10 Reasons The Harry Potter Movies Were A Massive Waste Of Potential

As the Harry Potter books progressed, the content got increasingly mature, reflecting the ageing of both the characters and readers, as well as J.K. Rowling's developing style. It's one of the series' strongest elements and the growing up of actors on-screen means the films can't help but embrace that. And yet they still managed to find a way to mess it up.

The big problem was that the later books, especially the final three after Voldemort's return, are too often summarised as "dark". Director David Yates, who came on board with The Order Of The Phoenix and saw the franchise through to its end, attempted to make movies that reflected that, but took the tone too literally; the movies were dark, but only because he'd used less vibrant colours and applied a murky filter. I wouldn't be surprised if The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 had its hasty 3D conversion cancelled at the last minute because the 20% brightness loss made the image completely incomprehensible.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with using a filter, nor of having the visuals reflect the tone (as executed in Harry Potter it's basically just pathetic fallacy, an age-old literary technique), but Yates appears to missed that there needs to be a tone to reflect. Instead the movies just feel pretty bland, with comedy and oppressive themes mushed together and any sense of maturing style lost. The result is just dour.