Entry 10: New Movie Trilogy and Closing Thoughts

             So, J.K. Rowling adapted Harry Potter’s fictional school book Fantastic Beasts and where to find them into a short companion book for the series a few years back. Recently it has been announced that a new trilogy of movies loosely based on this book is in the works. The fact that this book doesn’t have a story and really does just act as a fictional informational book means that these movies are being based more on an idea from this book rather than the book itself, which in a way can be a good thing since that will mean there is no worry of straying from any sort of source material. It will be a prequel set many years before Harry Potter in the same universe, and the screenplays are actually being written by Rowling herself, meaning that this isn’t just someone else’s vision of one of her ideas, but the woman herself is coming in full force to give people more of what they want. We won’t be expecting the first movie for maybe another year or two (you never know when things may get pushed back), but many Potter fans are eagerly awaiting any reason to go back into this magical world.

            And here, I have touched on pretty much everything I know and feel regarding the Harry Potter series, short of talking about the actors from the movies themselves (which is a whole different topic of its own). This is a series I started reading as a young boy, and while the theme may be death, many other underlying themes such as friendship and loyalty have really stuck with me through the years as I continued to read these books and watch these movies. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I still don’t fully understand the beliefs of those who think this is a series that goes against their religion in some way, unless it just has something to do with magic in general, but then I guess they also shun Mickey Mouse due to his role in Fantasia. I’m not trying to attack anyone, but just provide my general view that I believe that this is a good series for children to get into that can teach them about friendship and general stories of good vs. evil. It’s the kind of series that sticks with many people through to adulthood, and it can truly be life changing.

Entry 9: Other Books, Plays, and Miscellaneous Items

            J.K. Rowling has written several companion books to her Harry Potter series. These include books such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, as well as others. These are books that were mentioned throughout the stories, and acted as textbooks or other reading material in the Harry Potter universe. Reading them really expands on the official lore and kind of acts as a gateway for those that want to peek further into the Harry Potter world.

            Several stage plays were also adapted based on Harry Potter. There is a trilogy of plays that adapt the story in its own way that gained popularity, and one of the actresses from the movie even showed up to play her own character within the play. A new play is being produced right now that acts as a sequel to the original series of seven novels. It features the original characters as adults with their children attending Hogwarts, and new stories are to unfold as it progresses. J.K. Rowling herself is very excited about the project and speaks about it frequently on her social media.

            Harry Potter has also been adapted in many other forms. There is the Harry Potter trading card game, in which you collect several cards that you can buy in packs and build your decks to compete against friends with. While you can still buy some cards for this today, it never quite picked up the same as other popular card games among children such as Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon. There are several other kinds of Harry Potter games too, such as Monopoly and Trivial pursuit, and several board games adapted from specific books in the series rather than the series as a whole.

            Harry Potter candy is even a thing. Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans are these kind of jelly beans that, literally, come in every flavor within the Harry Potter universe, ranging from cotton candy, to dirt, to vomit. These have been made for everyday purchase, and having personally eaten some, I must say they can actually get quite gross. It is really fun though to play Bertie Bott roulette with some friends though and see how long you can go before you cringe at the nasty flavor you got. There is even more as far as apparel, costumes, and posters go, the list can really go on forever.

Entry 8: The Video Games – Games 4-7 and Lego

             The video game based on the fourth Harry Potter story was the first entry to take on the stereotypical approach to licensed gaming. Rather than using the more unique art style of the previous games, the game now modeled the characters after the actors of the movies. The cover art for the video game even featured an actual picture of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter instead of an original art. The game itself was reflected by this as well. Gone were the day of freely exploring Hogwarts and immersing yourself in the world as you made your way through the story, but now the game followed a very linear path with no room to go off the beaten path. It became the kind of game that you didn’t really take at your own pace, and could more than likely beat in a matter of a day or two. This was in fact the most poorly received Harry Potter game to date.

            The fifth game was the first one to make its way to a new generation of consoles with the PS3 and Xbox 360 being added to the mix. This entry featured more realistic visuals with the characters actually distinctly resembling the actors from the movies. While the fourth game did try this approach, it wasn’t until the power of the new generation that these games could really make the characters look realistic. The fifth game did take steps towards correcting the problems of the fourth though, and the open world explorations made a return. This was retained in the 6^th game as well.

            The 7^th game was split into two parts just like the films. This was viewed as more of a cash grab, and it became apparent that the games were officially no longer following the spirit of just giving a game version of the source material, and were now full-on movie based games. This movie cut exploration altogether as well, and followed the trend of “Cover Shooters,” games where you just run around and shoot enemies rather than focus on puzzle solving. While this didn’t necessarily make them bad games, it was a far cry of an ending to the game series from the puzzle filled games fans came to know.

            The final two games thus far are a part of the Lego video game franchise. Lego Harry Potter years 1-4 and 5-7. These games are more geared towards children (but are also enjoyed by adults), and cover the entire Harry Potter story over the span of these two games in a unique Lego fashion, and are generally well received.

Entry 7: The Video Games – Games 1-3 and Quidditch

              Now that I’ve rambled on about the first game, let’s start discussing them more in general. The first game covered the story of Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, and I feel like I could say that a gamer who hadn’t read the book or seen the movie could pick up the game and get the idea. It’s still not the same as reading the source material, and I’m sure nothing ever will be, but the games had decent pacing and one event always led to another that gave good explanation as to what was going on in the world and what your motivations were.

            The second game in the series, The Chamber of Secrets, was a tried and true sequel to the original. Many of the locations removed the same, the game retained the same art style and general gameplay, astonishingly enough among all iterations of the game. Like the first game, this one was released among multiple platforms, and each one saw their own unique care put into making them. Looking at the first and second game on PS1, the games clearly belonged to the same series, and the same could be said about the PS2 games. These different versions of the sequel all again told the same story of Harry’s second year in different ways, and each one tried to build off of their predecessors adding more stuff to do in general such as flying cars, more in depth potion brewing, and new puzzles to be solved.

            The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third game, was the first departure for the series. The art style changed, and it didn’t find itself released on as wide a spread of platforms, leaving out some of the older ones. The transition for the third game on a console that kept up though, such as PS2, wasn’t all too bad. The PS2 versions of the first and second games were open world and allowed for many sidequests, and the third game did tend to retain some of these features. The world environments did change though, and again, so did the art style. This game also offered the ability to play as three characters, which was totally new from the one character gameplay of the others.

            A spin-off game, Harry Potter Quidditch World Cup was later released for the current gen systems of the time, and was completely different from the previous games. Where each other game focused on the story of a particular book, this game was a sports game based on the fictional sport of Quidditch. It was similar to football and basketball games of the time in that there really wasn’t a story, but you played through a season of Quidditch as your selected team and moved through the ranks. While the game starts out as just the school teams, it moved into fictional worldwide teams really expanding on the universe.

Entry 6: The Video Games – The Sorcerer’s Stone

            Moving on from books and film, I’m ready to move onto a different piece of Harry Potter media, the video games. Now, not every video game entry is going to get its own blog entry, but the first one specifically is going to get one for a reason I’ll get into in a minute.

At the age of 5 I started playing video games, my first being Crash Bandicoot for the Playstation 1. I really got into gaming, which became a regular hobby for me alongside reading, so when I heard that a Harry Potter video game was coming out after the release of the movie, I was very excited. Games based on licensed products nowadays are typically frowned upon, namely games based on movies rather than original ideas. They usually have a budget used to get the game done quick and really cash in on the name while it’s still hot and popular in theaters, and doesn’t usually add up to a rewarding experience. Veteran gamers will typically stray away from these games, leaving a more casual audience to pick these up and feed the frenzy.

My young self knew nothing about this though, and I was all over the idea of a Harry Potter video game. My mom got me the game for Christmas for my Playstation, and I loved every second of it. It wasn’t all about being cinematic or eye popping action, it was more about solvling puzzles and using your mind as you made your way through the Harry Potter story. It wasn’t like the games you normally see based on a movie today. I believe that this may be due to the fact that the game was perhaps released based on the popularity of the movie, but was not released as an adaptation of the movie, but rather the source material itself.

Now I want to dig a bit deeper into the first game specifically due to the fact that I owned and played four copies of it: A copy for Playstation, for PS2, for Gameboy Advance, and for PC. And all of these games were completely different! They followed the same story, sure, but the gameplay was different, adapted to suit whatever system you were playing on, and the puzzles and overall experience was different. I could literally buy the same game four times and get four different experiences?! That is something that is unheard of today, and something that made me believe that they took extra care into actually making a good, fun game for everybody to enjoy.

Entry 5: The Deathly Hallows

           The Deathly Hallows saw a very interesting, more unique release than the previous film adaptions of the Harry Potter books. Rather than try to cram this massive book into a movie, having to pick and choose what gets changed and what gets left out, they decided to go with the risky move of making the final book into two movies. I say risky, because this is at a point where much of the fanbase was finally anticipating an end to a series of movies they’ve been with for years. 7 books should naturally equal 7 movies, right? Not 8? It’s not so bad, but there was also the actors to factor into this decision. Around the time of the release of the fourth movie there was a lot of speculation about whether or not the actors were getting too old. With each book covering only one year, these actors were starting to really pass the ages of their respected characters. While many actors have been known to play younger characters before, I think people were just worried that watching grown men play 15 year olds was going to become a bit weird. Several rumors even started going around about how they may just have to recast younger actors at some point, a really awkward decision if you’d ask me. Dumbledore had already been replace after the second movie due to the unfortunate death of his previous actor, and many people were already having a hard time adapting to that. Replacing the cast we’d been with for so  many years now though seemed crazy. In the end it worked out, and we did manage to retain most everybody from start to finish, even many of the background characters from the first movie still playing the background in the 8^th.

            This split in general of making one book into two movies really did seem to be the right move though. Some things were still left out, namely a few details from more flashbacks this time involving Snape, but nothing that would have been totally necessary to the advancement of his character compared to what got left out with Voldemort in the last entry. While this really worked with the last book though, it would not have worked had they, say, tried to make every book into two movies. Then we really would have had a bunch of old men and women running around as teenagers.

Entry 4: The Half Blood Prince

           This is personally my biggest issue with the transition from book to film. The Half Blood Prince was one of my favorite books in the series, if not my favorite book overall (up for debate with The Deathly Hallows). So of course, I couldn’t help but think going in that I would already be harsher to judge the movie version. And I probably was, but overall it was a good movie. Other than one thing that got left out…

            So, throughout the series it is established that Voldemort (or Tom Riddle) is Harry’s nemesis. He’s the man that killed Harry’s parents, has made numerous attempts on Harry’s life, and proceeds to pose a threat to Harry’s friends and classmates. He comes off simply as just a very, very evil man. The 6^th book though, The Half Blood Prince, attempts to allow us to understand Voldemort through a series of flashbacks. Harry views these flashes into Voldemort’s past in Dumbledor’s office. He witnesses Dumbledor’s first encounter with Voldemort as a child, when he was inviting him to go to Hogwarts and learn to harness magic. These flashbacks gave Harry hints as to why he and Voldemort are connected, why they share certain thoughts and abilities. The flashbacks delve more into Voldemort’s teenage years at the school and expand on a major plot point involving a teacher explaining to him the process of splitting your soul, allowing you to live for, if done right, potentially forever.

            The film delves into these explanations as well. But the film pretty much stops there. Let me backtrack for a moment. Early in the film, Harry begins taking a potion class where he finds the book of the Half Blood Prince and begins to master the creation of many different potions. Among the potions he learns about is a love potion, a potion that can create a false sense of love within the one who consumes it. They become borderline obsessed with the person who gave it to them, devoting themselves in a kind of sick, false love. This happens later in the story to Ron, and Harry must help him to overcome it. The movie just kind of drops it here though, a simple side plot. It was meant to be so much more than that though… In the book, Harry learns that a love potion was used on one of Voldemort’s parents. A child is not meant to be born based on this false and forced love, and yet he was. It explains why he doesn’t feel love, why he can’t understand love, and why love is one of the many things that ultimately overthrow him. The movie sets up everything about the love potion perfectly for this revelation into why Voldemort is the way he is! And yet, they let it drop. They just never bring it up again. Why? Why even put in the other scenes about the love potion in the first place then? It makes me question if the people who made the movie even read the book, or did they just personally not find this important? I think it is very important to understand the actions of the villain, understand why things happen the way they do. This is but one deeper example out of many in regards to the subject I brought up in an earlier post regarding people watching the movie over reading the book: while the movie is certainly fun to watch, even if it is well made, key details are left out and you may be none the wiser.

Entry 3: The Films

             I’ve mentioned before how I believe the films really expanded on the popularity of Harry Potter when I was a child, and I stand by the thought that they are what really expanded it into what it is even today. While the books were no doubt popular on their own, we live in a world today where, sad to say, people really don’t read as much as they used to. When a child is assigned a book to read in school, they are likely to either look up a summary or just watch the movie. It really is a lot easier to just sit down for a couple of hours and visually take in a story rather than spend, I don’t know, eight or nine hours (it really depends on the length of the book) reading through all of the nitty gritty details. But what is it that makes people not want to experience that extra level of detail? If they really love the movie, shouldn’t they want to read the book and take in all of those little extra bits of story that the book provides? Is it just because watching the movie is faster (simply a matter of time)? Is it because they aren’t that great at reading (skill levels really do vary)? But then even in that case, I have a friend who just listened to all of the books on tape to ensure that he wasn’t missing out on anything.

            The thing about these movies is that they really do give a decent representation of the books. They aren’t like the typical movie to book transition where half of the story is lost or changed (although the movies do have some changes, they are minor to the overall story). I personally thought the first and second movie did a fantastic job of adapting the books to the big screen. They covered pretty much all of the important details, many minor ones, and even have available extended editions for people who wanted even more out of them. But it’s after these first two films that we really start to see some bigger changes. More scenes are altered or left out in later films. Yes, someone who has watched the movie can probably still have a conversation with someone who has read the book, but they will be missing chunks, or some parts of the story may not line up the same. Why the change from the first two? Well, the first two were really much smaller books than any that followed. Later books in the series became rather large, around 800 or so pages, so more and more needed cut. But I didn’t see anything changed that overly bothered me… Not until the Half Blood Prince anyway.

Entry 2: The Books – Where Better to Start Than the Beginning

     It all started with the books of course. In 1997, J.K. Rowling released what she probably never imagined in her wildest dreams the book that would make one of the world’s most famous authors to date. She was struggling to make ends meet, rumored to have been writing down notes for her story on napkins in a café, and is now continuing to publish books regularly and live a more comfortable life.

            The books follow the life of Harry Potter, a young boy orphaned from a time when he was just a young baby and forced to live with his horrible Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin, the Dudleys. While calling the family horrible should be chalked up to a matter of opinion, I’ve never personally spoke to anybody who was fond of these characters, the characters who forced Harry to live in a cupboard under the stairs mostly due to a form of discrimination, but I digress. On Harry’s 11^th birthday, it is revealed to him after a series of events that he is a wizard, as was his parents, and this was why the Dudleys hated him so. It is from here that his new life starts as he travels to Hogwarts to study witchcraft and wizardry, and everything changes for him.

            Something that is very common throughout the book series is that they do tend to start in the Dudley home for most of the books, 4 or 5 of the 7 anyway. You typically get to see Harry dealing with the hardships of being in their home for the summer, with one bad thing or another happening involving magic, and then Harry is back on his way to the wizarding world.

            Rowling has stated that the theme of the books is death, a them that critics began to find too dark as the series went on. Starting from book 4 on, there was at least one (sometimes many more) major character death by the end of the book. While the story may get grim, it my own personal belief that the stories originally grew with the readers. The content was always dark in a sense, this is true, but I found that as I got older, the content of the books tended to get more mature as well, including more deaths, romance between the characters, and much more intricate plots. I wouldn’t say that any of the books are quite out of the grasp of children though, but I might say reading the first book at age 8 would be okay while the seventh book may want to be held off until age 12 or 13 before a child could truly appreciate all of the intricacies.

Entry 1: An Introduction

     Harry Potter has become a huge phenomenon all around the world, no doubt about it. Surely even if you don’t partake, you’ve more than likely heard about it. It started as a series of books written by J.K. Rowling, and has since expanded into several other areas of media, including movies, video games, card games, and much more. In this blog, I’m going to discuss Harry Potter within these many types of media and talk about how they’re different, how they may attract different audiences, the involvement of different people within multiple types of these media, it really is a huge subject to look at.

     For a little bit of insight, I’ve been with this series myself since I was about 8 years old, when about three of the seven books were released. I had just finished the first book in the series and was starting the second when trailers for the first movie started coming out, so I was getting into the series at a golden time when merchandise started flooding the local Walmarts, and kids that didn’t read as much as I did were still able to talk and get excited about the series with me at the release of the movie. A book I was reading that seemed like a secret to me within my class at first became the next big thing at the release of the film, which was honestly very exciting to be able to talk to my peers about. There were a few though whose parents were very religious, and regarded Harry Potter as satanic, something I couldn’t really grasp as a young boy. These were the same children who opted out of Halloween activities in school and went to other rooms during these times. Because of this, there was a short period where the administration didn’t seem to know what to do, and we weren’t allowed to have the books at school. This didn’t last long though, as the next school year I remember watching the first film on VHS at our class Christmas party, and again those who didn’t wish to watch were free to go.

     My experience with the series does go far back into my childhood, and was certainly affecting the world around me, as well as others who didn’t even have the slightest interest in it. I personally still enjoy the series, watching the movies again from time to time and every few years rereading the books. I plan to get all of my thoughts out regarding the different mediums of this I’ve experienced, and whether you’re a fan or not, I hope you can still find some aspects of this interesting.