Thursday, October 24, 2013

31 Werewolves | Remus Lupin



Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite Potter movie for a few reasons, but one of the biggest is the werewolf. Not because he is a werewolf necessarily, but Professor Lupin brought a much-needed element to the series: a teacher who not only took a serious interest in Harry, but also took the time to form a relationship with the boy. Harry had other allies among the faculty in the first two films, but they kept their distance in a way that Lupin didn't feel the need for. Which makes his lycanthropic curse and the toll it takes on him that much more heartbreaking.

I'm not super fond of the thin, sad look of Lupin in werewolf form, but like The Wolf-Man and Mike Nichols' Wolf, Prisoner of Azkaban presents a tormented werewolf, and that's my favorite kind. Sadly, Lupin is pretty much just background material in the rest of the films, but I hear he gets a lot more focus in the novels that - if I'm still confessing geek deficiencies - I haven't yet read.



5 comments:

Ken O said...

I'm not a Potter fan, but I've seen them all numerous times thanks to my wife. I remember seeing Azkaban in the theater and being surprised how mangy the werewolf looked. When every other special effect is fantastic I couldn't help but be disappointed by the werewolf.

Tragic werewolves are the best werewolves.

And finally, my wife really likes Lupin because she felt how they handle it in the Harry Potter universe mirrored how things like epilepsy are treated in the real world.

Michael May said...

Yeah, he's visually very disappointing. Once I figured out what he was, I got very excited to see the transformation and then felt let down. I seriously (pun intended) considered using Sirius Black for this list instead, since he's a much better-looking wolf, but went with the actual werewolf instead.

Your wife's observation about epilepsy is fantastic and makes me want to read the books even more. I've sort of been waiting for David to be old enough that we could go through them together, but that's sort of become his and Diane's thing, so I need to quit making excuses and just read them.

Wings1295 said...

Love the books, I have only seen a couple of the films. Lupin was a great character out of so many great characters!

Michael May said...

Joe, I'm curious about why you've only seen a couple of the films. No judgment; I have other friends who love the books so much that they can't enjoy the movies, so I'm just wondering if that's your reason, too, or if it's something else.

Wings1295 said...

I love the detail the books go in and how imagination can fill in so much more. The movies are okay, I guess, as entertainment adaptations, but they just never excited me the way the books did. My daughter, however, has watched them over and over again, and she loves the books, too. So, I guess it is just to each their own.

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