Hedgehog’s Corner – HARRY POTTER
“You’re a wizard, Harry!” He certainly is. He turned seven stupid books into eight amazing films - that’s proper movie magic right there!
Fun fact – a “book” is like a really boring comic but with lots more pages and words and without the pictures. Sounds pretty bad, right? Well thank goodness they turned this one into some films otherwise nobody would have ever heard of it! In fact did you know that books are actually quite popular with brainiacs and book fans? You can buy them in specialist shops, at the airport and I heard that even Amazon has started to sell them recently! Whatever next?
Anyway when HOLLYWOOD decided to turn these books into a lot of films over lots of years it had a BIG problem. They needed to find actors who would start out young and then grow older as time went by, which was obviously tricky. Who would have the talent to get older in such a crazy fashion? Luckily their auditions went well and they found their three stars to play Harry, Hermione and Ron. Daniel Radcliffe was brilliant and has grown up to be a very handsome man and an amazing actor. Emma Watson was brilliant and has grown up to be a very beautiful woman and an amazing actress. Rupert Grint was also in it.
But wait! Did you know that, just like the appalling “Pirates of the Coffee Bean” films, Harry Potter is based on a theme park ride? It’s true! All eight films are based on the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Universal Studios. When you watch the films you will see what a great job they have done of recreating the ride, it’s just like really being there!
One quick side note. For the rest of this article I will use “HP” instead of “Harry Potter” to save on time and Internet ink. Unless I forget or can’t be bothered, just thought you’d like to know so you don’t get confused. Because I know just how easily you get confused these days. “Why did I come upstairs?”, “Where did I put my glasses?”, “Is Reagan still president?” and so on. Just have some hot chocolate and a quick nap and I’m sure you’ll be fine later on. (Let’s just take a moment to LOL at these oldsters, I hope I never get to 30, what a nightmare! I think it’s best summed up by classic rock band The Who with their famous lyric “I hope I die before I get fooled again by this Magic Bus substitute”. Wise words indeed The Who and remember that just like with Doctor Who who you call The Doctor not Doctor Who with The Who it’s not Who but The Who. Does that help? Who knows)
Anyway back to HARRY POTTER. The big villain in the HP films is “he who must not be named”. But no-one CAN name him because nobody knows his name and they have great trouble trying to find out what it is, it really is a puzzling riddle (get it?). However over the course of the movies we find out that he is a totally evil monster man type baddie person without a nose for some reason who can TRANSFORM into a giant snake and smoke and other shapes and he is VOLDERTRON! (Because he can transform you see. Good joke)
Now prepare for your tiny mind to be TOTALLY BLOWN! Amazingly the first Harry Potter film had not ONE but TWO different names. This is a true fact! (The best kind of fact) The REAL name of the film is “Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone” but Hollywood mega-brain people decided that this was too complicated for dumbass Americans and insisted that the title be changed to “Harry Potter and the big shiny thing”. In fact (which ironically isn’t a fact) this isn’t the only film title to have been simplified for the American audience. “Moulin Rouge” was too French so they called it “Red Dance Film”, “The Madness of King George III” was renamed “Crazy King” and “A psychological treatise on the dangers of marine megafauna” was laughably called “JAWS” in the USA. What a bunch of dumbasses!
Anyway, Harry Potter is meant to be this amazing magician, but throughout all eight films he never once does a card trick. What kind of magician doesn’t do card tricks? EPIC FAIL! Pick a card, any card. Now put it back in the pack. It was the…..ACE OF SPADES!!! Why doesn’t he do that? That would be brilliant. Maybe then Daniel Radcliffe could have got work in other films that required magical skills, like NOW YOU SEE ME and NOW YOU SEE ME 2 (although maybe the second one should more accurately be called NO-ONE SAW ME – take that box office flop - SNAP!)
Famously EVERY English actor of all time has been in Harry Potter at some point. It’s crazy how many they put in there and their lovely English accents really sounded good. Although incredibly with eight films they still couldn’t fit in some of the best English geezers like Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor, Peter Capaldi, James McAvoy or Robbie Coltraine. So that’s a shame.
I tell you someone who WAS in Harry Potter. The best and most beautiful woman of ALL TIME who is HELENA BONHAM-CARTER. She played BELLATRIX who was a sort of evil witch woman and friend of Voldertron, but who cares, she was brilliant. No jokes here, I just thought if I mentioned her in this article she might get in touch and we’d go out for a meal and she’d be impressed by my wit and charm and then we’d get married and have babies and stuff like that. Although I suppose she would then be called HELENA HEDGEHOG which may be a bit of an issue. Oh well.
The first six HP books became the first six HP films. BUT THEN the seventh book became TWO films which was TOTALLY INSANE! Some “fans” said that by doing this Hollywood was cashing in and trying to squeeze every last penny out of the franchise before it finished to which Hollywood said “well, yes, and your point is?” which is fair enough.
Harry Potter lives in a big castle called HOGWARTS which is a pretty bad name when you stop and think about it. How did the castle naming committee come up with that? “Let’s name our amazing castle after two horrible disgusting things”. They may as well have called it FROGZIT or TRUMPTRUMP. (Ha! Satire lives – wicked presidential burn, I got him good!)
All of the HP film titles start with the words “Harry Potter and the”. Then they add a bit on the end. It’s different each time so you can tell which film is which, which is a good idea. After “Philosophers Stone” (or “look, a shiny thing” in the US market) there was “Chamber Pot of Secretions”, “Prisoner of I am not a number I am a free man”, “Goblin on Fire”, “Arizona of Phoenix”, the purple musical “Half-Pint Prince” and TWO “Deathly Borings”. Then it was all over and Voldertron was dead (spoiler!)
So I hope we have all learned lots about HENRY POTTER. I know that I have (thanks Wikipedia!)
LOVE YOUR POTS!
Hedgehog xxx
@HedgehogAICN
HedgehogAICN@mail.com
