Hacker Cinema
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
2001 · Film · 152 min
Part of Harry Potter Collection
Directed by Chris Columbus
Harry Potter has lived under the stairs at his aunt and uncle's house his whole life. But on his 11th birthday, he learns he's a powerful wizard—with a place waiting for him at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As he learns to harness his newfound powers with the help of the school's kindly headmaster, Harry uncovers the truth about his parents' deaths—and about the villain who's to blame.
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66 comments on Hacker News
I differentiate nerd from geek as a heirarchy, geek to me being a sub-nerd.
These are geekisms:
>super heroes
>fantasy books/movies
>Pokemon
>Magic the Gathering
>Star Wars
>Lord Of The Rings
>Narnia
>Harry Potter
>video games
Here you describe nerdisms:
>When I was little I was fascinated by big engines and in general driven by the curiosity of wanting to know how everything worked. I would disassemble every piece of electronics in the household. I was into model airplanes and gliders. I was obsessed with building electric motors. I was also really big into steam machines. Everything steam was just cool. Then computers took over my life. Today I find myself nerding out about wood working and back garden agriculture when I'm not doing AI stuff.
Geeks consoom, nerds understand and tinker/build.
Most video games are geek (consoom), tools like Siemens NX or Adobe Master Collection CS6 are nerd (should be thought of as extremely open-ended games), simulators wobble between my classifications depending on accuracy/depth (Minecraft, Sims: geek; NX Nastran, flight/train/truck/forklift simulators: nerd).
Why not?
This is a fantastic example - the Harry Potter movies have already been wildly profitable, surely enough to have solidly incentivized their creation. And they are now firmly part of our collective cultural background, to the point that most of the value comes from the network effects of people who have watched them rather than the works themselves.
The first book was written in 1997, and released as a movie in 2001. The last book was written in 2007, and released as a movie in 2011.
Putting a 20-year limit on the copyright would mean that one could use the characters/story (from the book) starting in 2017 - either riffing on them or perhaps even a complete remake. And this would still be 6 years after the final movie was released. The movies themselves would of course each have their own 20 year periods of monetization. You could legally watch the whole series of movies on a personal computer starting in 2031, which is still 5 years away. This all seems eminently reasonable to me.
I've slowly become more and more inclined to "Theory 5: Purity of vision" over the past six years.
When I was younger, I valued movies more than books. I know that people usually replied that books make you exercise your imagination more, but to me that felt like a disadvantage of books, they seem to rely on a crutch (the imagination), whereas movies (in my child's mind) stood alone, proudly. I tended to see a book as infirm, incomplete until it got an adaptation, and even then, a bad adaptation seemed to me to somehow devalue the book itself, like an infection from a prosthesis. I literally couldn't sleep at night because of errors in book adaptations, it was like a hole in the universe itself.
Then I reread Harry Potter, especially the last book, and I came to love the descriptions of nature and feelings in the tenting chapters, and I suddenly realized how much I value how the book makes feel, and how irrelevant the quality of its adaptation is.
This theory got put to the test when the Foundation TV show came up, which I found awful, and for the first time I didn't care. The book was just as brilliant as before, and no bad adaptation could make me lose nights anymore.
Recently, this disappointment with adaptations together with the appreciation of literature itself made me more disappointed with movies in general, even original ones. I realized how many compromises have to be made to make a movie which simply don't exist in books.
I realize this is about money, and it's 2025 right now, and I'm probably just old, but what will happen to quality? I actually laughed, twice, because they did this, twice:
> Beloved franchises, shows and movies such as [list of some of the greatest classics of all time] will join Netflix’s extensive portfolio including [list of laughable junk], creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences worldwide.
And then just a few lines later (and I won't snarkily shorten this one):
> By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we'll be able to do that even better.
Like did I really just see Citizen Kane in the same sentence as KPop Demon Hunters? Might as well add Ow, My Balls to the list, that's how jarring the contrast was for me.
That's true of course, but the book series wouldn't have become a cultural phenomenon that makes billions.
Unlike, for probably the only example, Harry Potter, which was already a cultural phenomenon when the first film was announced.
That's a Nolan thing like how Dunkirk used no green screen.
I think Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings embody the transition from old school camera tricks to CGI as they leaned very heavily into set and prop design and as a result have aged very gracefully as movies
For what it’s worth I personally read The Hobbit for the first time as a child a few years after watching the first Harry Potter movie.
So when I read The Hobbit I imagined the trolls to be similar to the giant troll from the first Harry Potter movie. The one that goes after Hermione when she’s crying in the restroom and then Harry and Ron have to save her.
I think her character Prof. McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies drew heavily on her much earlier role as that other Scottish school teacher, Jean Brodie.
This hasn’t been my experience. My kids have loved Star Wars, Harry Potter, Space Jam, Looney Toons, Muppets, Uncle Buck, Top Gun, Ghostbusters, My Neighbor Tuturo, all the classic Disney movies, Mary Poppins, Get Smart, and others I’m sure I’m missing. They even like some of the light westerns thier grandparents put on. It’s not everything, but it’s most of what I’ve tried.
They currently love playing classic arcade games on a cabinet I built.
It depends on the kid, but I don’t think it’s just a generational thing. The limits tend to be very old movies with sound issues, which was my limit as well.
He was Harry Potter in all the films, so I assume he's one of the best-known actors in the world.
aside from the way she's terrible, she's not terrible?
the wonderful thing any capitalism is that you can absolve yourself of guilt by having someone else do your dirty work for you. are you so sure every single seamstress that made clothes and stuffed animals, and the workers at the toy factories, and every single person involved with the making of the movies for the Harry Potter deals she licensed her work to were well compensated and treated well? that's not directly on her, but at least some of her money comes from there
I feel like some of the examples you list are a poor choice to illustrate your point.
Both Harry Potter (books so more than films, but in the films too) and Aang have plenty of flaws, and there's arcs and events that help them grow/develop.
It's been a while, but Katniss does have plenty of flaws and growth (and even some things she never overcomes about her self). Although, it's been a few years since I've read Hunger Games, I feel like she doesn't belong in the same category as Bella (which feels like a placeholder character intentionally). Tris from Divergent might be a good example though, but even there there's some growth.
Regarding some of the super heroes: they're all kinda "super" and very mary-sue-ish, I agree. But they still face challenges and difficulties they need to overcome, or the stories they're part of (rather than the character themselves) are otherwise interesting.
Most of the modern "strong female leads" are just boring (and this comes from a gay boy who LOVES strong women, my favourite characters are women: Sydney Bristol, almost every one from ATLA & Korra, Willow & Buffy, Halliwell sisters, Xena, Lara Croft, Jade from BG&E, women from Harry Potter, Aya from Parasite Eve games, an uncountable plethora of amazing female characters in Anime and manga, and I could go on and on and on, it's not like it can't be done, or hasn't been done, it has been done MANY times). The only challenge these modern Disney SFLs face is not believing in themselves (and as someone who struggles on and off with self esteem issues, I realise how difficult those can be, but also it's not "enough" to base a whole character around just that), usually with a sprinkle of "blame the patriarchy" in there too.
All this misandry and trying to portray any masculinity as toxic is just lame. It's very similar to Disney's queer coding of villains. I remember in my teens, while being a sexually confused and closed queer how sensitive I was to that bullshit and how awful and ashamed it made me feel. It's ludicrous how it's being done again, just the aggressor and targeted demographics are different now. I can't tell if that's just Disney's Modus Operandi, or of this is some type of bitter revenge writing. It sucked then and it sucks now, and it will continue to suck. We need to do better.
People mentioned elsewhere in threads that people complain about too many POCs. I've not seen much of this (maybe a few low quality posts online, but that's just racist drivel of a few small minced idiots, and rarely anyone cares about it). What people dislike is their liked characters' identities getting twisted to fit "modern audiences" (often it's MORE than just race). And the irony is, not even this mythological modern audience likes it because it usually ends up being a shallow self insert, so then down the line the audience gets blamed and called names). There's plenty of original PoC characters that are loved (of Disney: Mulan, Pocahontas, Aladdin/Jasmine, Moana, Lilo, Encanto cast). The whole "well why does it matter" argument is also a bit of a bad faith bait. If it didn't matter, why so bullishly insist on changing it?
They most likely still would have done it. Books like this usually have a short shelf life in the public consciousness. Harry Potter being an exception to the rule is in large part based on the hugely successful long-running movie series.
I get the idea, but I think that's way too short. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997; imagine if instead of paying Rowling for the royalties to make the movie in 2001, the studios had just waited until 2017 and done it without her permission, paying her not a penny.
Books were the entertainment of the day. In recent times people thronged movie theaters to see Star Wars or Harry Potter.
> You just got old. It happens to everyone, and every generation says the same thing: The music I enjoyed when I was young and impressionable was great, but all the stuff they make nowadays is crap.
Thing is, there are objective metrics about quality. One aspect is "loudness war" aka compression, where subjective loudness gets increased at the cost of dynamic range [1], another (in)famous aspect is the increasing use of auto-tune (both the software itself as well as the general principle after which it was named). Artists and especially producers love that shit because similar to standardization in fast-food it provides a "consistent" performance even in live productions - which is seen as "cheating" in music by older people, and I think for good reason.
On top of that there's an increasing tendency of producers to push for "bland" personalities as well instead of also taking risks, and it's not just music - it's movies as well: most movies aren't original productions any more, a lot of them is based off of prior IP (Harry Potter, MCU) or endless continuations (Star Wars, Star Trek) to recoup ever growing production and marketing costs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
> the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors.
So Rowling only gets to be some 8 figure millionaire instead of a 10 figure billionaire? That's so unfair.
> My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time (
The prolonged period of time should be 18 months. I don't think the concept of "royalties for adapting someone else's work" is severable from the concept of copyright. These things are either the same, or royalties are some subset of copyright.
Even just re-typesetting a book is an adaptation as far as these things are concerned.
> Why allow them to extend it at all?
Marvel's an interesting choice, because the comic book depiction of Iron Man (for example) came out in the 60's, and almost certainly didn't make anywhere near the kind of money that the movies did. I'm not generally opposed to copyright holders getting some revenue from the later adaption of their work, especially in situations like that.
5 years is cutting it really close for your typical film adaption of a book: the first Twilight and Harry Potter movies came out 4 years after their books, and I could definitely see movie studios just waiting an extra year to cut out the original authors.
My ideal world would see original authors retaining these kinds of royalties for prolonged periods of time (maybe 40 years or the life of the author, whichever's longer), but losing their monopoly rights in a much shorter timespan: basically, for the first 5-10 years copyright works the way it does today, but beyond that anybody's allowed to make derivative works, in exchange for some legally-mandated revenue slice.
that's not necessarily a good guide. Let's say you make a lot of money. You can pay your executives millions, have lush offices with swimming pools and tennis courts, company jets etc and report razor thin "profits". Not that they're doing that - but you can creative accounting your way out of reporting profits.
For instance, the star wars movies, forrest gump, lord of the rings, men in black and harry potter are all still not technically "in profit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
That's why money in - money out is a better barometer for insurance and people with star power negotiate different terms these days like percentage of "dollars in". I made a video a couple years ago with a writer friend who is now on strike about this.
(I'm cutting out the first 5 minutes of chit-chat and it's processing on youtube, but if you see this after that happens, just go to the beginning) https://youtu.be/QZBqjZS3hZA?t=296
The article says:
Cajoling the chatelaines of country piles here isn’t as hard as it once was, he says, thanks to the likes of Downton Abbey and Harry Potter. “Everyone wants to be the next Highclere or Alnwick,” he says.
Well thats true, for the very specific subset of properties who want to milk location income. There's another set, who don't pick up the phone.
Really? They want the income. I don't think anyone does it "for the likes" although the post-film-release tail of tourism must have some imputed value.
I don't have a mouldering pile to flog for visuals, but if I did, I'd be filling the moat if the tour buses started driving up afterward. Get off my (1000 year old) lawn.
I am 26 and the movies still feel fresh. I didn't even get to watch the movies until I was an adult...I only had the books, so the respect the movies had for the books was very special to me.
What pisses me off about Warner Bros is how they are latching onto LotR and Harry Potter because they were glorious 20 years ago, and they want to reclaim that glory without putting any work in to make something worth watching. They would rather milk one man's life's work to death for a cheap buck instead of trying to make something new. And, its probably going to be successful. Harry potter was fun 20 years ago, LotR was fun 20 years ago, but as a society we need to move on to new works instead of latching onto past success. If Warner Bros could realize that, they would be better off for it.
I have generally found that the best children's content all holds up amazingly well when viewed from an adult perspective. Think most Pixar films, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Little Prince, His Dark Materials, Roald Dahl and so much more. Great authors simplify complex adult themes for children, but never forgo them.
I used to argue that the rise of popularity of children literature and movies among adults is a sign of an increased infantilization of our society. Star Wars, Harry Potter, super hero movies (and many, many other examples in between).
But over time I changed this view: I don't think it's such a new phenomenon anymore. The mainstream always consisted mostly of simple stories with almost no emotional and philosophical ambiguity. In the 80s we had action movies with "super-heroes" saving the world. In the 90s we had a mix of love stories and blockbusters with a clear cut boundary between good and evil.
Furthermore, cinema attendance in the US has not changed much in decades. It could be argued, perhaps, that movies play a bigger cultural role today, but that could just be the result of recency bias.
My point is... the percentage of people who continue their intellectual and emotional development past adolescence has always been small. It could be that in some ways this phenomenon is more apparent today due to social media. But that doesn't mean that the rate of infantilization among adults has increased.
If you replaced "The Hero's Journey" with the (Japanese-anime) word "Isekai", I get the same feeling here.
"Isekai" is the "Trapped in another world" trope that suddenly became popular for anime/manga in the last 10 years. But the basis of the story has been backwards-applied to Wizard of Oz, a Kid in King Author's Court, and even 90s shows like Digimon, Escaflowne, and .Hack//Sign.
Except "Isekai" as a concept didn't exist until relatively recently, within the past decade or so. There's no way Mark Twain was thinking of that concept when he wrote "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" over a hundred years ago.
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Furthermore, a lot of the tropes associated with the Isekai genre can be applied to plenty of other stories (including the Hero's Journey). Harry Potter, for example, hits overpowered main character, travel to effectively another world hidden amongst people (Hogwarts), magical / fantasy tropes (classical monsters), etc. etc.
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There are however, certain tropes and storytelling devices that are popular amongst people. When you take an "average person" and stick them as the main character, with few defining features... it allows for the reader / watchers to "self-insert" themselves as the protagonist.
See Harry Potter who comes from Muggle society, The Connecticut Yankee who represented a modern American from Mark Twain's era, Dorethy from Kansas, or the legion of Isekai protagonists from Kagome (Inuyasha), to Kirito (Sword Art Online). You give the main character a degree of wish fulfillment, including adventure, romance, and overall a positive and uplifting story. And a lot of people will like it. (The notion of "The Outsider" from Westerns and Japanese Samurai films also hits this trope)
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We can see that "The Hero's Journey" in fact follows a lot of similar patterns with "Isekai" itself even. Adventure is thrust upon the protagonist in the form of "The Isekai" moment (the moment where the protagonist is teleported to another world somehow).
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I think "The Hero's Journey" is largely the same. Its a backwards application being applied forwards. A concept created in 1944 that tries to unify stories from centuries or millennia ago, and tries to distill them into a singular "pattern" that works for today's audiences.
No different from "Isekai" these days (though on a shorter timescale: a concept from the past 15 years that very well could be applied to stories from 100 years ago). Now excuse me, I have some trash anime to watch...
EDIT: The trolls will joke that "Saving Private Ryan" is an Isekai. The WW2 front was a very different life, and the "Isekai" moment was getting off the boat and onto the shores of West Europe. They can't go back until they've accomplished their mission, so its an Isekai, trapped in another world.
Filtering "listicles", articles with titles like "6 Secrets to Achieving Work-Life Balance", "23 Amazing Moments From The Harry Potter Movies", "5 Steps to Booking a Cheap Flight Online" and similar.
It’s seems more reasonable to use 26 year old actors to play a ~16 year old high school students than 11 year olds.
Daniel Radcliffe on the other hand was actually 11-12 when playing an 11-12 year old character. By comparison Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy simply didn’t fit nearly as well because he was a 2 years older. https://fantasytopics.com/harry-potter-cast-real-life-ages-during-movies/
Harry potter movie changed directors a few times right?
Amazon is getting a 160mil tax credit in NZ.
Regarding the team: "The team who will be creating the “LOTR” TV series includes: executive producers Lindsey Weber (“10 Cloverfield Lane”), Bruce Richmond (“Game of Thrones”), Gene Kelly (“Boardwalk Empire”) and Sharon Tal Yguado; writer/executive producer Gennifer Hutchison (“Breaking Bad”); writer/executive producer Jason Cahill (“The Sopranos”) writer/executive producer Justin Doble (“Stranger Things”); consulting producers Bryan Cogman (“Game of Thrones”) and Stephany Folsom (“Toy Story 4”); producer Ron Ames (“The Aviator”); writer/co-producer Helen Shang (“Hannibal”) and writing consultant Glenise Mullins."
So they have established people in the background and a well known franchise. As for not involving Peter Jackson maybe they just wanted to start fresh, no idea but George Lucas isn't involved of the Mandalorian
It’s a Ben Phillips hoax.
https://www.deviantart.com/benphillips/gallery/all
https://m.facebook.com/bedeekin.oobe
It’s extremely sus that he spelled his own name wrong and seemingly edited his name on IMDB. He’s credited in actual films as Ben Phillips (I checked the Harry Potter credits on streaming) and using the right name unlocks a lot of public context on his interests and abilities. He should be proud of the hoax because it’s fantastic but he merc’d himself when he commented on Reddit as Bedeekin. I suspect he runs the Reddit community as well as a few sock puppets within.
The main criticism of this YouTube video is that the main character doesn't really have to put in any effort and has all those skills from the very beginning.
While I agree that this trope can make kids think they're special without trying in life (and that they will be a hero in the future), I think there have been similar tropes in the past.
Just take basic story writing of many old movies: There is always a hero that is living a boring or even sad life, often unsuccessful and unhappy. Suddenly, a "mentor" appears who takes our hero into this new magical world and teaches him the most amazing things in no time. Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, basically all Disney movies, even Sailor Moon.
That doesn't teach kids very positive things either: just wait for a mentor to come along and show you the way to become a hero, don't worry, you will be a hero because someone shows you the way.
So I don't see the development described in the YouTube video as dramatically, it has existed forever.
I haven't read the linked article, and I don't like Star Wars. But as for people using JEDI or other Star Wars, Harry Potter, LoTR, GoT acronyms, I'm OK with all that. This is just how culture adopts new mythology, new symbolisms and new customs. Quite a lot of ideas, words and phrases from Orwell's 1984 are an integral part of current English communication.
Of course, when it comes to adoption of Star Wars and Harry Potter expressions, Disney and WB are likely to throw all their might at preventing it.
You mentioned "gaslighting". That's from a movie too.
Not sure I buy the whole "pornography is harmful to women." thing - I can imagine there are several angles to try to make a case for it, and I know it won't matter how much people argue about it, some people will say that baywatch is harmful to women, 50 shades of grey, and perhaps harry potter.
It's fine to have concerns, and I am all for teaching the next generation not to treat people how they see them treated in movies and to care for others even if they aren't as awesome as the 'celebrities' we are sold, or what have you.
I think when it comes to polls we should all know that people taking polls are very likely (or is it mostly likely or slightly likely?) to not be honest about porn. Surely when speaking to someone who is recording what you say and has your phone number, telling them every truth about your views on porn is well skewed.
I also think if you really want to delve into this, it's not right to paint with a broad brush, it would be better to classify dozens of different types of 'porn' and have discussions about the various kinds instead of all porn is X or Y.
I also do not think that ohnlyfans / camming is worse than porn from a decade ago - not sure why you are considering that - perhaps because it is more accessible to the average girl/person you feel that it's more dangerous?
I believe that it's less 'dangerous' for many reasons, and mainly because that kind of work allows you to control what you want in your performing script - as opposed to having to do what others have written, or (what happens sometimes, but not as a general thing) some group trying to get you to do more things once it's started filming, that weren't in the original plan.
I do believe we need more education about not living your real life like you see in the movies, so called 'reality tv', and other media.. how to separate your expectations and not get caught up in binges with pleasurable things that make it so you 'have a problem' - but I don't put it on 'porn' is the mind-control/body-possesion thing if the universe.
Also I'd consider that some porn may be helpful in having conversations with people to get to know more about how things may work, and lead to some good - as we have not gotten better about teaching basic human touch or communication much less sexual touch and intimate talks since the days VHS beat betamax, and without porn, you'd have even less.
Emma Watson auditioned for the original Harry Potter films, they are talking about making her audition again for a remake (!)
> A lot of AmE usage is becoming commonplace in Britain thanks to the Internet, though.
My girlfriend and I were watching the Harry Potter movie cast reunion, and I noticed how the younger cast members let a lot of Valley-Girl-isms slip into their speech. "So I was like" (introducing a quotation), and "totally" (meaning very, extremely), and so forth. Quite different from how I expect a British person to talk. The younger generation of Brits seem to have fully embraced what Stephen Fry called "Buffy talk, Sabrina the Teenage Witch talk" and "the language of the Sunny Delight generation": https://youtu.be/xs5fH1ECzWc (Note that Fry was specifically addressing the related phenomenon of AQI, a.k.a. "uptalk", but he diverts into things like "I was like" to introduce a quotation.)
How could I forget about LOTR! Admittedly Ive not seen any of the Harry Potter movies.
> an entire month of samurai movies
Man, that is awesome. When my wife and I first started dating, our date nights consisted of going and seeing all of the harry potter movies as they were being re-shown in a local theater. We bought the expensive seats and this theater served food/beer with the movie, which made it that much more fun. I wish more theaters would adapt their business model do to stuff like this- I'd LOVE to see the LOTR trilogy (extended) in theaters again.
It's more like, the spotlight has shifted away from the medium and creative people have left. Old movies, like old books, are by definition more important. Looking at the highest grossing movies of the past 2 decades almost all are based on older stories/franchises, from star wars to marvel , to LOTR, to harry potter (newest one).
I agree.. its very much a quality of experience for me.
I paid $250 for a six person table with dinner at the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra while they played all the best pieces of John Williams' music from his many film scores. Only a two hour concert, but the Jurassic Park theme made me tear up, and I was only 10 feet from the orchestra.
I paid $300 for two Conductor's Box seats at the MSO for myself and a girl I was dating to see the Harry Potter in Concert series, where you watch a Harry Potter movie while the orchestra plays all the music from the film live. For me, it was hit or miss, since I was too old to really get into Harry Potter, but the lady I was seeing was 15 years younger than me, so it really affected her, which of course really benefited me.
Both cases, money well spent.
Star Wars, Harry Potter, any Disney or Pixar movie, etc etc
An anecdote: a good friend of mine just found out she's pregnant with her first child. She's a huge Harry Potter fan, and her favorite characters are the Weasley Twins.
For not-all-that-much money, I was able to get James and Oliver Phelps (the actors who played the twins in all 8 movies) to each record a separate video message (about 1 minute each) wishing her congratulations by name and wishing her and her baby well.
I made the two Cameo requests on a Friday night, and had both videos by Sunday morning. Both were warm, friendly, and seemed to be genuine and happy for her (obviously to the extent that they know her: "name is X, first-time mom, huge fan".
She was absolutely over-the-moon happy about receiving them.
Local to me at least, the Cincinnati Pops has done this for quite a few movies, including the original Star Wars trilogy, some Harry Potter films, etc.
They get the film from the studio with the soundtrack removed, which makes me think this is a thing other orchestras have available to them as well.
Most of our media, especially mainstream, isn't that on the nose with tropes. If you go for e.g. anime, you'll fine an entire genre of "looser viewers can emphasis with suddenly finds himself in another world were he is the greatest". Isekai, in short. Some of those shows are great. But mostly absent is having to work hard for success. Probably cause it would ruin the power fantasy.
Harry potter also employs this trope in the beginning. But builds upon it beyond the wish fulfillment.
LotR? He literally inherited the ring and was pushed into the adventure. It gets better from there, but his past doesn't really matter. If mentioned, I can't remember anything except some reason for the other hobbits to tag along. Could have happened to anyone. It certainly doesn't convey any kind of message like "you have to work hard to find great adventures in life". No reason not to enjoy a movie/show/franchise, but should probably not be entirely absent from a media diet, either.
I don't have link to original talk I'd seen but if you search Ted talks for disney effect, you will find many discussing this. Saying that it just does "gender-stereotypical" portrayal grossly underestimates the impact of these movies. The message I took home was that young girls with constant exposure to Disney princess movies significantly decreases their future probability for enrollment in STEM.
However it's just not about girls, it also impacts boys negatively as well. If you have to read one great book about raising kids, make it NurtureShock. One thing I learned from it was how kids learn to value nature vs nurture. When you tell your kid "great job! you are smart" you are basically saying they have natural capability to do great things, they don't have to work for it. So when they fail, they tend to interpret that there is nothing they could do. Parents who say "great job! You worked hard for it" have much more successful kids. One simple phrasing makes huge change in their lives. NurtureShock has detailed analysis and citations.
Back to movies... Here's the thing: Do you love Star Wars? Lord of the Ring? Harry Potter? Do you know what is one common thing between all of them? The hero in the movie is born with capabilities to be great. You are Jedi because force with you since you were born. You are just that way. You didn't had to work for it. You are just destined to be the great, it's written in the stars. Story writers know this simple thing is cocaine for people and they keep creating more supply to keep us fed. We get hooked on to it right away but its not good for us. Now look back in your life and think about all the time you avoided hard work in the hope that your specialness would just do the work for you. Kids should avoid these kind of movies, at least until they are 18 or may be 21.
I've been doing this stuff professionally since 1982 including some stints at what might be called a fairly high level (household name companies in silicon valley). For all the people I've met/worked with, where I ended up hearing their education background, I'm absolutely sure no more than 20% had CS degrees. I also feel like there is a correlation between the extremely good people I've encountered, and _not_ having a CS degree.
That said, most folks did have some sort of science-related degree. People with no higher education aren't unknown, but quite rare ime. People with higher education only in non-science fields have also been quite rare. I haven't run into many shit hot coder history majors, frankly, but those I have encountered were so smart I'm certain they could have aced any degree they took the time to study for.
Last thought: architecture, design and coding seem more akin to creative endeavors such as writing a novel or play, making movies, that don't seem to be easy to "teach". e.g. nobody is marveling that J.K. Rowling doesn't have an English Literature degree (French, to save you checking..) and nobody is seriously trying to "teach" folks to write the Harry Potter series.
Disclosure: EEE major
> "nobody becomes somebody due to external event"
Pixar, StarWars, Lord of Rings, Harry Potter and virtually most other big banners use "nobody becomes somebody because they were already somebody" formula. Give it a close look and you will find lead characters in these movies didn't actually worked for their super powers or earned special status. Luke can become Jedi not because he worked for it for his whole life but because he was born that way. They were already special but put in difficult circumstances which made them not look special. But eventually they overcame and their "specialness" poped out anyway. People identify with this template because everyone thinks they are special and supressed because of external circumstances. Movie with a message that you are just as normal as anyway and you have to put years of grit to be successful - this typically doesn't go well with most audiences.
No lie. His description sounds like he's a better visualizer than I am, but not really different in kind, just intensity. I could probably do that if I practiced more often. When I was under 15 or so it was easier and closer to what he described. But still, if I'm reading the right book I essentially cannot see the page anymore because the visualization is so strong and intense that I'm in that other world, not in ours anymore.
I recently read Clarke's The City and the Stars. His description of the city of Diaspar is so strong that I feel like I have literally been there in exactly the same way as I have been to Yellowstone. I know I can't get on a plane to go back there, but if I open the book again I will be there again.
Another favorite book of mine is The Good Earth. I have experienced Wang Lung's life in almost the exact same way as Picard experienced another man's life in The Inner Light. I read that book in a single uninterrupted sitting because the experience of living someone else's life from beginning to end was so enthralling that I could not stop.
If you want to know why Harry Potter fans are so obsessive, it's because the books are very easy to visualize. Millions of people have a "lived experience" of being Harry throughout 7 years of wizard school and that experience leaves a mark on you. When I saw the movies it was a bit odd because I'd already seen a different set of "movies" in my mind and they got some details wrong.
A large number (possibly all, but I didn't check) of those companies are global. Here are a few examples of how revenue breaks down for some (randomly chosen big) movies from some of the firms on the list.
AT&T owns Warner Bros, and makes things like Harry Potter. Picking one of the movies, I see that the US box office is only about 1/4 of the worldwide gross. [0]. Not to mention that AT&T is itself a global firm for upwards of a century.
Disney owns Marvel, which made Avengers Infinity War. A whopping 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [1].
Comcast owns Universal, which made Jurassic World. That movie had 61% of its revenue from outside the US [2].
CBS owns Paramount, which made Titanic. More than 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [3]. Of course, that was a massive movie - what about something like Shrek the 3rd? Interestingly, roughly 60% of that revenue came from outside the use as well [4]. Take a look at What Women Want, almost 20 years ago, and 1/2 of that revenue came from overseas [5].
Netflix is in over 190 countries, with more than 70 million subscribers outside the US. This is even more impressive when you realize that Netflix was US-only as recently as 2010 [6].
Obviously I could go on, but I think I made my point - US media companies dominate the globe for movies. I could also nitpick and note that they left off video games entirely, even though they are bigger than some of the companies on this list. But no matter how I slice it, it is not a local market, and hasn't been for years. Hence my strong disagreement with your position.
[0] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter72.htm
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=marvel0518.htm
[2] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jurassicpark4.htm
[3] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=titanic.htm
[4] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shrek3.htm
[5] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whatwomenwant.htm
[6] - https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-netflix-expanded-to-190-countries-in-7-years
In this case we will have to ban children movies (Harry Potter?) and TV channels, which sounds too harsh.
As long as child is not performing some sexually suggestive stuff on youtube video ("popsicle challenge", wtf) it is OK, probably.
I don't read much. But movies and TV shows (and Anime) have tons of mysterious libraries.
* Terry Pratchet's Discworld -- `nuff said.
* The Pagemaster (90s film about kid getting trapped inside of adventure books)
* Beauty and the Beast -- The library was the only non-magical part of the enchanted castle, ironically.
* "National Treasure" movie has a few important library scenes
* A Certain Magical Index -- Anime / Light Novel: the female lead "Index" is literally a character who had a library implanted inside of her.
* The Mystic Archives of Dantalian -- Anime / Light Novel: Another one where the female lead is a library of sorts. She's more bookwormish than Index, and actually hangs out at a normal Library most of the time.
* Read or Die -- Another anime with library / paper themed superpowers
* Harry Potter -- So many shenanigans happen in the Hogwarts library, I don't even know where to start.
* Full Metal Alchemist -- The librarian was instrumental to the plot. Its mostly an action show, but there was a period where they had to research some stuff at the Alchemist's library.
* The Ancient Magus' Bride -- I wasn't too fond of the show in general, so I haven't seen it all yet. But there was a very memorable magical library episode. Effectively, the magic library was a trap which can only be escaped if the human receives something from inside. The lead character kept returning to the library (her personal life sucked, so she needed an escape), while the Librarian would continuously give her something so that she could escape each time. When the Librarian ran out of things to give her, he rips up the magical library card (hoping she never returns again). Unfortunately, the lead character is adept in magic and finds her way back even without the library card, to a disastrous consequence.
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- A classic, is it not? I guess its a single book that they're working with, but the singular book is magic-space tech that has all the information you could ever need. So its basically a library.
* Ender's Game -- Honorable Mention. Ender's video game with the giant that he plays by himself effectively functions as a library. Its where Ender has self-reflection, and where the malevolent forces push Ender towards one direction of his psyche. Its as much of a "Library" as the "Pagemaster" was IMO.
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EDIT: Apparently 'The Pagemaster' is a book in of itself, and is listed in the article. I didn't know that. Harry Potter was also on their list.
I don't think that's true. For one, there are many publications about strict education and until relatively recently, it was the leading school of thought; we have movies featuring them, even praising them (Harry Potter for example - that was an example of a school lead as a benevolent dictatorship - that of course turned out bad later in the series). For two, people mostly don't read books about parenting but then they're parenting their kids somehow - how? Well, with whatever they picked up from their parents, TV, fiction books... Isn't it possible that it might be the same with teaching? I have some experience with working in education. Most of my former colleagues almost never think about the way they teach; you ask them why did they punish a student for disobedience (aka "he drank water even though I told him not to") and they say "because that's how it's done", you asked them why are they explaining something in that way and they don't know, they just do.
I like to compare STEM to Harry Potter when it first came out. I remember being one of those dorks in middle school who couldn’t get enough of it, and I thought not many people enjoyed it as much as I did. Only a handful of people mentioned it, and I was pretty social back then. Then the movies came out followed by the “cool kids” going crazy over them. Suddenly you have to like Harry Potter in order to fit in!
The only difference is that STEM isn’t labeled as cool by “cool people” yet.
Geez, I can't believe they kept making Harry Potter films are losing $167M!
Revenue is absolute. Money either came in or it didn't. Profit is fungible because the accountants and business principals decide what counts as a cost and what counts as a surplus.
An infamous example of this is "Hollywood accounting" [0], whereby major studios spin off independent LLCs for each film project they pursue, charge these LLCs exorbitant fees for marketing, distribution, etc., and then the LLCs never post a profit. As I understand it, such structures have been used on some of the most successful film franchises of all time, including Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. This tactic is commonly believed to be a mechanism to avoid paying royalties.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
It seems the drive was watching Harry Potter on a video player. Not sure if he was touching the steering wheel. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/01/tesla-autopilot-crash-driver-was-watching-harry-potter-movie-wit/
I'm with you. I definitely don't hate it like many seem to. No, it's not a to-the-letter portrayal of the book, nor does it do a great job of portraying the "subtleties," but it's probably much better off not doing that. Look at the evolution in the Harry Potter movies. The first few tried to jam pack several hundred pages of detail into 2 and change hours, and miserably fail to make "good" movies on their own or good enough adaptations for the rabid fans of the books. The last few stopped trying to cover every chapter of the book in favor of better scenes and movie storytelling and were (IMO) much better for it. No, there isn't a navigator portrayed as a slug in the first book (though they show up that way in later books), and the Weirding Way is just some overthought martial arts, but I'd rather watch a movie with space slugs folding space and mmmbop sound cannons to visualize the things that don't translate well into visual/auditory space from text. If I were to pick an issue with the movie, it's that Lynch used a bunch of narration instead of coming up with creative ways of representing that stuff.
There is an uncanny valley for book to screen adaptations. Lynch's Dune is just far enough out of the bottom of that valley that I can enjoy it as an incredibly expensive, overproduced sci-fi movie based on the Herbert universe by the same name.
What made the original trilogy good is that it was something we didn't see before. Like Lightsabers, Deathstars, Blasters, Droids, Jedis, Siths, a whole lot of aliens, space ships with hyperspace.
It was Luke Skywaler going on a journey to become a Jedi Knight and find out what happened to his father.
The prequels were about Anakin Skywalker, but they wrote them more like a soap opera and added Jar Jar for comedic relief. It was about Anakin going from slave to Jedi Knight and then on to the dark side to become Darth Vader. It was about the fall of the Republic and the rise of The Empire. But for some reason it flopped due to holes in the plot and other stuff. It wasn't as well written as episodes 4, 5, 6.
In fact due to a lot of books and movies just recycling stuff, I got into writing books to come up with original stories and characters. But I come to find out people don't want original stuff they want the recycled stuff. So people who recycle other books into their own books get best sellers while mine don't sell. They even get made into movies. Hunger Games was a recycled Battleground from Japan. Harry Potter was a recycled King Arthur but a Wizard instead of a Knight.
So I guess this current generation wants recycled stories? While I myself want original stories.
You took a poor example since pi is not known to be a normal number (see eg http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NormalNumber.html )
This number however is:
0.0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 ...
This number contains all movies that have and will ever exist. However to specify where a 700mb harry potter movie is in this number, you'll need at least 700mb to represent the index. So in some sense harry potter 'exists' in this number - but in another sense its just a silly encoding method.
The article by an American reflects a less respectful attitude towards Philosophy in the U.S. compared to other English-speaking countries such as the U.K. Remember how the book and movie "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" were retitled "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" for the U.S. markets, perhaps catering to an American preference for instant gratification (sorcery) over abstract thought (philosophy).
There are plenty of classic, well-known characters in the public domain. Sherlock obviously being one, given the context of the discussion. Frankenstein. Robin Hood. King Arthur. Jesus....
On another note, it doesn't affect your point all that much, but while Harry Potter the character would go into the public domain in 2017, the first movie wouldn't go into the public domain until 2021. In that interval, you could use the characters but you couldn't replicate their likenesses from the movies without some sort of agreement.
The whole world seems to misunderstand this, but Hollywood movies about High School (with 20-something actors in them) are not representative of actual US High Schools any more than Harry Potter is representative of British schools.
> Harry Potter was published in 97, and the film was released in 01. They paid a million dollars for the rights. In your world they would wait a year or two and do it for free.
It's not obvious why that's a bad thing.
5 years is WAY to short. Harry Potter was published in 97, and the film was released in 01. They paid a million dollars for the rights. In your world they would wait a year or two and do it for free. A recent study claimed there were few books on Amazon older than 25 years. So that sounds like a good length.I'm not sure what the length should be, BUT the current length which is longer than the average human life span, is too long.
I did that with harry potter. Wanted to do the same with eragon but they never made any more movies :(
She shouldn't feel bad. I've never seen more than a few minutes of Star Wars or Star Trek. Never seen Dr. Who or any of the Monty Python stuff. I've never seen a single Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movie (or read the books).
But I keep telling myself that one day I'll binge through them all online.
That said, I did not entirely agree with them :)
I agree that Kickstarter is unlikely to raise 300 million dollars for the next Hobbit trilogy. I disagree that a huge blockbuster will never be crowdfunded. Transformers, Harry Potter, and Avatar all cost less than 300 million dollars. 30 million people pre-paying 10 dollars is not ridiculous, when you look at how many people use Google, and how many users Facebook claims to have.
Surprisingly, movie studios don't necessarily fund the projects that they profit from. Since you mentioned LotR universe:
"New Line made enough pre-sales in foreign markets, and there were enough subsidies to pretty much cover their costs. New Zealand was not the only subsidy. There was also the British Commonwealth subsidy and the German tax subsidy in those days. New Line didn't have to put up any cash to make that movie."
Also movie studios consistently claim to not make profits from their movies.
"However, New Line later produced accounts showing that instead of making a profit, the movies made "horrendous losses". According to Hubbard: "We found it surprising because it was one of the biggest box office success of all time.""
Other funding options: a company could start making short films and then transition into making larger, more expensive ones once it gains the trust of its audience. The films could be broken into "episodes" to reduce the amount of money that each chunk would cost. This all ignores patronage, another alternative funding mode.
Lastly, most movies aren't blockbusters. Even if everything I just said is a lie, the vast majority of movies will be just fine, because their budgets are laughably small. District 9 was shot for 30 million dollars. Primer was shot for 7000 dollars. When Harry Met Sally cost 16 million dollars. Citizen Kane cost 15 million. Pretty Woman cost 14 million. The government funded BBC has produced such things like The Office, Monty Python, and Billy Elliot on less than 5 million each.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10693123
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples
This is true of the first five films, but the later ones were separately negotiated
"Radcliffe found himself playing the lead role of Harry Potter in the anticipated family film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, based on J.K. Rowling's popular novel, and signed on to star in the first five movies. Once his contract was up, he signed another contract for $50 million to star in the final two films of the series."
http://www.tribute.ca/people/daniel-radcliffe/6160/
There are more important differences:
1. Apples are fungible; one apple is as good as the next one: unlike Harry Potter movies you can consume apples in any order.
2. Nobody holds the copyright on a particular apple. There are many companies growing apples.
3. You can grow apple trees in your own garden from seeds. If this takes too long, you can buy a tree.
4. You can not download an apple. 5. Eating destroys apples. 6. Apples can rot. etc...