Harry Potter - 10 Years Later 

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I just thought you might like to know that the autogenerated subtitles came up with the amazing 'Hell on the Bottom Carter.' Thank you for your time.

I forgot all about David Tennant's tongue flicks, the greatest "I am crazy" cue in acting history

Regarding Dumbledore’s character flaw of being manipulative: this is why I enjoyed Yates’ directing. In the very beginning of Half-Blood Prince, with the reporters there asking questions & flash-bulbs going off. He has the camera ZOOM IN on Dumbledore’s hand on Harry’s shoulder, LEADING him away. If there was any iconic shot that sums up the entire series, THAT is it. PS I love that you’re a Taker stan, btw! ☺️

I genuinely think prisoner of Azkaban is one of the best directed and shot blockbusters ever made. Im mixed on the rest of the series, I generally enjoy them but don't think theyre all amazing, but Azkaban is extremely special and Alfonso is amazing at staging, blocking, and lighting. What a phenomenal film

"For the first time I started to discovered art, not because it was popular with other kids my age, but because it felt more specific to me" - Very profound. That is the path to true artistic self expression and self identification.

I feel like the movies botched the magic duels as 90% of the time they are just glorified gun fights which differed to how they were handled in the books. The Order of the Phoenix perhaps had the best duel out of all the movies, and one that was closest to the books but still not as thrilling.

"David Yates song choice" broke me. Well done 😆

As a Mexican, a little part of me is really proud that the best Harry Potter movie was directed by a Mexican 😅 I loved the look of it overall, the tonal shift, Radcliffe’s elevated acting as he grew, I loved that Voldemort isn’t the center of the conflict, it’s essentially about Harry becoming an adolescent and learning to cope with his trauma. It’s a very human story in a magical setting.

Overall, I feel like my biggest criticism is the lack of genuine complexity. While there is some explorations of morality, the characters who are good are ultimately good because they happen to be on the good team. The characters who are bad are ultimately bad because they happen to be on the bad team. Even when we learn that a person we assumed to be bad was actually good, it’s because they were on the good team all along, not because they’re actually complex morally (and no, making Snape a jerk doesn’t mean he’s complex, he’s just an a-hole). Not to mention, our heroes are hardly agents of change. By the end of the series, nothing has really changed outside of the characters. They saved the world, but the world just goes back to how it was before the Death Eaters showed up.

I got the impression that Snape’s behavior isn’t excused but the result of someone having to reconcile protecting his tormentor’s and love’s son simultaneously. Context for how rough he was, not an excuse leading to us loving him for it. Harry’s naming his son after Severus is more of him realizing how hard that was and how well he did considering

Part of me still has a soft spot for these movies despite their flaws. But, like yourself, there's other art that entered my life that I revisit more. It's not even a matter of Potter being a kids thing. I just broadened my scope. I still come back to it on occasion. I enjoy it a lot too. But other fantasy fair like Star Wars or LOTR resonates with me more.

Chamber of Secrets is my favorite. Not the biggest fan of Deathly Hallows Part 1 but overall the whole series was fun.

Dude, you're not giving Chamber of Secrets the credit it deserves.

The lead singer in the Yule Ball band is none other than Jarvis Cocker! One of the coolest guys of the 90s haha

It really feels like the complaints you have about the first two movies consist of 'they suck because they made a faithful adaptation rather than pulling a Peter Jackson's Hobbit with it'. Especially when it comes to chamber of secrets, where a lot of the 'plot threads that go nowhere' DO have payoffs down the line, or existed as world-building segments and/or foreshadowing. The most egregious of this is the 'Weasley bros rescue Harry from the Dursleys' and 'flying car' bits. The Weasley's rescuing Harry was the first time someone outside of 'Dumbledore's group' was shown being aware of what was going on, and more importantly, BEING BOTHERED BY IT. It was only the second time Harry felt like someone was actually HELPING. It is quite important, both story wise and thematically, as it helps establish the weasley family as being MORE than just 'Harry's friends/aquaintances at school'. The movie was sorta hampered by runtime, and thus didn't really show how much of 'part of the family' Harry felt between his breakout and the start of school. With the flying car, it's mixed in quite clearly with the Dobby subplot, serves to introduce the whomping willow, which has roles of some importance later in the story (especially in book 3) and also provide a way to not have the rescue from Aragog be a total 'deus ex machina' moment, by using a semi-sentient car that was previously established as extant to solve that tangle. You come across as both overly nitpicky, and outright ignoring the established context on some things when it doesn't support the conclusion you want to reach. FTR: I'll take a faithful adaptation over 'director puts his own spin on things' pretty much every time. It rarely turns out well when Directors go messing about with the actual plot elements beyond the changes that are absolutely necessary. See LOTR VS Hobbit adaptations by the same director, for plenty of example of that 'less changes is better' approach being the smarter.

I was a little old for HP when it came out, so I never had that connection. I remember at the time there was a big hoopla and people decried the book as witchcraft.

32:08 I literally had the same journey of Batman, wrestling, and metal music in the same years (2005ish), except I was 13.

Man this genuinely really resonated with me; we're about the same age and in the mid to late 2000s I was hugely into Harry Potter to a ridiculous degree, but over the course of the following decade I lost touch with the series and now its something I don't really have any interest in at all. The reasons you gave, disappointing sequels, terrible fan base, Rowling herself all probably confirmed my lack of interest, but at the heart of it is really just that I'd grown up, grown older and developed a wider range of tastes and interests. I haven't actually watched any of the films for years maybe, despite my fond memories of them, and I have no idea how I'd react to them today, but your video really helped me look at my own attitude and put my feelings into perspective! Keep it up 👍

14:20 "the lamest band in fiction"?? it's a pulp and radiohead supergroup

oh god I can’t believe it’s already been 10 years. Great video btw 👍

Watching the Harry Potter films again, i truly found that at their worst they are still good and at their best they were actually some of my favorite films of those years. Even my least favorite Harry Potter film, chamber of secrets is still better than a lot more than half of the MCU movies. The filmmaking in this series was always consistently high quality and that alone makes it better than the MCU. Azkaban was the best, and I think deathly hallows part 2 was a better Blockbuster film conclusion than the last two avengers movies

I tried so hard to get into HP. I watched all the movies but couldn't get into them. I struggled so hard to follow what was happening after the 4th movie and I don't know why. I tried reading the books but they felt bloodless and tired.

Heh, sounds familiar. The movies didn't really have the impact they had after maybe "Prisoner Of Azkaban" or so. I had listened to the audio books so many times that my own vision of the stories had become so much more clear and vivid than any movie could convey. I still watched them all of course and they were fun but after the book series was finished and the movies were basically playing catch-up I just watched them to cross off a list and found myself getting increasingly let down by what felt like an inferior version of my own imagination. Also that year of 2007, when the books ended, was also the year when I discovered the Metal genre for me, even though I had never really shown much of an interest in any kind of music before. So from that moment on I had playing guitar as a new passion. But HP will always remain a cozy part of my childhood I like thinking back to.

This is so relatable. From age 7 to age 15 Harry Potter was basically my life. The movies as well, of course, but the books in particular. I had read each of the books at least 70 or 80 times, and seen the movies almost as much as that. There was no piece of trivia or lore, however obscure, that I was not intimately familiar with. As a matter of fact, I very nearly got a job as an extra in the final movie (but that's another story). And yet, from around 16 onwards exactly the same thing happened to me, to the point that I've barely watched a Harry Potter movie and haven't read any of the books in close to a decade. I think a lot of the points raised here are excellent ones* (particularly the one about the movies becoming less memorable post-Goblet, that's absolutely spot on). For me I think it was primarily a combination of growing older and simply moving on to other interests (cinema generally, or Sherlock Holmes and James Bond if we're talking specific fandoms) and also, as you say, the destruction of the franchise with all the retconning and spinoffs, that just made me feel alienated from and disinterested in something that had always been an integral part of me. Also- and this is on the literary rather than the cinematic side- I began to find quite a bit of fault with Rowling as an author. She's not bad at all (I quite enjoyed The Casual Vacancy, and she's obviously an amazing world-builder); she certainly doesn't make me actually angry with her prose, as happens frequently when I read Dan Brown; but she's no Tolkein, or Stephen King. She just doesn't have that effortless storytelling quality that really draws you in; it was the worlds she created I fell in love with as a child, not the way she wrote it. PS: I absolutely love the fact that you referred to Robert Pattinson as “the Good Time guy”; I will be stealing that from now on to replace my own personal nickname for that particular actor- “Twinkly Man”. I'm sure Robert would appreciate it. PPS: Completely agree that the absolute unequivocal best movie from the entire HP series is Prisoner of Azkaban. That's when the series really began to find its identity, but for me it never topped the combination of innocence, humour, darkness, tragedy and fascinating world-building that it reached with Azkaban. Cuaron really managed to blend his own vision with Rowling's in the most harmonious and exciting way possible (even more than Yates ever did- perhaps in part because he was drawing so extensively from the aesthetic already established by Cuaron). PPPS: I was waiting for the “Dumbledore asked calmly” meme to make an appearance. I was not disappointed. *Rowling's personal politics aside; for one, I'm pretty much entirely neutral on that particular issue and can see both sides- and also personally support Rowling's right to express her opinions without fear of excessive harassment- and secondly, as you point out, the personality of the creator should not influence the creation; Roman Polanski is- for legal reasons I must say “allegedly”- a piece of human garbage who committed one of the worst crimes it is possible for a human being to commit, but that doesn't stop me loving Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and The Ninth Gate.

I really loved that video. It was more nuanced and fair that a lot of the essays on that particular topic. That's great.

This Chris Benoit scene was unexpected. Amazing video, still love this franchise

loved this reflection and review!! makes me want to revisit the series as well :)

Great video! I watched all 36 minutes of it and was fascinated by your points! I rewatched all the movies this last summer and reread the books for the first time in years and I had a bit of a different approach, being that I still love it all. It’s funny you mention what scenes to remove from Chamber, yet I think Chamber is the best adaptation of the series because of everything they include. And the montages in Order is a strong way to me of condensing the novel, because I don’t know any other way they’d have done it, whereas Goblet left so much out unfortunately from the book. Every movie suffers from at least a few things they leave out from the books, but I think they’re all amazing in their own way. I agree with your points on the ending of Deathly Hallows Part 2 being a bit anti-climatic, and I can oddly relate to the first four being more memorable. All around great video, I can really tell lots of time was put into this 💯

I’ve heard so many Harry Potter takes it’s rare to hear something new like you detail here. Great video!

hell yeah, new video. what a wonderful way to end a stressful day

Dan getting deep again with another great video. 😎

Order of the Phoenix is my fav HP movie.. but I stopped reading them after GOF when I was a kid.

Great realistic take on why we take so long to revisit some things. Thanks for the honesty ☺️

Like you, I loved Potter as a kid and didnt revisit the world after the movies were done. We have a 7 year old boy so we just started reading the books & watching the movies. We're on book 3 and movie 2, and it has been great. Although I can't imagine how we're going to approach the more serious things at the end. Reading the books, however, seeing all the Easter eggs for the end, is fun.

I always found the series to be good sick day watches, but I also haven't watched them in years. The third was always my favourite, and your analysis has definitely helped me understand why ^u^

I can see three big problems on the rewatchability of Harry Potter: 1. It's a coming of age story: you get to spend 7 years watching Harry and the guys age from 11 to 18. It's therefore basically meant for children/young adults. Teenage-hood is a very fleeting and a hormonally crazy period compared to the next 50 years of adulthood (and something that not too many adults want to or feel necessary to relieve). 2. After Voldemort, what else is there? I love the George Washington TV movies because after "George Washington I" (where he is the military leader of a rebellion), he becomes even more powerful in "George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation" (i.e. becoming President of a new republic). Good winning in the end is such a boring premise. There is no more great battle after Voldemort. It's like defeating a Nazi leader with your rag-tag bunch of high schoolers. Every thing that comes after is going to pale in comparison and the real world doesn't have definite endings like that (aside from death). The John Adams HBO series handles the real-world concept of reputation being the only thing that matters once you're gone very well, no matter how big you were in life (therefore if we apply this to Harry Potter, Harry's epitaph will forever be the 18 year old who defeated Voldemort and nothing else). 3. The characters are one-dimensional (the Hogwarts House stereotypes, not enough teenage horniness and shenanigans, unsympathetic villains and heroes who wear their hearts on their chest, Harry being the standard hero boy protagonist and doesn't ever flirt with evil Luke Skywalker-esque, etc...) Edit: Almost finished the video. Man I did not realize after all these years how close Harry Potter was to achieving Game of Thrones level of subverting expectations, only to fuck it up (alongside many other things) in the ending and Epilogue (kind of eh with the Harry-Ginny pairing now come to think of it). Harry Potter did not really handle real-life adult themes well at all (or massively streamlined them in order to appeal to younger audiences). The best part of Harry Potter was the fantasy world-building and the character building of a group of young characters, but that can only bring you up so much. The Wizarding World never feels like a sandbox where you and I can play in (unlike Game of Thrones). Harry never works a day in his life to earn a living and with the most powerful character in the story never considering becoming evil, the story feels predestined from the get go for the "good guys" to win.

“Maybe they were trying to pay homage to the climax in the first one” I died laughing

Hang on, was that dance scene between Harry and Hermione actually backed by a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds track?

I still find it funny that rowling managed to alienate herself from both sides of the political spectrum

Wonderful essay. The Potter series as an indelible part of childhood is something I didn’t really experience (I didn’t read the first book until I was 15) but it helps me understand why they mean so much to, for example, my wife. That Benoit reference, however, hit pretty hard.

Definitely felt like I grew up with the GoF movie, and I felt less connected to the series after. Great review 👍🏾

So I sat here, dipping my toes into your video, thinking `Das ist richtig gut / That's really good.´ Read the books, watched the movies, but was already way too old for all the fandom stuff. Interesting retrospective, keen insights, all in all a very perceptive take from today's point of view. Thanks.

This really hit the spot. I was 10 when I read the first Harry Potter book, and I was 18 when I bought the last one in English even though English isn't my native language. I grew up with these books, and with these movies, and I loved this franchise so so much. Yet in the last couple years I have reflected on them and on myself, and on why I had no interest in Harry Potter at all anymore, only to draw exactly the same conclusions you did. I've watched the 3-4 first movies several times and read the books several times too. But past The Order of the Phoenix I'm not sure I've read the books even twice, same for the movies. I remember trying to rewatch the Half Blood Prince 6-7 years ago and I didn't make it through the cheesy teenage romance. I feel like in the past ten years I've grown up so much, and experienced so many things that changed me and had such a bigger impact on me than Harry Potter and its "love saves all". The serie has definitely forged a part of my identity, but it is now one of many layers of it. The older I get and the less it resonates with me, when the Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials and others still do. In a way I took the Life Express and Harry Potter is indeed the childhood friend I left on the platform 9 3/4. Great essay, I subscribed!

From the very first time I saw it till today, Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 has always been my favorite Potter movie.

"The Good Time guy" had me rolling that movie is absolutely brilliant though

I loved Harry Potter as a kid but like you, as I begin to grow into a teenager, I discovered different media I liked. I also got more interested in criticism along with writing so some of my problems with the story became more apparent. The RU-vidr procrastiTara is doing a great breakthrough of the books and I recommend her videos. Another thing that helped decline my Potter interest is my discovery of Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s world which I believe is timeless.

I distinctly remember when I fell off of Harry Potter, both the books and the films. The first four installments really felt like like they were exploring this dazzling, unseen world, and the movies really captured that. Everything from the monsters to the architecture described in the books to the music and aesthetic of the movies. After Goblet of Fire, once the decision to be more 'adult' was firmly made, its world no longer captured me like it once did. It wasn't that it was too dark, or too serious. But I was a teenager who engaged in a lot of nonfiction media and who took a lot of time looking at current global events, it was hard not to see that the wizarding world didn't really feel magical after that. It's just the same plodding bureaucracy and mundane shit that we already fuckin' deal with, and the change into the more dreary greys of the latter movies really didn't help with that. At a certain point I had to ask why this particular story had to be told in a world with magic. At a certain point in the later movies, the magic feels almost superficial, a simple way to get from A to B.

Thanks for the video. Watching the kids grow up is definitely part of the magic. All the magic is part of the magic too. For me, I think seeing them mature as actors enough to be able to convey versions of the characters that were 19 years older, was part of the charm of that epilogue. I'd also suggest that challenging ideas set up by a theme is part of how a theme is best explored - so although it appears that adults abuse their position of trust, the children grow to be adults themselves by recognising and pursuing the aspects of adulthood that they value most. So I didn't feel the theme was undermined by the redemption of Snape or Dumbledore. It demonstrated Harry's changing perception of what he valued and how he perceived courage, responsibility and sacrifice. It wasn't quite the same as if in the Lord of the Rings Sam and Rosie had called one of their kids Smeagol.

I do appreciate your use of the clip from F for Fake & wonder how many of your viewers catch it.

Excellent work as always! Might be fun to continue doing videos in this style. X movie, y years later. Raycevick has done something similar with video games, and I always wished someone would give it a go with films. Lends to a lot of personal reflection/engagement with the media.

that part in the final harry potter book and film about how you're idols will let you down with harry realizing that dumbledore isn't the perfect paragon of goodness that he thought he was discovering his manipulative ways and the very fact that he was just setting him up to die in deeply ironic as that's how many harry potter fan's felt when they discovered jk rowling the author of the harry potter books was revealed to have not so positive views on trans people not me though

Puberty and Vince McMahon...a powerful potion that could take down even the greatest witches and wizards.

Thanks for the analysis! Though I can't experience this franchise today the same way I did 10-15 years ago, sometimes it's still valuable to look back on it as well. Also, RIP Robbie Coltrane

I feel the same way with HP as you do. I don't love it or hate it. I just feel indifferent. I felt like I was slowly falling out of line with the series around Order of the Phoenix. I discovered violent and more "mature" video games the following year which is not too far off from your falling out with the series at the time. I still watched the movies but I didn't care as much. Then when the Deathly Hallows Part 2 came out, it felt nice but then I forgot about it, and then I rediscovered anime the following year which didn't help it out at all. I do have a huge childhood attachment towards the series but I can't say I am as passionate towards the series as say Star Wars, Marvel(before the MCU) or even Dragon Ball. I do respect as like you said for the childhood friend aspect where we don't like eye to eye but there are still some fond memories.

Very interesting video! I watched these movies as a kid. Not yet into filmography, not many films under my belt. I haven't felt a need to go back to the world of HP (mostly due to JKR), and it is interesting to see some of these images after so many years.

Wonderfull essay! You have so many good points that I totally agree with! Especially about Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows part 2. I really like part 1 because it takes its times and fleshing out the characters alot, but part 2 is just so many things trowing at you at once and especially the final act I am not so keen on and even though I really love the Snape revelation scene, I do think the movie is a bit of a mess! By the way the alternativ song you made for Harry and Hermonies dance scene, I couldn't stop laughing 😂

dobbys death still hurts to this day 😢

Win Gar Dium Levi Ohhh Snap a new EBC video!!! I mean I knew it was coming but I am still excited. This one definitely warrants a rewatch since you talked about a lot here. Anyway thanks as always for the top notch essays.

I don't like Harry Potter, but I'm here to support one of my favorite people. Great video and one of your best! #90sKid

"Lesson 1: don't give yourself too much creative freedom beacause if you do it your product will be bad and your fan will hate you" to J.K. Rowling

Everybody's got a price

The first 3 were great for differing reasons. 4 onwards just became a chore. The deathly dull David Yates got his claws into the franchise with 5, and it just did my head in.

I can definitely relate. Personally, I’ve found the stories in shows like the Expanse and the Americans to be more complex and able to speak to me in a way Harry Potter never could.

It’s odd because I had the same thing I binged all the movies like 4 years ago and then never watched them again

I laughed when you brought up the order of the phoenix fight because that was the closest we ever got cool magic in these movie

I think the movies miss the mark with handling the whole theme of learning to question authority figures and heroes, because while the books tackle this theme while following it up with “and learning how to cope with that,” the movies just raise the doubt and don’t explore what it means, let alone follow up on it. You could argue they’re sometimes just showing us what happened, while a lot of the weight originally came from the narration largely focused on Harry’s thoughts, it’s still a failure on the films’ part not to adapt that inner conflict into something they can show you on screen.

I never read the books. I was perhaps a year or two too young for them. But I really liked the first two films. They were whimsical, and fun. I feel it’s what the concept best works with. The franchise began taking itself a bit too seriously for my tastes in movie three, and that’s where I fell off. Edit: Thinking on this further, I think a part of my disinterest, and sometimes disdain for the Harry Potter film franchise might actually be something of a fan jealousy. While I was a little too young for Harry Potter, there was *one* young adult book series I was the perfect age to jump on the band wagon with when it came out, and as is perfectly well known to everyone at this point, the film adaptation was *TERRIBLE.* Perhaps some part of me is just latently envious that Potter Heads got a fully functional film series, while I got *that.*

I'm just a little bit older than you, and while I watched the movies in theaters when they came out, I never got attached to them in the way a lot of people in my generation did. Why? The books. For years, the HP series were my favorite books. I read them and re-read them. They were like old friends. I grew up in a place where the public education system was... not great, and students were treated as little more than numbers. So what appealed to me the most about HP was Hogwarts itself. It's not school, it's school in a CASTLE! And the professors actually care about you! And yeah, there's magic and murder mysteries and whatnot, but that's not what I was attached to. The movies are just the plots. Most of the flavor, most of the POINT of the books, was gone. The filmmakers never understood that there was power in Hogwarts just being a place you could go for a while.

Say what you will but I maintain that Harry Potter was the most consistently good-great blockbuster movie franchise in history. More heartfelt and creative than the MCU, more reliant than Star Wars, etc. I think all of them are at least decent and the characters really resonate with me in a way that very few blockbuster films accomplish.

Great video! Personally i only like the first 3 and a half movies for a completely different reason, i am waaayy younger than you and didnt have enough braincells to follow or care about the very dramatic, high stakes, drawn out YA plot of the later movies, compared to the very whisical child adventure vibes of the first ones with is magic wands and magic capes and magic map! Now as an adult i still find them more interesting than "big epic plot agains big bad guy". Also i couldnt at gun point recall what order of the pheonix is about, but ill def look for that magic battle, it seems amazing

This video, for some reason, made me cry. It was beautifully made, dude.

I think I was 17 or 18 when the movies started coming out, and I liked them for what they were (even if Peeves was left on the cutting room floor, grr), but by the time Goblet came out, I was already kind of hoping for an eventual reboot, but as something like a BBC series (or maybe HBO or Amazon now). I don't even think it would displace the original movies for the fans who like them, but just be an interesting alternative. Like I'm enjoying the new "All Creatures Great and Small," but there's several other versions that are very good too, for different reasons. I would definitely miss seeing some of the original cast, but I'd also be interested in seeing other interpretations. Like I think Dan Stevens would be a fantastic Tom Riddle/Voldemort.

18:19 AYYYYYEEEE! BUSS IT! 💪🏾😂

I don't think your conclusion is entirely correct. I was an adult when I got into Harry Potter and I've had the same experience as you. I was actually pretty annoyed by the whole Harry Potter fad when the first movie had come out, but I decided to give it a chance and see what all the fuss was about and saw the film and, to my surprise, I really liked it. I started reading the first book and I was only halfway through it when i went out and bought the next two. "Goblet of Fire' wasn't out in paperback yet, so I had to wait for that one but I devoured it as soon as I could. I was all in on Harry Potter. I was in my late 20's at the time. I had already had my 'putting away childish things' moment. The fact that these were kids stories didn't matter to me. I didn't 'grow up' on them. There was no adolescent nostalgia here like there was with Star Wars. They were just damn good books and great movie adaptations. I read the last three books as they came out and I like them, but not nearly as much as the first four. The same with the movies. Like you, I watched the first four movies far more than the last three. I think the problems are with the stories themselves and not us. I also had the same experience as you with suddenly not caring about this franchise when it was over, despite being so enamored with it before. I think it really has to do with the books. As good as they are, there are a lot of problems with them. Logic problems. Story problems. Most of the problems tend to show up in the last three books, though. The problems that are in the first four are usually minor and can be excused by saying "well, they're kids books, so it's OK". As the books become more mature, however, it becomes harder to handwave the problems away. So, things like the Snitch being 150 points or the Sorting Hat sorting kids based on personality when they're far too young for that and other things are there but they're not that big of a deal in the first book. Harry Potter being the Chosen One, the most tired cliche in all of Fantasy, is a big deal. I groaned when I read that in "Order of the Phoenix". In "Half-Blood Prince", I felt real dismay when I realized that Harry was going to go on a quest for the Seven Magic MacGuffins. A fetch quest? Really? It's so cliche and video-gamey. Then, in the final book, he has to find three more magic items! I hated that. There's other story problems but they become more apparent and stack up as the books get darker. The last three books lack a lot of the whimsy and mystery that the first four books have. What was once magical becomes mundane. I get what Rowling was trying to do with the series, each book was one school year, but I think, in the end, that was a mistake. Seven years is just too long. By the time it was over, we're all tired. The magic is dried up. The story was stretched out too long. I think most of us were just ready to move on when it was done. I still watch the movies from time to time but not nearly as much as I used to. I don't give a crap about any of the sequels and prequels and video games or anything else. Most of the crap is awful and just made to make money. I still like the series but I just don't care about it anymore. Not like I did when it was fresh.

Profound video man, I appreciate the really adult conclusion you took from it, its funny but I very much tapered off watching the videos at the same time and for similar reasons, the only major difference was that I had been started on the books earlier than the movies, so while I was a little young to connect to the teenage angst in book five by book six I was on a similar level emotionally and its my favorite book in the series, meanwhile goblet of fire remained my favorite film and I actually never bothered seeing movie six, and going and seeing deathly hallows 1 and 2 felt almost like a obligation or formality since by then I had finished the book series for a few years and the conclusion of the movie series didn't mean nearly as much to me as the seventh book had which I read in my early teens and which basically served as a capstone for my early childhood and hailed the long journey to adulthood

3:11 Because that's what they are.

After seeing that "10 years" in title, I felt an extreme anxiety of thought train thay what the fuck was I doing in last ten years?!

I've been an HP fan since 2001 when I was 11. To this day I absolutely LOVE this amazing series...of books. Yeah, since literally the first film, I've been extremely underwhelmed by all the movies. For years I've been envious of Star Wars and LOTR fans for the vastly superior quality of those films. I honestly can't remember a single time I've ever sat down to watch an HP movie all the way through after initially seeing them. The books still hold up extremely well and it's a fucking tragedy that their cinematic representations are as bland and forgettable as their sources are enthralling and timeless.

The first 3 are my favorite but 3 was always the best

I think it all holds up pretty well

22:32

The Cinematography got dry and Colourless from Part 5 which I didn't like at all! I couldn't even see anything in most scenes!!

I am younger than you but I also feel Goblet of Fire is the last memorable one

I need a fan edit of dh into one movie without an epilogue. Challenge accepted i guess

I thought this video essay was very good with a lot of strong points to make. I thoroughly enjoyed the video, which is why I wanted to talk more in this comment no one will ever read haha. I feel that a few important things were missing from this video. I had a very different experience from you in watching Harry Potter, but to the same result. I started reading the books after the first movie came out, and from then on I watched and read each movie and book as they were released. I was already a voracious reader at that age and was reading all sorts of things. I did not re-watch the movies often like you did, but I still had very strong memories of the first few movies (and books) while the later ones are very foggy. And like you, I had no more desire to engage with Harry Potter after the last movie came out. There are two big reasons I think are missing from this video. 1. Harry Potter just... isn't THAT good, honestly. It never was. It's not bad by any means, and there are some truly magical moments in it, but in the end it was just never really that profound. Most of the themes were shallow or (as you pointed out) not really delivered on in the end. It was just interesting enough to leave one wanting to find out what comes next, but not something so powerful that you carry it deep in your soul after. It's an aesthetic, a soundtrack, a sense of whimsy. Fun to play with, easily discarded. Once our collective craving to find out what happened next was satisfied by the ending, the fire that drove many of us to return to Harry Potter simply died out. The series finished and we were finished with it. 2. The plot in the later half of the series becomes too complicated to stand out on its own. I think this is why we both remembered the first entries vividly while the rest was hazy, even though you did a great deal of re-watching while I did not. The early plots were very simple and focused. A strong core cast of characters, a clear single goal, a journey from point A to point B getting there, and a conclusion. Later on though, the series became bogged down by a huge extended cast that ended up becoming unfocused. Characters were introduced and then never relevant again, or brought back in way later when we'd almost (if not entirely) forgotten who they were. Huge and complex plots and plans, all these different orders and groups, started dominating the series. Suddenly there was a LOT more to keep track of, and it got much harder to remember what was going on or to tell what was important. I remember when the last book came out there were entire scenes where I sat there just struggling to remember who some of these people were, and why they were around, and what they wanted. I understand things will get more complicated later in a long-running series, but I think those complications weren't handled as well as they could have been and thus became very difficult to remember. It also makes the later entries less interesting to return to, as either you sit there confused trying to keep track of things or you already know it all and there's no more suspense due to there being such a strong focus on unraveling secrets you already know. Just my two cents. Again, I really enjoyed this video!

The depression and anxiety that Harry feels through out Phoenix is done really well I think

My big problem with the first three is that they're just not that great on a script level. So many scenes of "life at Hogwarts" that do absolutely nothing but stall for time while the plot waits to take off in the third act. Whenever I rewatch those three I always find that I have no memory of what order things happen in.

This is a little all over the place. There are like 5 different thesises (thesi?)

regardless of what we think of harry potter, can we all agree that it is loads better than twilight

....I've never seen a HP movie. I guess I'll get around to it.

Amusingly enough, I only really fondly enjoyed the first two books/films. They're the simplest and cheesiest ones, sure, but reflecting back that's exactly what I wanted from the series and Azkaban onwards was quite a hard transition away from that. JKR's own issues aside, it feels a shame that HP was the only significant book series in my childhood to get a big-budget, well-made film adaptation. I loved both Artemis Fowl and Mortal Engines more then and still do now, but both of their adaptations deeply betrayed the central themes of the series (respectively the reformation of a villain protagonist, and the horrors of both reckless consumption and ecofascism). It's pretty sad to look back and see the latter two have their potential squandered, while the former has come to fuel a movement threatening my safety.

Sometime since the last movie, I woke up day and thought it idiotic that the 'wizarding world' hadn't... Grown up as a society. Sure, the first couple of books and films are clearly for children, so who cares if a 20th/21st Century boy is thrust into a sub steampunk style world not dissimilar from that of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... Wands being used basically as firearms... Latin words, silly gestures... For a while I argued with myself that the Orientals didn't use glass in the same way we did in the West for centuries as they didn't need to, they had other things, yet... And when I first ordered my smartphone to do a thing which it promptly DID..? The separation of the two worlds, the pure White Anglo Saxon Protestant angle of it all, with token foreigners... It bugged me. I saw the Fantastic Beasts movies, and these aspects bugged me more. I'm DONE with any wizarding world set in modern times on Earth which hasn't acquired tech and included it. I mean, why do all that fireplace Skype calling when a couple of enchanted phones and you got maybe tactile holograms?

I agree on Snape but I think you missed the point about Dumbledore. You can throw questions about why he didn't make the Horcruxes more obvious to Harry (maybe he didn't have time, who knows) But he knew what he had to do to save everyone from Voldemort's reigns, you could argue that this is not an act of a pure mind, but it isn't an act of evilness either. It's there to show that even his hands had to get dirty. In Order of the Phoenix he clearly explained that he distanced himself from Harry because he thought that would help, but the message here is that you can't just ignore and repress those things, you need to help and give love, exactly what Dumbledore learns and then does after that point. About Gambon's portrayal in the movies it differs from director to director, it was up and down I think, but I don't blame him, he's just an actor doing a job, and a damn fine one. People mostly only cite Goblet of Fire for the reasoning of him being "bad" which I think is incredibly unfair, because that's on Mike Newell completely, Newell wanted to dramatize that movie, not in nuanced and tough ways like Yates, but in cheap ways instead, so he made the characters be loud and make a scene in every moment. Under Yates Gambon got better, especially in Half Blood Prince where he's a clear mentor and friend to Harry, he did exactly what he needed to in that movie to work. That's my fifty cent anyway.

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Oh my lord. I feel like crying. You've just managed to summate my feelings entirely. I adored these movies. Now I feel somewhat embarrassed about them. Why? Again, like you, I just don't know. Is it because of the cornyniess of some of them, especially the earlier ones? Is it because I've simply grown out of the fairly simplistic good v evil story? Do I actively despise them for exactly the reasons you mention, Rowling's behaviour of late and the irritatingly shrill and twerpish fan base? I think it's more profound. As i said, i loved and adored these films. Never a big Potter fan, never read the books, never owned a Gryffindor scarf anything like that. But these movies were loved by me. Why? I think it's because they're saturated, bathed, positively soaked in nostalgia. Painful, really agonising nostalgia, the sort of nostalgia that seems to turn everything sepia in retrospect. They are so bundled up with memories for me, so utterly enmeshed with moments of my childhood it is impossible for me to view them objectively. I still remember cradling the VHS book of Chamber of Secrets, and debating with my sister which was better, 1st or 2nd film (she liked the 2nd more, I hated it because it was too scary). I remember seeing 6 onwards with the mum and sister, and being enraptured at every moment. I remember the weird DVD menus and all the odd games they had on their. I remember seeing 7 pt1 with my mates during secondary school. I even remember the first time I ever came, over Emma Watson on the DVD box cover of HP5. Yes it's even that vulgar. I remember them. Each one is like a slither of ice stuck into my heart. It almost makes it burst with aching and longing. They seem so innocent, quaint, sincere. They seem out of time, franchise films before the boom of them. Franchise films which, unlike most these days, seemed to have genuine spirit and passion and joy bajed into them. Its message of friendship and overcoming evil through the power of love and sacrifice and forgiveness seems almost unbearably sweet in such a cruel, modern world. They take me back to a time which seems to grow only brighter as things go on. By watching these films I relive my childhood. Not just literally, but metaphorically. I remember my school years, in Harry and his friends I see myself and all hje wonderful friends I had. In their hijinks and fun I recall with unbridled joy the sense of total, free, anxiety-less joy each day seemed to bring. The feeling of mutual love and respect, of comradeship, of absolute bonding that I had with those people, every time I watch the films I feel like I can see my childhood pass before. When we depart the three at the end, my heart breaks. I almost beg them to stay. Because I know that leaving them is leaving my childhood, closing it shut, I have to, by default, process the modern world again. By leaving them behind I say goodbye to that entire chunk of my life. And I can't do it. Not again. I feel like a bit of my soul is torn out when those last few notes of John Williams score plays. I sigh. Its over. Its gone. Its all gone. As you say, it was like that with my childhood friends. I never spoke to them again after it ended, I'm not in toutch with any of them, they may as well be different people at this by how much they've probably changed. They're sort of...gone forever. So that's why. My objective, adult, film critical brain cannot work at all with my childhood longing nostalgic ache brain. They are just incompatible. I don't know how to judge them, how to divorce myself from the emotions they are pregnant with. So I avoid them, allowing to live on more as memories in my mind, key moments of a ended happiness, much safer there than to actually confront them. As with the films, so with childhood. Why confront it head on and be acutely reminded of all you've lost when they are exist as vague, undefined, cloud bursts of joy in my mind. Let them stay there, and frolic, and dance forever.

This vid is SO Hufflepuff >:0

I'm 20 now, so I was 10 when Part 2 came out. Deathly Hallows Part 1 felt boring sad and scary to me (much like Order of the Phoenix) but DHP2 was a nonstop thrill ride for me. Funnily enough I found Prisoner of Azkaban to be the least memorable one and the innocence in the first two is always a comfort, as is the fun in Goblet of Fire (I never really found it that dark because I couldn't understand the darker aspects when I watched it).

10000x agree. It's a damn shame that this video hasn't got a huge number of views. It's very well done. I think Harry Potter in general, even just the main books (excluding fans, etc.) is too politically charged. In a world where politics is shoved down the throats of everyone 24/7 at every facet, the last thing I would want to do is dive into the politically charged world of HP. Tolkien is also political, but considerably less so. In a way you can actually say that LotR is anti-political considering that the hobbits had to cut through politics and do what needed to be done. Vs HP where they have to win politically, physically, and mentally in everyway to "win".

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