The planned HBO Max show promises to be good. Along with all the Star Wars news and Indiana Jones trailers, the information that HBO is returning to the Magical World of Harry Potter has recently been among the most exciting. HBO Max plans to tell the Harry Potter story again as a TV series, not with confusing prequels with misleading titles, but with the name brand product itself.
As you might expect, different parts of the fandom have responded to the news differently. Some fans are excited about a new interpretation and returning to the Wizarding World. Others are worried about how the show will handle the book material. Still, others oppose the project because a new adaptation of material that has already been adapted may not add much to what the first adaptations did.
When a new version of a well-loved story comes out, it’s natural for people to roll their eyes and worry about how the production might mess up the World and the story that means so much to many people. Look at how much fuss there was about The Rings of Power last year if you need a reminder. What seems to be lost in the flurry of pros and cons being thrown around in response to this news is an essential point that readers should think about no matter where they stand on this issue: Harry Potter should have been a TV series from the start, no matter how popular the movies are.
What Made Harry Potter So Appealing
One important thing to take away from this for any reader or adapter is that the stories were interesting because of the place’s setting and charm. The idea that a secret and magical Wizarding World full of unknown wonders existed alongside the World we all live in sparked the imaginations of a whole generation of readers, who all secretly wished that on their 11th birthdays, an owl would bring them a letter written in green ink.
The Wizarding World combined the allure of the strange and the comfort of the familiar in a way that was hard to resist. Readers were drawn into a world where the strange and half-remembered fairytale elements of witches, wizards, potions, and magic became a practical concern of everyday life. A foreign element was skillfully blended with school life and growing up to make the story almost universally appealing.
A Harry Potter TV Series Can Catch That Magic Better Than Movies Can
Because of the original appeal of the stories, a TV series is a much better way to show Harry Potter than a film series. As popular as the movies were, except for the first one, they didn’t do much to show how fun school life was or how charming the Wizarding World was. Even if that part of the movie didn’t work, it wasn’t necessarily the filmmakers’ fault. In a film, the tiny bits of school drama and magical charm has to be glossed over for the sake of the bigger story.
But that’s exactly why a TV series is a better way to tell the story than a movie. A sequel has 3, 4, or even five times more space to tell the story than a 2-hour movie does. This means that the school, magical environment, and all of the small, charming parts that made the books appealing in the first place don’t have to be cut to save time. The central plot points and drama can be dealt with over a season, but no single episode has to carry the entire plot. This means that each episode can focus more on the parts of the story that made it enjoyable in the first place. Teenage nerves and drama about grades, sports, friends, and enemies, the thrill of breaking school rules, the depth of the friendship with Hagrid, and Fred and George’s crazy antics can all finally be given their due.
A Harry Potter TV Series Can Finally Hit the Notes the Movies Missed
Even though the movies were very popular, much criticism of the characters and plot points comes from the fact that character arcs from the books were either glossed over or left out of the movies. Rufus Scrimgeour’s job as Minister of Magic was an exciting contrast to Cornelius Fudge’s. However, even though he is more skilled, he has just as many problems as Fudge, and Harry’s reaction to the contrast between the two is a critical moment in the book. Even so, Scrimgeour (Bill Nighy) is just a footnote in the movies, and he isn’t even the most critical thing that was left out.
Some fans also didn’t like that Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) married Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) and that Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) ended up with each other. Again, this is mostly because of how the plots of the movies squish the character arcs together. In the books, Ron was a true and loyal friend with a sharp sense of humor who sometimes became short-sighted and jealous of his popular and famous friend. In later installments, the movies moved away from this, leaving out the subtleties and turning Ron into a short-tempered version of the Ron from the books.
Ginny was treated even worse, mainly because her character arc was not taken into account at all. In the books, she became a much more important part of the main plot as the story continued. She was the only character who could joke about Harry having a dragon tattooed on his chest, which Ron never did. Most of this was lost in the movies, and Ginny seemed much less interesting than she did in the books because she was mostly left out of the story.
This only scratches the surface, but suffice it to say that important long-term character arcs are perhaps the most important way that a TV series can be different from a film: the characters and their development don’t have to be sped up for time, and the format of a TV show has the promise of being able to deliver exactly those things that made the books famous from the start: the charm of the World, the nostalgic familiarity, etc.
