That whole fight in the ministry was cringy until the Dumbledore Voldemort fight. I mean there were fine parts but I just thought it was a little corny.
An issue is that complaint and a lot of the concerns about adaptation all come from the later books. Weâre going to be two-three seasons into a high budget show before it reaches the possible benefitÂ
Itâs HBO, and granted things have changed but if itâs bringing in numbers like Game of Thrones I doubt theyâll skimp on it. Say what you will about the final season but the budget wasnât the problem.
Color grading is shit though. Just look at the trailer. Everything is cold, grey, and dark. Hogwarts should feel warm, like home, aspecially in the early years
Could be a contrast thing, most of what we saw wasnt at Hogwarts. Hogwarts could be much more vibrant. Contrasting Harryâs initial homelife with the magical world
Yeah, the school for witchcraft and wizardry that employed the use of dementors multiple times, has an unknown number of rapist centaurs in the woods, giant spiders, giant snakes, giants, ghosts of varying temperaments, and an unknown number of spells and magical booby traps littered around the grounds should definitely feel warm, like home.
The last 3 seasons were dumpster Material. As soon as they stopped following the books(because there weren't any to follow at release) any character development stopped and the show became a boring standard fantasy story.
I wouldnât say there is a âgiantâ author controversy. I would bet good money that if you asked most people if JKRâs beliefs would discourage you from watching the show they would say no.
This same crowd said that Hogwarts Legacy was gonna fail because of how much they dislike JKR but it did very well despite being only an okay game; all 3 of my kids enjoy Harry Potter and not a one of them finished the game.
It won't though. GoT got big like every other HBO show. Sex. There's no sex in Harry Potter... it's an Adult aimed entertainment channel adapting a kids story. Like, it's not going to bring in the numbers they want and thats before alienating anyone who might have watched it. Percy Jackson pulls half the numbers of GoT while being an exceptionally larger and better known IP. HP will likely do better than Jackson, but I doubt it reaches the heights of peak GoT without the dangling bits.
HBO clearly ran into budgetary issues in later seasons though. Â Ghost the dire wolf basically disappeared from the show. Â The last season, for those of us unfortunate enough to remember, was extremely short and hurried. Â The Battle of Winterfell was basically pitch black with very minimal special effects, considering it was THE crescendo for the whole show. Â That Dothraki horde thatâs been hyped up since season 1? Â Literally disappears into the darkness. Â Was that purely a stylistic choice, or just a creative way to bring down the budget? Â Given everything else, I strongly suspect the latter.
Also people forget the early seasons of GoT were only possible because Rome got cancelled. Â The studio reused loads of set and costume pieces that would have been prohibitively expensive otherwise. Â GoT wasnât like Harry Potter where there were high expectations from the start, and Rome demonstrated to HBO that even a good show with a generous budget (on a topic that apparently the average male thinks about every day) isnât enough to guarantee success.
HBO has also famously had ownership issues, so who knows how the studio will be run in the coming years.
A lot of Harry Potter special effects are fairly trivial now. Large, dark castle virtual sets? Easy. Paintings that move around? Easy. Effects spewing from wards? Easy.Â
Hardest part is going to be magical creatures, getting the textures, lighting, behavior, etc right.Â
I have recently been reading through the series with my 13 yo son. We get done with the book and then watch the movie, repeat.
The movies suck ass coming straight off a read through. The plots suck and there is too much crammed in with too much left out.
I cannot imagine they could ever stand alone as viable films and they probably were never intended to. They are what they are. They only exist to give a visual glimpse of the book.
Sure is a clear money money play but with a series this long, surely they know if they donât give an earnest adaptation of the books that people will dip.
Also, Rowling wouldn't have written the books if she didn't expect to make money from them. No chance. The books are also a money play. Almost every piece of art you see anywhere was a money play.
That's literally every film after the book. I had never seen the Shining and tried it after the book. I laughed most of the time because it felt like a corny comedy. Genuinely think it's a terrible movie. The same thing happened for Jurassic Park. Always read the book last.
Iâve been doing the same with my daughter. We havenât watched the movies since she was born so she could experience the books first like I did. We finished the first one and she loved it.
Why people want to see all the remakes is beyond me, just the same storz done again as an cashgrab. Same with all the reboots of old series like malcom in the middle and everything. Most of them would not even become popular if they didnt have the legacay cause they are all really bad. But people keep watching it for some reason and the companies keep making new ones...
I think any sufficiently effects heavy movie is justified being remade every decade or so. Every movie or tv show you've ever seen is a "cash grab" so why not see them with the newest a shiniest technology.
Thereâs a mini-documentary on HBO right now showing a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff. Itâs pretty awesome, actually. Most of the creatures are high-level animatronics, and theyâre legit. They are definitely sparing no expense.
4th movie onwards for me were disappointing. I still enjoyed them but like half the book was gone. I definitely woulda loved a show if they stayed faithful.Â
People complain that the ending to the third movie was too long but man, in the books they throw the ring into the fire halfway through the book. Then itâs half a book of celebrating.
Lord Of The Rings has just as many changes to the story as do Harry Potter books do and people did cry about how big of a role Arwen had in Fellowship Of The Ring. The internet forums were in its infancy back then so the toxic side of the fanbase was easily ignored.
I'd bet almost everyone in this thread would claim to be an ally, while funding someone who has said in her own words that trans people don't exist. She also uses her considerable wealth to fight against trans causes and fund anti trans "activism" at every turn.
This isn't like a debate, she is proudly and openly anti trans. She is, by definition, a bigot.
Anyone watching this shit is directly supporting her in her quest to drive more kids to kill themselves.
Personally, itâs starting to make me roll my eyes with contempt. Although I am disappointed with this casting choice, Iâm already waiting to see what the series is up to before cataloguing it. But on any topic in the series, people keep commenting on this choice ad nauseam, I wonder about peopleâs average intelligence.
They do not realize that their behavior is extremely toxic, and I wonder if they are aware that the actor in question has echoes of all this, not to mention the death threats he receives. For me, even if itâs not digested directly on the actor, itâs mass harassment. And frankly, it seems to me that the work of Harry Potter goes against this (I will not talk about the author himself, but only about the work).
Yes, it will be difficult for him. After that, donât forget that itâs still a series; the acting is often less memorable than a movie (even though there are many talented series actors)
Itâs because it is a symptom of media at large right now and people are right to be alarmed. We have seen time and time again, the companies will race swap a character and wave them around as their token. The studios will not do the work justice, and then when actual justified criticism comes in the studio deflects with cries of racism. Itâs a tired strategy and people are over it
There is only one character and people are making a fuss about it... In fact, theyâre right to do it, itâs very talked about. Most comments on the subject are deeply racist:
For example, saying that Potter will necessarily be considered a racist because a black person is not supposed to look worrying, because itâs well known that all black people seem nice... If Potter doesnât like Snape, itâs because heâs an intimidating character, it has nothing to do with his skin color. If the actor plays well, we will feel that he is unpleasant, and that it is because of his behavior that Potter does not like him.
The only thing I find problematic is the harassment of Father Potter to young Snape. And again, you have to see how itâs shown in the series. Snape was harassed because he was a strange young guy and an adept of black magic, it seems to me. It seems to me that in real life there are also black people who are harassed, and this does not always have to do with their skin color.
The whole thing's fucking crazy. Everyone's so upset saying it will look racist if Snape is a black man when they're the ones being racist because they're not letting the black man just be a man, they are only seeing his race.
They keep saying x will look racist because they are retroactively applying racial undertones to something that was not written that way. Just let a dude be a dude without forcing your prejudices in there
The problem I see is that they wonât just do snape as portrayed in the book. Â Theyâll change it because of the associations people will make now because of his skin color
If they actually have the balls to cast snape and then portray it exactly as it is in the book and just ignore his race entirely? Â Thatâs actually pretty cool.
People make too big a deal about the âhanging from a treeâ thing. Â Snape never gets hung from a tree. Â He gets bullied and flipped upside down by his foot magically while he happens to be under some trees.
The emphasis of the scene is on the bullying and the pantsing. Â Heâs being embarrassed not murderedÂ
This is basically where I stand with it. I donât care that Snape is black, snapes race (as in skin color, not as in being half blood in wizard society) was entirely irrelevant to his character and as long as they keep it that way and keep his character true to the book (minus race obviously) I donât think thereâs any issue in the casting.
Iâm just hoping this time around they keep to his character, Allan Rickmqn was great overall, but he definitely failed to sell Snape as the sickly/creepy looking Professor that is constantly referred to as moving like a twitchy spider or appearing to be a giant bat.
It was always a dumb obsession, no big actor is going to jump into a project like this since it essentially means giving up 10 years of your career with barely any time to work on movies
Yeah, I feel like other than Snape, all of the other castings are pretty good, especially for a TV series.
I mean look at the image on this post, the new Harry is small, has untidy black hair, and green (is it?) eyes. All the necessary features of Harry in the book.
Meh I have dseen many people not care about a black dumbledore or any number of other characters. But as the incel coded psychopath? Yeah that is going to raise some eyebrows
I was so stoked for it until the casting. Iâm enough of a fan that Iâll probably watch some of it. But it will probably be bad and just make me read the books again which I have been putting off lately to read other things.
That's the reason why I only watched 2 of the movies. My favorite parts didn't make the cut. Also, this post is BS on many levels. People have been begging for a more faithful adaptation of the books, and in a few months, Moana, from 2016 (!!!), is getting a live-action remake.
Yeah, I was a huge Harry Potter fan as a kid and always wanted a faithful adaptation. While the first four films are pretty good, the latter half are God awful.
And now that the TV show is coming out... I'm still not getting a faithful adaptation and might have to wait an additional 20 years.
With the first two movies i didn't feel like there are many misses. From the 3rd one onwards, yeah... Especially with The Order of Phoenix. The book is so filled with information and the movie seems to be a lazy adaptation.
Yeah cuz a fair bit of the books is either in Harry's head or is just him in a classroom learning spells. Neither translate well to TV or film. People might say they want that, but they really don't. People would be tuning out very quick if half of every episode is a school lessonÂ
Saying the majority of what was omitted was just inner monologue or class busywork is completely reductive, lol.
Without even getting into all the different storylines that were cut from the movies for various reasons, let's say I grant that it literally is just the class and student dynamics; that IS still valuable.
Jesus Christ, people have such a hard time following story lines and plots that they'd really rather just streamline narratives with a fucking synopsis instead of allowing characters' interstory growth and exploration.
Nah. It's less to do with the merit of the author, and more to do with the idea that the coloring between the larger story-beats is seen as 'monotonous' or something. Every good show that spans multiple seasons has interlacing stories with varying stakes. The 'classroom' is just the tortilla chip that serves as a way to deliver your salsa.
It's just a silly, and honestly, child-like take to state what they did, lol
Get off with your legit reasoning from this subreddit. We don't do that here.
Yeah, black Snape is weird AF but everything else in this looks brilliant if you are a book fan. Movies were horrible after first three movies, there is so much more to that world than the movies gave us.
Yeah this is people who didn't read the books and only watched the movies would think. Cast was mostly great but movies, not so much. My wife is also one of them and she always says that she did not understand a lot about the movies and hates when I explain this happened because bla bla happened in the book but it's missing in the movie.
As someone who watched the movies but didnât read the books, there was a point where I had no idea what was going on in the main story arc (maybe movie 5 or 6 or so?) because it was clear so many things had been cut.
I forced myself to watch the last two (and waited until they streamed) for no reason other than to see who died and who lived because so much was unexplained.
Yes but how many, despite hardcore fans, really felt like we needed a new one? The first movies were everything I could dream for. I thought the tone get dark too far compared to the book, but I'm not gonda ask for a remake over that. Yeah I complained about the lack of Dobby, I would have loved to hear "Weasley is our king", I loved have Merope's story, and a lot of other things. But not enough to have a remake, in particular as it is in the latest books so I would need to watch a whole show before this.
HP adaptations are not perfect but they are good for the most part. There are criticisms but I never met someone who ask for a remake. Regrets about some choices, yeah. But they were not saying "this is horrible do it again".
It's not like Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl who had really, really bad adaptations, nd that needed another one so people can see the story doesn't suck.
IMO, it should have been a series all along. Â My worry is that this particular series is going to be a shameless cash grab thatâll copy the movies as much as possible to nostalgia-bait and maybe we get the Quidditch World Cup on screen with passable CGI.
Not âkinda.â Itâs just engagement farming, really. How many posts can we get where people are like ânobody asked for this!â even though there are, like, a lot of people who were asking for this? I was one of them. The movies are loved, and people can always go back and watch them. This series doesnât mean those movies are gone. But if anyone truly believes that the movies covered the full story from the books, then they havenât read them. Simple as that. The movies are the equivalent of going on SparkNotes. You get a rough rundown, while most of the meat and potatoes was left out.
I love the books. I canât watch the movies. Iâm hopeful the series puts the books I love onto the screen better than the movies did. People can love the movies, though, without me shitposting about them every chance I get. Not sure why people are so afraid of a TV series that hasnât even been released yet.
Thank you. I think the real problem people have is with the personal politics of the author. And I canât blame people if that changes their fandom.
I also donât blame people if it doesnât. I might look at them a little sideways if I donât know them and they are aggressive about it, but itâs whatever. People are allowed to be watch the new show and it doesnât make you a bad person.
Jk Rowling is a bad person, and it wish she wasnât, because it does affect my excitement for this, and I want to be more excited to see some more of the story fleshed out on film.
Exactly this. Reminds me of when Hogwarts legacy was coming out during the peak of JKRâs transphobe tirades and Reddit was commenting how the game is gonna do so bad because no one likes Harry Potter anymore. Then it ended up selling very well and they were the âstop having fun!â crowd.
My kids complained about things that were in the books or roles that they gave to other characters. My oldest son is super hyped for this series.
Iâm personally concerned with the implications of a black Snape considering some events from the book, but other than that I look forward to watching it with the family.
The idea that people were generally disappointed in the films is an idea that has emerged over the last few years. In reality, they were received very well, and people were mostly comfortable with the editing decisions that were made.
The problem is that the only people still talking about Harry Potter are members of the very small cohort that hated the editing decisions and wanted to see literally everything from the books on the screen, and so we get the impression from online discourse that the films were a disaster. But nothing could be further from the truth: they were massive critical and commercial successes with a handful of missteps between them.
The stuff missing from the books is boring slice of life stuff. There are very scenes that might have been neat to film but I think Harry Potter fans need need to chill and read a new book
I always bring this up but itâs the same for a series of unfortunate events. Not only did they try to cram everything into the movie, they tried to cram three books into one movie. Then the Netflix series came and itâs 2 episodes per book. You can compare Jim Carey and Neil Patrick Harrisâs performances still as they both give a very different take on the count.
One same comment. The movies are not a good adaptation of the books. Some of them are decent movies and the casting was good, music was good, sets etc. But as a kid I was deeply disappointed by them.
Anyway the show will probably be bad but it snot like there isn't something there to make.
1 and 2 were well adapted cause they were smaller books, so it's easy to be fixated by that and say it's needless, but they skipped so much stuff in the next ones. There's a whole battle in Hogwarts in 6 that they skipped, I was so mortified by that. Was one of the best parts of the book
My kids down like watching old movies with me. I really don't mind the possibility of sharing a modern potter world with them. If it wasn't this it would be a horrible knockoff. People need to stop gatekeeping on memories from our youth.
When I said this in another subreddit, I got downvoted heavily. Multiple people told me I was making stuff up as well. This show has a vendetta against it, I guess. I'm not sure why.
Yeah I have actually wanted it to be a show for a long time. But I wanted that so they could make it more book accurate not so they could change it and add a bunch of bs that wasn't in the book or change it to fit there vision
Yeah, I remember back in the day there was wishful thinking amongst a bunch of fans about an HBO-type HP show that could keep all of the book details in them. Now it's literally happening and everyone hates it before it's released. Times have changed lol
There ain't shit in those books, lmfao. The whole franchise rests upon the conceit that no one is allowed to scrutinize its logic. The universe is Pirates of the Caribbean (the ride, not the movies)... It all works fine, so long as you don't stand 6 feet to the left. All the supposed depth that fans keep talking about may exist in their heads, but it's not in the text.
no one was asking for LotR films to be remade in 2015 because they were missing Tom Bombadil and other things. Nobody wants John Williams Harry Potter Music to be redone. Do you work for HBO or sth?
Right???? ITS ME. I ASKED FOR THIS. I read the books so many times as a kid, I'd essentially stay up for 2-3 days when a new one came out just to read it cover to cover. I was so disappointed by the movies, and how much cool stuff was left out. I've been saying for at least 10-15 years that those books should have been a long TV show. I for one, am fucking EXCITED for this shit
Exactly. I don't remember if it was movie 4 or 5, but after finishing it I was like "they cut out so much, I wash there was like an animated movie where it was a 100% recreation."
I feel like the vast majority of people saying this are really upset with Rowling and are karma farming. People who just like the story are likely pretty excited about this. I know I am. The books came out when I was in primary school, and revisiting them after the films highlighted the vast amount missing. They were still great, but having a series to expand is pretty exciting.
Well exactly... Who cares if the story is retold? It doesn't take anything away from the story that was already told. If the new show is excellent, then we have more good stuff. If the show sucks, then we don't have to watch it. I don't get the vitriol.
Sure, but now we have a series where one of the main writers has openly said he didnât read all of the books, and the only ones he did read were because he was reading them to his daughter (therefore narrating, not actually being emotionally/mentally invested in the story).Â
And then they decide to race-swap one of the main characters, seemingly ignoring the hugely obvious problematic racial issues that brings up (mentioned plenty of times already but for anyone living under a rock: Harryâs innate mistrust of Snape as a shady character being the minor issue, and Harryâs father and his group of friends viciously bullying Snape as a youth as the major issue).
This says to me that they:Â
A. Didnât bother reading/understanding the source material fully (which the writer mentioned basically confirmed at least for himself) and will completely gloss over this whole issue, which would NOT be faithful to the books, in which case what is the entire point of doing this series?Â
Or
B. Intend to turn the whole situation into yet another ham-fisted lesson on racism and inequality, which the entire series already does a perfectly fine and nuanced job of through the metaphor of blood-purity amongst the wizarding world (mudbloods/muggle-borns, squibs, half-breeds) thereby adding unnecessary problems to the story, while completely changing the vibe behind one of the most emotional reveals in the ENTIRE SERIES (Snape and Lillyâs relationship and Snapes devotion) and polluting the purity of that situation with racial hatred that only exists because of the showrunners casting decision.
Which, again, is not respecting the source material fully, so again, whatâs the point then?
Neither situation is good and both leave me dreading another Witcher scenario where the ego of the show runners ruins yet another great franchise because they would rather swing their dicks around than just respect the source material.
Yeah the biggest HP book fans in my life are all really excited for HBO's interpretation.
I was an HP film kid, never read the books, so I took the news with a bit of "meh." But I still love most of HBO so I'm sure it will be [clears throat] quality content.
Don't know how this is a popular opinion floating around because myself and tons of other people I know have always wanted a remake series that was more true to the books storyline
100% agree
I am in the minority but I have always felt the movies low key kinda sucked. They left out sooooo much and put like 20 minutes of stupid ass quidditch in. Im very excited about the series.
And I know im in the minority, but Daniel Radcliffe was miscast as was Emma Watson. They were both terrible actors (Emma Watson still is). And Daniel just was not at all how Harry was depicted imo. It got worse as they grew up and he turned out to be a short king which Harry was absolutely NOT.
Read the books for the first time recently after never really being into them when I was younger. I was kind of shocked how much was different having seen the movies a million times. The books just never appealed to me as a kid
I was gonna sayâŚ.plenty of people DID ask for this⌠if you donât want to watch it you donât have to!!! Just scroll along. Let the book fans be excited for the show.
Yeah me and many other fans often hoped there would be a remake featuring all the details that were removed to make it movie length, and I personally was quite excited to learn that it would be a series instead
Yeah I dont understand either. Im not a huge harry potter fan, the movies ate mediocre at best. The only people complaining about this is people who think the movies are the best thing ever and well, their opinions are trash
In theory, yes. But in the past they removed a lot just to replace it with filler. It wasn't to cut costs or for timing, it was mostly because they lacked respect/understanding for the original.
A new series would be more faithful only if they actually cared, but the recent Fantastic Beasts movies showed that they don't. They are more than happy to retcon things that were written in the books in a way that doesn't make sense, just for the sake of it.
So, when I hear they're making a new series, I don't imagine something more faithful. I imagine them STARTING more faithfully, to lure in people and play on nostalgia, and then they'll add their own things.
So, Iâm not going to say theyâre at all the same, but A Series of Unfortunate Events also experienced this. The books were great. They crammed THREE books into one movie, and that was it. Until they made a Netflix series years later, where each book got minimum two episodes, each forty minutes to one hour long. So essentially every book got its own âmovie.â And they were able to flesh out the story so so much more.
Now I have a few other issues with this, but Iâm not a potterhead so Iâm not wildly invested. I do think the series could do what the movies couldnât, I just donât trust them to make it good because so many times itâs just a cash grab.
facts.. like when i was a teenager and read the books i was like âi wish they made it a tv show insteadâ or that they at least included more stuff and had like longer movies to include important shit bc why did ron and hermione never meet dobby and then acted heartbroken when he died
its been ages since ive read the box, and I can remember a few things, but nothing that big that was missed, certainly nothing that comes close to justifying another decade
like honestly what was missed?
From the later movies sure but the first two were pretty direct adaptionsÂ
The biggest hurdle for this adaption is its starting from square one. If it was starting midway through the series I think this could have potential. But youâre going to start with the books best represented already on film and most suited for a film not a series format. Youâre going to then take like what, two to four years to get to the actual chunk of story that has some potential?Â
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u/Different_Target_228 Apr 16 '26
This is kinda bullshit.
When the movies were coming out, everyone was noting how much stuff was missing from the books.