This thought has been spurred on partly by my seeing Harry Potter for the second time because Caley (my girlfriend for the uninformed) absolutely loves the series and a short conversation held under a friend of mines status on facebook a while ago.
The friend in question was Adrian Wilson and he said this ... well, not exactly this because I couldn't find the actual post but I'm fairly confident it was Adrian and he said something very close to this about the trailer for the newest Potter film.
"Why do they poly-juice a group of people to look like Harry? Wouldn't it be easier to give Harry the potion to make him look like someone else?"
Now I don't know if the above idea would have been easier but it certainly would have been about the same, and Harry makes the very good point that he doesn't want everyone risking their lives for him as since they'll all look like Harry they'll all be targets, so logically if nobody looked like Harry then nobody would be a target other than the fact that ultimately the death eaters want to kill all of them so it's mildly irrelevant anyway as whoever you are you're probably going to get attacked.
Perhaps more curiously though is as this minor argument progressed I felt the need to ask the obvious question of "why use the poly-juice at all? why not just all wear masks?".
You should let that last thought sink in because seriously speaking would that not have been exactly as efficient as what they actually did and involve no magic whatsoever (aside from all that flying malarkey of course). In fact it begs the question as to why Harry doesn't just drive away in a car. If they're trying to disguise him then surely acting as unwizardly as possible is the answer and flying around doesn't really do it. If anything that just draws attention to you.
Another problem is, exactly how powerful is magic? Because Voldermort and his cohorts seem intent on ruling or killing us poor mortals and to be honest with you if a group of wizards showed up I'd pretty much hand over whatever the hell they wanted so I'm not entirely clear what's holding them back. Yes there's some sort of good wizard resistance but they seem about as militarised as a cream slice trying to fight of a swarm of ants at a picnic. Okay there's a whole load of magical maguffins doing nothing except drive the plot forward and Voldermorts questing for them coupled with his desire to kill Harry seems to be the only thing holding him back from taking over the world so you kind of wonder why he bothers.
Anyway, the problem of the title of this entry is trying to have a secret world intertwined with the way we understand the "real" world.
Here's basic plot for you, one option - the secret world is smaller and thus weaker than the "real" world so when the real world learns the truth of it's existence they misinterpret it, try to control it and ultimately screw everything up. It's the better off not knowing approach, think The Initiative in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. Second option - the secret is so big and powerful it's actually in control and we people of the "real" world are merely tiny ants too insignificant to bother with. This ranges from literal godly beings watching over us in a 'Clash of the Titans' kind of way to a relatively more simple political conspiracy controlling our lives like say the 'X-Files'. Third option of course is the 'Toy Story' approach which is a little of column A and a little of column B, full of plot-holes but the secret world is a relatively minor detail in the story as a whole.
There are a few options that don't fit into these categories I'm sure and these are very simple breakdowns that massively oversimplify but you get the idea and you can probably see that Harry Potter doesn't fit into any of these. The secret world is too big and powerful to be considered weaker than the "real" world so I don't think we're a threat to it. Alternatively the world of witches and wizards apparently have absolutely no control of the "real" world at all and go to great lengths to avoid it, and since Voldermort doesn't simply seize control it's obviously not that simple a task so they're certainly not our lords and masters. In addition to those problems with these two ideas the addition of magic would greatly enrich the lives of the "real" world, especially medically, and keeping it secret if they're a kindly force is shockingly selfish and far more sinister than Voldermorts simple power trip, and if magic is a malevolent force then why go to such great lengths to pretend otherwise.
As a final note there's a comedy sketch called the Harry Potter puppet pals which concludes one of it's episodes with Ron having the clever idea of arming himself, Harry and Hermione with machine guns and gunning Voldermort down and I'm not entirely clear why that would be a such a silly idea, because magic in the Harry Potter universe actually seems a bit inconsistent. I remember there was some big reveal of the killing curse along with some other unpleasant things you can do with a wand (don't get dirty thoughts now) and it was all built up to be very scary but in retrospect isn't a gun basically just as efficient. Actually it's more efficient, it's quicker, considerably. And if you're in range to use a wand the odds are that you're in range to do basically the same thing with an everyday object, a wand just keeps you from having to carry around lots of different tools.
And didn't Hermione have something that allowed her to turn back time in one of the stories? Why don't they use that all the time? Yeah there are consequences for mucking it up but shits going down anyway so who cares. I could pick apart every element of the damn story but I can't be bothered and I did't really have a problem with the physics of Harry Potter when I was reading the books, it works well enough in a harmless childish way although the films keep trying to convince us they're mature and clever, this is more of a general complaint, Harry Potter just happens to be the nearest target right now.
This kind of adds on to my review of the film, these kind of feeble plot elements only really work in a fun slightly extravagant kind of way and turning all serious makes the errors stand out all the more clearly.
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