i didn't really read any of the books. i tried, i felt like, 'blah'.

i looked at the harry potter displays during the first years, i thought to myself 'christ, they made him look just like john lennon. thats pathetic.'

i watched some of the movies... sort of fun but coudlnt get into it that much. except richard harris, damn, that was cool.

i mean, but over all, i just feel like, whatever? what am i missing people!

for example. theres some thing where some dude with a big beard, looks like a pothead, sends harry to some spider, which almost kills him. wtf was that about?

and there is some evil rich kid. uhmmm ok whatever. how original. not.

oh. and good vs evil, where good must use a whole lot of violence against evil. wow. thats, uhm. yeah. lord of the rings wasnt enough, we need this too. i dont even want to see the rest of the books/movies, out of fear that the 'evil tribe' will all have dark skin, in some kind of morbid peter jackson fantasy.

how can i get in? where is the hook that will get me in?

oh well. someone please point me to a support group for the potterless and harryless.

i dont get harry potter either

That makes three.

Sounds like you saw movies 1 and 2, which were directed by Chris Columbus, an inept director at whose hands everything turns to plastic. If those movies had been my introduction to Harry Potter, I would have gotten out. I stayed away from the Harry Potter bandwagon for years, then finally succombed to peer pressure to read the first book since it was short, and I've been hooked since. I don't know what good it is, but maybe I'll clarify what you've posted:

Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore was perfect; too bad he died. I would have liked to see Ian McKellin, but Michael Gambon has turned out to be fine for the part.

The pothead was the groundskeeper for the school, and he, being kind of a rough guy and half giant, doesn't understand how dangerous his "pets" are, and so didn't understand the danger the kids were in when he sent them to the spiders. Of course, that movie was incredibly boring, don't judge the book by it.

The "evil rich kid" isn't evil because he's rich, he thinks he's better because of his parentage. He's not really evil, but he tries to be. He thinks it's cool to be evil because he's never really seen evil or had a chance yet to be evil. You'll see, if you stick out the books.

Violence happens in the series, but is not the point of the series. The whole series makes a point about the dividing line between good and evil is that evil kills as an end in itself, for the pleasure of it; and for good, killing is a thing to be avoided at all costs.

Ignore the first two movies, they suck. The first two books are great, but if you think they're not up to the hype, I think Rowling didn't really catch her stride until the third book. I was hooked by book one (much to my surprise), but it was at book three that I realised how good the series really was. Also, Movie three is the first one worth watching at all, period.

I don't know if that helps, or if you were just trolling, but there it is, from a reluctant Harry Potter addict.

We're four now. Read the first book, saw one movie (I forget which), and if the book hadn't stopped me, the movie would have made sure of that.

I'm actually wondering whether ananzi was being candid, there. In any case, I agree with the LotR movie bit. I always liked Ralph Bakshi's version better. Darker, more menacing, more mysterious. Less ostensibly scary, more so by suggestion and omission. Oh well.

i read a few pages of one of the books and i caught parts of the movie with the tattered flying black pillow cases a few times but have yet to actually watch all of any of the movies. ill get around to it eventually, mybe if some station runs them all back to back ill set the vcr to record the lot of them.

Nothing wrong, I didn't read any of the books and didn't watch the movies. If I have some time for reading, I prefer James Joyce.

Dropping James Joyce's name in a thread about Harry Potter... hats off!

Two or three years ago, my sister offered me books I to IV and I brought them for holiday reading. I enjoyed very much books I and II. That candid mixture of old England and childish magic was just fun. All in all decent litterature for teenagers, even though vastly inferior to works like Earthsea.

Book III and IV I could not finish. They were longer, lacked the freshness, the humour and funny ideas of the first two volumes. Those kind of books must be light or they're unreadable.

Somehow, I dislike James Joyce... and stream-of-consciousness as such, actually.

well i saw the last movie. it was fine. even had some good bits.

its a lot better than most of the crap they sell kids these days.

i love how the school is a pseudo anonymous bureaucracy and some of the professors are douchebags. i think that is an excellent thing for kids
to learn about the real world.

its not like f'in "star trek" where starfleet academy and 'the federation'
are almost always right.

well whatever. i dont think ill see the other movies or read the books
but i am not against them as much as i used to be. actually i am
really glad they are there... so much garbage out there for kids
these days. world of warcraft included.