10 Reasons The Harry Potter Movies Were A Massive Waste Of Potential
Remake, anyone?
There's no denying that Harry Potter has a massive impact on cinema. Just as J.K. Rowling's books modernised children's fiction, the movies opened up new sources for Hollywood adventures, normalised the idea of the mega-franchise in favour of a simple one-off trilogy, re-cemented the idea of unknowns leading films with A-listers in supporting roles and heralded in countless other changes that can still be felt today.
That's all to do with the wider series though, rather than the impact of any single movie, with is pretty apt given the quality of the films themselves; on the big screen, Harry Potter is a franchise that's very much stronger than the sum of its parts - individually the movies never hit the heights their reputation would suggest. They are solid fantasy adventures, but it's only as an ongoing story where they really work; the gradually increasing darkness in tone, something that paralleled a wider shift in cinema around the same time, accentuated the real-time growth of the characters, and the grounded-yet-whimsical magical world was a refreshing alternative to more traditional high fantasy.
But it could have been so much better.
Breaking them down, the Harry Potter movies took a nuanced fantasy epic and honed in on the teenage element. The coming-of-age side of the story was always a strong through line in the books, sure, but it was intrinsically linked into the developed, accessible mythology; every step in Harry's development was reflected in the trials he went up against. In film, however, things were shifted and simplified. If you want to get the true fantastical and thematic meat you have to read around the topic, like with a Warcraft or a Batman V Superman.
With that in mind, it's hard not to call the whole thing a massive waste of potential. J.K. Rowling's literary style has its critics, but few would take away her ability to craft a story, which is exactly what the movies muddled.
Five years on from the release of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and with the Wizarding World set to explode again, let's take a deeper look at the flaws of this impressive series. From overarching creative choices to poor adaptation, here's how Harry Potter managed to severely miss the mark.
10. They Didn't Know How It Ended (And It Shows)
One of the smartest business decisions in the development of Harry Potter is also one of its most creatively stifling; J.K. Rowling's decision to allow the movies to start before the books were over. Producer David Heyman bought up the film rights to the book series in 1999, the same year The Prisoner Of Azkaban was published, and the first film came out when we only four novels deep.
This meant that the movies hit at the peak of Pottermania and pushed the hype to even more extreme levels - The Deathly Hallows was published in the same month as The Order Of The Phoenix opened in cinemas, an astute marketing decision - but also that they were flying blind, not sure where the story was going or what random bit of mythology worth including (Rowling only stepped in when they almost went majorly off course, such as when Kreacher was almost cut out of Phoenix). It didn't help that the author seemed to actually be trying to mess with the movies in later books - in The Order Of The Phoenix Fred and George bid farewell to Hogwarts with the help of Peeves, the poltergeist who'd been cut out of The Philosopher's Stone.
The problems this caused can be plainly seen when comparing the books to the film. There's several essential book moments - the mention of Grindlewald on Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card, the building blocks of Snape's arc (Rickman knew, yes, but nobody else did), the recurring role Dobby plays across the series - that were deemed extraneous when making the earlier movies but came back to haunt the filmmakers later on, as well as plenty of points that feel out of place in retrospect.
Had they known where things were going, Heyman and his raft of directors could have neatly built things up as well as Rowling did in print, and, conversely, there'd have been less time spent on empty cul-de-sacs. If there's a single argument for remaking Harry Potter, it's this.