Harry Potter: The Biggest Mistake Each Wizarding World Film Has Made

9. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone: The Ultra Safe, Copy-And-Paste Approach

The franchise's first film is a really nice fantasy flick and it is still good, but it's not actually ageing terribly well and is usually seen as one of lesser movies in the series. But why is this? After all, the story is great, the adult cast are magnificent and the world-building is unbelievable, so what's the issue?

Arguably, it's that the whole thing just plays it too safe and feels a bit flat. In terms of the script, it doesn't really do anything wrong exactly but it doesn't do anything particularly adventurous and the dialogue and character beats play out in a rather by-the-numbers fashion. Chris Columbus' direction is also rather uninteresting and that doesn't help either.

Essentially, this is a copy-and-paste version of the book which follows it beat for beat but lacks quite a bit of its humour and richness thanks to this unadventurous screenplay, which ensures that this blockbuster is definitely good but never quite becomes great.

The main child actors were really annoying back then too, although that's forgivable since they were very young when this was filmed and they got better as the films went on.