Harry Potter VI

[KvHagedorn]

Well.. if the Lemony Snickets books (which my boss's 10yo daughter reads instead of HP.. I think beacuse they are shorter) are anything like the Jim Carrey movie in spirit, they would kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth.. that movie is DARK. I mean, the guy just goes around murdering everyone.. lots of good people die, and it's all because of that old standby theme of kid's literature.. no grownup listens to kids. It's all pretty negative and unpleasant. HP is just adventure.. no one has really died yet except Harry's parents (parent death being the other eternal theme in kid's literature..), and that's just alluded to. We never get to care about them before they are blasted out of existence or whatever.

[Gurm]

Well.. if the Lemony Snickets books (which my boss's 10yo daughter reads instead of HP.. I think beacuse they are shorter) are anything like the Jim Carrey movie in spirit, they would kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth.. that movie is DARK. I mean, the guy just goes around murdering everyone.. lots of good people die, and it's all because of that old standby theme of kid's literature.. no grownup listens to kids. It's all pretty negative and unpleasant. HP is just adventure.. no one has really died yet except Harry's parents (parent death being the other eternal theme in kid's literature..), and that's just alluded to. We never get to care about them before they are blasted out of existence or whatever.

Well, a couple thoughts:

1. Some people have died in HP. Professor Quirrel in the first book (although he was taken over by Voldemort, so we don't care, right?), Sirius Black in book 5, and in this book we lose some more people.

2. Lemony Snickett is, it is true, predicated on the fact that adults just don't listen to kids. The books are, and at the same time aren't, like the movies. But they are, in fact, quite bleak. The children triumph over all, though.

[Jon P. Inghram]

I didn't like the Lemony Snickets movie either, felt like the target audience was hyperactive 5 year olds with nanosecond attention spans. Plus I hate movies that require characters to be abysmally stupid for the plot to continue (Star Wars:ROTS for example. )

[Gurm]

I didn't like the Lemony Snickets movie either, felt like the target audience was hyperactive 5 year olds with nanosecond attention spans. Plus I hate movies that require characters to be abysmally stupid for the plot to continue (Star Wars:ROTS for example. )

The books are pretty much like this. They all follow the same theme:

- Children are left in the care of some new, obscure relative.
- Said relative is either benignly loving, or cold and distant.
- Count Dooku... err... Olaf sneaks into their lives again, in some bizarre disguise which the children see through instantly but which the adults in their life never do.
- Some things go horribly wrong. Usually, this involves the DEATH of the adult relative.
- Count Olaf almost wins.
- The children thwart him.
- The adults see, at the last minute, what went wrong...
- Count Olaf gets away.

Rinse, repeat.