Like I said, just going on the movies alone here.
However, if shields don't stop physical objects as well as magical energies, Voldy would have to know the gun was being aimed at him to do anything to the bullets. And when he is in the middle of duelling another wizard, I really doubt he has the time to do much else.
Maybe not against Dumbledore. Against anyone else, Voldemort can keep them busy while still tackling other stuff. The movies never show it, but he duels Kingsley, Mcgonagall and Slughorn at the same time, and they're Dumbledore's most powerful deputies. And he does this with a wand that isn't even his.
And last I noticed, bullets move much much faster than any of those magical energies the wizards and witches were flinging around, and tons faster than any wizard can flick his wrist and say a magic word.
Again, it is noted in the books that wizards have very fast physical reflexes. And if push comes to shove, they can perform magic without a wand, and even moderate wizards can perform a spell without saying it out loud. Most importantly, every statement in the books indicates that spells pretty much travel at the speed of light.
No time to cast a spell on a bullet once it is fired, so he would have to know the gun was there and have the chance to cast a spell on it, all while defending himself from more and more magical attacks.
Except he could disappear from the bullets path in the blink of an eye too, quite apart from his wizard reflexes allowing him to turn the bullet into a feather.
When fighting a Big Bad like him, there is no room for fighting by the rules or with honor. Use every potential tool, especially those a Dark Lord of Magic would never suspect. Especially in a world where the magic users have handicapped themselves by their disdain and lack of knowledge of the muggle world. The movies made it clear that at least the British PM had some knowledge of there being a magical world and wizards and all that, so why not call in some RAF planes and helicopters to help fight such evil? Every bullet you have to use magic to stop is one more magical spell you are using that is not attacking another child at Hogworts.
That's because technology doesn't work well around magic (which probably makes the gun useless too). The RAF planes will just crash on their own, without even encountering the ridiculous number of ways a wizard can disarm a plane.
And even if Voldemort was immortal, bullets and such would have worked fine against his hordes of death eaters, giants and giant spiders.
Except that the spiders and the giants have very very think hides, and the death eaters are all wizards of some power, so technology will be disrupted, and they can stop bullets anyway.
It's a plot hole the movies left open, but apparently the books don't.
In the list of plot holes the movies leave open, this doesn't even come in the top 100.
Most definitly an anti-science attitude in fantasy though! Can't argue with THAT point!
How so?
As to the whole draw and fire thing, the same problem arises with wizards drawing their wands, aiming them at Voldemort, speaking a multi-syllabic spell and flicking their wrist. I'd have to say that is even slower than drawing a gun aiming and pulling a trigger. A moderately fast draw could put several bullets in a wizard in the time it takes a wizard to "fire" their spell after drawing their wand (assuming the wizard is equally quick drawing his wand as the gunman is his gun, which I doubt).
Sorry, but casting a spell is a hell of a lot slower than pulling a trigger.
Sorry, but casting a spell is a hell of a lot slower than pulling a trigger.
Sorry. Read the books. Casting a spell can take pretty much no time at all for powerful wizards. They've been shown to maintain a continuous stream of spells for long periods of times in duels. A machine gun could match that, but one spell can change it into a pillow in about the time it would take Voldemort or any competent wizard to think of it.
anti science mindset in fantasy?
- 31/07/2011 07:32:16 PM
1075 Views
Just wanna say
- 31/07/2011 10:52:17 PM
942 Views
Uhh...
- 31/07/2011 11:31:29 PM
964 Views
Re: Uhh...
- 01/08/2011 02:00:56 AM
1091 Views
Shields stop physical things..
- 01/08/2011 05:16:28 AM
977 Views
if the books mention that specifically, fine then
- 02/08/2011 12:14:47 AM
920 Views
Again, read the books... 
- 02/08/2011 07:15:27 AM
1001 Views
- 02/08/2011 07:15:27 AM
1001 Views
Anti-science
- 02/08/2011 01:36:04 PM
1023 Views
That doesn't make it anti-science...
- 02/08/2011 02:56:58 PM
982 Views
Re: That doesn't make it anti-science...
- 02/08/2011 09:56:41 PM
983 Views
Because...
- 03/08/2011 04:21:43 AM
1127 Views
Thanks for proving again that books are better than movies... *NM*
- 01/08/2011 12:17:26 AM
333 Views
Well it sounds to me like you're not thinking about the term "science" correctly.
- 03/08/2011 05:29:42 AM
772 Views
personally, I've always seen SF as a sub genre of Fantasy
- 03/08/2011 07:02:02 AM
968 Views