Hello Potter My Old Friend (Part 1)
The good, the bad, and the dark magic of watching the Harry Potter films as an adult
Via lovemyecho.com
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” – Albus Dumbledore
I can still recall my curious delight when my late grandmother Jenn gave me Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for Christmas one snowy Vermont winter in 1998. She lived in England at the time so she’d bought me the British version— American children just wouldn’t relate to philosophical rocks, apparently. Jenn read the first chapter to me out loud and I was curious enough to keep reading on my own. By the time I got to the flying scene I was enthralled by the world. After that, I eagerly awaiting the release of each new installment, devouring the increasingly lengthy books in a reading frenzy when they dropped. Like so many people, I grew up alongside these characters, and these books were a central part of my transition from childhood to adolescence.
However unlike many of my peers, I was never a fan of the Harry Potter movies. They departed enough from the stories I’d loved reading that they lost me fairly early. I never even saw all of them, stopping after movie five, returning only for the heavily hyped final film in college. While I’ve rewatched The Lord of the Rings movies more times than I can count, I never rewatched the Harry Potter movies.
My opinion of JK Rowling has since gotten a lot more complicated, first because of the irreparably bad Fantastic Beasts prequels, a money grab disguised as world building, then via her prolonged, baffling, and frustrating Twitter takes on trans issues. Because of all this nonsense, I was ready to dismiss this franchise as a part of my childhood that was best to not revisit as an adult. Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, Alexis started feeling sick and desperately needed a comfort watch. It had been over fifteen years since I read the last book and over a decade since I saw the last movie, so I came to these with fresh eyes. Here’s what I discovered when I revisited my old friend Harry.
The Sorcerer’s Stone: Welcome to the World’s Most Dangerous Boarding School
Warner Bros / VIa smosh.com
Anyone but super fans willing to forgive anything necessary to see Harry Potter onscreen will surely concede the following: books are a more forgiving and open ended medium than films and children are a less discerning audience than adults. Many things that a child reader will accept will not fly with an adult viewer and some things that were fun to imagine for yourself can be awkward or confusing to see on screen. This is particularly true of fantasy, which benefits from sprawling explorations on the page that films don’t allow for.
With this axiom established, the inciting incident in this one makes no sense as an adult. The fact that the abusive Dursleys, who resent having Harry Potter live with them are somehow opposed to the nephew they so openly loathe finally leaving to go to a pre-paid boarding school is perplexing. It also epitomizes the fundamental flaw in Rowling’s style of world building, where obstacles or advances necessary to the plot are fastened on with a lot of hand waving and “don’t worry about it” explanations. This type of writing is Rowling’s greatest magic, crutch, and flaw as a storyteller depending on who you ask, and it tends to work in the books but falter on screen.
Once Harry arrives at school, the environment is astoundingly charming and captivating, thanks in huge part to John Williams’s bewitching score. This delightful ambiance almost successfully distracts from the truly head scratching parts of Hogwarts. Isn’t having staircases that constantly move around just asking for kids to get extremely lost and/or fall to their deaths? Why are the children punished for sneaking out late at night by being sent to a dangerous forest (late at night) by themselves when they know there’s a creature killing unicorns out and about? The next three films struggle with trying to have it both ways when it comes to two conflicting truths:
Hogwarts is a fun, warm, and welcoming environment for young people to learn and the audience to fall in love with.
Hogwarts is jam-packed with danger as the plot requires, but always a kind of danger that no adult in the room is ever willing to openly acknowledge, much less resolve.
The vibe you get watching this one as an adult is that, even with all the magic, Hogwarts is an odd school with bizarrely few responsible adults around. Speaking of adults, the gulf between the child actors and the adult actors is the largest and most noticeable in this one. Alan Rickman delightfully chews on the scenery as Snape, but the segments of just Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint tend to feel like they’re just reading lines. While this one gets by mainly on world building, nostalgia, and John Williams, the sense of wonder and discovery is palpable. This is a warm and cozy movie for when you want to switch the lights and your brain off and curl up in a blanket.
Rating: 7/10
Dramatic acting legends they got to show up: Richard Harris as Dumbledore, Maggie Smith as MacGonagal, Alan Rickman as Snape, John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick
Who steals the show: Snape, John Williams’s iconic score
What’s aged the best: The production design of Hogwarts, the music
What’s aged the worst: Hogwarts’s laissez-faire attitude to child endangerment, The CGI for Fluffy, the troll, and the ghosts
Lingering questions: Why was Harry’s mom the only one whose love served as protection? Did none of Voldemort’s other victims have parents that loved them? Would quidditch really be fun to watch if a team that’s dramatically outplaying their opponents can still lose based on an unrelated game of tag with an over-caffeinated shuttlecock?
The Chamber of Secrets: Longer than a basilisk, but as unviewable?
Via quickmeme.com
Behold another dangerous mystery for the trio to unravel and another convoluted plot to bring Voldemort back. Chris Columbus (the non problematic one) came back to direct this one and you can feel the stylistic continuity between the two movies. Where later installments go quite dark and bleak, these two feel like wide-eyed children’s stories about discovery, friendship, and teamwork. The inexperience of the actors and warm color palette are a tidy metaphor for the comfort and naiveté of childhood that we, like Harry, will never be able to return to in the later films.
While the world here is delightfully colorful, these movies have pretty black and white depictions of good and evil. Case in point: the truly unhinged moment where Lucius Malfoy tries to kill Harry right outside of Dumbledore’s office after Harry frees Dobby with a sock. This was apparently improvised by Jason Isaacs, but the fact that no one caught this during shooting or editing is pretty baffling. It makes his two dimensional character collapse to one dimension of bad, nicely encapsulating the problem with Slytherin and the house system in general. Having an explicitly good house, an evil house, a smart house, and a dumb house feels woefully reductive, even for a children’s book or film.
Rating: 6/10
Dramatic acting legends they got to show up: Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockart, Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy,
Who steals the show: Tied between Snape and Gilderoy Lockart, though Lucius Malfoy gets an honorable mention for sheer punch-ability
What’s aged the best: John Williams’s score
What’s aged the worst: Being the longest movie based on the second shortest book, relying on a Fawkes ex machina to save the day
Lingering questions: How did an enormous snake get around Hogwarts in the pipes without anyone noticing it? How big are wizard pipes anyway?
The Prisoner of Azkaban: Y Tu Werewolf También
Warner Bros/ Via funnyjunk.com
The fact that they got Alfonso Cuarón to direct this is astounding and it really makes it stand head and shoulders above the other ones visually. This is the most beautiful of all eight movies, with every scene carefully composed and gorgeously shot. Cuarón uses stylish and clever camera moves, snappy editing, and even one of his signature long takes to give this one way more nuance and texture than The Chamber of Secrets.
This one has perhaps the best depiction of the Harry, Ron, Hermione triad. Their relationships to each other and to the adults makes the themes of fear, independence, family, and loyalty start to shine brighter than a patronus. The scene where Harry realizes that he alone can save himself from the dementors by the lake is one of the most poignant moments in the entire series.
Rating: 8/10
Dramatic acting legends they got to show up: Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore, David Thewlis as Remus Lupin, Timothy Spall as Peter Petigrew
Who steals the show: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin
What’s aged the best: Alfonso Cuarón’s stylish direction, Hermione punching Malfoy
What’s aged the worst: Thinking too hard about Peter Pettigrew or the many plot holes that the maurauder’s map and time turner open up
Lingering questions: Why did the children stop wearing robes for this movie only? Is surrounding Hogwarts with soul-sucking phantoms prone to attacking random students really the best way to keep it safe? Why do they introduce a device that allows for time travel in this movie and never use it again?
The Goblet of Fire: Cedric Diggory Died For This?
Warner Bros / Via comixed.com
This one is a masterclass in how not to adapt a book. The Goblet of Fire is a very long, episodic book, which works great when you’re ten and taking days or weeks to read it, but results in huge pacing problems as an adult watching a two hour and forty minute film. While this was always going to be a challenging book to adapt, they did themselves no favors with what they cut and what they kept in. Some fun sections like the Quidditch World Cup got cut, while they kept a long scene of MacGonagall teaching the children to dance and a cringey scene of a ghost trying to ogle Harry’s junk in a bath tub that doesn’t belong in this or any movie. Even sections that should be exciting tend to drag, like Harry’s first challenge with the dragon. Instead of showing us how any one else overcame the dragon to build up intrigue and suspense before Harry goes, we skip all that and get a bloated yet tension-less chase around the Hogwarts grounds.
Most damningly, this movie has no thematic through line. We bounce between adolescent rivalries, byzantine wizarding competitions, and the behind-the-scenes return of the Hitler of the magical world that should be mysterious and ominous but just isn’t, and there’s nothing tying them all together. While this may be a problem with the source material (this is the watershed book between the lighter first three books and the darker three to follow), it’s still a problem the director Mike Newell and screenwriter Steve Kloves solved poorly with their adaptation. The ending graveyard confrontation where Voldemort returns is the best scene in the movie but doesn’t fit tonally with everything that came before it. Worse yet, after offing Cedric Diggory they try to return to a feel-good ending scene that falls flat.
Rating: 5/10
Dramatic acting legends they got to show up: Brendan Gleeson as Mad Eye Moody, Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, Robert Pattinson as Cedric Diggory
Who steals the show: Mad Eye Moody
What’s aged the best: Voldemort’s return scene
What’s aged the worst: The Moaning Myrtle bath scene, Harry, Ron, and Hermione all hating each other for some reason, Dumbledore’s out of character shouting, The first and third triwizard challenges
Lingering questions: Does Hogwarts HR vet or even interview defense against the dark arts candidates or do they just let anyone who seems unstable enough to implode by the end of the school year have the job?
To be concluded in Part 2…
Why did I split something into two parts that could have clearly worked as one longer thing? I blame Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, and Dune.
Did you enjoy the Harry Potter books? The movies? Which ones were your favorites and least favorites?
Do you know someone that would enjoy this article? Share it with them!
If you enjoyed reading this and want to support more content like this please, consider becoming a subscriber. A free or paid subscription is a great way to support my writing and make sure you never miss a post.