The above clip is not the trailer for this movie, but rather the opening Overture sequence. I decided to share this because when seeing the film again last night, it brought chills to me in my seat and made me so happy that we had made plans to see this film in a theater on easter Sunday. This is my daughter's favorite musical, and we have watched it every year since she was in high school and maybe even before that, I can't quite remember. Two years ago, at the start of the Pandemic, she was already living in Texas and I was still packing up the house at easter time. We did a simultaneous watch on physical media and shared through Facebook Live. This was much better.
There have of course been multiple performers of the parts in numerous productions over the years, but it does not seem to me that anyone else could be as definitive as the two leads in this filmed version of the Broadway rock opera. In the 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards" by Harry and Michael Medved, Ted Neely won the award for The Worst Performance by an Actor as Jesus Christ for his role in the film adaptation of "Jesus Christ Superstar". This is maybe the most unjust slight I have heard from film critics. Neely was tremendous in the role and the rampage at the temple and his performance in the Gethsemane number matches the vocal performance extremely well. Because Carl Anderson was so dynamic, Neely may be seen by some as a Jesús secondary to Judas. The play/album/concept was written to be from Judas' perspective, but I feel that Jesus comes through very effectively because of Neely's performance. The rest of the world seems to agree with me because Neely has played the role for over fifty years on stage in dozens of tours.
Carl Anderson as Judas has a voice that comes right out of 1973. He sounds soulful with a rough edge and could easily have been an R n B singer with any of the great seventies soul bands. Both he and Neely come from a theatrical background and their performances reflect that the roles they are playing are to be sung.
Norman Jewison, who has made multiple Academy Award Nominated Best Pictures (one was also a winner) worked closely with choreographer Robert Iscove to get the exuberant dance scenes to pop in a non stage setting. The use of wipes, dutch angles, freeze frames all integrated creatively with the setting makes the film much more elaborate than any version of the stage play. I think the set, which mostly consists of natural rock formations and ancient ruins, was used really effectively. There is a terrific long shot of several columns that dancers move out from behind in a synchronized move that reveals them in the background that I particularly admired. The sensibility of the era was clearly based in the hippy culture, in spite of the traditional Christian story. The costumes and dances all reflect the times more accurately than a series of pictures of "Jesus People" would have.
I like the rock themes that Andrew Lloyd Webber twists into Broadway show tunes, and the lyrics of Tim Rice are reasonably respectful of the story that is being told. The final shot of the cross on the hill in the sunset comes complete with a shepard walking through the backlight in the foreground. That was an unplanned mistake that offers a slight spiritual coda to the whole show. I can hardly wait till next year.
This was a film that was not on my radar, and although it features two actors I have enjoyed immensely over the years, I had no plans to see it. Other members of the family however think differently and so we went to Saturday afternoon screening, with several people behind us who were advancing in age a bit faster than I, and we all enjoyed an inspiring story for a couple of hours. I doubt that I will ever see this again, but there was nothing wrong with it, it just was very obvious what it was.
Mark Wahlberg plays Stuart Long, a ne'er do well boxer who at an age when most boxers have already retired, decides that he can make it in the movies and he heads to California to be a star. As a recruiting film for the Catholic faith, this is an interesting story of how a man finds his calling through adversity. Stu is not a religious zealot, but a man changed by the world he encounters and the spiritual feeling he gets in recovering from a major trauma. The juxtaposition of Stu's life before and after this experience, is the stuff that these kinds of inspirational movies thrive on. This just happens to be a grittier, down and dirty story when it comes to Stu's language and behavior. The charm that let him skip through life early on, slipping past the disasters his family lived through, is not enough to get him what he thinks he wants. His spiritual choice has to come from a different place and this story tries to show that to us, warts and all.
Catholic dogma on redemption and baptism are heavily interspersed with the biographical elements of Father Stu's story after he has come to a realization of his calling. For dramatic purposes, the story includes another acolyte with doubts about his calling, and some unflattering economic assessment by the church itself. I can't say how accurate Mel Gibson's portrayal of Stu's long absent father is, but Gibson and Wahlberg are very good together and Jackie Weaver as Stu's conflicted mother is both infuriating and endearing. I was pleased to see Malcolm McDowell in a non-sinister role, I always enjoy seeing him on screen.
The only flaw in the film is that it is not very surprising. It is sincere in it's message and it wants to be inspirational. I found it admirable but I was rarely moved by the events in Father Stu's life, I was mostly just interested in what was happening at the moment. If a movie like this does not grab your heart, it is not doing completely what it intends. I wanted to understand more about the paths that Stu was following, but the film is so tied into the biopic structure, that I never felt involved with the spiritual elements the way I should have been.
As a drama with some comedic elements, it worked well enough that I was glad I saw it. As a spiritual film designed for an Easter Holiday emotional magnet, it missed the mark. I'm glad there there are Father Stu characters in the world and that these stories get told, for the faithful it may be enough, but for the audience, we need a little more.
I am not a Michael Bay hater, there are plenty out there who can take up that mantle, but I understand why some people find his style intolerable, it's because of movies like this. "Ambulance" is an action chase film, that takes every camera trick you can imagine and inserts it into every scene in the movie, for no reason other than to try to convince you that you are watching something exciting. Sometimes it works, when we can see all the cars in a chase at once, or when we switch to an aerial view occasionally, but often it is simply distracting and annoying. Every sequence set inside the ambulance does not really need to be highlighted with ten different camera angles and constant shaky cam photography. One in a while, a static shot of the details would make us focus on the event, rather than how it is being shot.
At times Bay appears to be parodying himself. The characters actually reference "The Rock" and "Bad Boys" so the film is self aware that it is just an action piece of entertainment, not to be taken too seriously. I would be ok with that if the plot made a little more sense. This is a movie based on a Danish film that was only 80 minutes long, somehow they manage to add an extra hour to that, and I suspect you can pick out a series of plot complications that make up that extra time. The paramedic performing surgery directed by two doctors on the golf course using Face Time, would be one of those additions. The gang cartel connection would be another. This film finds several ridiculous concepts and strings them together to fill in story.
"Ambulance" looks like it is going to start as a heist film, but we mostly see the after effects of an escape and that is probably a good thing. Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Danny, is supposed to be a world class bank robber but he has hired the biggest bunch of goons to help him carry off the film, you wonder who he used in all the other crimes he is supposed to have committed, where are they? Some of the guys look like standard Black Ops Mercenaries, and some look like hippie recruited off the street. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays his adopted brother Will and he is supposedly not a criminal but a war hero. As a driver he is dragooned to replace some other clown at the last minute and you can see that this is just a justification to get a "good" brother "bad" brother story which does not feel at all organic.
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In the poster title of the film, they draw attention to the location of the movie by highlighting two letters in the title "AMBULANCE", so if you like movies set in L.A., you should like this right? Well, as a sixty year former resident of the city, this movie continues to make the same mistakes a hundred other films have made. Twenty minutes of driving at high speeds in downtown, leaving destruction in your wake, will not result in your finding clear roads in the same area you drive to five minutes later. Tourists will be disappointed to learn that the airport is not ten minutes from the civic center. Oh, and the biggest laugh of the film is the reference the lead S.I.S. captain makes to "rush hour starting in 45 minutes". In Southern California, there has not been a distinct rush hour for three decades, it is pretty much 24/7 bumper to bumper on all the roads that get referred to in the film. If you want the film to be about a car chase in L.A., you factor that in, there are car chases on the local news there once a week and they are more compelling than the stuff that happens here.
The best parts of the film are the credits, which only last a couple of minutes. If only Hollywood would steal that concept and leave the visual mayhem to Bay for the movies he makes. Eiza González as the EMT that gets caught up in the story is fine, but she is asked to do the impossible, play a rational character in an irrational scenario.
If you have been following recently, you will not be surprised to see that I am a fan of the Harry Potter films. In the past month I have seen three of them on the big screen, and I was happy to get the opportunity to write about them since I had not yet started blogging when they first arrived. The Wizarding World is an umbrella label that Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling have coined to cover an expanded universe of materials, including this second series of films that are basically a prequel to the original stories. The first in the series, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", was a welcome addition to the fantasy world and id a great job at setting up a new set of characters. The follow up film, "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" is another case altogether. While it had the requisite visuals, it lacked the spark of the first film, misused some of the characters that had been created, and was basically a series of exposition dumps that were hard to keep track of and boring to begin with. "The Secrets of Dumbledore" needs to pull the series back from the brink of self destruction, and it largely does that.
This movie is not as narratively strong as the first film was, but it is a lot better at keeping us involved and it uses the characters pretty well. Ever since the back story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald in the last of the Potter Books, it has been believed that there was a love story gone wrong there. This film confirms that in the stories, and as a side note has created problems for the studio as a result. Apparently the Chinese market is not ready to accept a gay subplot in a western made film, so references to that aspect are being trimmed for that market. There is a little bit of hypocrisy here because of the attitudes of Hollywood to stateside policies. but as an economic decision it is inevitable. The film needs as big a market as possible to justify what they have invested in and to be able to pursue more films.
There are two or three course corrections her in this story that help put the series back on proper footing. The most important of which is that there is plot not just narrative. We know the objective of our antagonist (although the background on why Grindelwald is motivated in this direction is very murky. Power! seems to be all that is there). Jude Law as Albus Dumledore is much more a part of what is happening in the film. Newt Scamander is more engaging in this story than in the last one, where his character was the dullest thing in a dull movie. He is used expeditiously as one of the main characters, rather than as the lead character. That helps keep the story from becoming tiresome. Eddie Redmayne continues to mumble and remain understated, but at least his characters brother is around to translate on a regular basis, and he has a couple of charming scenes that do play off of his character, rather than just inserting his character into a scene where the personality does not match up. If he were on his own in a scene confronting the International Wizards Confederation, it would be a disaster, but fortunately, his brother Theseus, is more articulate, and a new witch "Lally" is around to fill in gaps. This new character is a welcome addition to the film and fills in where the moping drudge of Leta Lestrange would have dragged the film down more. Katherine Waterston must not be available for shooting most of the time, this would have been a part that she could have played, but she only shows up in a couple of inserts and right at coda.
The biggest miscarriages of the second film were the misuse of Queenie and Jacob. The way Queenie gets drawn into Grindelwald's circle is not convincing, and Jacob was barely noticeable last time out. Queenie is still a little out of place but at least we can see why she was needed in the camp of the dark wizard. Her character is conflicted in this story and that is exactly the way they needed to go. Having stumbled with her, J.K. Rowling and returning co screenwriter Steve Kloves, find a way to at least use their mistake and get out of it by the end. Jacob Kowalski, the Muggle/No Maj, played by Dan Fogler, is the most entertaining character in the films and his charm has been completely restored in this story. He and Redmayne play off of one another really well, and he gets to be included in the plot in a way that makes sense, not just as a tag a long character. The scene where he interacts with the students at Hogwarts is delightful.
The series is titled "Fantastic Beasts" so it is perfectly acceptable to have the fantasy creatures play a part in the story. Their presence was overdone in "The Crimes of Grindelwald", but there is just enough in this film to make them relevant without becoming obnoxious. There is a mythical creature with the power to see the future and the decency of a person, the Qilin is charmingly visualized but be ready for a horrifying moment early on in the film, it was disturbing. Newt gets a chance to return to his quirky persona in a prison break scene set in a black site which is a German Wizard's prison, along the lines of Azkaban, but even more gruesome. In spite of the grim setting, there is a very humorous element that reminds us that we are watching something that should be fun, and this scene reaches for that goal and achieves it.
There are still problems with the narrative. Most of these would have been solved if Rowling had written full books for each of the films, and then adapted the stories so they could be coherent. Because there is not a literary history to fill in details, certain things just have to be taken as a given, and that does not always work. Holes in the plotline are rushed. Grindelwald goes from loathed fugitive to favorite for political office, almost instantaneously. The current head of the International Wizard Confederation is a character with inconsistent actions, and looks substantially like Mads Mickelson who is playing Grindelwald, and that suggests some collusion as well. The Credence plot line is resolved with the least annoying retcon possible, but the whole family connection was a mistake in the first place.
I don't know that this film can keep the franchise going. The theatrical revenues will be affected by changes since Covid, as well as the missteps of the prior film. There are still plot lines that could be followed up on, but if it ends with this entry, the conclusion is satisfactory. I'd still enjoy seeing more of the characters, and I would be interested in the timeline and the way it gets integrated into actual history, but that might be a landmine that Rowling should take a lot more time to figure out. The film is largely successful and I would keep following the plot, I'm just not sure it will do enough to expand the audience back to Potter sized proportions.
This will be a short post to remind everyone to add a little joy to their life now and then. Last year on my birthday, I finally committed to a top ten list of my favorite films. Number five on my list is this greatest musical ever made featuring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and the delightfully young Debbie Reynolds. It feels like every five years it's time to celebrate an anniversary by making sure this gem is on the big screen once again. I know I went ten years ago and had a wonderful time and this film made it onto my blog. Five years ago, just after the passing of Debbie Reynolds, there was also a screening I attended, again another Fathom Event.
There is so much to appreciate about the film that you could spend a couple of thousand words on it before you even get to something new that you wanted to focus on. I'm not going that direction today, I just wanted to take a couple of minutes of your time to focus on one sequence. The "Broadway Rhythm Ballet" section of the film was something I had not seen in my original encounter with the film. Local TV stations in the 60s and 70s would cut a movie to make it fit a weekday afternoon slot, and that sequence was missing the first time I saw "Singin' in the Rain" on TV. Watching it this last Sunday makes me wonder what kind of monsters they had working for those Stations in those days, who could take out the biggest, brightest and most creative section of the movie, simply to save some time.
In the film, Don Lockwood is describing the scene to studio head R.F. Simpson, so it is a fantasy scene and it was being plugged into the disastrous "The Dancing Cavalier". So I can see that it was convenient, because it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie, but boy does it look great on the big screen. Lockwood/Kelly showing us as a country rube, trying to make it on Broadway is funny. The montage sequences where each performance gets more elaborate as they go along, even though the song stays the same is pretty satiric without being mean spirited. It is the nightclub sequence with Cyd Charisse that makes the whole thing finally so memorable. Every costume of the flappers and hipsters of the day was outlandishly garish. Charisse in her bob haircut is enigmatic and beautiful. The grace and choreography that Kelly used in the ballet section with the long dress train is astounding. Even today, with all the technical wizardry at your fingertips, you would be hard pressed to find a way to make that work, Kelly, Stanley Donen and the craftsmen at MGM managed to do so 70 years ago.
Two recent and fairly modern references are going to close out this post. Rita Moreno, who is the last surviving cast member of this film, recently was in Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story", which is the film she won the Academy Award for, This movie was almost a decade earlier, but she had a nice bit part which was a little more substantial than I had remembered. I was paying more attention to Rita in this film than I had in the past because of this recent history. The other thing that comes to my mind was a film I watched the day before at home. Hugo Speer, a prolific British TV actor, played Guy in "The Full Monty" a story about a group of working class men trying to put together a man strip review. In his audition for the troop, he wants to demonstrate his athletic dancing ability. He points to the wall and says. "There's the wall, and I'm Donald O'Connor." He then proceeds to prove that Donald O'Connor is a dancing god and the rest of us are mere mortals.
There are so many great numbers in the film, you sometimes forget that the next thing you see will be even better than the last thing you saw.
The first two Harry Potter films had a lot riding on them, and Director Christopher Columbus is often criticized for lacking an edge to the films. In truth though, it wasn't until the later books that the stories got deeper and the history started building on itself. This was a new venture and the book series was not complete when work on the first movies began. The kids in the story really are kids, not teenagers and so it seems appropriate to make these movies as children's films and establish the universe that the characters will occupy for subsequent stories. This film came after "Adventures in Babysitting", "Home Alone", and "Mrs. Doubtfire", all films that have a comic kids sensibility. He was the right choice to baptize Harry into films and the two movies he made are excellent. They may not be everyone's favorite Potter films, but they are essential and vastly entertaining.
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets "is the second film in the franchise and takes us to the second year at Hogwarts. It continues to build the history of the school, show us an elaborate environment for the story to take place, and gives us another mostly stand alone hero story before the more complex interweaving of the following films. The beloved character of Dobby the house elf is introduced and even though he is primarily a CGI character, he comes to life and endears us in a way that Jar Jar Binks never could. Although Dobby can be annoying, his personality is understood as part of a character forced into a the circumstances that created him. He also is redemptive by the end of the series and was not overused just for laughs.
A character who appears only in this one film, but dominates the movie (although not the plot) is Gilderoy Lockhart, as depicted by Kenneth Branagh. When I first read the book, and thought of an actor to play this character, Hugh Grant came immediately to mind. The vain, slightly silly and lightweight nature of the character seemed a perfect fit. The trivia on IMDB says that Grant was actually cast but had to withdraw due to a scheduling conflict. Nothing against Hugh Grant, I really enjoy him as an actor, but Kenneth Branagh was perfection in this film. He had the same qualities I mentioned above, but he also plays an unctuousness that I'm not sure Grant could have brought. Lockhart is the real comic relief in the film and he is inserted just enough to justify his presence, even though the character is superfluous to the main story. This is the only Patter film with a post credits sequence and it naturally is a joke about Gilderoy Lockhart.
While the film is a little more dark in plot line, the photography matches that pretty well while still managing to keep the mostly upbeat tone of the first two books. There are still kids style shenanigans. and the young actors sometimes over do the mugging for the camera, Radcliffe is stronger in the role as he is moving into the other films, Grint and Watson are a little behind but still better than in the first movie. The maturation process of growing up seems to have worked on the actors because they get better with each subsequent film.
This was the last film for Richard Harris who originated the role of Dumbledore. In the same year he played a part in a terrific version of "The Count of Monte Cristo", where his character is quite aged and infirm. Harris was dying of Hodgkin's lymphoma when he made both movies and his delicate state was unfortunately obvious on film. I would never say it was a blessing that he passed on, but I will say that recasting was needed because Dumbledore, while aging, is still a vital and dynamic figure in the series, and Michael Gambon was more up to the task in the remaining films.
One of the most inventive elements of the story was Tom Riddle's Diary. The effect of Harry, entering the pages of the diary, foreshadows the magic of the pensive which will become essential later in the stories. The other element of this is that the diary turns out to be one of the Horcrux that Harry is searching for in the last two films and it really helps tie the universe together without making every new component feel like it is being retconned into the plot. "The Chamber of Secrets" is surprisingly, the longest of the Harry Potter films, but it does not feel that way because of the light touch Chris Columbus brought to assembling it and the brilliant insertion of Kenneth Branagh into the role of Gilderoy Lockhart.
When it was announced that the final Harry Potter book would be split into two parts for two final films, there was a lot of complaining. Cynics around the world saw it as a cash grab, merely a way to extend the series to an additional film and pull in some extra bucks. Harry Potter fans who read the books on the other hand understood immediately the need for this decision. While "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is not the longest book in the series (that honor goes to Order of the Phoenix) it is the one with the greatest number of incidents to visualize as part of the over arching narrative. When seeing the results of the final two films, it is hard to imagine how it could have been condensed to a single three hour film and still be comprehended.
The majority of the film does focus on the battle of Hogwarts, but there are so many adjoining paths that need to be resolved, and yet it still feels like it is doing the minimum possible with some threads of the story. For instance, the information about Aberforth and Ariana is skimmed over quickly, just enough to keep the characters in the story, but with very little background (which may be the justification for the Fantastic Beasts Series of films). On the other hand, it was essential to get Lily and Severus in the story as students at Hogwarts and the time spent in doing so is one of the best moments in the whole series. So Screenwriter Steven Kloves and Director David Yates made some very sound decisions in choosing what to include and how much time to devote to those elements.
There are fans of heist movies that should really appreciate the way in which the jobs get taken care of in these last two films. The Poly Juice Potion does seem to get overdone a bit in the movies, but it is an effective technique and it is used in clever ways here. Helena Bonham Carter gets to be in the movie a bit more than would have otherwise been justified by her part, simply because Hermione is passing herself off as that vile character when the three leads are trying to infiltrate Gringotts. Carter is really terrific playing a character who is so uncomfortable playing the character that Carter actually is. Her shoulders slump like Hermione's might if she was uncertain,. She hesitates with eye contact the way someone might when testing out an acting role. Rupert Grint does not have to transform himself except by disguising himself with a beard, but he gets the surly facial expression of Bellatrix Lestrange's vassal, just right. I liked that Harry and Griphook are using one of the Deathly Hallows in pursuing a Horcrux, although I am a little unclear if the curse Harry uses in one of the Unforgivable curses or if it is some other variation.
The Model used for the films at the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Experience in the U.K.
The special effects in the vault sequence are pretty darn good, although I do miss the amount of practical work that made the mine chase in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom so much fun. The albino dragon who is nearly blind is a perfect match for my imagination when I first read the book, and the Goblin supervisor who is is entranced, shaking his empty hand as if he has one of the warning bells in it, is a very nice touch, both humorous and disturbing as it plays out. There is plenty of action and excitement in the sequence, but it does not hold back the story, it really does feel like the launching point.
(From the Gringotts Exhibit at the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Experience in the U.K.)
Inevitably, the audience is going to have to fill in the blanks in a few places. When our three protagonists return to Hogsmeade after the raid on the bank, they are greeted with alarms that we don't quite know are set off by. Seeing how it is a magical place, we can sort of assume that Harry's mere presence would be enough to get them going. The explanation in the book is more interesting and clearer, but it would require more exposition and the film requirements mean we should be focusing on story rather than minutia. The same sort of choices are made with Aberforth, and with just a couple of slight references in the dungeon of Hogwarts, we move on past what was a whole chapter in the book. Fans of both the books and the films can appreciate the arrival of the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix. We remember that you can't apparat directly into the castle, so when they appear at the door of the great hall at the moment Harry is confronting Snape, we can fill in the blanks perfectly well.
The key emotional turning point in the film is not the confrontation with Voldemort at the climax, it is the sequence that comes before that, when Harry discovers that the man he has resented since his arrival at the school, the man he thought betrayed his beloved headmaster Dumbledore, is in fact a more important connection to his mother and the resolution of the conflict, than any other character in the film. Snape is revealed as the true hero of the story, having endured horrors on an equal level with Harry, but never able to show that to anyone and having to sacrifice himself so that harry can finally understand. It is Harry's five minutes in the Pensive that clarifies everything and forces Harry to become a man, and not just the boy who lived. When taken together with the intrusion of Snape's memories in "Order of the Phoenix, we have a very complete picture of Snapes motives and actions. That he has had to stand by while others suffered so that he can allow the trap to be sprung is a pretty good example of the kind of control a wizard would need to justify being called a Headmaster of Hogwarts. That Harry has to eat the words he only moments before threw at Snape, make this a story arc worthy of eight films.
All of the major characters get a few moments to shine in the battle that ensues. The novel makes some of the losses more poignant with details, like the loss of Lupin and Tonks, but the visions we are given do them adequate justice. It is the moments of action that we really get our money's worth out of here. McGonagal going off on Snape and then setting the guardians of Hogwarts loose makes us revere her even more. Mrs. Wesley battling Bellatrix and surprising her with a completely unexpected spell is a moment of ecstatic release. The best addition however has to be the elevation of Neville Longbottom to the status he always deserved but was denied him as a secondary character. He could easily have been the one who was in Harry's place, and we discover that if that had happened, he would have been a worthy "chosen one" as well.
The stars of the movie evolved into solid actors over the ten years that they made these pictures. At first, they were cute kids who played the parts well, since they were mostly cast as cute kids. As the series got more serious, so did their chops. Ron as a character matters more in the last three films, he is not just a sidekick. Grint does a good job being a stalwart follower who becomes a leader along the way. Emma Watson grew into her beauty in these films and that she sells us on Hermione's relationship with Ron, is a testament to her skills as an actor. Daniel Radcliffe had the whole enterprise resting on his shoulders since he was eleven. He often got to have a few humorous moments in the films, but in Deathly Hallows Part 2, those moments are far fewer. Instead we get some great line delivery, like the slam at Snape, or the grasping of Voldemort and flinging himself off the parapet while calling him Tom. The most moving moment of the film is in the Coda, when grown Harry tells his young son that he is named after two headmasters of Hogwarts, and he can proudly say one of them was a Slytherin and the bravest man he ever knew. Radcliffe had his big boy pants on in that scene and he nailed it.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows Part 2" is not just the conclusion of the last book, but also of the series that made a difference in real kids lives. There are still some who only know these characters from the movies, but to millions of children, reading became the wand that could open their imaginations. All of the Young Adult fantasy that dominates the film markets these days on Netflix, Hulu, Prime and similar platforms, all owe a debt of gratitude to J.K. Rowling and her imagination and skill with language. The film makers were smart enough to figure out that they needed to keep the movies as close to those kids imaginations as they could, and they succeeded.
