Cam on Movies & TV

Hey I'm Cam 👋 Movies, TV, adaptations and characters I spend too much time thinking about. Usually have a take, or two.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

Peter Pettigrew lived with the Weasleys as a rat for around twelve years.

That means a fully grown man spent years sleeping in Percy’s bedroom and then Ron’s bedroom, travelling with the family and listening to their private conversations while pretending to be a pet.

And nobody ever really discusses how profoundly disturbing that is.

Sirius and Lupin understandably focus on the fact that Pettigrew betrayed James and Lily.

But from Ron’s perspective?

Imagine discovering your childhood pet was actually a middle-aged murderer who had been watching your family for most of your life.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

I think people take Snape’s “pig for slaughter” line far too literally.

Dumbledore knew Harry would eventually have to face Voldemort, but by the time Harry walks into the Forest, Dumbledore has also given him the Resurrection Stone and arranged things so there’s a very real chance he survives.

Snape sees a man who raised a child to die.

Harry eventually understands something Snape never did.

Was Dumbledore actually raising Harry for slaughter, or is that simply what it looked like from Snape’s side of the story?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

One of the things I find most interesting about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is how Harry and Sirius are basically trapped in parallel.

Harry is stuck at Hogwarts while the Ministry calls him a liar, Dumbledore avoids him and the adults around him keep information from him “for his own protection.”

Sirius is stuck inside Grimmauld Place for exactly the same reason.

He’s finally escaped Azkaban, but instead of getting his life back, he’s confined to the childhood home he hated while everyone else goes out and fights.

And I think that’s why Sirius understands Harry’s frustration better than almost anyone else does that year.

The problem is that Sirius handles confinement just as badly as Harry.

He becomes restless. Reckless. Desperate to be useful.

He starts encouraging Harry to take risks that the other adults wouldn’t.

Sirius is supposed to be Harry’s godfather, but Order of the Phoenix sometimes makes them feel more like two people trapped in the same emotional situation at different ages.

And that makes what happens at the Department of Mysteries even sadder.

Sirius finally gets the chance to leave that house and help Harry.

It’s also the last thing he ever does.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

The multiplying part is a fair question. Hermione actually says you can increase the quantity of food if you already have some.

Gamp’s Law stops them creating a meal from nothing. It doesn’t explain why they couldn’t keep a supply going once they’d found bread, eggs or something else edible.

Being on the run explains why shopping is difficult. Their cooking explains why dinner is miserable. But neither fully answers that bit.

You sometimes see people say duplicated food loses its nutrients, but the book never establishes that. I wouldn’t invent an extra rule just to get them out of this one.

[Steph♡ @stephafterhours]

Why couldn’t wizards just conjure or multiply food to avoid starvation during the Horcrux hunt? #HarryPotter

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

Dumbledore is the really frustrating one here because he already knew Harry was right about Draco’s mission. He had Snape involved and was trying to manage it without telling Harry.

Ron and Hermione genuinely needed convincing. And Harry’s detective record was a bit messier than this suggests. They’d suspected Draco was the Heir of Slytherin in Chamber of Secrets, and Harry had been badly fooled by the vision of Sirius the previous year.

I can understand them wanting more than “Malfoy’s up to something” again.

But Harry does keep finding more. That’s why HBP is so frustrating to read. His dislike of Draco makes people doubt him, even when he’s noticing things worth investigating.

And once Katie and Ron nearly die, “Dumbledore has it under control” becomes a much harder answer to accept.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

And this explains that tiny moment in Goblet of Fire when Dumbledore looks almost triumphant after Harry tells him Voldemort took his blood.

It’s such an odd reaction when you first read it. Harry’s describing how Voldemort came back, and Dumbledore briefly looks pleased.

Then you get to Deathly Hallows and understand what he’d spotted. Voldemort could touch Harry now, but he’d also taken Lily’s protection into his own body and given Harry a way back from the forest.

I love that the clue is sitting there three books before we get the explanation.

[Damivox🐾 @Damivox_]

Voldemort taking Harry's blood was actually a huge mistake.

He thought using Harry's blood would remove Lily's protection.

But by putting Harry's blood inside his new body, Voldemort unknowingly kept Lily's protection alive within himself.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

We actually never find out who Voldemort thought the source was.

Dumbledore’s portrait tells Snape to give him the real departure date. It also tells Snape to plant the Seven Potters idea with Mundungus, which we later see him do.

But that explains what Snape was doing behind the scenes. It doesn’t tell us what story he gave Voldemort.

Mundungus would be my guess, since Snape already had access to him and could interfere with his memory. That’s a guess though. The book never names the “source we discussed”.

I wouldn’t take that line as Voldemort knowingly accepting tips from Dumbledore’s portrait.

[Halimat🥀🌹 @leemarh7099]

What exactly was Snape’s “source”?

In the very first chapter of Deathly Hallows, Snape tells Voldemort about the plan to move Harry before his birthday. When Voldemort asks where the information came from, Snape simply says:

“From the source we’ve discussed.”

Could the source have been Dumbledore?

And if so, how could Voldemort trust information supposedly coming from Dumbledore after Snape killed him?

Or was Snape using another fake source to protect his cover?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

The pipe wasn’t sitting open for fifty years. The entrance was concealed beneath a sink and had to be opened with Parseltongue. Knowing Myrtle died in that bathroom wouldn’t automatically tell Dumbledore where it was.

There’s also a detail in Rowling’s extra writing: Corvinus Gaunt protected the entrance when Hogwarts installed plumbing, so it stayed hidden.

But I do think “how thoroughly did anyone investigate Myrtle’s death?” is a fair question. Harry and Ron eventually get a useful description from the victim herself.

I can buy a magically hidden entrance. I still want to know what questions the adults asked the ghost.

[Shelbys_take @ShelbysFade]

If Dumbledore knew a student died in that bathroom in 1943, and he already suspected it wasn’t Aragog… why did Hogwarts still have an open pipe to a thousand year old murder chamber fifty years later?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

I love this fight, but the book has a moment I really wish had made it into the film.

Voldemort attacks Dumbledore with a Killing Curse while a conjured snake is about to strike him. Fawkes flies in and swallows the curse, bursts into flames and falls to the floor as a baby phoenix.

At the same time, Dumbledore gets rid of the snake and traps Voldemort in water.

It’s such a good sequence because Dumbledore looks incredibly capable, but there’s still a horrible amount happening at once. He has help. There’s danger.

Whenever this gets discussed as Dumbledore casually beating Voldemort, I think poor Fawkes deserves a mention.

[Bhlender @Fikayohmi]

Dumbledore and Voldemort were really throwing everything at each other here.
Every spell Voldemort fired, Dumbledore seemed to have an answer for.
Fire, water, flying glass—the whole Ministry became their battlefield.
What made it even crazier was how calm Dumbledore looked through all of it.

Voldemort came into this duel with pure aggression, throwing spell after spell at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore barely looked shaken, just calmly blocking and sending magic right back at him.
The way they kept exchanging spells made the whole fight feel like two masters testing each other.
Every attack got bigger, from fire to water to shattered glass flying everywhere.
You could really see the difference between Voldemort’s rage and Dumbledore’s control.
Still one of the coldest and most powerful duels in the entire Harry Potter series.

You could finally see why Voldemort was said to fear him.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

The Crouch family could honestly carry a horror film of their own.

His dying mother takes his place in Azkaban. His father brings him home, then keeps him hidden under the Imperius Curse for years. Winky has to look after him and keep the secret.

And when Bertha Jorkins discovers he’s there, Crouch damages her memory trying to cover it up.

That’s the detail I find most disturbing. Bertha hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s walked into a family secret and ends up paying for it.

Voldemort later gets that information out of her and discovers he has a loyal servant available.

By then, Crouch’s attempt to keep everything buried has become part of the explanation for how Voldemort gets someone inside Hogwarts. There’s so much more going on here than “Barty escaped prison”.

[David_Not_Goliath 🪨 @David_da_bozz]

The movies created one of the darkest Harry Potter plot holes by cutting Mrs. Crouch and Winky. In Goblet of Fire, Barty Crouch Jr. is introduced as someone who somehow escaped Azkaban, but the movie never explains how. In the book, the truth is WAY darker. His dying mother used Polyjuice Potion to take his appearance and stayed in Azkaban while Jr. took hers and walked out with his father. She later died there, and the Dementors believed Crouch Jr. was the one who had died. 💀

And Crouch Sr. didn’t exactly set his son free. He hid him at home for years, keeping him under the Imperius Curse and having Winky watch over him. Eventually, Jr. broke free during the Quidditch World Cup and the entire Voldemort plan started unfolding. Cutting Mrs. Crouch and Winky didn’t just remove side characters. It removed the explanation for one of the most disturbing escapes in the entire series. Movie-only fans really missed how messed up the Crouch family story was.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

The bit about Harry and the Dementors that hits me is that part of him wants to keep hearing them.

They force him to relive his parents’ deaths. That’s why they affect him so badly. But during Lupin’s lessons, those memories also let him hear his mum and dad.

He barely has anything of them. Imagine finally hearing their voices and this being the only way.

So he’s trying to learn the Patronus while also struggling to give up those few seconds with them. He knows it won’t bring them back. He still wants to hear them.

I wish the film had spent a little more time on that. It makes those lessons so much sadder than Harry having trouble with a difficult spell.

[symplyTonbra @SymplyTonbra]

Why does Harry get so affected by the dementors?

So, why does Harry Potter, the boy who lived, get affected so much by dementors?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

I want game shops to be worth going into again.

Let me try something, browse a decent used games section and find a game I hadn’t already been advertised six times that morning.

Give me a reason to spend half an hour in there. I can look at a preorder page at home.

[IGN @IGN]

GameStop is planning to re-open stores that it previously shut down, with one opening its doors this week. https://t.co/H7rQHN6mYU

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@DiscussingFilm My first question is how many seasons they’re planning to keep everyone in there?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@IGN “Strong character work” has me more interested than the score, honestly. How much shorter would it need to be for the action to stay fun?

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@IGN I’d leave Brian’s goodbye alone. That scene already says everything it needs to. I’m struggling to think what another appearance would add.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

There’s a point where “I can’t wait for the next season” becomes “hang on, what happened in the last one?”

Then the recap throws twelve names at you and expects you to remember why someone’s brother was in prison.

I don’t need every show rushed out yearly, but getting back into one shouldn’t feel like revision.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

A new report from Luminate has found that long gaps between seasons of streaming TV shows are leading to major losses in viewership.

More than a 1 year gap is seen to largely cause a significant loss in viewership.

(Source: https://t.co/HclxmLmZku)

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@IGN Being able to install it years later is half the reason I’d buy the disc.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@DiscussingFilm @Variety I’d rather wonder how they’re all getting on than find out Jim and Pam have split up because someone needed a plot.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

This little smile.

Alongside all the danger and mystery, I really want the series to give Harry room to enjoy being a kid.

[Cam on Movies & TV @CamOnScreen]

@TheDailyHPotter Hermione lying to McGonagall afterwards is my favourite bit. You can practically see Harry and Ron thinking “oh, she’s one of us now.” 🥹