Elemental

I’m a sucker for movies featuring the four elements of Empedocles (and popularized by Aristotle): Earth, Water, Air, Fire. Thus, despite the less than stellar reviews, I watched Pixar’s latest: Elemental. Not willing to shell out cash, I borrowed the DVD from my local library.

 

What’s the story about? There are four populations of elemental beings: Earth, Water, Air, Fire. While most folks live with other folks of the same element in rural areas, the shiny metropolis brings together the different elements – some well-established, some looking to start a new life. The trouble is that it’s hard for elements to co-exist in the same space without causing physical problems. That’s especially true for Fire. It burns Earth. It boils Water. (Oddly, I don’t recall noticing problems between Fire and Air even though you’d think that Fire would consume the oxygen in air as fuel.)

 

The Earth folks look like plants, seeds, and earth – they’re solid. The Water folks are distinguished by being liquid and transparent-ish. Air folks look like clouds. These three fit into the well-known phases of matter: solid, liquid, gas. In chemistry, a substance can transition between phases at the appropriate pressure and temperature. In fact, the boundary that separates phases define melting and boiling points where two phases co-exist at equilibrium. At the triple point, all three can co-exist. My first-year college students should be able to identify all these on a phase diagram. Fire doesn’t fit into this story. It’s not a substance, it’s chemistry in the midst of transformation.

 

In Elemental, there are no phase changes for the most part. Each elemental being maintains its properties. But there can be problems on physical contact. Water gets other folks wet. Air folks get annoyed when someone walks through them instead of going around. The biggest problem, though, is Fire. These folks have to literally tiptoe around their neighbors, being careful not to touch them physically lest they actually cause a change of phase. Fire can burn earth causing it to be consumed or parts to “drop off”. Water can be boiled into what seems like nothing (should it be Air?) which sorta kills its existence. So what happens when an attraction forms between a goofy Water-based individual and the protagonist from the Fire clan?

 

In the beginning, they can’t touch. And then somehow by the end of the story they can, because they have somehow “changed”. There’s no explanation how or why. I posit that they manage some sort of insulation in between. An air gap perhaps? The movie doesn’t support this – that physical touch seems to be, well, a touchstone. Maybe there’s a thin layer of oil. That allows the fire to keep burning without evaporating the water? I’m coming up empty-handed for reasonable physical explanations. Maybe unknown magic should be invoked. And the point of the movie is the emotional relationships – and somehow those transcend and transform the physical, I don’t know how.

 

In the physical world there are phase boundaries between solids and liquids, liquids and gases, solids and gases. (These also exist between different solid phases of which there can be many, especially at higher pressures.) My students should also be able to locate and tell me the definition of the critical point, where the boundary between liquid and gas seemingly dissolves. There are some videos showing the disappearance of the “horizon” that separates them, but frankly they’re not terribly exciting. I suppose you could call the supercritical fluid a new phase of sorts. I suppose you could also call plasma a separate phase, and maybe that’s where Fire fits.

 

I don’t have much else to say about the mostly forgettable movie, other than I like how Fire has the best food. Hot and spicy! My kind of folks. They also make the best chemists, crafters, and engineers. The manipulation of glass scenes in the movie are cool; I mean hot. What on earth would we do without fire?

Space-filling

After watching the third Fantastic Beasts movie, and realizing how little of the previous movies I remembered, I decided to go back and watch them. The fantastic beasts are more interesting and plentiful, especially in the first movie. This time around, I found myself pondering the space-filling serpent. According to the Harry Potter Fandom Wiki, it is called an Occamy (and shown in the picture below from the wiki). The ability to grow or shrink to fill space is ‘choranaptyxism’, an invented word in the Wizarding World pulled from the Greek words for ‘space’ and ‘unfolding’. Why not use Latin instead of Greek?

 

Why does the beast grow or fill to shrink its space? I don’t know. Why doesn’t it do so when living in Newt Scamander’s garden of beasts? I don’t know either. Why does Newt ask for a teapot to trap it – shouldn’t any other container do? Possibly, it’s unclear. Maybe Newt says this in the heat of the moment to allow his comrades to focus on a solution. How does this beast change its size to fit its container? I don’t know, but I have speculated on what atomic-level forces might be affected as matter is enlarged or shrunk (it is more problematic than it looks). Then again, this is a fantastic magical beast so maybe the rules of ‘normal’ matter don’t apply as when you cast an Engorgio spell to make a spider larger (to Ron Weasley’s horror) or if (Marvel Comics) Ant-Man shrinks.

 

In an introductory chemistry class, students are taught that gases “take the shape of their container”. The size of the gas particles does not change. Rather, because of their constant motion, the particles whiz around to “fill” the container in their never-ceasing movement. Matter isn’t being resized as the container size changes. The pressure of the gas rises or falls proportionally as the volume of the container is decreased or increased respectively, provided the temperature remains constant (Boyle’s Law).

 

Also in introductory chemistry class, students learn different ‘models’ to represent molecules, one of which is called the space-filling model. This model is sort of like a gas-filled container except that (1) instead of gas particles, electrons are the constantly moving entities, and (2) there isn’t actually a boundary per se – the negatively-charged electrons stay relatively close to the positively-charged nucleus because of electrostatic attraction. The space-filling model comes into play because the electron ‘clouds’ on two different molecules cannot substantially penetrate each other because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Were molecules to meet in motion, they would bounce off each other, never passing through each other like ghosts.

 

This reminded me of a vignette in Tom McLeish’s book. Robert Grosseteste was a thirteenth century cleric who became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235. He incorporated what we would today call ‘science’ into his theological thoughts. One thing that puzzled him was the ‘solidity’ of matter. (It’s surprising that students today aren’t puzzled – it is strange!) McLeish writes: “If [Pauli Principle repulsion] were not the case then solid or liquid matter as we know it could not exist – all matter would simply pass through itself… think of a simple version of an atomic picture in which the atoms are really point-like particles – since this is the picture faithful to the ancient Greek atoms – the indivisible ones. At first it seems as if this might be a promising route to explain the matter we experience in terms of its hidden, and simpler, substructure… but in this case classical atomism doesn’t work. If we stay with the idea of point-like particles then solidity simply does not appear.”

 

Why don’t we just give up the idea of point-like particles and use ‘hard spheres’? This isn’t as easy as it looks because it still begs the question as why you have hard spheres. For that matter, classical mechanics (the stuff one learns in physics class) is predicated on using point-charges that give us beautiful and simple equations we can use! Without explaining the ‘bulk’ of atoms, we’re stuck in a circular argument spiraling into infinitesimal point-sized particles (which don’t exist). We had to wait until quantum mechanics to figure out Pauli repulsion – a good seven hundred years after Grosseteste became a bishop.

 

Grosseteste’s idea (in De luce) was to use light as a sort-of explanation. McLeish writes: “… light, unlike atoms, does possess a natural ‘extension’ – open a shutter and it streams in to fill the dusty air beyond uniformly and immediately. If matter cannot of itself (simple and without dimension) fill space, then maybe the operation of light on matter might endow the tiny particles with extension by carrying them, or somehow extendedness into them. Actually, [Grosseteste] is very careful to say that this source of corporality might not actually be light itself, but if not then something very like it… Remarkably, Grosseteste’s insight turns out to be more or less correct… light is space-filling in that it is a wave… the quantum waviness of matter allows it to be solid, and prevents my falling through the chair I am sitting on.”

 

Taking this a step further, Grosseteste “makes an extraordinary leap of imagination: he attempts to apply his theory of local matter to the structure of the universe as a whole. Beginning with a flash of light, the entire universe is filled and expanded by its self-propagation until it has reached huge dimensions. Solidifying in its exterior shell, re-reradiated light from this shell of ‘perfected matter’ then concentrates matter back towards the center, leaving the successive planetary shells in its wake, and the unrefined elements of fire, air, water and earth at the center.” It’s clever. Grosseteste comes up with a ‘Let There Be Light’ creation of Aristotle’s cosmos. As an aside, Grosseteste was also interested in how matter might manifest in different Aristotelian ‘accidental’ forms – because he was interested in how one might explain Catholic theology’s concept of transsubtantation – the bread becomes the ‘body’ of Jesus Christ in some participatory way even though it still looks and tastes like bread to the eater.

 

Is there a creative explanation for the space-filling serpent in the magical world of Fantastic Beasts? I don’t know. I’d love to get my hands on a standard Hogwarts textbook: Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling might be one. Or maybe Newt’s textbook. But I have a feeling that the explanation will leave me wanting. Or I need to ghostwrite the book with an infusion of the magic of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics isn’t astrology, but sometimes feels like it. (That book has been written.) So as you’re sitting on your chair reading this, take a moment to ponder why you don’t fall through it. The weirdness of quantum mechanics that gives rise to the space-filling model of molecules gives us solidity!

FB3: Private Brawl

So I watched the third Fantastic Beasts movie. I had low expectations, thus the movie didn’t disappoint. I felt he first movie was the better than the second movie which was better than this third installment, except I can hardly remember anything from the second movie suggesting it was quite forgettable. This third movie was rather confusing, although that was partly baked into the storyline. There is a hint that the main antagonist can scry the future, but how or why is unclear, and it was nowhere as interesting as the demiguise. It also required the protagonists to be unpredictable and confusing.

 

Subtitled “The Secrets of Dumbledore”, I feel that the movie tries to capitalize on what made the Deathly Hallows one of the best books of the Harry Potter series. I found Harry Potter rather whiny in Book 5, and that downgraded it compared to some of the earlier books in my opinion. What elevated the last two books was by moving the focus away from Harry’s life by exploring the lives of the others. Albus Dumbledore’s past is a pivotal part of the final book. The movie tries to impute greater import to events in his younger days, giving a somber weight of seriousness – which also weighs down the movie in my opinion. Further weighing it down was the mirroring of the German Third Reich setting. I was not impressed.

 

Are there fantastic beasts? Yes. One of these creatures and its special powers is pivotal to the movie. Newt Scamander’s bowtruckle and niffler companions get their moments to shine, and his case can locomote and protect itself reminding me of the legged-box in the Discworld novels. There’s also one very large beast residing in a wizarding prison pre-Azkaban along with its minions. Dementors not available, perhaps? I’m being purposefully vague to avoid giving spoilers of the movie for those who care about such things.

 

There are some clever bits of magic and the special effects in some of the action scenes are enthralling. This was to be expected in this sort of movie. Teleportation was employed in a variety of ways consistent with the books – with more flair! The cleverest bit of magic though was something akin to creating a private eminent domain to do wizarding battle that separates the duelers from others. In one instance, it mirrored the Upside Down of Stranger Things. It’s not clear exactly how that magic was cast, but it reminded me a tad of similar duels in the animated manga series Jujutsu Kaisen. In any case, this isn’t completely new to Harry Potter in the instance when the meeting of spells from Harry and Voldemort’s wands (sharing the phoenix core) separates them from the onlookers in Book 4. It’s magic allowing one to have a private brawl, and maybe do less damage to the actual physical surroundings.

 

My favorite character in the movie? Jacob Kowalksi the Muggle. He provides levity and heart to the movie, otherwise in short supply. The good baker in what would have otherwise been a half-baked movie. And that’s my FB3 update.

Metal Muncher: Ghost Version

Yet another Ghostbusters movie. Yet another Ghost-related blog post. I enjoyed Ghostbusters Afterlife. It’s not mainly about ghosts or ghostbusting but about family and friendships – relationships by blood or forged by working closely together. The kids who helm the movie give it a touch that’s missing from the previous movies in the franchise. The narrative of the movie unwinds slowly, but keeps the viewer engaged. There are hokey parts that pay homage to the original movie, but are overall well done.

 

I won’t say much more about the story arc of the movie, so as not to spoil it. Instead I will focus on a side character, the ghost known as Muncher. Unlike Slimer, Muncher doesn’t have much personality. Muncher just munches on stuff, particularly if it’s metallic. It allows Muncher to shoot bullets in self-defence when threatened. Instead I’m interested in mulling over the corporeality of Muncher and iron, complementary to my previous posts on the interaction of ghosts and matter.

 

Ghosts are thought of as ghostly, typically interacting little with matter as we experience it. This is true of the Harry Potter ghosts who glide through walls, people and other seemingly solid objects. Interacting with matter might be possible although difficult, as illustrated by the pantless politician in the comedic BBC series Ghosts. In Ghostbusters, such interaction is not a problem. Muncher does not fly through any walls, and in fact, carefully avoids running into solid objects at high speed. The ghostly entities in this movie seem to be able to wear material corporeality like a garment. They sort of dissolve when forced into a Ghostbuster trap. They seem to travel either as smoke or as photons of lights or some combination thereof.

 

Muncher seems to have an appetite for metal, eating through it faster than a strong acid can dissolve it. Why? I don’t know. While Muncher is luminous, Muncher’s body is not transparent so it’s unclear where the metal goes. At the very least, it gets broken into smaller pieces that can be egested like shrapnel. Is it waste? Can Muncher transform one metal into another type of metal? Can Muncher break down a chunk of metal all the way down to the atomic level, and what happens then? I don’t know. These are perhaps questions a Ghostscientist might try to answer. Hopefully as Phoebe, the protagonist of Afterlife, grows up, she could pursue such questions.

Second Exposure

A year ago, I watched Christopher Nolan’s Tenet for the first time as I was covering Entropy in my G-Chem II class. One of the students had told me I should watch it when we speculatively discussed entropy and the arrow of time. I found Tenet messy and confusing the first time, although I understood the overall gist of what was going on. This weekend, I decided to re-watch Tenet because once again we are in the entropy chapter of G-Chem II. While I noticed things I had missed the first time, I still think the story is not tight enough. Too many things going on, loose ends, some inconsistency (for reasonable cinematic reasons), and it’s still a bit of a mess. I think more editing was needed before the theatrical version was released. As my spouse perceptively said, it would be interesting to see a director’s cut with voice-over. (We haven’t done so.)

 

The most interesting bit in the movie is to cinematically convey what it ‘feels’ like to go against the arrow of time. They didn’t film it and then run the reel backwards. It was filmed in the forward direction with the actors trying to play the part of moving backwards and forwards in the strange jerky motions we observed on the screen. It must have been utterly confusing for them, but I think they did a good job overall – the movie felt ‘kinetic’. The science itself is dubious. The difference between entropically inverted objects is mushed with the notion of anti-matter. The idea of having to carry your own oxygen tank is inconsistent with other things that you can interact with when you are making your way through an inverted world.

 

I was amused by the discussion about exothermic reactions turning into endothermic ones. I suppose my constantly admonishing students to pay attention to sign changes in thermodynamics is something my students will note if they watch the movie. While the second law of thermodynamics inexorably moves towards ‘disorder’, there is no problem with systems and subsystems within the thermodynamic universe becoming more ordered. This happens all the time in chemical reactions. Every time you burn a fuel to release energy in an exothermic reaction, the chemical substances are transforming from higher entropy to lower entropy (i.e., becoming more ‘ordered’) rather than the other way around. The heat released however increases the ‘disorder’ of the surroundings at a much higher magnitude, and thus the chemical reaction is ‘driven’ forward in one direction.

 

Having had my second exposure to Tenet made me think about students being exposed to chemistry. You don’t know what’s going on the first time, and maybe the second time you gain a little more understanding. But it might still be messy and things might not make sense. You sorta think you know what’s going on, but it may take a third exposure to disabuse you of that notion. That was certainly true for me. My first go-around of chemistry in secondary school, I had no idea what was going on. It felt like my weakest science subject. Physics and biology made more sense. In my second go-around (junior college / pre-university), it made more sense and I seemed to do better on exams. Only as an undergraduate did I fall in love with chemistry and things started to click – third exposure. And then in graduate school, the fog cleared even more. That’s my fourth time around if you’re counting. More murkiness cleared as I began to teach, and it’s only now that I can claim I have expertise in understanding and teaching chemistry.

 

In my G-Chem classes every year, inevitably a few students will thank me for helping them make sense of chemistry. These students often tell me what terrible teachers they had in high school, and that they didn’t understand anything, but now the material makes more sense to them. I’m glad I’ve helped clear up some conceptual things about chemistry, but their previous teachers may not have been terrible. It may simply have been first exposure to a challenging, confusing and the non-intuitive nature of chemistry. I’m glad they feel better about their second exposure, but when they take my exams, it reveals that several of them still do not have a good grasp. I try to tell them not to feel bad about it, and that I had a similar experience myself. I’m not sure they believe me.

 

Many, if not most, of my students, did well in high school. Academics, to some extent, came relatively easy for them, especially the ‘honors’ students. Now for the first time, they are encountering the academic struggle and it’s unnerving. (I experienced doing poorly in school before I entered university.) Some of them feel there’s something wrong with themselves, others are apologetic and even feel they are letting me (the instructor) down when they are doing poorly, and they tell me they are trying. I try to be sympathetic and say it’s okay to not be acing the class, and that the subject material is indeed difficult – but I think my words ring hollow. I need to work better at displaying empathy (it’s not something I’m naturally good at).

 

We’re not all geniuses when we see something for the first time. Maybe even the second time. Many things that we learn in school are not ‘natural’ and we humans haven’t evolved to learn them by osmosis. We need to work through it – the hard way. And that’s okay. But the pace of life has quickened, and it feels more urgent to the younger generation to be able to pick up something more quickly, otherwise they feel like failures. This, I don’t think is their own fault as individuals. They’re caught in an accelerating system, entropy inexorably moving forward, that makes life feel crazier, messier, and less comprehensible.

The Matrix Resuscitated

I remember exactly where I was when I first encountered The Matrix. I was in Old Town Pasadena trying to decide whether to watch a movie at the AMC Cineplex or at United Artists across the street. It was twilight. I know this because I’m cheap, and the twilight showing (the movie that’s just before 6pm, even lower priced than a matinee) has the cheapest seats. UA, at $4.50 per twilight ticket, was slightly more expensive than AMC, but there wasn’t anything that sounded interesting at the AMC. That left The Matrix which I didn’t know much about except it was sci-fi-ish. I had not seen any previews nor read any reviews. Friends hadn’t told me about it.

 

After the movie, I walked out in a daze. It was day when I entered the cinema but night when I stepped out. Normally, I would take the free Old Town bus back to a stop close to my apartment, but instead I decided to take a half-hour walk back just to clear my head. I had never seen anything like it. Mind-bending. Stylish. It was awesome. Well, except for the final minute telephone booth scene before Neo flies away. But then, the Wachowski’s likely didn’t know they would have a sleeper hit and that tons of money would be thrown at them to make their sequels, so I can see how they stuck that scene in for “closure”.

 

By the time the next two sequels were released, there was plenty of pre-buzz. I had seen previews. (You couldn’t avoid them.) Hype was plentiful. The Wachowski’s were already famous. In my opinion, the sequels are progressively less satisfying than the original. For one, the novelty is lost – that cannot be avoided. But Reloaded made up for it with some very clever bits. We saw Zion for the first time. The short fight scene between Neo and the Merovingian’s exiles is superb. The freeway vehicle chase scene is among the very best. The story-telling arc of the final mission to get Neo to the core is artful and clever. There are some neat surprises throughout the movie. I still greatly enjoyed it.

 

Despite being poorer overall story-wise, Revolutions was still a fitting end to the trilogy. The last stand at Zion with the battle mechs. The tense ride to machine city. And while the final fight was weak in the narrative arc, there was still good drama and tension interspersed throughout the movie. Redeemable. I still enjoyed it even though (or perhaps because) I had correctly anticipated that it would be weaker than its predecessors. Still, it had some skill, as the Merovingian might aptly say.

 

I just watched Resurrections. It was a mess. My expectations were not high, but it still came in below par in my book. I was cheap, watching it through HBOMax which came gratis with my home internet package. Instead of coming up with something original and clever, it felt like themes from the first two movies were repackaged, then compressed into a single movie. The narrative was rushed. Perhaps it should have been The Matrix Retreaded. It still could have been pulled off by a new generation of young faces. But the story bogged down by hanging on to the old. The fresh-faced actors might be talented but they suffer from the weight of their forebears: Laurence Fishburne is Morpheus and Hugo Weaving is Smith. And Carrie-Anne Moss is severely under-utilized. Even the poor Merovingian is reduced to a gibbering vengeful nutcase. An empty shell.

 

They tried to bring back the dead. But resurrection wasn’t achieved. Resurrection is what you get when the perishable old is raised imperishable into new glory. Or so says a wise old glorious book. What we got was resuscitation. A temporary reprieve from lying in the grave in a death state to briefly experiencing a living state. But it’s an old living in an old body with one foot in the grave. What we got was The Matrix Resuscitated.

 

There were some clever parts to the latest movie. I liked how programs could instantiate themselves in the “real” world. Thinking about how machines and humans cooperate from more explicit examples to seeing imagined hybrid visual tech was interesting. But otherwise there wasn’t much meat. The video game idea was not mind-blowing or even spoon-bending. All you’re left with is action sequences. But they feel empty without a sufficiently supporting story arc. “Am I living in a simulation?” is no longer an interesting question after the first movie. “What does Resurrection entail?” could have been an interesting question to tackle. But all we get is Resuscitation. And we should be profoundly dissatisfied.

 

P.S. Cham & Whiteson tackle the question “Do We Live in a Computer Simulation?” in their latest book. They quote Neo in The Matrix. Their analysis is also less than satisfying.

 

P.P.S. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the so-called Resurrection Stone doesn't do any better.

Revisiting The Hobbit

It’s been over three years since I bought a boardgame (as I’m trying to reduce my collection). That last boardgame was The Battle of Five Armies. It has sat unplayed, and it was time to remedy the situation. Learning a new immersive boardgame, with many rules, and that has a playing time of 2-3 hours, takes patience. I punched out the pieces, unwrapped the cards, and immersed myself in the rulebook. Having played Battles of the Third Age, I knew what to expect. 

 

But I needed a bit of extra motivation. Learning this sort of game requires several play-throughs because you’re going to make mistakes the first few times, and you’ll run into ambiguous situations where you’ll need to consult sources beyond the rulebook. (The internet has made this much easier compared to the old days when you had to snail-mail questions to the game company.) This meant devoting another 10-15 hours before I would be satisfied with having learned the game properly. To motivate myself I decided to re-watch Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movie trilogy.

 

I could be classified as a Tolkien nerd, at least in my younger days. I discovered The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings at age twelve. For many years, I would re-read Lord of the Rings, appendices and all, every year. (The Hobbit would be revisited less often.) As bits of Middle Earth lore became available be it through The Silmarillion, the Book of Lost Tales and Unfinished Tales, I devoured it. I learned the runes. I pored over maps and histories. I might no longer be a nerd because I haven’t kept up the last twenty years or so, but I do still re-read the books once every 3-5 years. I thought Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was overall good (although I had some quibbles), and my sister gifted me with a boxed set of the extended version. I’ve re-watched these on occasion.

 

In contrast, I was disappointed with Jackson’s Hobbit movie trilogy. I dutifully watched each movie in the cinema when it was released, hoping for improvement. Nope. All manner of side-stories were added to what seemed like a bloated spectacle aimed at making money. The Tolkien nerd in me was unimpressed. And now, dear reader, you’re thinking why on earth would I want to watch the movies again and how indeed might it motivate me? For one thing, the boardgame focuses on one tiny sliver of Tolkien’s story, the battle of five armies. (It takes up less than 5% of the book, but rages on for half of the third movie).

 

The truth is that I was in two minds about whether to watch the movies, and to help make the decision I decided to read some movie reviews. That’s how I stumbled upon the Smithsonian’s excellent piece: The Tolkien Nerd’s Guide to “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”. (I also recommend their guides to the first two parts, linked in the article.) I now had a glimpse of Jackson’s vision in situating the Hobbit movies in the larger context of the twilight of the Third Age of Middle Earth. That’s why the Ring plays a larger role, and there are those extra scenes involving Dol Guldur and the Necromancer. Jackson doesn’t quite follow the “true” story or its timeline. Everything is movie-dramatized to pack as much of a punch so the action and drama are amped up several notches.

 

While I still don’t like numerous parts of the movies (anything involving Legolas, the over-sizing of Smaug and his hoard, and some Laketown scenes), I now have a better appreciation for other deviations in the movie. Tauriel’s multi-faceted role now becomes more interesting in examining the politics of Middle Earth. Dol Guldur scenes are no longer annoying. The overplaying of dragon-sickness and the effect of the Arkenstone hark to the seven Dwarf rings and the Silmarils of the First Age. I also enjoyed noticing the different personalities of the Dwarves in the movies which are not found in Tolkien’s books. I’m pleased that Bombur gets some excellent scenes. And I enjoyed how the song “what Bilbo Baggins hates” was rendered in a memorable and clever way. I was also able to sit back and enjoy the over-the-top action (except when Legolas was involved) and even accepted Azog as prime antagonist. (In the books, Azog was killed years back; Bolg gets a tiny mention for the battle.) I also didn’t mind the Dune-ish tunnel-making worms when they showed up. Overall, I enjoyed the movies more this second time around, because I watched them with a different mindset.

 

I’m also enjoying the boardgame. It’s more streamlined than Battles of the Third Age, with a clearer rule-set, a shorter fate track with faster progress, and with improved game-play elements. As a stand-alone game, I am now more likely to pull it out and teach someone who’s interested compared to its predecessors. A little of the narrative richness is lost with a shorter and less fiddly game (i.e., without a bunch of extra rules for special cases), but it’s likely to get more play time instead of sitting on the shelf. I’ve played four games with each side winning two apiece. The game seems relatively well-balanced provided the Shadow player is aggressive from the get-go. (I learned this the hard way in Battles of the Third Age.) A Shadow player who sits back while building up forces has little chance in winning. A quick strike is required before armies are fully mustered but it requires risky play. This forces the Free Peoples also to take risks and makes the games much more interesting.

 

Above is a picture after Turn 3 in my fourth game. The Free Peoples rolled particularly badly in this game allowing the Shadow to easily take the Eastern Spur and the ruins of Dale, before wiping out Dain Ironfoot’s army at the Camp before the gates of Erebor. Bolg is approaching the front gate while Thorin is still on the Fate Track. The northern goblins have crossed the mountain pass and are following behind Bolg, as are several other Shadow armies. While the Elves have mustered in the south hoping that there is still time, Bolg in the next turn broke through the Front Gate into Erebor thus winning the game. (In the previous game, Bolg’s armies failed to break through at a later point, and Beorn showed up decimating them.)

 

It’s been fun revisiting the Hobbit. I re-read parts of the book after watching the three movies back-to-back over Thanksgiving weekend. I also re-read the Durin’s Folk appendix. And the last movie gave me the oomph needed to thoroughly enjoy the battles in the boardgame!

Onward

A long time ago, there was magic in the world. And it was beautiful. And useful. But learning magic was difficult. It required study, mental concentration, and artifacts to channel the magic – a wizard’s staff and a power stone. In the meantime, knowledge of the natural sciences made leaps in progress and ushered in new technologies. Electricity! You no longer need to expend your mental and physical energy and concentration to conjure a spell of light; just flip the switch and the light comes on.

 

This is the setting of Onward, a marvelous animated movie with an original story line that didn’t get as much press as other well-known franchises such as Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2. Onward is a better movie, trust me. I was hooked from the start as the tale opens with the brief history above. The elves, dragons, gnomes, unicorns, centaurs, no longer use magic. They’re making do without it. Just like we do in our world.

 

Magic will reawaken and there will be a quest, but I won’t spoil the story. While it is ultimately a story about relationships, there are clever vignettes in the movie hinting that magic might break out at any moment. It’s there lying dormant, waiting for someone with the talent and will to use it. But before all that happens, “knowledge” of magic seems only to lie in the imagination of nerds indulging in a role-playing Dungeons & Dragons-ish boardgame. And such head-in-the-clouds nerds aren’t taken seriously by folks getting along with the realities of life. Eventually history and fantasy will intertwine, and that’s where the fun begins.

 

Watching Onward made me think of Harry Potter and Hogwarts. Where magic is prevalent, electrical technology goes wonky. (I’ve previously speculated why.) Why is a school of magic needed? To train young witches and wizards how to use and control magic. They have the potential talent, but they will still have to study, concentrate, and practice, if they want to be good at it. Magical wands help to channel the magic. As do incantations. But ultimately, it’s still a matter of personal will and the expending of physical and mental energy. It can be exhausting, but perhaps it’s worth the effort.

 

What about natural talent? Harry seems to be destined to an uber magic user, given his magical genes. And he does do some remarkable things, including learning the Patronus charm in his third year – with practice and effort, of course. However, it is Hermione, the “cleverest witch of her age” who, I think, is the most adept overall even if what she does is less showy. Yes, she is intelligent. No, she doesn’t have the genes. But more importantly, she is willing to put in the work. Lots of it. Harry and Ron are frequently chided by Hermione for their lack of discipline. She has indeed learned to use and control magic, not by luck, but by practice-makes-perfect.

 

While magic is an important part of the of the Harry Potter series, the heart of the story is about the ties that bind: friends and family. The same is true for Onward. It showcases the magic of story-telling. Short, sweet, thoughtful, and not overdone. I highly recommend Onward for your viewing pleasure!

Feeling like a Gryffindor

Last Chance. Relive the Magic.

 

Since AT&T is my internet provider, I have access to HBO Max. Other than re-watching some Studio Ghibli classics, I have hardly taken advantage of what else is available. This is my first streaming service, so pardon my ignorance – I was surprised that opportunities come and go. All eight Harry Potter movies, probably contracted to build subscription when the service launched, are in the Last Chance category. HBO Max is telling me that I have a limited time to Relive the Magic.

 

I watched all eight movies when they were released on the big screen, but that was a while ago. And since I had been feeling like a dinosaur, and I wanted instead to be feeling like a Gryffindor, I thought this a good opportunity to revisit the movies before the new semester begins. Having re-read the books this January, I was reminded of how excellent they are!

 

Almost two decades ago, shortly after the first movie was released, I talked to one of my friends who had seen the movie, but had not read the books. I remember his remarks to this day: He thought the visuals were good, but had trouble following the story – he felt there were bits and pieces stitched together, but not necessarily well connected, and that the story seemed to jump from one event to another. It made me realize what a different experience watching the movies might be if you haven’t read the books. For me, it was cool to “see” Hogwarts. You get some sense of the school and its grounds, but there is some movie magic seeing it on the big screen. It was also interesting to see and hear the different characters, and be immersed in Harry’s world through a different medium.

 

This time around, I decided to skip the first two movies, partly because I remembered my friend’s remarks, partly due to my finding Lockhart in Book 2 annoying, and partly to avoid the dissonance when the actor playing Dumbledore switches from Richard Harris to Michael Gambon. Also, my favorite book is Book 3, and I had a vague memory that while the movie deviated considerably from the book, the depiction of the parallel key events that form the climax was cleverly done. I enjoyed the movie, although I found it “darker” than I remember (i.e., less suitable for kids), and I had forgotten how much the movie differed from the book. Having recently re-read the books, I was regularly surprised in many scenes, and thinking to myself “wait… that’s not how it happened”.

 

Now I do understand that when you adapt a book to a movie, you have multiple considerations: leveraging the different (visual) medium, the reduced time to tell the story, making hard choices to streamline the plot, and accounting for an audience that might not necessarily have read the books. I had given this issue a lot of thought when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies were released. I’m somewhat of a Tolkien geek, having read the trilogy close to twenty times. Of the five DVDs I own, three of them are part of the boxed set extended-version. I’ve watched the movies maybe three to five times total, and I have many a bone to pick with Jackson’s choices, but I think I understand some of the choices made when deviating from the books.

 

But back to the Harry Potter movies. I contemplated skipping #4 and #5 on the list, because they are in the lower half of my book rankings. But then I talked myself into watching them to see the kids grow up. Also, Book 4 is a pivotal turn in the series; we get to see students from other schools, the behind-the-scenes “faithful servant” storyline is clever, and there are the spectacles of the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard tournament. The only vague memory I had of the movie was that the First Task was theatrically over-done and the Third Task was disappointing with moving hedges and wind blowing. My fresh viewing experience was disappointing indeed. My vague memory not only proved correct, I was unimpressed by the simplifying shortcuts that turned a rich story into a drab one. The simplified or modified portrayal of key characters was, I thought, poorly done.

 

Still I shouldered on. I couldn’t remember anything about the fifth movie, which should have been a Grim omen. Book #5 is lowest in my ranking. (It’s still good.) Yet it does have scenes of St Mungo’s and the Ministry of Magic, and if anything, the movie could take advantage of its visual medium to immerse the viewer in these settings. However I was even less impressed re-watching the fifth movie. No St Mungo’s. And I had the strong feeling of a story being chopped into tiny bits and strung along. I think it would be incomprehensible, or misleading, to someone who hadn’t read the book. Ugh. There’s much I could rant about, but I won’t. After watching it, I remarked to my spouse (who was also disappointed with the movie) that I can’t believe I paid money to watch this the first time around. She had a good reply: When you’re watching it for the first time on the big screen, perhaps you ignore some of the flaws. But on the small screen, there was no worthwhile magic to relive in this movie.

 

The sixth movie was a breath of fresh air. I had almost no recollection from my previous viewing, and I found the present viewing rather enjoyable! The story arc was well-maintained, and deviations from the book to streamline the key plots were, in my opinion, well done and effective. The new musical score, and judicious use of humorous scenes, kept the movie lighthearted and brisk, while taking seriously the darker parts of the plotline. There was only one significantly extraneous scene that I thought highly unnecessary, but as a whole, the movie held its own very well. I would even rate the sixth movie above the third movie (although I rank Book 3 higher than Book 6). I plan to watch the two movies covering Book 7 during the coming weekend. Back when they were released, I remember holding the minority view that the less action-packed Part 1 was as a movie, better than Part 2. We’ll see if I change my mind.

 

Overall, throughout the movies there were some cool Gryffindor scenes including being in classrooms and common rooms, the Quidditch pitch, and other areas in Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. For brief moments, it was feeling like a Gryffindor. As I apprehensively approach the online semester, I’d like to be a Gryffindor. Some of my students will probably think I’m a Ravenclaw. Others will think I’m an evil Slytherin. But I’m happy to be Hufflepuff. Just gotta keep putting in the hard work!

 

*Images from Google Web Search for Hogwarts House Banners. Not sure who first designed them.