broken script
Drag and smash. This was my first impression of this movie after I walked out of the theater.
Rowling has great ambitions and wants to use a lot of plots and scenes in "God 2" to expand the world view, place easter eggs, and pave the way for a sequel. However, even ordinary audiences who do not understand the routines of ordinary commercial film screenwriters know that if a commercial film contains a lot of information that is irrelevant or weakly related to the plot, it will not look good. Rowling, who has some writing and screenwriting experience, must know about this.
In order to make these massive information not appear abrupt in the movie, Rowling designed multiple narrative lines based on different viewpoints to place these worldviews, easter egg information and sequel clues, so that these information can be as closely related to the plot of the movie itself as possible. What connects the various narrative clues is the main line of finding Credence's true identity.
Yet such narrative design has largely failed.
First of all, the attraction of Credence in "God 1" is the new setting of "silence" drawn from him. At that time, the audience was attracted by this setting for two reasons: First, for fans, according to the description of the movie "God 1" and the seventh part of the novel, Dumbledore's dead sister is likely to be It is also a silent, so the sequel's interpretation of this setting may lead to Dumbledore's young experience that is not presented in detail in the novel; secondly, for ordinary audiences, "God 1" silently shows a strong power While the villain Grindelwald seems keen to harness this power, the sequel may offer more information about it. In short, the audience's (even the fans') interest in the mystery of Credence's own life is limited, and what the audience really cares about is silence. However, in the narrative process of "God 2", Rowling did not further respond to the audience's interest in silence after watching "God 1" in the script, but instead used a large space to describe Credence's life experience. Audiences don't actually know why Credence's identity matters, especially to fans, since one of the themes of the Harry Potter series is against bloodline theory. And the way Rowling's script draws the audience's attention to the mystery of Credence's identity is also not very clever - the audience is "informed" by Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and the Ministry of Magic with repeated and similar lines at the beginning of the film. Raidence's background carries a huge secret, and it's important.
Second, the several branches of the Credence Line are also unattractive to the audience. "God 1" Rita Lestrange only appeared in the photo and a line or two. The audience's interest in this character is in her relationship with the male protagonist Newt (her surname obviously makes fans realize that there may be some interesting tension in this, and for ordinary audiences, Rita-female-male-male How the Lord's triangle will develop is a potential point of interest for the sequel). But at the same time, whether the audience is a fan of Haha or not, there is actually not much emotional substitution for this character. As a result, in Rowling's "God 2" script, a lot of space was used to construct the heart and life of the character Rita, and forcibly linked her life experience with Credence's life experience, but the audience's real interest was No effective response: The tension in Rita and Newt's relationship (such as the reason for their breakup) is not represented, and the Newt-Rita-Girls triangle is only slickly portrayed as a result of gossip magazine misinformation Various small misunderstandings.
Rowling's design of the plot also resulted in the main suspense of the film's story being constructed entirely around the supporting and new characters of Rita, Credence, and Black Brother. The main story's connection to Dumbledore and Newt is extremely weak (although Credence's identity is finally tied to Dumbledore at the end, this relationship was not effectively presented in the process of building the suspense earlier ) has limited appeal to the audience. The climax of the film has therefore been completely reduced to an extended version of the "I am your father."-style dog blood ethics drama.
Finally, a lot of the plot is built around Credence, leading to Queenie's move to Grindelwald, an interesting narrative line that is not fully developed. The shift in Queenie's position seems convincing in the end, largely thanks to Depp's performance and the persuasiveness of Grindelwald's ideology itself. To elaborate on this requires a political and ideological analysis of Gods II and the Harry Potter series.
The ideology of the magical society
The setting that the magical world and the magical society keep Muggles secret is the basic setting of the entire Harry Potter universe. This setting allows the readers of the novel to observe the magical world from the perspective of Harry Potter in the previous novels, which greatly improves the readability, and also gives the villain Voldemort a deep-seated motivation for behavior. But as Rowling increasingly wants to express her thoughts and perceptions of the real world in her novels and plays, this setting creates enormous ideological tension in her texts.
Ostensibly, Rowling's story promotes the "politically correct" values of the liberal left: against prejudice and emphasizing the equality of wizards and other magical creatures, even twists. The reason why Grindeloth and Voldemort are villains is precisely because they regard wizards as beings higher than Muggles, and both want to break the isolation between Muggles and magical society and establish a system of domination and oppression by wizards over Muggles. But if we analyze the behavior of Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic, we will find that the mainstream ideology of magical society is not much more advanced than the ideology of these two villains.
In the novels and movies, Dumbledore or the Ministry of Magic, as representatives of the mainstream ideology of the wizarding society (Dumbledore is, in a sense, the representative of Rowling's own ideology in the wizarding world), they are fighting against Grindel In the process of Voldemort and Voldemort, although the means and strategies were different, and there were occasional conflicts, the goals were essentially the same: to fight against Voldemort and Grindelwald, to maintain the existing isolation between Muggle and magical society, and to protect Muggles.
This means that for Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic, Muggles are nothing but an existence outside the wizarding society that needs to be protected, and can only passively accept the actions (protection) imposed on them by the magical society. In other words, Muggles are just A kind of "other". In both the novel and the film, Muggles as a whole are clearly neither subjective nor transparent to wizarding society: only Muggles who demonstrate magical abilities enter wizarding society passively; even Ron in the novel The extreme Muggle sympathizers of his father also only regard Muggles as objects of study and do not have real two-way communication with Muggle society and Muggle individuals; A product of deceit (which is clearly not the case with Harry Potter, since the motherfucker has actually been out of Muggle society since being admitted to Hogwarts). In this sense, Muggles' actual status in the wizarding world is inferior to that of house-elves who are slaves to wizards. After all, house-elves know magic, enter the magical society, and communicate with wizards.
It is not difficult to see that the mainstream ideology of the magic society regarding the relationship between the magic and hemp society is not a variant of the ideology in the magic world that Rowling ostensibly opposes, such as "Westerncentrism" and "Orientalism". This just shows that the mainstream ideology of the magical society is hypocritical and arrogant in nature, which is the real source of Grindelwald's ideological persuasion.
image of Grindelwald
In order to make Grindelwald, the villain man who has been entangled with Dumbledore, believable. Rowling put a lot of effort into creating the character.
On the one hand, Rowling certainly doesn't want the audience to identify with Grindelwald's ideology: she wrote in the script of "God 2" that Grindelwald and his subordinates killed the entire Muggle family, and used undercover to provoke Credence and the mainstream of the magical society At the same time, Rowling also set the "Wizard enslavement of Muggles" as the ultimate motivation for Grindelwald to break the isolation between the two societies, which is obviously any motive. The audience couldn't accept it emotionally.
On the other hand, Rowling explained the reason why Grindelwald can gain the trust of many people through the narrative line of Queenie's change of position. Although this narrative line refers to the social context behind Grindelwald's rise (the isolation of magical-Muggle society due to secrecy laws), Rowling's focus is still on Grindelwald's own abilities: his means of manipulating people's minds (intervenes in Queenie, Credence's spiritual world at the right moment) and his Chrisma (superb magic lore, charismatic speech).
But it is worth noting that while Rowling goes to great lengths to direct the audience's emotions towards Grindelwald in her intended direction, it also inhibits the audience's in-depth reflection on the socio-historical context that Grindelwald represents. This narrative mode may have a dangerous effect: when the spotlight of the historical stage is only on the careerists and "Demon Kings" such as Grindelwald, Voldemort, and Hitler, such people take the lead in the society behind the stage, The economic and cultural background will become obscure to the viewer.
some thoughts
Rosa Luxemburg died at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, not after Hitler came to power. Likewise, many of Grindelwald's followers did not spring out of the cracks after his rise. On the contrary, Grindelwald rose because there were many people who thought like him. In other words, if the isolation between magical society and Muggle society is not broken, and Muggles still exist as "others" (rather than communicable subjects) in the magical world, Grindelwald and Voldemort-style black magicians may Still appearing one after another.
Then we have to ask, can this isolation be broken? According to the worldview that Rowling added in pottermore, it has not been broken so far. On the one hand, although the secrecy law is the premise and basic setting for the establishment of the Harry Potter worldview, but on the other hand, it may also be related to Rowling herself.
PS, at noon in the first day of junior high, my classmates and I went to the university cafeteria next to the school for lunch. At noon every day, the cafeteria serves both junior high school students in our school and students from the university next to us, so although my classmates and I “snatched” the curry beef rice bowl after a bloody battle in the crowd, we were not in the cafeteria either. 's shelter. We walked out of the cafeteria and gathered on a small lawn that could accommodate 7 or 8 people and squatted down to eat. As usual, while eating, I watched with a "winner" attitude at the third-year junior high school students who were destined to eat leftovers because of their preparation for the senior high school entrance examination. Usually, some of the third-year students will come to the cafeteria with books, and that day was no exception. "Five-year high school entrance examination and three-year simulation", "One lesson and one practice", "Mathematics", "Chemistry", "New Concept English"...
"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!" I called out, pointing to a senior. A few students next to me who were immersed in eating immediately raised their heads and looked in the direction I pointed. "Is the Chinese version available?" Classmate Yang, who is also a fan, called out. After confirming that what I saw was true, a few of us quickly finished the rest of the lunch box, dragged our full stomachs, and rushed to the newsstand at the school gate to line up to make phone calls.
"Mom, can you drop by the bookstore this afternoon and help me buy a new book of "Harry Potter"? The book is called "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"."
I was fascinated by the wizarding world of Harry Potter during my childhood and youth, and the fervent desire for an admission letter to Hogwarts before the age of 11 is still etched in my memory.
The first novel that impressed me the most was the moving picture of the magical world. At the time, I thought it was the most magical thing in the world. 13 years passed quickly. GIFs and short videos are inescapable in our Muggle daily life. One can't help but sigh: the imagination and productivity of the magical world will probably be caught up by the Muggle society.
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