Let’s start this off by saying I don’t hate Harry Potter. I like the books, I like the films, I like Emma Watson! Wait, that’s beside the point. Anyway the Potter franchise has pretty much dominated the last ten odd years of our lives thanks to the movies, and with the last Harry Potter film out earlier this year I decided to watch the films from the start.
But after watching the first two, I started to notice something. There’s quite a lot of plot convenience going on, items or plot points which are brought up, but are only used at a certain point for that film. Confused? Well let’s take a look at the first one.
During the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ we see Ron and Harry having a game of wizard’s chess, where we see Ron is a master at the game. And what should one of the challenges that Harry Ron and Hermione face on their way to getting the Philosopher’s Stone? A giant chess board of course! And that’s it. We never see wizard’s chess again. I guess it was discontinued after it almost killed someone. What about the need for Harry to go to the restricted section of the library? If only Harry had gotten an invisibility cloak for Christmas. What about when Harry faces off with Professor Quirrell/Voldemort which essentially went:
Voldemort: Kill him!
Quirrell: Isn’t he a main character?
Voldemort: So? It’s not like he’s being protected by the power of love.
Quirrell: Oh okay. (Grabs Harry, starts dissolving) Argh! He’s protected by the power of love!
Voldemort: Curses!
Okay, so there was a couple in that one. But just wait! We still have six books/seven films! And ‘Chamber of Secrets’ is filled with them. It starts off with Harry being locked in his room, since Dobby the elf dropped a cake on Bishop Brenan’s wife, smiling all the way because, whilst it makes him look like a jerk, people will love him for it! Anyway when Harry is locked away behind bars in his bedroom, I bet he was going “If only Ron’s family had a flying car...oh hi Ron,”. Yeah, the Weasley’s have a flying car, but this wasn’t the only time that car saved the day, it also got Harry and Ron to Hogwarts when Dobby shut the portal to the train, and saved Harry and Ron from Shelob, I mean Aragog, Hagrid’s giant pet spider. Oh but the ultimate plot convenience scene comes when Harry ventures into the Chamber of Secrets, when Tom Riddle reveals that he’s Voldemort in teenage form and summons the Basilisk, a giant snake which can kill on sight. But it’s not like a phoenix that belongs to Dumbledore will come and scratch out the Basilisk’s eyes...oh. Well, um, it’s not like the sorting hat that the phoenix brought along will cause a sword to materialise...oh. Well ha! You’ve been bitten by the Basilisk and it’s poison is flowing through you! It’s not like the phoenix has Pokémon healing tears...oh come on!
Next story, the prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry is having his soul sucked by a Dementor, oh wait, luckily out of all the carriages on the train, they pick the one where the only person on the train knows the only spell needed to repel the Dementor. And we all know the story I’m sure, where Sirius Black is innocent and Peter Pettigrew is the real villain, however Pettigrew escapes and Black is almost killed but is imprisoned, oh, and Buckbeak, the hippogriff Hagrid has is due to be executed. If only there was a magical device that could allow Harry and Hermione to travel back in time to save Buckbeak and Black. Oh wait! Hermione has such a device! Which we also never see again! Why? Being able to travel back in time would be brilliant! It could save so many lives! It could save Cedric Diggory! What about Black in ‘Order of the Pheonix’? What about everyone else in the later stories? Oh wait, no we can’t use it because Dumbledore told us not to. And Buckbeak also saves the day a couple more times, once by saving Harry and Hermione from the werewolf Lupin and how else were Harry and Hermione suppose to get to the top of the tallest tower to save Black, who was imprisoned up there in a cage which Hogwarts has for some reason? Do Hogwarts imprison supposed killers often?
As for Goblet of Fire...I don’t actually recall any plot conveniences for that. I remember things like ‘use this spell’ or ‘hey look, dragons’, but nothing major. Oh wait, I remember one, which literally spells it out as plot convenience, where Harry asks Neville Longbottom if he knows of a spell to allow him to breath underwater. Whilst Neville doesn’t, he does provide gillyweed. Oh! And when Voldemort has been reborn and challenges Harry to a duel, because the power of love from the first story has worn off or something, Harry is saved when Voldemort’s wand produces...I don’t know, ghosts I guess, which save Harry.
Order of the Phoenix? Well they did actually cut back on the plot convenience a little, especially when Harry himself points out “he was lucky,”. There was still a little though, I mean when they need to fly to London, it’s a lucky thing they have Thestrals. Then again there’s a bit of weird stuff going on with those. You can only see them if you’ve seen death, so why Harry didn’t see them until now is beyond me since his parents were killed in front of him as a baby! Also when everyone was flying them, well, could they see them now? Harry and Luna could, but what about the others? Did someone die since they arrived at Hogwarts? Or were they flying whilst terrified since they couldn’t see their steed? Oh and the room of requirement showing up when they needed a secret place to practice, though I’m not really sure it is convenient since Dolores Umbridge blows the bloody doors off later.
And yeah, there wasn’t really that much plot convenience in that one, or the ‘Half Blood Prince’. Or the most part of ‘The Deathly Hallows’/Deathly Hallows Part One’. Actually one of two main plot conveniences for the ‘Deathly Hallows’ is the mirror shard that allows Dumbledore’s brother to see Harry whenever he likes. And yes, it is also creepy.
The other major plot convenience is one of the Deathly Hallows, the resurrection stone. Now, the other Hallows, the invisibility cloak and the Eldar Wand, well, at least Harry had possession of the cloak since the first story, establishing it very well, and the Eldar Wand, whilst it has been around since the start, was very well established in ‘Deathly Hallows’. The resurrection stone was just ‘here it is, enjoy’. Harry was carrying it the whole time inside the snitch, but the revelation that the stone was inside was still just a bit, hmm, flat shall I say. Now if it was the Philosopher’s Stone, maybe I’d cut it a little credit.
Then again, now that I think about it, the resurrection stone shouldn’t have worked the way it did. In the Three Brothers story, it was said the stone resurrected loved ones, which basically means person A uses it to resurrect person B, Harry couldn’t use it on himself. Then there’s the fact that Harry dropped it in the woods...BEFORE facing Voldemort! So he wasn’t even holding it when hit by the Avada Kedavra, so he shouldn’t have survived!
I will give J.K. Rowling credit though, at least it’s established. The Deathly Hallows I’ve already mentioned, but yeah, so was everything else, the phoenix’s healing tears, the wizard chess playing, Hermione’s time-travelling device...sort of. And that’s about it. Everything else was explained later. Yeah.
But despite the stories being riddled with ‘the butler did it’ scenarios (the term used when writer’s can’t think of an ending), the books are still extremely entertaining, the films are brilliant, the acting is great, especially from when they were child actors, normally they’re terrible! But yeah, the Harry Potter franchise was a great laugh and will be enjoyed for years to come.
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