Harry Potter

Somewhere it must be written that with every new Harry Potter book release, the population must rush out and buy said tome (queuing up for bonus points, of course) and then attempt to read all six hundred and something pages in about twenty minutes.

Being the independently minded, well-balanced individual that I am, I bought my copy on the Saturday morning (in fairness, I didn't queue) and proceeded to read it. But because I'm a big boy with grown up responsibilities, I finished reading The Deathly Hallows on Monday evening.

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The Plot

I should've probably read The Half-Blood Prince before kicking straight into this new book. I mean, did you know Dumbledore was dead? I must've forgot.

Anyway, we start out at 4 Privet Drive. The Dursleys house. Except the Dursleys are being shipped out for their own protection. The Order Of The Phoenix are moving Harry to a safer location, except it all goes awry. Despite the awesome secrecy involved, and several decoy Polyjuice Potters, Voldemort-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gets wind of the plan and sets out to capture Potter.

I've always considered Harry Potter as a bit of a wuss. With the glasses and always being bailed out by someone else or accidentally worming his way out a situation.

But what if we beefed Harry Potter up a little bit, perhaps got someone a bit tougher to play the role. Bruce Willis. It'd be worth it just for what would ultimately become the new Harry Potter catchphrase:

Yep, that's more like it. Watch out, Voldemort. This Potter isn't gonna take any more shit.

Anyone care to suggest a title for the movie? "Harry Potter and the..."

Yep, the wands are drawn in this battle to the death between aspiring witches Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley.

Granger is the Muggle-born associate of Harry Potter. She's pulled him out of a few tight spots with her bookish knowledge of magic. Coming from a muggle family, she works hard because she's got a lot to prove. Granger used a time-bending device to allow her to take twice as many classes in one year and all of her anecdotes start with a visit to the library.

Weasley is from a tight-knit, long-established wizarding family and her father works for the Ministry of Magic. She's been in tight spots before, when she became enchanted by Tom Riddle's diary and got sucked into the chamber of secrets. She's incredibly protective of Harry, as we saw in the Half-Blood Prince, and a plucky young witch who'll dive into danger to protect her loved ones.

Full disclosure before I begin - I enjoyed the Potter saga much better at the beginning, when he was a clearly abused boy adopted by his mean Aunt and Uncle and the wizarding world was completely unknown to him.

As the story and the characters mature, and the film posters get darker and have any shred of colour drained out of them, the Harry Potter franchise gets duller. We're moving now into classic good versus evil storylines with a bit of horny teenage frivolity thrown in to create a romantic sub-plot.

The other problem that the movies now suffer from is that - for all us fans who can read - we all know how the story ends. There's no ambiguity as to whether Harry will end up with Ginny or Hermione, or indeed how Ron and Hermione's story will end. And let's face it, we know who will emerge victorious in the final battle between Harry and Voldemort. We simply have to go through the motions to see how the on-screen adaptations will compare to JK Rowling's books.

Oh, lucky us - we got to see a preview showing of the new Harry Potter movie, Goblet of Fire this evening!

We’ve all big fans of the Harry Potter movies, so were looking forward to the latest (movie) episode in the saga.