Very interesting contrast last week when I caught back-to-back screenings of a pair of fantasy flicks: Stardust and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
For one, the Stardust screening was deserted - just me, one other person and a friend I brought along. (A tumbling tumbleweed blocked my view of the screen for a while). The Phoenix screening was packed - they had to bring in folding chairs for the overflow, and held the start until some bigshot could make it.
And the movies deserved their respective audiences. Want to see an uninspired, you'll-leave-the-theater-humming-the(adequate)-special-effects fantasy? Stardust (directed by Matthew Vaughn of Layer Cake) is your film. Everything's pro-forma, out of the twinkly, twee, Edwardian-British faerie school of literary fantasy, without an ounce of conviction showing anywhere; I've had more believable experiences at your average Renaissance Festival.
Now Potter... well I have to admit I'm just wild about Harry. (I'm probably the first guy to ever make that joke.)
HERE BE SPOILERS:
Even so, I thought the Order of the Phoenix novel was way overlong and could've benefited from some judicious pruning - which is just what director David Yates and scripter Michael Goldenberg have provided in whittling it down to a mere 2:15 or so. (For one, Umbridge's sadistic punishment of Harry - straight out of Kafka - went on forever in the book & is done away with in one scene in the movie.) Now Potter does have the edge on Stardust with 6 novels in print and 4 movies preceding this one - but even so, Potter's world of magic feels real and earned. It exists amidst and around our own, just as we sometimes feel there's something more and special and immense invisible just in front of us.
Stardust? Well, it's based on a Neil Gaiman graphic novel, judging from the movie, lazily written on a lazy Sunday. There's this stone wall, see, in the middle of the English countryside, okay? And just on the other side of it is a magic land of enchantment forbidden to mortals. Cool, huh? And if you can get past the 90 year old guy who-looks-harmless-but-is-really-a-kickass-warrior, you can wander into the magic town up a-ways in Magicland. Now everyone in the real world town accepts this matter of factly -but doncha think they'd all be storming that wall to visit this enchanted realm, especially if they could come up with some magic viagra love potion? Evidently the thought never occurred to any of them - or to the filmmakers to come up with a reason why the folks in both realms keep their distance from each other. (Except for the awkward-young-man-who-becomes-a-hero-fella, because if Luke Skywalker can do it, by gum so can he!)
Robert DeNiro has some laffs as closeted sky pirate queen, I mean king, but he's slummin' 'n hammin' for all he's worth. Also, they say they're pirates but beyond an occasional 'arrrr' they're all actually pussycats, and they seem to make a fairly honest living capturing & bottling lightning up there in the clouds. (Castle in the Sky' s Dola Gang would make short work of them.)
I'm the wrong guy to say, but I suspect if you came to Phoenix cold you'd still be swept away by the macro- and micro-detailing of the film's world: the vast interior of the Ministry of Magic, all done in shiny black brick - the storeroom of prophecies, shelves filled with glass globes stretching infinitely in every direction - or even the desolate playground and damp concrete highway underpass where the film begins.
Both films feature a heads-on battle of magic energy between 2 characters - it's been done plenty of times before, but the difference between them is the difference between the films: while the one in Stardust is ordinary, Phoenix's is truly magical - and oh yeah, scary too. (At one point a fountainful of water rises into the air and becomes a whirling globe of liquid - a special effect that isn't just real looking, but spookily beautiful and ethereal.)
I'll shut up soon. But one last thought. Bet I won't be the last guy to point this out: Hagrid's gigantic, not-very-bright half-brother Grawp - is he a ringer for Alfred E. Neuman or what?
Joe Strike has written about animation for numerous publications. He is the author of Furry Nation: The True Story of America's Most Misunderstood Subculture.
