Explaining what went weird with Ron Weasley

Did you know that in Chapter 16 of the first book, both of Perry's friends get a final time to show their unique skills. However, Hermione's final time to shine, the potion riddle was cut from the movie adaptation. Originally, Harry and Hermione leave the wizard chest match after Ron sacrificed and come across seven potions on a table. Three of the potions are poisoned, two are wine, one will allow Hermione to go back to Ron and the other will allow Harry to go forward. When this was cut, they changed her special moment to be the Devil's Snare trap where she can identify this strange plant strangling them and know what to do about it. In the book, the Devil's Snare trap is a group pepper, where the disposition of each friend gets them closer to the solution. Devil's Snare, Devil's Snare, what did the professor say? It likes the dark in the damp. So light of fire, Harry choked? Yes, of course, but there's no wood. Hermione cried, ringing her hands, have you gone mad, Ron bellowed, are you a witch or not? It's in character for Hermione to forget to use magic to solve this problem when she's panicked, but it's better for the structure of the movie's story if she gets to have her moment. Ron will get his moment later when he beats the magical wizard chest board despite the fact that he not only had to protect his king, but his friends as well. So maybe Ron didn't need to remind Hermione that she was a witch in that scene. But you know what? He really didn't need to do? He really didn't need to do this. Oh, look at me, it's a pelic! Look, Hermione pays attention in her poetry. There are a lot of people out there on the wild internet who believe that the movies made Ron a lame comic relief character, or they made him to mean, so they stopped liking him. Some go as far as to say that the movie's ruined Ron easily, and they dislike or hate one of the most important characters in a series they otherwise love. My thesis statement for this video is this, in my opinion, what's mangling Ron in the devil's narrative scene, and most of the time throughout the series, is the impulse to make Ron look, opish, silly, or mean for a joke when it really wasn't necessary. Somewhere along the line, Harry went from having two friends who were smart in different ways to having a smart friend, and a lesser sidekick who is having his skills, observations, and lines absorbed by his best friends. The main consensus of people I've talked to about this summarized the problem as they made Ron a goof to make Hermione a cool proactive role model for little girls to look up to. That explained scenes like this were Hermione's taking a line from Ron. But how do you explain stuff like this? And dialogue changes as infamous as this. I think it flies under the radar how often Ron's characterization has to bend to give Harry cool moments and pack full moments or just softening up the text a little bit to make our protagonist's less flawed. So now begins our exploration of the two Ron's, the Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter movie series, and the Ron Weasley of the book series written by JK Rowling. In book 2, Chapter 7, Draco calls Hermione a mudblood. It's a word of both she and Harry have never heard before, but they know it's nasty because immediately chaos erupts around them. Ron tries to attack Draco, but his spell backfires because his wand was broken in Chapter 5. But while vomiting up slugs, Ron explains the general concept of pure blood supremacy in why he thinks it's wrong. He concludes by pointing out that Neville Longbottom is a pure blood wizard, and he's kind of garbage at magic. Currently, in the movie Ron spends the scene vomiting slugs. Eve Cloves gets a lot of criticism for bias, I do think some people go too far when they start psychoanalyzing him and concocting weird conspiracy theories, but what is clear to me is that seven of the Harry Potter movies were written by a dude whose favorite character is Hermione, and Hermione, because she's so well read, is also his favorite vessel for giving exposition. Should Ron get this moment using his unique background to serve as a cultural ambassador? Hmm, I don't know, the scene's kind of about Hermione, isn't it more sad if she explains it? Ron's busy with his slug vomiting, let's just use him as comic relief. It's not a big deal, Hermione probably read about it in a book. Here's a DVD extra from Chamber of Secrets. Steve, Hermione is a character who you've said in the past, is one of your favorites, does that make her easier to write? Yeah, I mean, I like writing all three, but I've always loved writing Hermione, because she's a tremendous character for a lot of reasons for a writer, which also she can carry exposition in a wonderful way, because she just assumed she'd read it in a book. My research tells me that long ago, in the time between the first books release in the year of 1997, and the first movies release in the year of 2001, Ron was actually a more popular character than Hermione. In fact, when Rolling Met Cloves of the First Time, she was really nervous about what this American was going to do to her baby, but she felt more at ease when he told her that his favorite character was Hermione, which was something Rolling very rarely heard from anyone. Cloves loved for this little strong-willed bookworm, gotten twined with Emma Watson's growing passion for her role in the internal life of the character she was playing. Yeah, he basically asked us to write an essay about who we thought I could just why they did things they do, their backgrounds, their feelings, their thoughts, how they've changed in the first year of Hogwarts, second year of Hogwarts, and now in the third year. I felt really so pleased with myself, because I, you haven't handed yours in. I felt so pleased. I've done it. I've done it. So I had mine. The next day I'm a little 16 pages of hers, and Cloves never stopped loving Hermione. She's still his favorite. What I'm trying to say here is that there doesn't have to be a grand conspiracy for this to happen. People working on the movie don't have to hate Ron to lose the threat of who he is. They only have to consistently enough value other things over his characterization and development. And well, someone has to be your least favorite, right? It's natural that that which interests you the most draws your attention unless you're being very careful. In any one scene changed, there is almost always a logical explanation for why they changed it. It's just one of those things where you don't notice how far you've drifted until you take a step back. I thought you said, you know who my favorite character is, and I thought, oh, he was going to say Ron. Yeah. And I love Ron, but Ron is so lovely. He's so easy to love. Everyone loves, who couldn't love Ron? And I thought, okay, you love Ron. And then you said, oh, Hermione. I'm going to bed for either of you, come up with another clever idea to get us killed or worse, expelled. She needs to saw her priorities. When I examine how Ron and Hermione changed the adaptation, I think about their friendship and eventual romance and marriage. Honestly, I think Harry Potter doesn't have super strong writing behind it's romantic sublots. But the movies could see ahead of time how people were reacting to the books, so they had a chance to steer into the skid and try to make it better. Let's see how they did. And has Ron gone to bed? No, yeah, no. She likes her. Very Christmas, Harry. Oops, it's worse. The only way to really explain it is that the movies have this strong aversion to Ron and Hermione as a couple as well as Harry and Ginny, especially Harry and Ginny. The situation with Ginny and the beige dish rackification of her character is so bad, it deserves its own video. But trying this day on topic, it tells me something that Ron and Hermione moments that would take no extra time are still downplayed and underutilized. When Ron hears the screams of Hermione being tortured, he should be yelling like he did in the book. Repressed reactions can be cool, you know, shaking, sweating, but this ain't it chief. This is way too repressed. Maybe he doesn't even care because it sounds like they only got a few seconds of him screaming and just played it on a loop. Oh, you can't fool me, that's a bloody tape recorder. Throughout the series, Ron and Hermione bigger a lot. But, when I reread the books and remember all the random little things they start and bickering about, these exchanges don't come off to me as a failure in them being able to get along. It comes off more like they're bored and that this is fun to them. Hermione can be intolerant of certain personality types. She also loves to debate. She's argumentative. Ron is one of the few people that Hermione can go fold the bait club on that will argue back and not get upset or take it personally. Harry thinks they argue too much but considering that they can become offended by Harry and interrupting them or telling them to stop, hints that Harry is not experiencing their bickering the way they are. What I liked about the dynamic was I never really had to question if Ron respected Hermione. He is consistently on her side. He knows she's a know it all. He's aware of her flaws but he still likes her and he sees the strengths those flaws bring. Ron will defend Hermione when people go too far. Five points from Griffin to offer being an insufferable know it all. Hermione went very red, put her hand down and stared at the floor with her eyes full of tears. It was a mark of how much the class loathes Snape that they were all glaring at him because every one of them had called Hermione a know it all at least once. And Ron, who told Hermione she was a know it all at least twice a week, said loudly, you asked a question and she knows the answer why ask if you don't want to be told. Movie Ron has fewer opportunities to engage in this behavior as is the nature of an adaptation of a book. But Ron does not always use his time well like uh what is this? That is the second time you'll speak an out of ten Miss Granger. I even capable of restraining yourself or do you take pride in being an insufferable know it all? He's called point, you know? I hate it, I don't like it, I'm not a fan of it. Book Ron is a wear past book one that Hermione is hyper competent and magic. Ugh, but I'm escalated by losing to a girl at something being a dude gave me no advantage in. I let it do that, get my nice and open. It's completely intentional. Did you see me disarmed Hermione Harry? Only once said Hermione, stung? I got you loads more than you got me. I did not only get you once, I got you at least three times. Well, if you're counting the one where you tripped over your own feet and knocked the wand out of my hand, this is actually the movie Steve Clubs didn't work on. Although I guess you could argue his characterization was already set in stone at this point. Book Hermione is pretty canonically the one who is the most skilled with magic on a technical sense. She has by the book perfect form and she's the best at one-less magic. She's not really the best at fighting because she has a hard time functioning under the pressure of real danger, but yeah, anyway, Book Ron is not threatened by her in this chapter. Ron is happy about being able to win a few rounds against Hermione because he knows she's talented, and Hermione is being a sore loser about the few times she lost. Ron and Hermione get into a couple of notable fights throughout the series, like their fight in Prisoner of Ascabin. The Scabber's Crook Shanks fight is a pretty solid example of Hermione not being able to people real well. Hermione is in denial that Crook Shanks probably ate Scabber's. Ron is actually wrong because Scabber's is Peter Petagru, but all he wanted was for her to take seriously that Crook Shanks wanted to eat Scabber's and keep Crook Shanks under control. And after his ret disappears he just wants an apology he wants Hermione to admit that she was wrong. They argued Hermione stormed off in tears to the girl's dorm. Harry thinks it's going to be the end of their friendship. Hermione went to Hagrid's hut to cry. This was a big deal. In the movie, Hermione's a little indignant and Ron wine-zitter a few times about it. So the conflict doesn't feel important. It's kind of like a background argument. You're seeing less of Hermione's flaws. She's looking a little smooth. She's an airbrushed Hermione. The uobalt by and the other hand highlights all aspects of Ron's awkward social immaturity. As it should, the night begins with Hermione having her Cinderella moment and ends in a fight with Ron. It's not an exact recreation. It doesn't happen in the grip and door common room, but it's basically the same fight given the same way exposing the same flaws. Actually, if anything, I'd argue it's harsh. And that feels out of place to me now because this was supposed to be a back and forth exchange. Last movie was Hermione's turn to be wrong and this is Ron's turn. This is how they grow. But I can't help but recognize the external factors to why this happened. The description in the novel is that it's a kind of ice palace really. There are ice of course hanging from the magic ceiling. So we've taken that, maybe a step further. When I went in, I was absolutely goffs max. I cannot tell you how beautiful everything lurks. You recognize it as exactly the same space, but the transformation is nonetheless pretty complete. The whole thing of course looked like Swarovski Crystal and was stunning. Two people fighting about a rat and a cat is a very simple personality driven conflict. It's not really as exciting as a winter ball at Hogwarts where, oh, everyone has to find a date. Ooh, romance. Oh, coming of age stuff. Turning the great hall into a frozen Wonderland was a massive undertaking. Look at this set. Look at all this stuff. Look at all these costumes and all these people who have to learn to dance. They wrote this scene to have some weight. They were really proud of this. They put a lot of work into this scene that is barely 10 minutes of the movie. But then you have to take a step back. This more perfect version of Hermione is not helping this dynamic. It starts looking less and less like they're growing up and trying to become their best selves together and more and more like this smooth Hermione is either trying to fix Ron or is waiting for him to become a smooth Ron. And that's kind of said, right? Both for the characters and the fans, but also for clubs. He said one of the reasons that he was so drawn to Hermione was because he saw her as the outcast of the outcast. He thought she was complicated and hard to love and that makes it seem like he couldn't capture what he liked about her. Hermione is not an effortless genius. She's a genius through effort. She studies hard no matter how boring the professor is. The amount of time she sinks into this comes at the cost of other things. Movie Hermione has not completely lost her flaws. I think that's an exaggeration, but she's not nearly as flawed as she was in the books. I can confidently say that book Hermione needs her friends just as much as they need her. Harry headed straight back to Griffin to her common room where he found Ron and Hermione playing chess. Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at. Something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her. And it was true because Hermione was now character that and it stayed throughout because I think she had such huge intelligence, but it was really a kind of exasperating frustrating character in a way that it was like the girl that bothered you in school. But you couldn't stop thinking about her. So not always the easiest to like. I like that about it. That's where I liked about her. As I said before, it's not surprising to me that when discussing what happened to Ron, everyone focuses on Hermione and Harry gets to fly under the radar. If you go okay, Hermione stole a Ron's line here. That's kind of easy to understand, right? How Harry warps Ron is more structural. In fiction people often think it's a good idea to give your audience a blank slate character to attach themselves to so that they can learn about the world this character inhabits. This character can ask questions that we would want to ask. We're like alien parasites doing recon through an empty false vessel. Both Harry does contain details that make him not a total blank slate to me. Despite stereotypes about people with glasses on the nerd to jock false dichotomy, Harry is more of a jock interested in sports, sport teams, and physical activities. His grades are fine, but he's not a very intellectually curious person. He tends to only go out of his way to learn new spells if he needs it for class or to survive some trial. Like when he learned accio for the first task in book four. Although he tries to be outwardly polite, he can be judgemental and it takes a lot for him to change his mind about someone. Harry struggles for a long time to see the adults in his life as complicated, flawed people until they're three-dimensionalness, slaps him in the face like a sweaty, soggy, slap of salami. In fact, his stubbornness is one of the main reasons many of the plot twist work. Harry's personality is not as quirky as other characters who inhabit his world, but, you know, it's hard to look unique when you have dragon-loving half giants and stock-loving hell-solves running around. You may have noticed a lot of the stuff I just listed has motive to with Harry's thoughts and opinions, a thing the movie does not narrate to us. These two characters make all the same decisions and yet they come off as really different. It's kind of cool how important that internal narration is to the story's protagonist. The way it would summarize the change between book Harry and movie Harry is the temperature has been This isn't spicy Harry. He's at most a little zesty. He is overall a smooth Harry. The removal of Harry's internal dialogue makes him seem less judgmental and angry. When how much he resents or is disgusted by other people, is left to your imagination, his temptation to do bad things becomes a little more surprising. As a result, he's a character whose comor, meekor, and has more of a sweetness about him. Here's a word, fact. In the book, very often, Hermione was kind of the unfavorite friend. Harry can be really rude about her and his internal narration, calling her shrill, bossy, or hysterical. I'd argue Harry grew a deeper appreciation for Hermione the older he got. He loves her to death, they have their own unique bond, but in terms of just hanging out, she's not the funnest person to be around, so he kind of favors Ron. You miss him, Hermione said impatiently, and I know he misses you. Miss him? Said Harry, I don't miss him. But this was a downright lie. Harry liked Hermione very much, but she just wasn't the same as Ron. There was much less laughter, and a lot more hanging out in the library when Hermione was your best friend. And it comes up when Hermione fights with Ron. She feels strongly that Harry favors Ron and that she's the more expendable friend. She's not unaware that people see her as a buzzkill. Okay, side with Ron, I knew you would, she said shrillie. First of fireball, now scabbers, everything's my fault, isn't it? Movie Harry feels more like Hermione's best friend, and I think it's because he's quiet, and we're not privy to all his negative thoughts about her. Because of this, I think the bond between Movie Harry and Movie Hermione gains a lot more chemistry, and is drained of some of its more awkward elements, because you can just kind of pretend that Harry always gets her and is always sympathetic to her. Harry can still be a mature and Ron is his best friend, who's more on his level mentally. That friendship is really important to Harry. It's not an accident that Ron was put on the bottom of the lake during the second task. Harry was really actively said when Ron stopped talking to him in that book. No, he spells. One. But it's not powerful enough for all of them. Where's the money when you meet her? Here's another thing to chew on. The Movie has to invent what Ron is doing, and scenes where Harry is not describing what he's doing. The Erdogg scene from Chamber of Secrets uses Ron as comic relief, having a make funny faces and wine at the sight of all of the spooky spiders. Movie Ron does a lot of whining, but Book Ron agreed to go in when Harry asked him. Come on. What? You heard what Hagrid said? Follow the spiders. The head into the dark forest. Ways, spiders. Why can't it be follow the butterflies? Harry, I don't like this. Harry, I don't like this at all. Something wet touched Harry's hand and he jumped backward, crushing Ron's foot, but it was only Fang's nose. What did you reckon Harry said to Ron, whose eyes he could just make out reflecting the light from his wand? We've come this far, said Ron. But we don't actually know what Ron was doing the whole time, because Harry isn't keeping track of him and describing his reactions. Then they made the scene of the boys getting away from Erdogg more complex. Get Fang, Harry yelled. Diving into the front seat Ron sees the borehound around the middle and through him, yelping into the back of the car. The doors slammed shut. Ron didn't touch the accelerator, but the car didn't need him. The engine roared and they were off hitting more spiders. In the movie, the scene is turned into a full car chase. The car is not driving itself so Ron stops the car before they get out of the forbidden forest, and says, Clubs out of there. Only to get chomped on by a chill practical effect that just wants a hug. And then Harry asked to save him. Then Ron keeps freezing and failing to drive the car or the car fails him and Harry has to help and protagonist it up. This version has more tension in his thrilling and spooky, but it makes Ron look a little foolish. And as a result of this, Harry our main character looks braver and more heroic in comparison. Before getting into the biggest example of a Ron change that flares up anger in people, please allow me to obsess over an obscure example that I've never seen anyone get mad about, but it kind of bothered me and it's sort of funny. In the third book, there's this hilarious moment where Ron calls Harry. Harry's uncle Vernon picks up the phone and Ron is screaming at the top of his lungs into the phone asking to talk to Harry. Ron has never used a telephone before and he doesn't know how they work. It's an endearing in-character example of Ron's ignorance of the muggle world. Would you like to see a dumb version of that? Okay, assuming Ron's family had a different copy of the book with no runes on the cover, because if they did wow Ron use study ancient runes at your school for wizardcraft and witchery, the book is called Tales of Beetle the Bard. Beetle the Bard was a wizard author. I have a copy of the Tales of Beetle the Bard. This book and all five of the stories in it couldn't be sold to a muggle population in this universe because every story exposes the existence of the magical world. The wizard in the hopping pot is a story about a cruel son compelled to help muggles by his late father's enchanted cooking pot. In Bavadi Ravadi in the cackling stump, a clever witch tricks a king in his brigade of witch hunters to stop hunting witches when she fixed her death and makes them think that she has cursed them from beyond the grave. Ron knows his best friends were raised by muggles. He knows Harry's aunt and uncle abused him and wouldn't be reading a bedtime stories anyway. Why does he think they would know this book? Why is his IQ hit the floor like a sack of bricks? Well, it's because it's a funny joke. And even if it's not a joke that would make sense for his character, it might slip by most people. And if they notice they can just write it off as a lapse in judgment because after all, Ron's not the smartest guy, is he? Let's move on to the scene. We'll start with Ron getting squinched when they make their escape and end up in the wilderness. I actually love this. I think it's sad. I feel the urgency makes me uncomfortable. I think all three of them did a great job, but Harry Potter and the Deftly House part one is a PG-13 movie, so there isn't a lot of blood. The injuries and the nicest thing to look at, but it's not the same thing as finding Ron unconscious soaked in his own blood. The text describes that a chunk of his arm is just missing as if cut off by a knife. Harry is learned about squinching, but he can only think of it as something comical. The reality is extremely grizzly. The Deftly is all Hermione dares to do to heal Ron. She's afraid that if she starts casting spells, she might kill him. The effective Deftly and what it does is not explain to the movie's audience. Deftly accelerates the time on the wound. It makes it several days older and that's all. When I read Deftly Hallows, I feel stressed about the fact that Ron never really recovered from his injuries. Here he seems sore and demoralized, but I think that if you'd only seen the movies, you wouldn't understand what if any limitations there were to how much Harry and Hermione could heal Ron. The urgency of Ron's healing is heavily tied to the food issue. Ron can't be healed by magic and he's not getting enough proper nutrition to heal naturally. The trio is stealing eggs and bread from farmers. They're foraging for mushrooms, Harry caught the world's most pathetic fish, apparently. Any food they get their hands on, they have Hermione duplicate to make them more, but that lowers the quality of the food in terms of taste and nutrition for the sake of having more of it to fill their stomachs. They live like this for a couple of months. So Ron is festering, right? Mentally and physically. And maybe he could handle it until it's his turn to wear the horror crux and that's when things get bad. A detail left out of the movie's argument is that they learn, Ginny Neville and Luna have been set into the forbidden forest with Hagrid. This is meant as a punishment, but Harry is relieved. He can't think of the forbidden forest as dangerous because he's locked out so many times. This is some of the stuff that Harry is saying while Ron is silently listening in. And Senate must have thought that was a punishment, said Harry, but Ginny Neville and Luna probably had a good laugh with Hagrid, the forbidden forest, they've faced plenty worse than the forbidden forest, big deal. So the original fight starts off almost word for word the same, but then Harry has an I'm sorry thrown in. I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand. Then the word mummy is switched to mum, dulling the humiliating sting of this comment. You thought you'd be back with your mum by Christmas? I just thought after all this time, we would have actually achieved something. Ron's line, we thought you knew what you were doing, as in he and Hermione turns into, I thought you knew what you were doing. I thought you knew what you were doing. I thought Dumbledore would have told you something after Ron's awful comment, Harry tries to tackle him, and then he tells him to leave, which seems like a natural conclusion to this conversation because it's already escalated to violence. Book Harry tells Ron to go home three times during this argument, and then there's the line that I keep mocking. It's all right for you, too, isn't it with your parents safely out of the way? My parents are dead Harry bellowed, and mine could be going the same way yelled Ron, insensitive, but not mocking him for being an orphan. Also the line you have no family, makes it seem like Ron doesn't think of Harry as his family, and I honestly don't think that's true. I think both Harry and Ron feel that Harry is an unofficial member of his family, and that betrayal of his expectations for Harry is part of what's fueling his anger right now. I think Book Ron is offended because he's starting to feel alone in his paranoia and worry for the well-being of his family. He thinks he's seeing a division in the priorities between himself and Harry. It looks like movie Ron has already come to the conclusion that Harry is not his family without the whole element of him being insensitive to Ginny being in danger, and that just kind of bums me out. Then there is the romantic jealousy. I can understand reading this why Ron feels like Harry has without any plans brought Hermione, who he loves into a very dangerous situation. But because the movie has all of these scenes of Ron getting jealous of them being in proximity to each other or just getting along despite the high stress levels of the situation, that makes me think that Hermione was just giving this Ron kisses that would fix everything. That's probably why years later people meme on this part of the movie. They're watching this thinking that he looks like a guy who's having no fun on this camping trip. There's something really ironic to me about Ron, a character who's supposed to be overcoming these feelings of an adequacy because he's overshadowed in life by his exceptional brothers and by his exceptional friends, being overshadowed by the movie's writing. 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