The light has faded a bit
If you haven’t seen the film, Potter and crew have returned for another year at Hogwarts. Regretfully, the school has been infiltrated by an unknown entity that has opened a ‘chamber of secrets’ and released a terrible being on the group. This being is capable of petrifying humans and animals alike. What’s even worse is that no one knows where the chambers are that have released it and no one understands how to stop it. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasely will have to put their heads together and get this thing stopped before Hogwarts is shutdown permanently.
The second movie in the Harry Potter series brings about a change in many ways. The first change is that the kids have grown up a bit. They’ve gotten comfortable with their acting and it shows very well on the screen. The second change to the film is that it’s going away from the lighthearted tone from the first and starts to enter a different world were people have their places, the stakes of survival are far more serious and a very real sense of ‘death’ has found its way to the overall story arc.
New characters are also introduced in this film, which help shift the mood in the right direction. The most vicious of the new characters is Lucius Malfoy (played by Jeremy Isaacs). His character truly gets the ball rolling for the rest of the films. He is pivotal and evil as hell in this movie. The absence of his character means that the movie doesn’t take a leap downward. He is the introduction to what lies ahead for Potter. He truly knows how to make people seem small and insignificant in the story and he wears this honor like a badge on his sleeve. Another character, which goes missing after this film, is Dobby the house elf. A funny, scrawny, horribly treated elf that tries to warn Potter of the dangers he is about to encounter. Dobby is a perfect device that moves along the story and ends the story on a very triumphant level. He is just as important as Malfoy, if not more important.
I felt like this film certainly did start the ‘dark’ part of the overall story. It introduced some new characters (like I mentioned above) and the concept that magic and wizardry isn’t always cute and cuddly. For the first time in the story it felt like these kids didn’t live in a world of make believe, but a different world with very real consequences for actions. The film also introduced and expanded the storyline of Voldemort. That’s particularly important because you’ll need this information in the second film to understand and enjoy even more information about him in the fourth film. When you get to the sixth film you’ll also want to revisit the end fight in the second film as they’re all tied together. With all of this said, this is certainly the one I disliked the most. I felt like it took a very long time for characters to develop and it moved at a snail’s pace. I liked the comedy relief now and then, and simply loved the action parts of the film, but the time it took to get to the middle (where part of the story of Tom Riddle is told) and then to the end fight was just too darn long. I appreciate what Columbus and crew did in terms of transforming story to screen, but you could tell that there was just a bit too much detail to it. Regardless, the film is certainly good as the acting has been upgraded significantly, but it just seemed to drag in places.
Anyway, you know about this film and how good it is, so let’s talk about the ultimate edition part of it.
The same, but different
Much like the first ultimate edition, the second is arranged almost exactly the same way. The video and audio quality are still particularly good for DVD. You get a nice slipcover with a hardbound DVD case inside (emulating a book). You get a four-pack DVD, a hardbound character book (depicting all the characters in the series) and you get some thick character cards just like the first set.
You know the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Much like the year one ultimate edition, the year two is darn good. You still get the original and extended movies, a disc full of special features and you get a fourth disc with some more features and an hour long documentary strictly on characters.
Here’s what you’re looking at in total with these DVDs:
Disc One:
– Theatrical Version
Disc Two:
– Extended Version
Disc Three:
– Conversation with J.K. Rowling
– 16 Minutes of Additional Scenes
– Production Sketches
– Build a Scene
– Tour the Chamber of Secrets, Diagon Alley, Dumbledore’s Office
– Student Yearbook
– Professors and More
Disc Four:
– Screen Tests
– Creating the World of Harry Potter Part 2: Characters
– HBO First Look
– Comprehensive Gallery of Trailers and TV Spots
What I particularly like about this set of DVDs/blu-rays that Warner is producing is that they’re intertwined together. For example, the hour long documentary on the last disc is the second part to explaining almost every aspect to the productions; it’s connected with the first documentary on the first ultimate edition set. What’s even nicer is that the documentaries aren’t solely focused around the film it came with. This documentary goes over characters that span all the recent films that Warner has released. You get a nice long explanation about how actors fit the characters and how those characters matched up with the books characters. It’s amazingly interesting and truly the yummy frosting an already tasty cake.
Before you ask, yes it’s still worth the $39.92 (again, you can find it much cheaper — click the amazon link to discover that) that Warner Brothers is asking. There’s so much here and by the time you buy this one you’ll be sucked into the fact that you need the four to five others that hopefully come out.