When the trailer for the new Harry Potter series was dropped online, fans all over the internet were having excited yet skeptical conversations. Will this be a good adaptation, or just another corny remake of something that doesn’t need to be remade?
It’s the return of a childhood world we’ve revisited through rereads and movie marathons. When such an emotionally important franchise comes out with something so fresh, it feels personal.
Why We Can’t Let Go of Harry Potter
The movies helped define an entire generation’s childhood, and for many people, Harry Potter was their first real introduction to fantasy, a world that felt completely absorbing, to the point where it held (and still holds) a cult status.
There aren’t many people who grow up loving books or regularly reading just for fun. However, Harry Potter is something that most people I know have read at least some of.
For me personally, it ended up being the series that got me into reading in the first place and led me to find many other books I love, and this isn’t an original experience. The shared experience of Harry Potter allowed many people to bond with their peers throughout their childhood over something that was intriguing and immersive.
TV vs. Movie Format: Why This Time Could Be Different
The fact that the reboot will be a TV series rather than a movie series gives me hope. While the original movies were iconic, they each had only about two-and-a-half hours to rush through a book filled with intricate plots, evolving relationships, and rich world-building.
While the movies were impressive for the day and age they came out, they were constrained by time; there wasn’t enough room to breathe. This new series changes that completely.
In a full season of television, each book can be fully developed to match the story; storylines that might’ve been trimmed for runtime can now stay, characters develop more naturally across episodes, and emotional moments are allowed to sit longer instead of being rushed past or quickly glossed over.
Viewers can follow the more subtly changing mood of the story as it’s carried between each season, representing a book.
A Chance to “Fix” the Films
After I watched the trailer for Season 1, I felt a lot of excitement because the casting feels pretty book-accurate, and the acting also seems good. I was a little worried it might end up like the reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which, to me, felt underdeveloped and corny, and frankly fell flat. However, after this trailer, I have much higher hopes.
As big a hit as the original movies are, and as much as fans still rewatch them, people who read the books generally agree that arcs were shortened and characters were simplified.
S.P.E.W., which was important for many of the Hogwarts students’ characters, especially Hermione’s and Harry’s, was left out. So were smaller moments and characters that were integral to forming the Hogwarts environment, like Peeves the poltergeist. Some important parts of Voldemort’s past and Horcruxes were also gone from the screen.
So, as someone who was a big fan of Harry Potter as a kid and loved reading the books, I’m looking forward to the release of a potentially more accurate adaptation, with the first season of the series coming out on Dec. 25.
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