Marvin D. wrote:So yesterday I watched some of harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. PG-rated. It should be PG-13! Dark. Gloomy. Witchcraft. While it may be awesome to fly and have powers, why fill our minds with junk?
In that case, couldn't you question why they made the movies in the first place? And while on that tangent, why would she have written the books for movies to be made out of them?
Whatever you have to say about the books, you have to admit, J.K. Rowling (some say Roh-ling, I say Raow-ling. Yeah, I'm definitely from the South!) is
brilliant. She is a talented author and has certainly a great sense of humor and satire and a wonderful imagination. Whatever you have to say about the books' content, she is brilliant. Just thought I'd say that to make sure--no one who has read Harry Potter can really say that the writing itself is bad (except for certain words used that could stand omittance).
Danielle Abigail Maxwell wrote:Could HP be the same way? Yeah. There is ALWAYS an intended audience. Like Twilight. That's definitely for the teenager girls that like Robert Pattenson... yuck. That's why everyone complains. Because if you don't fit into that category, you aren't going to like it (probably), or you will complain somehow. If you're a part of that group, you probably defend the movie.
Honestly, just because there's an intended target audience really doesn't necessarily entail that they--and only they--will like it. That isn't what you're saying, I understand, but I'd like to bring up something from my third grade year (I'm goin' into the old days, baby!). We had a game called "Movies" that we played all the time--someone would say the first letters of every word in the movie's title, and the first person to guess the movie's title got to say their movie. More often than not, there would be R-rated movies coming up at least five times in the game. These kids would have seen the movies and not really been affected. Just shows the kind of people I used to hang out with, right?
Danielle Abigail Maxwell wrote:HP is probably targeted for mature, 16-25 year olds. Yeah, 13 year olds watch it, but its either 1) over their head (like the books), and 2) just cool looking. They don't grasp it. They just see and nod. That's why I get uneasy when I'm seeing 12 year olds reading HP... um... can you seriously understand that? another reason why kids go gaga... they don't get it normally. 12 year olds reading Twilight... easier to read, but okay, seriously, AH!!!!!!!!!!!
The scarier thing is more often the case--the twelve and thirteen-year-olds
actually grasping what's being said. There are people at my school who read adult books--
and none of it is over their heads. Of course, the only reason I know about this is because I tend to percieve a lot of things most of my other close (all are Christians, thankfully!) friends either don't percieve or don't care about. But if it weren't for those close friends and for show choir, I'd beg to be homeschooled.
Danielle Abigail Maxwell wrote:PG-13 means suggested audience 13 years old and up. (so, you wouldn't really be saving many if you put this requirement on... it just warns about some things)
The thing is, most kids I know aren't the kids who pay attention. Almost everyone I talk to is practically amazed that I was not allowed to see PG-13 movies until the actual age of thirteen. At first, I felt that the rule was bad, but after seeing my first PG-13 movie (it was an HP movie, because my dad checked it out and said it was okay), I understood why. Movies are rated the way they are for a reason. The filmraters aren't stupid, they know what they're doing. Going back to what Marvin said:
Marvin D. wrote:Dark. Gloomy. Witchcraft.
The mood of a movie does not determine the rating; it is the amount of violence, scary scenes, sexual connotations, and profanity. It has nothing to do with the mood. At any rate, a large subplot was introducing the creepyness (for lack of a better term) of the dementors, which are to basically create depression in a person's life by dredging up bad memories and extracting the bad ones. It was supposed to be dark. And isn't the weather in Britain pretty much perma-gloomy? It's not like they were purposefully making it a sad movie; British weather, while not rainy all year, does have its weeks of overcast skies. The other movies have this quality, too. I don't see any complaints about other specific movies because of this.
The whole series, as well, does get progressively darker in content as it goes. That is because in the battle of good vs. evil, you're usually given easy tasks first--then it gradually goes into the more difficult, sticky situations. I think that was part of the point of the plots of the books--they're gradually more intricate, dark, and intense, and it all culminates into the climactic grand finale and the conclusion.
And for the record, you can't really have
Harry Potter without witchcraft. Neither can you have
Snow White,
Sleeping Beauty,
Cinderella, and every other media we deem as "acceptable" for kids. The fact is, witchcraft, magic, whatever you call it, it is occultic and evil. Simple as that. People attack HP for magic usage, but ignore the other media that is deemed acceptable--as has been Harry Potter--even though it contains just as much of this magic as HP.