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Resolving the wrong story problem
Mar. 19th, 2023 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunnyskywalkerFilm Crit Hulk’s essay “Black Widow and the Latent Last Act Blues” has some interesting thoughts about story beginnings and endings and how they work together to provide catharsis. (I haven’t yet seen Black Widow, but the essay makes sense anyway, so don’t worry if you haven’t either unless you care about spoilers.) He thinks the beginning of the movie is pretty great in isolation, but doesn’t properly set up the end, which makes the emotional resolutions at the end feel tacked-on and lackluster.
And this helped me crystalize one of my main problems with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now, there are a lot of problems with that book. The one I’m going to focus on here is Harry’s resigned march to his death. There are a lot of problems with this scene too — and I think one of them is that it wasn’t set up properly.
This is where one of the main themes of the whole series reaches its climax: that you have to accept death, not try to fight it forever. But…did Harry need to learn that lesson? ( Read more... )
“that’s supposed to be the big lesson that’s at the heart of everything, right? And we genuinely do get the sentiment / fallout of it, but we’re still missing the most important thing that makes us care for it. Because there isn’t that first act thing where we experience the heartbreak of that along with them. […] ‘What is the thing they can do at the end of the movie that they couldn’t do at the beginning?’”
And this helped me crystalize one of my main problems with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Now, there are a lot of problems with that book. The one I’m going to focus on here is Harry’s resigned march to his death. There are a lot of problems with this scene too — and I think one of them is that it wasn’t set up properly.
This is where one of the main themes of the whole series reaches its climax: that you have to accept death, not try to fight it forever. But…did Harry need to learn that lesson? ( Read more... )
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