Movies vs. Reality

I've asked several Irish people about the movies filmed in Ireland and the response is always "They're shit".  They hate American movies that are supposedly Irish like P.S. I Love You and Leap Year.
Before coming abroad, I had dreamed about going to all of the places that I had seen in movies. I was eager to go to these places because famous actors and actresses were there and it looked so beautiful. I was positive that if the movie set took place there, it was going to be my favorite place. I was wrong. The Irish are right.

I watched scenes from movies that took place in Ireland, Rome and London like Harry Potter, the Lizzie McGuire Movie, and Leap Year.  Before going to the places where these movies were filmed, I re-watched them, just to make sure I remembered what it looked like.

I arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, one of the most famous places in Ireland, and the cliffs were breathtaking. A scene in one of the Harry Potter movies had been filmed here but it looked nothing like this in the movie.  The water hit the rocks thousands of feet below and a tiny castle sat on top of a cliff across from them.  The sky was bright blue, the grass was bright green and the place felt happy. I was confused. In Harry Potter, the waves were crashing against the rocks in fury.  The sky was gloomy and there was no castle.  There was no resemblance to what I was seeing in the Harry Potter scene.

Opposite the Cliffs of Moher

While driving around the Ring of Kerry, I stumbled upon a castle that is said to be in the movie Leap Year.  The castle looked a lot smaller than the one in the movie and the surrounding scenery did not look the same.  In the movie, Amy Adams has to climb a steep hill in the rain just to reach the castle.  Yet this castle was on level ground.  It was quaint and surrounded by a neighborhood.

In Rome, at the Trevi Fountain, Lizzie McGuire sings and puts on a concert while everyone cheers her on.  When I visited the Trevi Fountain, hundreds of tourists were taking pictures and throwing coins into the fountain.

At King's Cross in London, Harry Potter's Platform 9 3/4 stands where Harry has to run through a brick wall to get to the Hogwarts train.  Rather than seeing a sign for the platform inbetween 9 and 10, outside of the train platforms on a wall is a simple plaque for tourists that says Platform 9 3/4.

After visiting many of these places, I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't like the movie.  I learned that many of the scenes had been animated using a computer and they were not real.  They used these places as a starting point and changed them.  The real places, however, were so much better than the movie scenes.  Seeing these places in person was more beautiful than what any computer could make up.  They were real.  These places became my favorite places because of their true beauty, not because they were messed with to look like something else in a movie with celebrities.