Today I had the great pleasure of seeing the final instalment of Harry Potter at the movies: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Having read all the books some time ago (although it had been a couple of years since I read the final book) I roughly knew what was going to happen, but with a hectic lifestyle it’s harder and harder to sit down and read a good book from cover to cover (I hate having to put the book down and pick it up again hours or days or weeks later) I tend to favour the movies over the books. That said I still prefer the books as the story is much richer, a little less dumbed down and in many ways the plot points make more sense. There’s no doubt to me that J. K. Rowlings work has been well translated to the silver screen but then it could have been a little better in parts.

Enough of that - I’m not a movie buff or film critic and have no intention to ever be one. Instead however let’s look at movie hype. It’s becoming more and more of a phenomenon whereby a secondary camera unit follows the actors around behind the scenes on set and interviews/observes what they do and it becomes a “DVD Extra” usually - months or years after the movie goes to the cinemas. The more recent trend is to show these “behind the scenes / interviews” as promos for the movie to build up some sort of hype. Many web sites features them and they screen as “exclusives” after the news on TV and/or current affairs programs to attract the masses to the cinema to watch the latest and greatest movie.

As annoying as these techniques are to an old guy like me, I take particular exception when they show the promo, immediately before the movie starts! In the same cinema. Literally 2 minutes before the movie starts, we are shown a promo clip about how great the movie is. Seriously? I’m not kidding.

Who are they selling this to? They’re hyping it up for us when we’ve already come to the cinema, paid and sat down in the seat. We’re not leaving. It made me want to throw up.