon who was serving time like a prison sentence? Good going Ron, Harry and Herminy; you’ve just set a serial killer free! Hundreds of innocent children will be killed because of your actions. Happy now?
• Bullshit, he looks nothing like Dumbledore. Robes, beard… that’s about it.
• For an educated girl, Herminy’s “She’s your sister?” is about stupid. I stopped giving a shit about keeping track of this jungle of characters five movies back and even I knew it was his sister…
• The pink Centaur git is back at the school and “evil” has taken over but the portraits are still hanging in the halls. They made such a big deal about taking them down last time and they know how they work, why are they still up?
• They fight like idiots. I have this problem in kung-fu movies too. Outside of a tournament, when there is life and death on the line, why do they fight one on one? Why isn’t the ENTIRE student body pulling out their wands?
• Another thing I’ve always wondered; why hasn’t someone shot the bastard yet? Spells, charms, wands… the bad guys are still prone to physical violence. Someone pull a fucking gun already!
• Ha, I’ve been asking why they tolerated the Slithering house all along. ALL the bad guys come from there, why not eliminate the house? Gryphendoor is the Alpha-Betas, Hufflepuff is the stoner house, Ravenclaw never got any screen time for me to know that they do but why do we need a “this is where all the bad guys come from” house? The sorting hat could sense the evil or the midiclorian count or however the hell it works, exclaim “Slithering!” everyone cheers and the kid goes through the door marker “Slithering” and falls in a pit to his death. Problem solved.
• Maybe a stretch but after the underground radio “lightning has struck” scene, the informants turning people over like the Gestapo, you’re still invoking a WW2 mask, and now these pretty awesome stone warriors just look like the Jews summoning golems. Sorry, you’re ruining your own movies here folks. You can’t hand me turd after turd after turd and then ask why I’m not eating the chocolates…
• Nice shield you’ve got surrounding Hogwarts. When you’re done with it make sure you get it back to the Gungans, they’re going to need it.
• Who would have thought the line, “I want to destroy your mother’s precious heirloom” would work?
• And now the countless army of baddies marches on Helm’s Deep. I swear, if Dumbledore returns at the final battle I’ll turn this off. I know I’m 7 and a half movies in to an 8 movie story, I don’t care. If Gandalf the White saves the day, I’m fucking done!
• The Lord of Darkness, the most evil man and powerful wizard alive wants a showdown, in one hour. The outcome of this fight will decide the fate of every wizard in magicland! And where do you want this epic battle to take place dark lord? On a mountain top? On a cliff overlooking a great sea? No, let’s do it in the parking lot behind the high school. Ooookay…
• Two back to back instances of the movie answering us as we comment aloud:
  Teresa asks, “How’d Ron open that door?” As if in answer, Ron immediately says, “Harry talks in his sleep”
  Next scene, Ron and Herminy are splashed in the face with tons of water. I mutter in a bad cockney accent, “Oy, that’s what I’m gonna do to you on our wedding night Herminy.” As if in answer, the two immediately embrace and kiss passionately.
  One of us thinks he’s pretty funny, the other one of us has class.
• Hey, can Herminy use her time travel thingy and cause a do-over if they lose this battle?
• Hey, watch out for those little winged things Harry, they can’t be any good. At least, they weren’t on Geonosis.
• Someone shout “Fireus Alarmus!”
• I get it now, the last three movies is a video game. Each whorecrucks is a level boss and they get progressively more difficult to defeat.
• Am I just noticing or has the music sucked recently? I remember liking it early on but it’s been flat and bland recently.
• “You have your mother’s eyes”  HA! Is this where they reveal Snape as Harry’s real father? I’ve been waiting on this!
• Oh cool they killed a twin without the hokey “I feel the other’s pain” bullshit. Nice!
• I didn’t write anything down during the “Snape memory” sequence, it was too powerful of a scene. But as I remember it, Dumbledore was dying anyway, Snape had to kill him in a very noble Judas Iscariot kind of way.
• I think I had my first “give a shit moment” in the movies. That was pretty sad, depressing and a little pathetic. Watching another man have a child with the woman you love, begging for her life and then having to watch over the bastard spawn for 17 years. So Snape didn’t turn out to be the daddy but he did act like a father figure, protecting from the shadows and in the end, even dying for the kid.
• If I were Snape, I would have played my last card a little differently. He would have taken my tears to the viewer and been assaulted with the thousands of times Snape tossed-off to pictures of Lilly while using his other hand to give the finger to a picture of James. Nothing but repressed sexuality, unrequited love and burning hate for thirty minutes of memories. This may be why I’m not allowed to write children’s novels…
• Harry must die so others can live. Snape is Judas, Harry is the Christ.
• The D&D nerd in me did a flip when Harry said to the snitch, “I’m ready to die” and out popped a D-8. Roll for damage Harry.
• I sill can’t get over “Avracadavra”. No matter how you say it, spell it or allow for historical or linguistic subtleties, it just sounds too close to Abracadabra. Why not have the resurrection spell be “Yapple Dapple!”?
• Gandalf the Grey HAS returned as Gandalf the White. But not during the big Helm’s Deep battle so, yeah, it’s soooo much different than LotR
• Heaven is a train station. A train station where people abandon the bloody fetuses of evil wizards.
• Fuck this, Dumbledore the White just isn’t working for me, bring in Morgan Freeman.
• Is that it? I was told Harry Potter died and came back. It’s one of the few spoilers I knew about in advance. THAT’S his death and resurrection? LAME!!!
• The Lord of all Evil finds out he just killed a child so he celebrates in front of his minions with… a little dance. How cute.
• Draco looks like he’s being forced to hug Aunt Bunny but instead of being freaked out by her mustache, he’s got the whole “burn victim” thing going for him.
• Something is just “off” about this scene. ValDeMorte is popping one liners at Nevil and the crowd of bad guys is laughing. It feels like the out-take credits of a Burt Reynolds movie.
• And fuck this, the Malfoy family is moving to Jamaica.  Smart move.
• Nevil looks like Ed Norton from Fight Club. “I am ValDeMorte’s ruptured spleen.”
• Nice try but Ripley pulled off the “Stay away from my daughter you bitch” line MUCH better in Aliens.
• Would Harry have killed the disarmed ValDeMorte if Val didn’t evaporate? Would it be wrong if he did? Is that why Val evaporated, the writers took that decision out of the hands of a character you are supposed to like?
• Lovegood gets with Longbottom. Seriously, the porn writes itself.
• Why is Riff-Raff pushing a broom? They’ve already shown they can clean up magically like Mary Poppins. I’d figure a broom would be rather difficult to come by in a school of magic.
• Ron: We could be invincible! Harry: Or we could snap it in two and chuck it. Herminy looks like she knows she made the wrong choice in men.
• 19 years later!? No, fuck this, someone promised me a dead Harry. That ten second delirium via concussion doesn’t count! If it does, I’ve died at least three times that I can remember…
• With all the money they spent on these movies, they couldn’t age them any better than this?
• Did I miss a demographic? Is England over-run by red-heads? What the fuck with all the gingers in this series?
• The boy who lived. The boy who saved the world. Now looks like, the boy who will do your taxes.
• None of them teach at Hogwarts? All of them are staying behind on the platform? And after all they’ve been through together, none of them talk or even nod toward each other?  It feels like the morning after an orgy and no one wants to make eye-contact.
• The end. Finally, the kid catches a break. Fight evil for seven years, kick back and relax for the rest of your life.  Not a bad gig.

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Now that it’s all over, some thoughts on the series:

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I think if I was in a conversation with JK Rowling we’d get along just fine. Based on the sheer volume of obvious references in the HP series, it appears we both enjoy the same movies.

But that’s not a fair jab on my part. The failing is my own.

You want to know what cripples me as a writer? You know why I haven’t gone “all-out” and submitted the hundreds of manuscripts I’ve written? Because after I read them back, I see the similarities to other stories I’ve read or movies I’ve watched and I’m embarrassed to call it my own work. Writers do it all the time, it’s natural, nothing is new under the sun. Even when it’s just a slight connection, I file it away and wait for that one original premise. It doesn’t exist dude! So stop using that as an excuse to dislike Rowling’s world. It’s nigh-impossible to write a fantasy novel that DOESN’T invoke some element of Lord of the Rings or King Arthur or any of the other standards. So for me to cast dispersion on the Harry Potter universe for that reason alone would be utterly wrong.

The movies are guilty as sin of suddenly introducing a tool or notion that will become important in the immediate future. No foreshadowing, no planning. It makes it feel cheap and made-up. No world-building just a series of magical dilemmas that we coincidentally happen to be prepared for. I didn’t want to use the term “Deus Ex Machina” because I see it thrown against these books all the time but as far as the movies go, it’s totally appropriate.

I actually liked the core story. I just wish they had pared the entire thing to two or three movies instead of eight. There was WAY too much fluff in there. It was like they couldn’t decide what to cut. If you’re making the movie for fans of the books, you’ve got to include certain iconic scenes I’m sure. But there was SOOOO many unfleshed sub-plots in there. It was like I was being shelled with unnecessary characters, plots, scenes… I found myself just hunkering down and waiting for it to be over.

I think the whole “gay Dumbledore” thing has no bearing on the movies whatsoever. I actually watched for any hints and other than a few “could be” conversations that were really stretching, there was nothing in there. Unless his “less than a year to live” disease was supposed to be Wizard-AIDS. I think his “outing” was an afterthought PR move to cause a stink with some people. If they had the one guy at the wedding pass off the line, “of course I miss him, he and I were lovers for fifty years” or “married” anything like that, it would have fulfilled my rant of wanting to see a gay character in a mainstream movie that wasn’t playing to the stereotype or used as a plot point. As it stands, the character of Dumbledore is not identified as gay. Not in the movie he wasn’t.

I’m glad I watched them. I’m really glad I watched them with Teresa and Becca. But I’ll probably never watch them again. Maybe the last one… That one was alright. But without the exposition of the first seven, it’s pointless. They haven’t inspired me to read the books, they solidified my opinion that this series was not for me. But after watching them, I’m at least willing to admit that I don’t hate them, I just don’t care for them.

Sat through three more Harry Potter flicks.  Still not impressed.

They look like they are trying to get darker but they’re not. They simply follow the age of the teenagers and that period of life involves a lot of brooding.  They’re just “exploring feelings” and such… oh, how my weeping ovaries hurt after watching these things!  There were some good parts, some cute scenes but as a whole I’m not interested in watching awkward teenagers fumble with puppy love.  Twilight…  Harry Potter…  Ehhh, not my gig.

Some of the stuff I liked turned out to be the overdone, cliche and expected parts.  The lightsaber duel was pretty cool looking.  Helena Bonham Carter playing a crazy bitch… Umm, haven’t seen that one before…

I’ve still got the last movies (two parts) to watch.  Hopefully it ties it all together.  I’d like to see at least one well-planned and clever turn and not just pulling some Star Trekian magic out of their ass at the last minute.  Consistency in the magic world would be nice too.

I’d also like to care about any of the characters.  I wish I had one single character that I wanted to understand, one person I wanted to know more about.  This thing is like reading the Book of Numbers, there’s a hundred new characters on every damn page.  Every time I start to feel “close” to a character, they take them out of the story to make room for the new ones.  The main three?  Whining bitches all of them, I hope they die.  Dumbledore?  They never made him likable enough.  I didn’t care at all when he died.  Hagrid?  He was my only chance but he’s barely in the damn movies anymore.  I keep thinking Snape is going to get more time but they never give it to him.  To be honest, if I hadn’t promised to watch them all, I could just leave the story right where it is and be just fine.

I’m sure they get plenty of explanation in the books.  (Or at least, I hope so…)  I’m willing to give her credit enough to believe that this universe is fully and properly explained in the books.  But these are movies, not books.  If I have to read the book the movie is based on to understand, feel or care about characters in the movie, then it is a failure of a movie.  It may make money, it may spawn sequels (most of that coming from an existing fanbase) but if you take a ‘great’ book and can’t successfully condense it into a movie format, DON’T do it!  The “you have to read it to understand” excuse is complete and utter bullshit.  A movie should stand on its own.

Whenever we have time, I’ll watch the last two back-to-back.  So far the entire movie series looks like it’s probably a good story to tell in two, maybe three movies.  Not eight.