I just feel bad for the kids they end up casting. Those kids won't deserve the shitstorm thats inevitably going to come their way regardless of how this pans out.
I saw a screenshot of a tweet that they had to do an open casting call for the child leads. Probably because the existing pool of child actors and their parents don’t want to make money for Rowling.
@@megmcawasnt the movie open casting? They went to schools looking for the main trio. Emma was discovered after her school announcer auditions and Rupert sent in a VHS tape
Not to get randomly existential or anything, but child actors have always felt like a weird ethical grey area for me. Even if they genuinely *want* to be in a movie or show, it’s their parents who do the consenting. Which, with stories as huge as HP, makes you wonder how many of the parents are genuinely supporting their kids vs. looking forward to the proxy fame and direct fortune. The ten- and eleven-year-olds won’t be the ones ultimately deciding whether to support something that gives a TERF even more money and relevance. But there are plenty of jerks on the internet (and even misguided mainstream media) who would either end up scapegoating the kids anyway, or would use them to prop up their own bigotry.
@nerijas5295 I work in children's theatre, and yeah, there are a lot of safety precautions you need to have in place. We put in a lot of legwork to protect our kids, both in person and on the online spheres. Any time children are working, there is a mountain of potential abuse you have to carve away. Big studios typically only put in enough work to prevent a lawsuit, and it breaks my heart. I still absolutely think you can have child actors in an ethical way, but I doubt WB is going to put in the right kind of effort. Especially if they cast any poc kids in the main set. Studios tend to pick vulnerable actors for progressive points and then do nothing to defend them from the backlash.
It should have been animated, but for some reason executives(and a big portion of the audience) think animation is a genre for kids and not a medium that can tell endless stories.
This is what I always felt! It would separate it and give it a chance to do things live action can’t portray. Also it wouldn’t matter if kids got older or actors left or died because there could be a sense of continuity that the original couldn’t.
Remaking a book/movie series that was originally very well received, not that long after original release, at its historically least popular state- due to the author, mostly- AND attaching her name to it is just an absolutely terrible idea. I have no idea why this ever got approved
Money. Money. Money. Capitalism does not care about anything but the bottomline. Mostly short-term. Long term it would be wise to focus on maintaining the franchise, but its a risk they are willing to take. Cause it will make money. Star Wars probably lost lots of money right after the disney trilogy, but I'm sure they made it back with the TV shows.
It's been over 23 years since the first book had an adaption. It's been plenty of time. It's also better than making up random stories about the series with the failed fantastic beast spinoff. WB is treating this IP like a break in case of emergency for easy money.
@@gilbertoflores7397 I think we disagree on the definition of plenty of time, honestly. The films aren’t outdated, they still visually hold up. Remaking them at this point screams “we have run out of ideas, hand us your cash”
@@princessadrigirl6774as someone who loves the movies, there’s a lot even in later movies that doesn’t hold up visually, like them flying through the burning room of requirement. Also, there’s endless post online about how much the movies left out from the books that a show could include
Marauders show is so obvious, it’s the biggest missed shot ever. Literally has an amazing school setting, great characters and character arcs, inbuilt powerful villain/threat.
And you can do the whole Snape gets cucked by James thing. I mean, he didn't but HBO would 100% do that for the DRAMA. Or worse they'd try to force a love triangle.
Tbh I'm not so sure a school centered marauders series would be very interesting. By all acounts they were normal kids are normal school besides for lupin being a werewolf which made them become animagi. If you made a series about them after they left school, those mysterious three times James defied Voldemort, that would be interesting. But I think it way more interesting series would be about the founders. We know virtually next to nothing about them except for the fact that they were great witches and wizards. You have a good screenwriter just that with the Harry Potter IP, it would be an amazing show.
nah, marauders would be amazing. 1. They Were as good as our golden trio if not better, all of them exept lupin obviously managed to become animagi by themselves by their fifith or sixth year i guess. They were school legend arguably as popular and charismatic as the weasley twins (young sirius x james antics would be delightful to watch)... also they litteraly created the map. 2. A lot of major characters of the books were in their teens/early adulthood, makes for really interesting character développement (The Black Sisters dynamics, regulus, a young snape going dark, him and lily dynamics, pete pettigrew's evolution from friend to ultimate backstabber, Petunia's muggle POV ) the possible storylines are endless... 3. Mfckin' Tom Marvolo Riddle in his prime would be absolutly terrifying bro like ain't no philosophical gellert Grindelwald scheming tryna steal bambi's lil cousin and stuff. Just Absolutly ruthless Voldemort on the come up...imagine that.
Harry Potter was a generational phenomena. We talked about the plot in school, met for late night (lol at 9 pm) premier sells in costumes, made our own fanpages and merch until WB stopped that with copyright claims. Governments praised the books for making children read again. In Edinburgh, London and Oxford there are themed tours. But its done today, in Europe more then in Asia and the USA, living of nostalgia nowadays. The USA media need to understand stories are supposed to END. The Artus saga had an ending, the Nibelungen, Shakespeare's plays, every single novel. Repeating the same story to milk it does not work out on a long run...
@@internetkurator9256 Then you're just wrong. Huh, it's actually funny how simple things can be sometimes. You personally not wanting more of it doesn't mean more shouldn't exist.
It bothers be that Hollywood's fear of risk has become associated with comic book movies. Comics take some of the biggest swings in the medium of story telling. Superman lived 400 years into the future and fought two robot clones of Hitler, batman once wandered a wasteland and carried jokers severed head in jar, the entire Marvel Universe was saved by Franklin Richards (a six year old boy) when he created a pocket dimension to keep the Avengers and Fantastic Four safe when they were almost killed by Charles Xavier being possessed by magneto. But they never adapt those stories. They just make movies where Iron Man acts like Dean Martin.
The 80s called, they want their storylines back. Those stories are too goofy to tell especially when the cost of telling them is a couple hundred million for all the CGI involved with superhero films nowadays. Most of the stories that tried to do something different outsides the mold were tepid at best, nobody saw them. The market for comics movies got too oversaturated red and most of the core cast have already moved to other projects. Disney is better off freezing their MCU nonsense and DC can just not do them. They can come back when the movie doesn't need half a billion to be profitable and one of their main stars isn't getting arresting for attacking his girlfriend or whatever the Flash dude did.
@sws212 So, the stories I mentioned are from 1995, 1997, and 2019 respectively. Not the 80s. The 80s are kinda the problem though, it seems like alot of non comic fans who like comic movies, think that the only acceptable comics to read are Frank Miller comics from the 80s. Dark, gritty, with an indeterminable message and theme. But since you got the year wrong I assume you haven't read these books, so on what basis are you calling them goofy? Also I don't want a million interconnected Marvel movies. I want good movies based on comics. Maybe a new take on the Mask or Spawn. Maybe a The Maxx movie. But with effort put into it. Taking the weirdest parts of comics and making them tangible. I don't need a huge CGI budget, I don't need a star studded cast. I just need creativity. Like your main point seems to be a beef with Hyper Capitalism, not Comics.
The first Fantastic Beasts movie was not bad by a long stretch. It actually did a lot of really great things, and I'd argue that the choice to make the movie about some random throwaway character is actually the right choice for quality. It's a step in the opposite direction of the shameless fan-service/sequel/reboot territory. It was actually original and stood on its own, while still exploring aspects of the world that people fell in love with. That's what expanding a franchise should look like, taking a beloved world and telling new and unique stories within them rather than the obvious ones that everyone asks for. The sequel, however, fell into that shameless fan-service sphere with all of its attempts to tie it into Harry Potter. I highly recommend the video "The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" by Pop Culture Detective, which touches on a lot of what makes the first movie (mostly Newt Scamander, admittedly) so good. I'll also add as someone who was recently diagnosed autistic, that Newt's character seems heavily coded autistic but is portrayed in a very positive and not super stereotypical way, a kind of representation that is severely lacking in media right now.
I super agree with you. Loved the first film so much. I think the failure is fantastic beasts 2 and 3. They forced the story of the wizarding war into newts story and as a result they were both worse than the first fantastic beasts. I would have watched ten films about Newt and his friends just adventuring around the world, solving problems related to fantastic animals and helping people everywhere they went. It could have gone back to the HP roots of mystery stories, and I would have loved it. Instead they forced Dumbledore and Grindelwald into Newts films, resulting in canceling the whole franchise because the writing was too scattered and no one was interested
I agree with you! I would have loved a mystical, 1930s version of Steve Irvin. Makes me so mad that they chose to focus on Dumbledore and weird family connections instead
I’d like the fantastic beasts movies better if they’d done separate movies for newt and separate ones for dumbledore/grindlewald. Their stories just don’t make sense when combined.
@Cruizinelli12 Il liked the first movie a lot. As for the second, I thought Dumbledore/Grindlewald was going to be a Wizard WW2 Era movie. Wizards and the Allies covertly fighting against the Nazis and their Wizard associates (the Nazis really liked occultism). But instead Grindy shows that the muggles are bad because they started WW2 meaning the wizards are fighting someone who wants to stop the war. It was a mess.
The worst part is, Rowling is so good at naming. Say what you will about the woman, but she is damn good at naming things. And yet when it comes to Cho, she just did not care.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Cho Chang isn't a name, that's a big thing. Cho could be a Korean last name, but it isn't something which would be used as a Chinese first name. Joanne has an amazing ability to pick interesting, iconic names and when it comes to Cho Chang, she just falls flat.
I think HBO cannot be trusted with their current management after the season finale of House of the Dragon. The CEO got involved and demanded 8 episodes instead of 10 and stayed with that even when there was a writer's strike and nothing could be changed. The fact that he would meddle in their biggest show and actually make it worse, there is no way this Harry Potter series would not have this sort of meddling. This new management is not the same HBO that signed on for infinite seasons of Game of Thrones. THey cannot be trusted to fucked it up and they will because they are so blinded by money. I think the fact that the first thing they did after the merger was a planned Twilight reboot says it all. It's not about quality, it's about trying to squeeze all the money out of things and if they can't they will shelve things (like Batgirl) so no one can ever see it. If anyone is excited show them the last episode of House of the Dragon and I think that excitement will die immediately. They ruined my excitement about the whole world of Westeros shows they have coming up because Zlavits is going to put his little fingers into everything and sacrifice quality for the all-mighty dollar.
I always had a hope that if they did ever plan a reboot/retelling of hp that they would do it as an animated series. With the success of series like arcane, I don’t think it would be too out of left field.
I have to disagree with one thing emphatically: the movie industry was always profit driven and most artistry had to be fought for tooth and claw except that now advertising and data analytics have developed far far more and there's much more data on what sells and how to cater to the biggest audiences. After all, people say Blazing Saddles couldn't be made today, but it also barely got made 40 years ago, and the movie industry monopolies were broken up 40 years before that. (Approximately in both cases)
You know, I've never considered how similar the straight-to-streaming and Marvel secrecy/green screen is to the studio-exclusive contracts in the golden age... Although I can't imagine a studio wanting an exclusive contract these days because it means they'd have to guarantee work.
@@Manakuuchiha I was literally thinking earlier today like "Did they cast Harry Styles in Eternals and similar actors just to have that established relationship whether or not the movie goes well?"
It does seem like this trend has reached a peak though, and is only getting worse. Take something like Lord of the Rings, for example...what studio would take a big risk on an unproven IP with an unproven director, and green-light three massive movies today? That's not to say it didn't take some fighting even then, but it feels like those kinds of punts are impossible now.
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style. Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style. Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style. Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
Rowling fell into my bad graces back in 2013/14, a time during which an active independence campaign was running in Scotland whcih was engendering much healthy debate. Anyway, along she came throwing her weight behind the anti-independence campaign and likening people who supported Scotland's self determination to death eaters, which to amyone who has ever interacted with a supporter of Scottish independence will know is a completely fatuous notion. Perhaps we should have been less surprised though given how Rowling portrays slavery as "common sense" and abolishionists and swivel eyed lunatics.
JFC, what is it with her and calling everyone who disagrees with her "Death Eaters"? Actual Scottish people who wanted independence AND trans activists? And it's pretty disturbing that they're both just groups of people sticking up for rights and self-determination they don't feel are provided by the current social order. I would 💯 read any pastiche novel that presented the conflict in the HP novels from that perspective.
There's another reason she opposes Scottish Independence. An independent Scotland would mean she can kiss her Westminster gifted-billionaire tax breaks goodbye. And she is a staunch neoliberal and Blairite, hence her reluctance to accept anything left of Tony Blair or that espouses anything other than outdated, myth of meritocracy-pushing "End of History" bollocks.
@@EjayT06 Perhaps common sense isn't the right way, but the way she puts it across as "just-so... that's just how it works and we can't/won't do anything about it". Anybody who tries to fight this obvious injustice is seen as a swivel eyed lunatic.
@@apilolomi I apologize if English isn’t your first language but shackles are famously used to keep people in bondage usually against their will… it’s a bit less than ideal that Joanne thought to use shackles as the only black man’s name
My classmate told me that he couldn’t read Harry Potter because it was satanic or play Pokémon because it supported evolution. This was 2010 in California
That's the same stuff religious parents said about it in the 90s and 00s when they were coming out. Good to know the crazy religious nuts never change.
Yeah, having been indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity, don't be too hard on the guy. It's hard to break free and when you do, the usual result is losing all your friends and your family. The price of freedom is too high for some, so they stay willfully ignorant.
@@springshowers4754 Peeves is a mischievous spirit called a poltergeist that lives at Hogwarts and has a fairly significant presence in the novels. He's basically just a pest/nuisance, but he's fun and wacky and can have really good moments, especially when played against Filch, who DESPISES Peeves and basically assumes any disaster is probably his fault. He's just a quirky piece of world building that never had huge plot significance, but still added a ton to the flavor of the wizarding world.
I will always stand by this: Fantastic Beasts should have been a book series. And I love the first movie. But the plots don't feel like movie plots. The screenplays are written like novels, so let them be novels. Maybe the cancellation was a blessing. We can get the final installments in a format that fits.
Yes, it should've been like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, she probably knew early on there was going to be a movie, but Collins is an author of novels. I'm not saying you can't be both, but it's always a bigger risk to go into a new medium.
I honestly agree, those movies felt like they were written like a novel and not a visual medium, the movie constantly implemented storytelling techniques specific to the written medium and further fumbled by failing to incorporate visual storytelling techniques. I’m a storyboard artist and I’ve encountered a lot of scripts over the years that were so obviously written by a novelist who didn’t understand the visual medium they wanted to work with 😓 while things like story structure and character arcs are universal to all storytelling mediums, many storytelling techniques are VERY medium specific. Honestly, if so hadn’t taken creative writing classes as my electives at university I don’t think I would’ve ever appreciated just how differently you have to approach storytelling depending on the medium you’re using. For instance, internalisation (especially when using First Person narration) is an amazing technique in a novel, such direct access to a character’s inner thoughts is the written medium’s greatest strength, but if you try to do a 1 for 1 of that in a visual medium like a movie, it’ll be an awkward voice over monologue completely detached from the visuals, visuals that could otherwise communicate the same information, mood, etc via its own medium specific techniques. Conversely, I’ve read books by authors who clearly were envisioning their story as a movie and their descriptions read more like the art and camera direction annotations on a screenplay than actual prose 😅 such novels are trying so hard to make the reader experience their story as a movie and are basically trying to tell their story via visual storytelling techniques and get bogged down trying to make the reader literally “see” their story as vividly as you see a movie rather than conveying the story through any of the non-visual storytelling techniques that good novels always use. So it definitely goes both ways; novelists and screenplay writers have to be VERY careful whenever they write a story for the opposite medium to what they’re use to, I’d honestly never advise writers jump from one medium to the other without explicitly studying the storytelling craft of that medium, you can utterly ruin a story if you don’t understand the medium you’re working with!
@@Sanakudou i recall when Hogwarts books first had geocities fanpages & i wrote real diary from syudent perspective,,,,myspace 2003,, 2010..i wrote 7 year ,, 25,555 day journal,,each hour a new class,,, new blog page every day ,,every hour ,,,i was a wizard all right ,, i would post & forget & never go back to edit,, cos i had no time ,,i was always typing 300 words an hour..lol...i 'd do it again too.....by 2015 we got the Ilvermorney School.. but no basic origin ,, so i made it up,, another 25,555 days,, in 2022 i thought ,, ah job done,, ah tv show,hmm.please hold ,,ok a Harry Potter tv show,,yeah ,,new 7 years til..2029.. hey show til 2036,,yeah 14 years ..more,,teehee ,, by 2040~ 2047.. thats 50 years ,,like starwars 1977~2027,, wow we got old,,
It's just interesting. I remember people talking about wanting this on Tumblr years and years ago. Must have been 2014. There was this post saying, "no but imagine Harry Potter as a tv show sort of like Game of Thrones where each season is a book and each episode is a chapter everything could be fleshed out" And this was quite popular. It's weird to think about it in retrospect, because no one could have seen things unfolding like this at the time.
Kids on Tumblr thought no one was listening to them. Fandom became extreme there, but it was just a way for them to express their creativity. It was never supposed to make it to the mainstage and no one ever thought it would the way it is now
I think back then it was more of a hypothetical "what if..." and even then, it was long before all the vast majority of these other additions to the franchise and before Rowling went masks off...
Harry Potter is not even that good an IP, you can’t copyright wizards and you can certainly expand on them better than Rowling with her 7 wizard schools that don’t even have names in random ass countries and her characters like Sheamus O’Carbomb. Harry Potter could be replaced my an innumerable amount of fantasy IPs
The concepts like the house elves, so called ‘half breeds’ like Hagrid and the Centaurs not being treated equally to wizards EVEN by the ‘good’ ones is actually the point. Good, kind and clever people can participate in bad things just because they’re normalised. That’s why Hermione as an outsider could see it and Ron couldn’t.
@@hayleyhellbound9513 The whole point of SPEW seemed to be 'Hermione does activation wrong.' It was treated as a joke, not as something positive. And while, yes, there is point that even 'good' people might not be 100% good, nothing is done with that point in the books or films.
But remember, Rowling made the narrative say Hermione was wrong and this system was CORRECT. Which is absolutely disgusting. Rowling had this entire book give a whole "Oh Hermione, you'll understand when you're older!" Giving a, "She's DIFFERENT. She's one of the GOOD ones. The EXCEPTION!" Which is... putrid. This is a real thing. And it's in these book and it should make your skin crawl. If a narrative has to do this sort of override, it's not a good narrative. It's telling the readers they're too stupid to make their own connections. This isn't what happened. There is a sort of caste system for magic in Harry Potter and Rowling is just fine to let it exist. Exceptions like Hermione are different because she's a human. Everyone else? Forget them. They are the rule. That SHOULD bother you.
you are forgetting one thing, if you are going to comment on it you have to show actual consequences and growth. its not the so called good ones doing it being the problem, its JK Rowling shows in the text and dialogue they are being correct. Why else would she describe every bad person as ugly and fat if not her thinking some of is ok?
Bang on. There are many things that have aged poorly in the books, Rowlings obvious disdain for fat people being the most obvious to me but the wizarding world being full of immorality and discrimination is one of the nuanced aspects of the books. At no point are you encouraged to think that Dobby's treatment is ok or the way Hagrid is shunned a good thing, the treatment of prisoners at Azkaban is explicity pointed out as being morally rephrensible, and Sirius's character is shown to be permanently damaged from his experience. JK Rowling has become a deeply reprensible character and if you examine her works then of course you'll find traces of it but the media literacy of the people going through Harry Potter looking for problematic issues, they always settle on these easily disprovable points and it's sad to see.
Hey, so, I was personally only a year or two older than Harry himself as the books were coming out. I have dark hair and wear glasses and was a scrawny kid; this passing physical resemblance combines with a love of the books and literally earned me the nickname "Potter" which was used by *everyone I knew*, family and teachers included, and lasted until I finished high school. To say that the Harry Potter books were formative for me would be a hilarious understatement; I read every book through at least a dozen times, and the longer ones easily more than that - Order of the Phoenix was my favorite. When it later developed that Rowling was becoming what she is now, it was *agonizing* for me to try and associate the love, friendship, whimsy and fun I'd always felt reading the books with... what the author now was. It was only three years ago now that I managed to convince myself to throw away my last remaining hard copy of Order, and it was a painful experience which took that long to build towards and convince myself was the right thing to do. This is all to say that your description of the communities which sprung up around Harry Potter as being full of loving, inclusive, friendly people has helped to... I'm not sure, create a distinction in my mind between what Rowling is, and what Harry Potter is. I'm not exaggerating when I say I had to duck into the bathroom at work to hide my tears while I thought about what you'd said, and how having a lingering love for the series I felt it was my duty to distance myself from might not make me as much of a traitor as it always felt like I was. I say this with absolute sincerity - thank you for, in at least some small way, giving me back a part of something which had meant so much to me for such a large piece of my life. I'm thirty six years old now and will never spend a single dollar of my money in a way which might have any chance of reaching Rowling, but you have helped that twelve year old boy nicknamed Potter within me stop feeling guilty for existing. Again, truly, thank you.
Chapter Timestamps: Chapter 1: Franchise fatigue 3:19 Chapter 2: Reboots 4:52 Chapter 3: State of the brand 8:59 Chapter 4: JK Rowling 17:29 Chapter 5: Is Harry Potter bad, actually? 20:50 Chapter 6: The discourse 35:32 Chapter 7: The movies 38:42 Chapter 8: Mystery 45:08 Chapter 9: Could they pull it off? 47:54 Chapter 10: Death 52:05
There are thousands of great fantasy books that would make for great movies or tv shows but companies keep overlooking them so they can keep milking series for a quick cash grab.
Coming back because I have more thoughts: I think there's a difference between the things the books' messaging was couched in and that messaging itself, and I think that gets pushed aside in a lot of retrospective looks at Harry Potter. Which, honestly, is understandable! I think you can make a good case for themes like the endurance of love, the importance and even beauty of death as "the next great adventure", and the strength and solidarity that comes from finding Your People being muddled and even ruined by the fact that Rowling regularly relies on misogynistic, racist, classist, ableist, fatphobic, transphobic, etc. characterizations of the characters who are supposed to be bad people, do bad things, or act primarily as set dressing. I think you can make a good case for those themes not being able to reach their true potential when put in a story whose protagonist is ultimately quite passive and a protector of the status quo, along with his friends and allies. I think we _should_ be able to make those cases, because I think that's how the next generation of writers learns to do better. But I also do ultimately think that, at that time, she meant well, and I think that for those of us who did speak that same language of tropes and stereotypes, who did understand the status quo as a good thing worthy of protecting, in writing a very basic "discrimination bad" story, she gave us some important tools to start deconstructing that language and understanding, even though she has clearly reached her own limits of that deconstruction. I think people like to mock the idea of Harry Potter being anyone's social justice starting point, but as someone who did grow up fairly conservative... I mean, it was for me, and I think it was for a lot of other fans I met and befriended over the years. It'd be a stretch to call it progressive for its time, but it was the first place I really learned that sometimes, questioning authority is a good thing. I guess what all that boils down to is that I can never really dismiss Harry Potter entirely. It's not an active part of my life anymore; it won't be as long as Rowling keeps going after trans people (and occasionally weaponizing lesbians like me in order to do it). But it was formative to me in a lot of ways that I think it would be pointless to deny, and I do think there's a lot of revisionism and unnecessary shaming going on when we say it was never good and we all should have known. And in line with (maybe expanding on?) what I said in my earlier comment, I think I would be curious at the very least to see what could be done with a TV reboot -- after Rowling has died and can no longer funnel her money toward organizations and policies that seek to make life worse for my friends. I'm not thrilled that this is happening so soon. But eventually.
I think that's a very balanced a reasonable view (and I wasn't even part of the target audience for the original HP, having been around 16 when the first books came out. I do like the movies though). Are there flawed details in the series? Yes. Is the world-building flimsy? Absolutely. Did JKR bit off more than she could chew with it as the story got progressively darker and more adult? Yup. But did this series capture the imagination of millions of young people with its themes of magic, friendship, loyalty and standing up for what's right? ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY. I think by the end it fell victim of its own success, with people caring so much about it that they (and JKR herself) wanted it to be more than it set out to be: a whimsical magical story for children. When it failed to deliver, and when JKR fell into her current political stance, it was ripe for criticism, to the point where it's annoying how some people try to tear it apart over quite minor details, like they'd be embarrassed to admit there's anything good about it. It's a bit like with beloved sitcoms (like Friends or How I Met Your Mother) when after a period of adoration there comes a time of reassessment and suddenly everyone in those series is toxic and can't do anything wrong haha.
i think some people severely underestimate the general awareness of jk rowling’s behaviour there is in the general public. your typical coworker or friend of a friend at best has a vague knowledge that jk rowling has been cancelled but that does not impact on their love for harry potter in any way and would gladly devour a hbo series
Back when the reboot was first announced, I watched a video from either Jessie Gender or Council of Geeks pointing out the announcing the new series was a strategic ploy by the cash-strapped copyright holder. I can't remember all the details (and I don't feel like rewatching the entire thing just to place a RUclips comment) but the theory was that rights to the Harry Potter IP was one of the biggest asset they had, and the original seven novels was the most reliable money maker. So they pitched the series to their shareholders/bank/corporate partner as a way of pointing out how solvent they were in the long run. This strikes me as the most probable answer to the question about why they were doing a reboot now. Honestly, while it's impossible to to know yet, I find myself wondering how well this show will do. For the OG fans, their loyalty is already cemented to the movies. For younger kids, for whom 'Harry Potter' wasn't their childhood, they know the author as that unhinged transphobe who cyberbullies any woman she deems insufficiently feminine by Caucasian standards. Thus if they do give the show a try, it'll be with a jaundiced eye. If it's good enough, they'll probably watch it, but I doubt they'll fall in love with it like Millennials did. And that doesn't factor in what stupid things JKR does in the meantime to further destroy her reputation in the meantime. I commented that on another video about the upcoming series, before her online harassment of Imane Khelif. We've got roughly two years to go before the new series airs, so it's almost a given that Rowling is going to say more hateful things in the interim. Not only will turn off potential new fans, but even the long time HP stans may find it increasingly difficult to justify continued engagement. Just sayin'.
It is honestly a baffling choice to make the show to begin with and shows how disconnected corporations are with reality, for now we can only let time pass and hope to god that the writer gets succesfuly sued by Imane Khelif
@@sentineluno i hope she doesn't again, Rowling is not an evil person, and damn it i desire to see the show see the most accurate harry potter, not fucked over by some of the screenwriters. and the limits of 2 hours
I really appreciate the section on "is harry potter bad, actually?" I think it's a reflex people have to write off a problematic person's past work as actually having been bad all along which always seems to be kind of missing the point.
It’s the only way for most to reconcile somethi by they love being made by somebody they hate. I imagine if it turned out Tolkien was a turbo racist and ate children nobody would look at his extensive world building with glee or that anything he ever made had any impact or was ever good despite literally all evidence to the contrary.
@@creed8712 I mean, his world building does contain a considerable amount of racism that people do regularly revisit without having to critically pan the rest of the books because they aren't actually that comparable to HP. HP does have a lot of writing flaws entirely separate from even its problematic elements. I think a lot of people like to pretend they ALWAYS saw it when they didn't, or pretend there's nothing redeeming or interesting about them (the films I think highlight the best of them whilst trimming the worst writing choices or at least distracting you from them). But... they actually aren't particularly well written, especially on a revisit. The bloat alone in those last few books...
@@elena_1776 I flat out hate that treatment cause again any books written before literally last year could be considered problematic and if the world is always perfect and has no problem then why the hell should we read it it tells nothing.
I think Rowling has had some kind of mind break where after she finished writing the original series, I think she has come to quietly resent it over the years or something cuz she doesn't seem to care how the quality of the associated projects have gone over the years. This reboot is gonna be a hot mess
And it all stems from her failed follow-up, where the only person who wasn't straight or white was the serial killer big bad. After that flop, she took the crack pipe all the way to supporting literal n@zis.
Not sure about the mindbreak, but I think she should have realised Twitter was a dumbster fire and should have handed her account off to an assistant. I think she fell down the rabbithole of the worst of the worst, one step at a time, and because she's living in a bubble of her own money and making, she's no longer in touch with the themes she fought for while working for Amnesty International and being a poor mum living on welfare. I personally think money and social media corrupted her and she's a shell of the person she was when she created the series. Yes, there were some troubling nuances in the books even then, but some of them can be brought up as part of upbringing and society at that time. But there's just no excuse left for her blatant opinions regarding minorities, especially trans people.
Honestly, my biggest gripe with HP at the time, when I was a kid reading the book with my mom and brother, was that I identified a LOT with Hermione as "the girl of the group" and "the super smart kid with top grades", and she was CONSTANTLY mocked and put down, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly, often by her two best friends, for being a nerd, and a miss-know-it-all, and for speaking in an annoying way, all things I was regularly mocked for and super insecure about IRL. The story was good, but I never invested myself emotionally into it because of that. I could never believe Rowling stood for inclusion, beyond a basic (by my local standards) "nazis are bad and racism is bad" message, because her opinion on anyone who was outside the norm in a way she deemed annoying was clear from the start. My childhood series was Ewilan, by Pierre Bottero. It has imagination-based magic, wonder and enchantment for days, well-developped characters, and the main character's friends don't sound like my fucking middle school bullies.
I'm pretty sure Hermione was JK's self-insert character. If anything, she's trying to depict a reflection of reality there based on her own experience. That's my opinion anyway.
You know who asked for this adaptation? David Zaslav, CEO of HBO. Maybe not him specifically, but he has openly and frequently talked about how interested he is in franchises that print money.
He knows that Warner Bros Discovery really needs to pay off its debt. And he will do anything to make sure the debt is paid, even if it means dismantling the company piece by piece.
Did anyone else feel like the Cursed Child made Bellatrix have less of an edge in hindsight? She’s supposed to be insane and obsessed with Voldemort, but if she was carrying his child wouldn’t she have stayed safe until birthing the child? She would be supposedly pregnant around when she killed Sirius Black. It makes it seem like she was just some girl who Voldy took advantage of, not a woman who decided for herself to be evil. Idk, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Makes her attempt at killing Ginny make less sense as well. You’d think you’d at least have a look of realization that she too is mother that is about to orphan her child when Molly stopped her
It also makes no sense given their interactions in the main series. It's so obvious Voldemort isn't interested in Bellatrix romantically/sexually. It was one sided (on another note, imagine a guy with no nose still not wanting to date or shag you - ouch 😂). Maybe they just did a ritual or something, but that's still pretty dumb. There was no need for Voldemort to want a child. It's even canonical that he gets triggered by crying infants.
@@emperor_msk Also, if we don't get more Owl House then the image of the original core story may remain untainted. What has the Harry Potter franchise put out since the movies ended that's been good or memorable? The first Fantastic Beasts? Perhaps. If we're being charitable. But all the set up got screwed up thanks to those horrendous sequels. I can't think of anything else that's been memorable or seen in an overall positive light.
I liked the Owl House as much as the next periphery demographic watcher but you're absolutely on one if you think it's anywhere close to HP, either in reach or popularity
I agree that Harry Potter is a pretty good series of books and movies, but seperating the art from the artist is a harder pill to swallow when the artist is still alive to directly benefit from any financial endorsement of the product. As much as the series was formative for me as a child, nowadays I'm steering clear of it until Rowling's out of the picture.
Ah, well. I grew up with Harry Potter and I do understand why my generation can't let go, but at the same time it's hilarious to see adult people refer to themselves as Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Co. on dating apps. I get it, Harry Potter had a huge impact on us and it's okay to love it, but we're at a point where it's romanticised too much and with that comes that any new movie or series set in the Wizarding World is doomed to fail. Nothing can compare the nostalgic feeling a whole generation carries and can't let go of. Accept that companies want to milk your precious nostalgia as much as possible. If you want to cherish your feelings towards Harry Potter til the end of your days: just ignore every new production instead of complaining it will ruin your childhood memories. Same with Disney. Just ignore it and you can live with your own imagination of Harry Potter or Arielle forever and ever.
If it's hilarious for grown adults to call themselves by a fictitious school house it should also be just as hilarious when they refer to themselves as having incorrect chromosomes.
@@orphanedhanyou I am begging you. Interact with real people outside. No trans person pretend they have the opposite chromosomes. They dont deny what they were born as. They just would like you to use preferred pronouns, and also take a shit without being told to get out, it isnt that hard.
Yeah, how dare they enjoy something that became normalized to enjoy with friends and family. Simple minded idiots that they just don't sulk and hate everything absent mindedly. You choose this mindset.
HP is not great literature. It's a children's story by a children's author who grew past her abilities. The fundamental magic and economics were completely ignored or unacknowledged. It's a fun world, but can't compare with Middle Earth or Dune. An active editor empowered to push back would have been a huge help. Once they started filming and needing prompt content, there was no hope for fixing the technical issues with the world building.
>It's a fun world but can't compare with Middle Earth or Dune I disagree. I think a fundamental aspect of the reason Harry Potter doubles either of those franchises in total gross (at least movies-wise, but I'm sure the monetary gap is just as wide with books) is precisely because this nerd fantasy has greater appeal than the other two nerd fantasies. No one is looking for formulae laying out how Transfiguration works - they want to go to Hogwarts.
@@pbradleyking Fantasy literature can still be great without needing to be just as great as the two most popular and widely loved fantasy/sci-fi worlds ever. Hakeem is still an all time great even though he’s not Michael Jordan. No nuance to your argument.
@@GreylockMountain If you wanna base quality on the amounts sold you're ignoring factors such as: What era it came out in, how many installments were written (LOTR has 3 books, so naturally HP's 7 will make more money), who it was sold to (Harry Potter came out during the era where teaching kids to read was at an all time high thanks to books such as the goosebumps series and animorphs, while when LOTR came out, children did not read books, not to mention the amount of people on earth was nowhere near the same amount). That's also not mentioning how we then default to Endgame being the best movie ever made? Or Justin Bieber being the best musician of his time? Not how these things work.
@@dn5633 I disagree tbh. HP isn't great literature by any stretch of the imagination. After book 2, they all lost the plot and are terribly written. It just happens that the movies also came out and fit so well into the zeitgeist that it shot the franchise into the stratosphere. That's not a bad thing by any means, but the movies play a huge role in the continued success of HP. The first book was a huge success on its own, but the latter ones gained alot from the movies, the soundtrack, the acting, etc, which replaced alot of the bad stuff in the books.
I would've loved a series on Umbridge honestly, been saying this for years, we have no clue to why she is so evil, why she believes what she believes, nothing... we got more on Voldemort and he is less hated than her
I wouldn't say the books are "bad"... But they aren't great either. They're accessible and easy to read, Rowling seems to be good enough at pacing to keep events moving and keep the reader engaged. Otherwise, they're incredibly shallow and unless you're right leaning and libertarian, they are too steeped in Rowling's worldview for any message to stand up to adult scrutiny. Once you include her complete inability to accept any kind of criticism or to admit to any flaws or plot holes, the veneer of nostalgia fades quickly.
I never got that impression at all, and I'm kinda shocked so many people nowadays read the series as some sort of rightwing propaganda. I guess some things got lost in translation because I diodn't read them in English.
@@dn5633If read with a political lens, Harry Potter has pretty horrible politics. It’s steeped in 90s neo-liberal “we don’t need to change the system” bullshit. I mean, Harry literally ends up being a cop defending the same broken system that gave him so much trouble as a teen. Not to mention the narrative condones slavery as long as the owners are nice. Shaun has a really good video essay that goes into the shitty politics of Harry Potter if you’re actually curious.
I dont understand why a reboot, just tell a new story mate: - the hogwarts founder's - the marauders - the 7th year for Neville under voldemorts regime - first gen after the war - adventures of the Phoenix order - and, and, and
i think it's kind of disingenuous to frame the criticisms of harry potter's larger themes as nitpicking the books to prove that jk rowling has always been evil or whatever when these are literally criticisms that already existed that people were already talking about years ago before she became poster child of the terfs. it really doesn't take much time to realize the books can be interpreted that way if you stop to think about them at all. like "why did jkr introduce slavery and then make the main character a slave owner in the happy ending" was a criticism my friends and i could come up with in middle school before the second deathly hallows had even come out, easily during the time that harry potter was seen as a masterpiece and jkr was seen as some kind of pop culture god. they aren't small issues. they were actively getting in the way of us enjoying the stories and we were writing fanfiction in our heads to solve the problems this posed for us. and we were HUGE harry potter fans who literally ran around during break time pretending to duel each other with pencils. these problems weren't just always there, they were also always obvious. i can't even remember how many times i met another harry potter fan who went on a rant about how it's ridiculous that everyone makes fun of hermione for being against slavery. we were children and we could make those critiques. because it's literally right in your face. the comic relief in book 4 is that hermione wants to abolish slavery. if you look back at critiques of harry potter and its world even from before jkr came out as a terf, these same critiques are already present. we were like 14 (around 2013ish, so before jkr started doing terf shit online) when we realized harry potter was poorly written upon a reread, and we were huge fans of harry potter. sometimes bad people do make good things, but harry potter is just mediocre. from a craft perspective it's not particularly well written or creative, and from a moral perspective the hero character is literally a slave owner in the happy epilogue, and that's not even touching the whole systemic oppression of all other magical species by wizards or the rampant fatphobia. harry is kind of insanely passive and also an asshole. none of the characters get real development. 90% of the books are boarding school book fluff completely unrelated to the actual plot, which gets ridiculous in the second half of the series when wizard hilter is out and about and we're reading about our characters just chilling and doing homework most of the time. it's just not a good series. half of the ideas in the books that are hailed as creative are ripped whole cloth out of the worst witch series. the reason anti hp people had the "read a different book" criticism was partly because they were just hating, but also they did have a genuine point. harry potter is just not well written and once you start reading other books, you realize that. like, you said it's grounded in altruism and thematically dedicated to the liberation of oppressed people. but it's objectively not. like voldemort is simultaneously a blood purist wizard supremacist racist nazi character who wants to oppress more people, but he's also the only one trying to reach out to the other oppressed magical species and offer them better treatment. both of those things are true and they're completely contradictory. all of magical society is built around wizards having the ultimate power and other species not even being able to use wands. this kind of stuff is mentioned repeatedly in the books which is why i still remember it. but they don't do anything about this. harry and co are only interested in maintaining the status quo. slytherin house is a cesspit of blood purist ideology, but even in the epilogue it still exists. nothing changes. slavery is introduced and it still exists. goblins and centaurs and giants and so on are treated as second class citizens despite being intelligent and this never changes. harry isn't even altruistic. he's basically a millionnaire and his best friend's family lives in poverty, but he doesn't financially help them out with anything. he doesn't even OFFER to compensate them for the car after driving it into the tree. he doesn't even buy ron any christmas presents! they're supposed to be best friends! harry and co decorate the severed house elf slave heads in sirius's family's house with christmas hats over the holidays. what part of this is altruistic? what part of this is thematically dedicated to the liberation of oppressed people? the problematic "undertones" aren't "there if you go looking". they are overtones. the book is actively slapping you in the face with how horrible these people are. i think the audience harry potter ended up cultivating says far more about the fans and the communities we created than it does about harry potter. we got what we wanted out of the books. we looked at a series of books in which the heroes want to continue to oppress others and we decided they didn't actually want to do that and that they were good people. part of the reason why is also that the movies left a lot of this malice out, so it's easy to remember that version of the story.
How are you gonna complain about overarching themes in Harry Potter when you don’t even acknowledge that the books constantly talk about being kind and treating others with respect, especially when it comes to house elves. House elves are representative of a poor working that can still be representantes today, as plenty of employees are overworked for little pay, and plenty are eager to get the chance to work, which makes them easy targets for abuse-immigrants, recent grads, people passionate about their jobs… Having an extreme example of this in a child’s book, making them think about why we should be kind even to those we wrongly consider “lesser” ( everyone who thinks elves are lesser in the books is punished) You can always strip away parts of media and see them in a bad light, but looking at the whole picture it’s clear the authors intent was not for the reader to think slavery is ok…
Basically word for word the comment i wanted to make lol. he mentioned liking the books when he was 7 and it made me wonder if he's ever actually read or analysed them since through an adult lens. Nostalgia really can rot your brain if you let it. I recommend Shaun's video on Harry Potter, Shaun did not grow up as a fan so it's interesting seeing a totally fresh adult take on the stories.
@@pedroedmond3008Given how much people are arguing about it, I question any statement asserting that the author's intent with regard to this subject is clear.
@@adamdavis1648 Argument isn't a gauge for intent though, plenty of people argue about evolution, argue that it's a theory, though only because they don't bother to actually study it and understand what it means, devoid of any external biases. Information is always trivialized when the masses mosh it into generalized assumptions. Whether the slavery in Harry Potter is meant to represent literal slavery, a metaphor of old British servant class, or even just loyal animals, is up to debate, but the author made it very clear that, regardless of how they got there, treating them with respect and kindness is the most important thing you can do.
@@pedroedmond3008 Even if the elves are a represetation of poor folk and not slaves, it's STILL a terrible analogy that relies on the reader just being fine with there being "good" exploiters and "bad" exploiters. It's clear that Rowling was basing the house elves on the old european folklore of elves, goblins and the like that would come in the night and do housework for people. Like the tale of the cobbler. In these various tales, the creatures would do work for free, but would get offended when offered payment and sometimes 'punish' the person by never returning or doing work for them. In these tales they were mischievous and worked on their own code. The trouble is, Rowling took these fun concepts, and turned them into creatures that were bound to masters and easily abused. What they should have been, even by folklore's standard, are autonomous creatures with their own free will who cleaned of their own accord and left as soon as their current target did anything to offend them. Would have made for WAY more interesting story telling to. Imagine Hogwarts having fun quirks like "omg don't leave red socks out for laundry on thursdays! the house elves will quit on the spot and we'll have to hope a new batch fills the spot by the weekend or we're really going to have issues". House elves should have had the power in these dynamics, not the other way around. That's the POINT of the fairtytales.
If we're talking about racial sensitivity, taking nothing away from your main point, we need to recognise Parvati Patel as an explicitly named Asian character, long before Cho Chang.
Y'all I don't think the Indians who live along with all the other Patils and Padmas care about this. Like we love that there's people who r named like us. N we cringe at the pronunciations. We don't really have the energy to care.. Wait u prolly don't too. Lol. We just njyoin some internet drama
The morals have aged well because they aren't nuanced.... like at all. Saying racism bad and leaving it there gives no room for bad actors to attack it. Which is good but its also kinda lackluster.
I kinda think the morals have some cracks in them if anything. In short there aren’t really any bad actions so much as there are people that we’re supposed to hate. Like, Harry can own a slave cuz he’s chill, but dobby must be freed because a bad guy owns him. The entire story is dedicated to returning to a comfortable status quo that the well to do protagonists can benefit from, merely by killing the big bad guy. None of the inequality or racism is ever systematically addressed by the end of the books. And Harry and his friends all get to become wizard cops and politicians lol
@@creed8712 the Japanese surrendered to allied forces under very complex political and cultural circumstances. the atomic bomb lays dubious at best claim to ending the war if that’s what you’re getting at
I feel so bad for the new child actors filling in the colossal shoes. Especially if they enjoy their time filming season 1, only for later seasons to be cancelled if the show fails.
There is nothing that this show could do that fanfiction hasn't. Lets be so honest. Every awful storyline element, racist undertone, or transphobic statement has been explored and fixed through the unimaginable mass of Harry Potter fanfiction on AO3. The marauders era fandom (built on almost no canon information) has taken on a deeply queer 'fanon' and produced more literary content than my public library could hold, and that alone is reason enough to know that a reboot is unnecessary. Unless Rowling dies almost immediately and somebody interview-with-the-vampire's that shit (lets it be gay) there is no concievable point to me
Maradeurs fandom already has countless movies and series, its called "Teen wolf" and "Euphoria" and "Smallwille" and "Winx live action" and countless other ips about 20-year old schoolkids engaging in vague mysteries and relationships
Interview with the Vampire was always gay. You don’t have to have physical sex to be gay. Anne Rices books are filled with queer people and themes. She was always a vocal ally. Her son is gay and she had started talking about her own lack of internal sense of gender when she was tragically taken from us.
It makes no sense cinematically, but perfect sense financially. Rowling has proved she can't make anything else decent; her input to the scripts on Fantastic Beasts was considered a big factor in why the films are so poor, and her adult fiction is overlooked unless it's stirring up controversy. HP is the cash cow, and the next generation aren't going to buy in unless there's a constant refreshing and laundering of the brand to keep it headline-relevant when the only thing we hear about Rowling, over and over, is a tirade of bigotry. It's a cash grab, and keeping the new park in-line with the old branding shows how little faith anyone has that it'll even take off.
I feel like it's still a bit too soon to gauge what the parks really think of the show since we've barely got anything besides talk of the show's announcement itself and some casting calls (to my knowledge anyway). I do agree with everything else, though, it's pretty blatantly a cash grab. As far as faith in the show goes though, I'd wager the parks would be shooting themselves in the foot if they chose to cash in hard on the new show, only for it to be bad. Still, I doubt that there's much the parks can do with what little there is to advertise or 'cash in' on with the new show right now, so when we actually see more coming out about the show, will we get a better impression on what the parks think.
I like that you tried to be as nuanced as possible with this. It's hard to find anyone who has given HP any artistic credit, because it did have merit until so, so recently. I'm no longer a JKR supporter, though I was a fan literally since day one. It's been hard for me as a huge HP fan *and* a trans man to compartmentalize all of this. Thanks again for talking about this and being real.
A work of art lost its merit because its female author holds her own opinion of womanhood? Interesting. (And by that I mean I find it condescendingly interesting.) I still like The Fugees’ music even though Lauren Hill hates me for something I can’t control.
@@DanLovesBooks because it's terf author denies the OPs manhood* But still not really, no, because a lot of people have been dissecting the series for years even before Rowling started being a bigot and it just never was that good.
Can you help me try to understand why people are so angry with Rowling? I was a HUGE Potterhead during the release of the books but drifted away from the IP post-Deathly Hallows. I've never read Cursed Child, never watched the 2nd Fantastic Beasts, and don't follow J.K. on Twitter. I've only heard about the political issues peripherally. Please correct my understanding of events. To me it seems like J.K. Rowling genuinely wants to be an ally to the trans community. However, she thinks there should be a distinction between women and trans-women. She would still like to acknowledge trans-women as people who should be respected as much as anyone, and treated with dignity. It seems like she agrees with most of your values, genuinely wants to be an ally, and means well. The disagreement comes with her definition/distinction between woman and trans-woman. I don't mean to be dismissive at all. And I understand why someone could feel hurt by this "disagreement" (there is probably a better word to use). But is it really enough to call J.K. a "bad person"? She means well. You have to meet people where they are. J.K. seems to be an ally more than an enemy. She seems to want to help more than most people.
@@Jane-oz7pp jk has only said trans women and women are different...shocker. and denying ops "manhood'? R u serious? The op us trying to mimic being a man to relieve dysphoria, they're "manhood" isnt real .
The only way I can really see this working in a new adaptation is to also change the visual media; if they did this as an animated series, I think it would probably work magnificently
Yeah unless they’re willing to shell out GOT level money per episode it’ll end up looking cheap. You can bet your ass there won’t be practical effects, it’ll all be added in with CG
@@solarydays She wanted to continue working with the golden trio but they all spoke out against her and her disgusting views so she feel's vindictive towards them.
@@solarydays I'm not saying its the plan but I understand why people think this way, Cause she is extremely bitter especially towards Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson because they have been extremely vocal against JK Rowling.
@@solarydays She did? Both statements are true lmao, She did want to continue working with them and they did not with her so she became bitter and resentful this is a fact not a make up your mind thing.
@@solarydays Are you drunk? Like is there something wrong with the way you read or think? She did wanna work with them I was just reiterating that, Do you not understand that when someone replies to you they are referring to what you were saying or is this somehow magically lost on you?
I hope they dont actually bother going through with it, but if they did start it, can you *imagine* her meltdown when it's inevitably canceled early (streaming shows just don't run that long, the economics of the model are so bad, especially for a show that will be expensive as hell to produce and the only possible product placement is its own merch.)
It’s going to do shit because it’s going to be shit and unsuited to steaming, but she’s going to spend all her time saying it failed because of a woke mob
@@Golami224 lol it wouldn’t be a “woke mob”, it would just be another case of studios pouring money into a show that doesn’t offer sufficient returns cause the streaming platform economic model is kinda a nightmare and hard to finance. Shows get canceled very very often on streaming platforms because they’re hard to make money off of
If they wanted easy money making Graphic Novel/Manga adaptations of the books would be an easy bet. But JK Rowling doesn't like comics and doesnt think they're "real books" or whatever. If they wanted some easy money I think making a Harry Potter anime or cartoon adaptation would be a slam dunk.
Okay, well, after finishing the video and reading the comments, I feel like one more comment is necessary. My previous comments were all counter-points to things you said, but after seeing that the current comments seem to skew more in the negative direction than the positive, I think it's necessary to mention that this was an excellent video. Your arguments were very well-structured and thoughtful, and eloquently expressed. And the shifting of the recording setting was a cool touch as well. All in all, this video felt extremely professional and kept me thoroughly engaged to the end. It's certainly the quality of video I wouldn't be surprised to see on a large established channel.
For me, at least, this HBO reboot is just a cash grab. It’s too soon after the series. And with JK Rowling beliefs I’m not looking forward to it especially that my beloved book series will more likely get made terrible
oh boy do I remember the satanic panic over HP! I was only a small child during the original one back in the 1980’s, but I definitely remember the HP one! I was in middle/high school at the time, and I will never forget my parents’ friend calling our house to leave a message (on the good old answering machine) begging them not to let me or my brother read HP. Because it was against Jesus or something. Thankfully, my parents never really prevented us from consuming any media as kids. It’s probably because they were both working full time, but still. We got to watch way too much HBO, even the R rated stuff, and listened to whatever music we wanted. So they weren’t about to start taking books away from us. That woman who left the message probably loves the franchise now, given rowling’s new allegiances and all. Wouldn’t be surprised to see any of those ridiculous stay at home moms who wanted to burn every copy of the half blood Prince then, now sporting a “I stand with jk rowling!” or “this witch doesn’t burn!” shirt.
Where I lived there was no Satanic panic, I didn’t even know it was a thing back then until I read about it on the internet when I was 17. I’m from Spain
I LOVED the series but growing older I was just kinda starting to feel off about some aspects. I mean as a girl it was kinda always bad because there are so little female characters and they all suck. JK Rowling REALLY hates woman (not just trans woman) and it really made me hate everything gilry about myself . 10/10 recommend a video "Top Top 28 Female Characters in Harry Potter (and what they say about J.K. Rowling…) " But like the thing that made me get the ick in fist place is the slave race that wants to be inslaved and that slavery is only bad if they treat their slaves bad and just how she wrote about Hermione wanting to free them. But now as an adult it is hard to read because its impossible to "seperate the art from the artist" because like the world building is so based around fasism is okay or atleast if we do it and slavery is fun and acutally what if we did an antisemitism and fatphobia and the list just goes on. I dont say it lightly or as a joke, so much of her world is just rasist but not to show its bad just to be like in a world i had all choices to create I will create rasism and let it exist. There are so good long videos about this, i cannot explain it all in a comment. Even though I want to enjoy it as when i read it it is not like good writing, it is just nostalgia.
The only women that are "good enough" are mothers who are celebrated for being only mothers or sacrifice everything for supporting their husband. Even then there's always a xenophobic stab at who they are, like Molly Weasley. There's ALWAYS an insult. Always something. Always a comment that makes me go, "Holy crap, even Roald Dahl isn't this hateful unless someone is evil for evil's sake." Narcissa Malfoy gets a pass and less insults just because she had a child and she's putting up with her husband's goosestepping because OH BUT BEING A MOTHER AND WIFE. HOW NOBLE. Give me a break she's got an armband on, too. But despite loving McGonagall she still has vitriol towards her for never loving again (and the cat lady thing) which is... what's the point? She gets the Dumbledore treatment; we only find out later she gets nieces and nephews she's devoted to which, okay why are you WEIRD about women being single or not having children in their lives or being even remotely feminine? It's WEIRD. It's CREEPY. This obsession is really weird because then she'll go OH WELL SHE LOOKS LIKE A MAN OR A PIG for other characters she wants to deeply villainize. What. Even as a child it felt deeply unsettling. I like pink. What's wrong with me then! I was going through puberty and my weight fluctuated each week. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME, JOANNE?!
the point of her mentioning that character is that a female character that was only mentioned ONCE made it onto the list of female characters mentioned THE MOST IN THE SERIES. if the series had actual care put into its female characters, all of the female characters on the list would be mentioned at least 5-10 times. and video dives into the character arcs of the most popular female characters such as ginny, molly weasley, mcgonagall. almost all of their motivations are tied to their relationships to male characters, or being a mother.
You’re right: it’s totally about money. And I have to believe the studio has done their research that there’s enough people that will want to watch it that they’ll make money. I also think that they’ve seen that JKR is sort of a one-hit wonder. Just about everything she’s done since those first seven books have made the Wizarding World franchise worse. If she’s going to be deeply attached to it, a HP remake is really the only option. There are so many other stories that could be told from within the universe, but because of JKR, we’re stuck with either bad stories or remakes.
Sure man let's get a series out of a beloved children series like, nearly ten years after its relevancy has faded, and its creator is embroiled in a controversy that has placed the series under brand new scrutiny where people without nostalgia are analyzing it and everyone who was a diehard six odd years ago is starting to realize that the entire series was actually pretty poorly written but we couldn't see it because we were children. This is a good idea.
I really want to know where you're at that HP's relevance has faded, because it sounds like you're letting your distaste for Rowling color your perception. The books and movies are still insanely popular. And if an entry is good, like last year's Hogwarts Legacy, it'll still crack $1B.
There is a lot I agree with here, but the idea that Harry Potter is "explicitly anti-fascist" enough and its themes are so obviously there that conservatives won't go to bat for it is absurd. They fucking play MGS and don't comprehend the blatant anti-western sentiment in it, and the earnest adoration of Che. They watch Robocop and don't see that its politics condemn them. You put too much weight onto hypocrisy and consistency.
Sigh.. I’m all for new ideas being done, however as a kid I always thought a animated Tv show of Harry, Ron and Hermione and their daily lives at Hogwarts depicting the rest of the school year outside of the main events of each book/movie would have been a fun idea. It would be animated and therefore not confused with the movies, but also explored all the growth and events that happened in a school year outside of the main plot of the books/movies. Each season was a year they were at school, and we could really get views into other characters times at Hogwarts as well and see some events that weren’t given time in the movies. Obviously now that I’m a little older and the final books and movies have been released I realize that’s a lot harder to pull off well and and adapt faithfully. However a full remake of each movie to accurately tell the stories of the book THIS soon is a level of overkill that even Disney and their mass production of Star Wars hasn’t reached… yet.
There was some absolutely fantastic moments in this video but... It's a little frustrating that the acknowledged critiques stop at social critique because whilst bigotry does make a series worse, there's so much MORE foundational to HP's poor story telling (and I say this as someone who "was a fan" in the sense that I enjoyed the first four books and then forced myself to "enjoy" the last 3 because it was the only interest I had that anyone else was enthusiastic about). Bloated page counts, dull and tangential story telling (my god, book 6), inconsistent moral messaging ("good characters can fat shame but bad characters cannot" is bad not only because it's problematic, but because that's inconsistent and sloppy), poor tone control, copious moments where characters you're meant to like get unbearably grating, bad/missing foreshadowing (the deathly hallows are a particular standout - though clearly it's not for lack of planning, because the horcruxes were well established even if the magic changed), an unsatisfying conclusion that's about Who Got A Wand We Just Learnt About instead of a core theme or the protagonist's skill/traits, a further unsatisfying conclusion where it feels like a lot of potentially positive changes for the world were ditched in favour of the status quo.... the list goes on. And without getting unnecessarily CinemaSins Nitpick about it. It's part of the reason why the FILMS are particularly good - the scripts do a good job of trimming the fat and neatening the edges and I do think this recolours the original in a lot of people's brains because they are so iconic and memorable. Now of course the films took their material from the original so it's not as if there was nothing in those books that was 'good', so I can't fault anyone for being able to get past the flaws in them and genuinely enjoy them. But I know when I revisited them in that gap where Pottermore started getting weird but JK hadn't gone off the deepend yet I found myself walking away thinking "they... weren't that good, actually". As for the problematic elements - it's important to continually recontexualise that these are books for kids. Kids that are meant to age with Harry, sure, but still children. "This could be taken as a commentary on how activists are dismissed as annoying because hard truths are difficult to stomach" rings hollow when it's alongside a house elf who is depressed and alcoholic as a direct result of being freed from slavery. Most adults would probably not read it that way, let alone 13-14 yr olds. It's not revisionist to understand that the books problematic elements HAD been critiqued for years by minorities who finally started to be listened to as the cracks in JKR's armour started to show during Pottermore's early years. Unshockingly, it wasn't popular or often safe for marginalised people to critique the cultural juggernaut that was Harry Potter? I dunno man, "Cho Chang" has always been a racist name (etc) and people finally acknowledging that isn't "revisionist". That honestly added a weird taste to the rest of this video that was otherwise good. It's like... okay to have complicated feelings, it's okay to acknowledge the books/films had plenty going for them, but it felt... defensive. And for what?
Right, like it must be easy to sit there as a white guy and dismiss the criticism that people of colour have been saying for decades as nitpicking and twitter discourse just because he can't get over something he liked as a child maybe not being as good as he thought it was when he was 7 lol. Like it's fine to recontextualise and reevaluate things from your past with a more mature outlook. Healthy, even. More people should do that.
@@eyeballjay Absolutely. It's easy to get individualist about it too like.. .you don't need to defend /yourself/ that you were one of many people who didn't notice/didn't care about the bigotry throughout the books. I know I sat in that area in late teens/early adulthood even though my overall opinion on the books had wilted from a general quality perspective. I feel like that's what happened here.
If fanfics and the public domain has taught me, the Harry Potter franchise doesn't need rest, it needs to be free from corporate hands and Rowling's hands to let other fans and artists rejuvenate it with their own progressive ideas that changes it in a positive effect moving forward.
THIS, the amount of great writing made by fans is outstanding and fixes many of the issues that many have with the books and even expands the universe in actualy good and interesting ways
I honestly don’t need a reboot…I love when they do stuff like “Tales of the Jedi” for Star Wars. To have small things focus of other characters that weren’t prominent in the films series. But…🤷🏻♀️
They can update the books to what they obviously always meant to say, according to JKR. Make all Death Eaters LGBTQ, Draco becomes crossdresser Drag-o, Hermionie makes studies of the age at which teenage girls are most ripe and fertile, Ron dies, so Hermione can get together with Harry, Dumbledore is now straight and has 23 children with McGonnagall (also he‘s played by Matt Walsh), Umbridge is a butch lesbian, the Dark Mark becomes the Rainbow Mark, and Voldemort‘s favourite spell is „Awokeakedavra“. Music sounds all like a Richard Wagner opera.
The funniest bit of this is actually that Wagner was one of the biggest inspirations for John Williams. His concept of the Leitmotiv is visible all throughout John Williams' work. The entirety of the Harry Potter soundtrack is heavily inspired by Wagner. So the original soundtrack already actually sounds like a Richard Wagner opera.
I think you underestimate how much conservatives will contradict themselves. They will absolutely support the new show just because jk Rowling is involved and will constantly try to claim it's anti woke, regardless of what it does...
I've been looking for a video like this for a little while now without even realising it, amazing content wowowow i wanna add my own thoughts because I've been reflecting on my past relationship with the material ever since the news came out that she might be being sued sometime soon i think there's something positive to be said about Harry reconnecting to a past he never knew I do truly think that the series peaks in its thematic richness in Prisoner of Azkaban, with that whole story being a beautiful exploration of how Harry can reclaim a relationship to the parents he never knew through spending time with his dad's old friends everything regarding how his patronus is conjured from a memory that he isn't even sure is real is super touching and I'm sure people never knew their parents would be able to find themselves in Harry in those moments in short, I love the part when Sirius tells Harry that the ones we love never really leave us, pure and simple that's when the series is at it's strongest, to me to me, everything that follows is weakened once you come to terms with the idea that the finale centres on a fight to vanquish fascism written by someone without a solid grasp on how fascism should be confronted - the fact that Voldemort is essentially defeated by wand loyalty mechanics rather than by anything explicitely anti-fascist speaks for itself - hell, Harry owns a slave by the end of the series ; ; with that being said, I'd be remiss not to mention Newt Scamander as a character. I do think that he's an amazing example of a positive masculine role model; kind, empathetic, peaceful, and I think it's brilliant that many read him as a positive example of an autistic protagonist,,,,, but you totally hit the nail on the head when saying that it's a shame that those movies aren't built for him and are instead concerned about a conflict nobody cares about I only ever stuck around for the first fantastic beasts film, didn't see the sequel because I wasn't comfortable seeing a film with Johnny Depp in it in 2018 and cut ties with the franchise once JK went fully mask off in 2020 but I still love Newt himself, at least conceptually 10/10 video, it feels like it was made by someone who's been making video essays for years - I'm sure next time the Harry Potter special interest takes over me, I'll be rewatching this, alongside Shaun's video and the ContraPoints video ^^
I'd like to say that I think the themes of the Harry Potter novels are different. It's not a story about a fight against fascism, but a story about the fear and acceptance of death in all its nuances. It's about learning what death is and how it feels for the people left behind (> dementors, which double as a symbol for depression), about understanding and being faced with death (> seing Thestrals), about the fear of death and trying everything that's in one's might to escape it (> Horcruxes), about sacrifice and love and protecting the ones we love by sacrificing ourselves (> Lily and the protection she gave Harry, mirrored by the deaths in the Final Battle of Hogwarts) and finally of accepting death and welcoming it (> Into the Forest), also about manipulations (>diary), media image vs personal image (> Kimmkorn), propaganda (> narrative "Voldemort is/is not back") and the difficulty of breaking through perceptions in a closed-off society (> purebloods/ houseelves / goblins). Love and friendship and loss are integral parts of Harry's story, repeated over the novels time and time again by the mentor figure Dumbledore and that's why the final battle against Voldemort is so satisfying because by his actions he created the person who's responsible for his downfall. I personally think that Harry Potter is a story about themes and the problem with the Fantastic Beasts movies is that JK R. lost sight of that and tried to incorporate all this storylines into a script without getting a pushback from a seasoned editor and screen-writer. Just my few cents, don't want to negate your opinions.
I used to also love harry potter more than just about anything when i was really young. But as i got into my mid teens, a lot has tainted the franchise for me. I consumed much more literature that was frankly not aimed at kids. So, on top of the shitty additions to the franchise, i looked back at how flimsy the writing was for the original series. And rowling being repugnant doesn't help either. They are ideally books made for kids to enjoy, and it accomplishes that. But also, there are similar books made for kids that engross adults as well.
Or ......and heres a crazy idea.....how about adapting a long book series that hasnt been done before ? Take a leap of faith maybe.? And stop beating a dead horse? Sincerely, a potterhead who rereads the books and re-watches the movies on a yearly basis.
IKR, you can tell that the executives just live outside of human costums and just see the numbers and statistics without any of the context, making baffling choices like this
When it comes to Harry Potter's quality and if it had good morals/lessons, I think the problem is that: no matter how kind and and empathetic Rowling tried to be, she got in her own way. I don't think she was ever the rabid bigot secretly waiting to be let loose on the world. She self radicalized because she became so socially isolated, has clearly never dealt with her trauma or insecurities, and is surrounded by yes men. Ursula K. Le Guin was right in her assessment that HP was “stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” Bullying in British schools is normalized to a greater degree than in American or Canadian schools for one thing, for example. Her world building is shallow - I was in the fan fiction side of HP and let me tell you, I had to do so much of my own world building to fill in glaring gaps that I was basically creating my own universe. I found Rowling was good at creating sets and scenes, establishing an aesthetic, but nothing deeper than that. Rowling suffers, in my opinion, from a very narrow world view and a shocking curiosity about the world. And to go back to Le Guin, who I found later, I don't think Rowling should get a pass about writing "in a different time". A Wizard of Earthsea came was published in 1968. It features a mostly non white cast, an intricately built world, and a very deep magic system. It tackles themes like growing up, faith and belief, gender, power and responsibility, balance with oneself and nature at large. In contrast to Rowling, Le Guin was always inquisitive, challenged her reader's perceptions (regardless of target demographic), and was always willing to grow and change and challenge herself as a person and an author. Rowling is not, in my opinion, capable of such thoughtfulness and that will always hinder her works - especially Harry Potter - when it comes to the value of her stories.
My breakup with this series has been one of the most painful and the most protracted breakups of my life, and so for that reason and a whole host of other reasons (including what you've covered in this video), I really do wish they'd just scrap any attempts at a reboot at _least_ until Rowling dies and she isn't funneling the money she makes from her IP into anti-trans organizations and politics. I'm grateful for the good messages the person she used to be had to share about the tangible forces involved in love and loss... but I can't look at it again until the person she is now _is_ no more. I would love for that to mean she deradicalizes one day, but I'm not holding my breath. Well-made video, in any case. It's nice to hear nuanced takes about the franchise itself no matter how people feel about it... and I think I do kind of miss talking about Harry Potter.
your take on the concept of death in harry potter reflecting in what is happening to it in the real world gave me goosebumps. i never thought of it in this way but it captures the essence of everything we say about this reboot era in general, and in harry potter in particular, so poetically and beautifully. thank you for that
If anything, this series should be an anthology of scenes that either couldn't make the movies or had to be condensed for runtime. We don't need an entire season for Prisoner of Azkaban, but a book-accurate Shrieking Shack scene with all the Marauders' details? Yes, please.
there’s also the disadvantage that full seasons of high quality shows now take foreverrrrrr to make, and have a much higher likelihood of getting cancelled somewhere in the middle, which would make its existence even more meaningless. and with child actors they need to have a very tight time frame so they don’t grow up too fast. i have very little faith they’ll pull it off
If I actually cared about Harry Potter enough, I'd say the best they could do is take the Animated style of deathly hallows story and tell a new story for a new generation.
it is a major oversight in your critique that you do mention that the books are very misogynistic, classist and fatphobic. If you talked about those things along with the racism and slavery, could you still really claim that the work is good and holds up?
Yes because those arent the merits of the criticism and if anything the books intentionally shine a light on classism, even if it doesnt magically solve it.
Cute how millennials attempt to reconcile their childhood love for a series of books with their much more recent drive for self-validation via attention whoring on social media. Cute and pathetic.
I could, but I’m not triggered by the author having her own opinion about womanhood. They’re fun books to read. Can’t have a good story without struggles, so sometimes the author has to touch on sensitive subjects. Would love to see your bestselling book that gets millions of people to read it and which contains nothing anybody might find disagreeable.
You could claim that the messages surrounding love, friendship, loss, grief, mortality, questioning authority, etc. are still worthwhile, even though they're not at their most expansive and true when couched in misogyny and classism and fatphobia and racism and weird accidental slavery apologia and upholding of the status quo. I think those nuggets of good have kept people afloat in the fandom for a long time (though I personally was on my way out with the second Fantastic Beasts movie, let alone when Rowling came forward as a vocal transphobe).
It's weird because the more you look into it, the series is just so at odds with itself. You have such great themes about bigotry and friendships and love while at the same time you have Rowling promoting fascism, sexism, and slavery.
All I will say is as a 32 year old that loved and grew up with Harry Potter and I still love it. I don't care for a reboot a animated series maybe but a full reboot it's a no for me I agree it's a very bad idea they will ruin a lot of peoples childhoods older and younger. As for politics I don't take sides I am staying very far far away from it same with religion.
There was a time where I would have really loved a marauder’s show but after all these years of jk rowlings terrible behaviour, I really don’t enjoy Harry Potter anymore :/
If you had a story where in the end all the injustices of the world were righted by the actions of the main characters it would be so much less realistic than a magical school for witchcraft and wizardry already is. I can't suspend my disbelief so much to accept the villain is dead and the whole of society just changes every bad thing about themselves. Change always happens incrementally. Always.
The fact that it will be more like the books *the books that are pretty racist and sexist and have a lot of things that were super problematic to the point that the movies decided not to show them even back then makes the idea of the reboot even worse
My opinion on the movies hasn't changed at least: only the first two are worth watching as fun, lighthearted, fantasies. Even if I was still willing to consume hp, I think there is not just a question of quality in new adaptions, but also in how they are going to appeal to fans of all ages. It is a children's series, but the new content seems torn in trying to appeal to adults just as much.
when i was a kid, watching harry potter movies for the first time after reading each book, of course i was angry it didn’t fill every hole and didn’t cover every plot line and even ruined favorite characters like ginny. back then i really wished it was a series instead of movies. i wanted them to one day make this series for real. but growing up, i grew to appreciate everything the movies gave besides all the details of the plot, like the amazing cast and the wonderful set and music which are now so tied to the story. and as you said, the books are still here. and i’m actually happy that there are some scenes and characters that i’ve never seen on screen cause it gives them freedom in my imagination. i find it hard to remember how i imagined some things from the books because instinctively think of the movie now. but the unadapted scenes are left pure in my imagination
Great video! I also often talk about how “they don’t make movies like they used to” literally, recently rewatched the OGs with an eye for cinematography and there is some great stuff with perspective, lighting, color grading, especially in the first three, that really sets the mood. The problem is that both the literal medium (the OGs were shot on 35mm film) and the studio structure have significantly changed (and IMO worsened) the visual quality of all media, especially TV.
Is it a bad idea? Yes Do I still desperately want scenes of the golden trio in Gryffindor common room goofing off and having fun that I can hold on to when I'm really stressed? Also yes. Only if the common room is the same as the OG one though xd
The criticism towards the name "Cho Chang" is utterly stupid. Cho Chang is a perfectly beautiful, normal name in Chinese. Chang is the romanisation of the Chinese surname 張 in both Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking countries except in Mainland China. It has a more common variation "Cheung" which happens to be another Cantonese romanisation. 張 is the third most common surname in Taiwan, the fourth most common surname in PRC and the most common surname in Shanghai but it is also a Korean surname. Zhang is the romanisation of 張 using Putonghua (Mandarin) pin-yin system which is mostly only used in mainland China. 張 is more commonly romanised as "Chong" and "Cheong" in Singapore and Malaysia. Chang and Cheung is also the romanisation of the Chinese surname 章 in Cantonese. Cho is the romanisation of many Chinese characters including 秋, 卓, 草, 曹, 楚, 早, 祖 in Cantonese. 秋，卓，楚，早 are the ones more commonly used in given names so I am only going to elaborate on these. 秋 originally means plentiful harvest but it can also mean "autumn". 卓 means "excellence, outstanding; profound; brilliant; lofty" but it is more commonly used in 2-character given names. Just so you know, 卓 is also a Chinese/Korean surname. 楚 is the name of an ancient Chinese state and originally means thorns, but it can also mean "arranged in order", "well-dressed", "a lovely lady" or "clarity". 早 just means "the morning" but I happen to know someone with that given name but with a different surname. Cho Chang is translated as 張秋 in Chinese, which basically means "Autumn Chang". I actually happen to know someone from primary school with that exact same name and romanisation when the Harry Potter movies were still coming out. This classmate of mine was incredibly disappointed by the fact that she got sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Ravenclaw in that Pottermore sorting quiz. As a kid, I used to have a headcanon that Cho Chang was a Hongkonger who moved to the UK due to the worsening political climate before the 1997 Handover as it was very common for Hong Kong families to emigrate to the UK back in the 80s to 90s. That would explain why Cho Chang didn't have an anglicised name as she was not born in the UK and most people from Hong Kong back then rarely put their anglicised given name as their legal name. I have actually never heard from anyone I know who grew up in Chinese-speaking countries or speak Chinese criticise this name. Cho Chang is a very commonly adored character in Chinese-speaking countries and the only thing I have seen people complain about her is her lacking characterisation or the fact that she didn't end up with Harry. I only learned that people didn't like this name after moving to an English-speaking country for university and I am tired of having to explain this repeatedly. People who make this "criticism" are the type of persons who think JK Rowling hates hungarian people because she made "Hungarian" horntail the worst dragon 😭
So basicaly the hate to the name is bad faith critisism that forgets to take into account the opinion of the culture they assume they are protecting, who could've fucking guessed God this wave of bad faith critisism towards HP is rough, like the video said, it's not perfect but it does have tons to apreciate, DESPITE the writer.
I'm not Asian either so I'm not going to try and dispute anything you said about the name, but I have seen multiple Asian people criticising the name and I think i'm gonna listen to them over some person in youtube comments who claims to have never seen Asian people criticising it when they have been. For like decades lol Also I don't think joanne would have known or considered any of this because she is dense as shit lol, especially when it comes to cultures that are not her own. It has been shown time and time again
@@sentinelunoI agree and love your comment. My only criticism is "wave"? "Cho chang" was a criticism of white liberals 2 decades ago. Said criticism is probably not just because the name is on the nose, it comes eerily close, by virtue of coincidence, to "ching-chong" highly offensive language mocking.
Setting aside my personal feelings about HP as a whole after Rowling's downward spiral, and whether or not I'm betting my future Schadenfreude supply on this project's failure, I think this reboot finds itself in a bit of a Sailor Moon Crystal tight spot. Which is not good. SMC presented itself as a truer-to-manga animated reboot of the 90s Sailor Moon anime, promising to stick closer to the author's original intent and fix some issues the first adaptation had. It ended up rehashing a story that manga readers were already abundantly familiar with (often with a panel-by-panel adaptation), then timidly trying to introduce changes that didn't freshen it up, had an unmemorable music score (as opposted to the original), was plagued by animation errors due to its commercially rushed release, and was visually so unremarkable that by season 3 it started heavily drawing from visuals of the original anime to the point that it felt less like hommage and more like just riding its coattail in an attempt to be recognisable. Which made it feel all the less necessary. In the end, it was axed at three season out of five, and the final two arcs (which ironically were where the original adaptation floundered and could have been the promised improvement) were wrapped up in two feature-length movies rather than multi-episode seasons.
My expectations are extremely low after seeing Percy Jackson and Netflix's ATLA. Both of them were utter garbage. These companies love to brag about their tv show budgets but they look like crap. Where does all the money go? And i get why the kids suck at acting, they're kids, but why do the adults?
I feel like people still quote/reference barbie fairly often? like "my job is Beach", people say "my job is Emails" or just last week glen powel talked about ryan gosling like "he's everything, I'm just Glen". I feel like "she's everything, he's just ken" is also a common meme format. (I know it's not the point of the video.....)
Let old things die, make room for new things ffs also, is HP bad story? yeah, it is. formative? for many children it was a special book series, but one cannot say something is good because you have fond feelings for it. no, i don't think i can call it revisionism, lot of the fans at the time were children. how were we to know better. but the books did have critics, even back then. but you cannot say you are biased and not agree that you are wearing nostalgia goggles. it was like that because it was so popular, it was everywhere. we read it in school, it was visible in every bookstore. then movies came and the marketing was just wild. but in fact the story itself is not good at all, there are so many other magical books out there(like the secret of platform 13), if only one would stumble upon them(or your parent). there is very little that was new in there, Harry as a MC was underwhelming, characters were killed randomly, it did not seem to know what it wants to be, the rules were made as we read on, the ending was just so bad and the status quo didn't change despite the wizarding world being so fcked up. slavery, fatphobia, bigotry, slytherins... there is so much of it, you mentioned some of it. i can see however very little of value in these books. like wow, no persecution for muggle-borns and half bloods? that's what we achieved by the end? that is the triumph we are celebrating? i'm sorry but with so much wrong introduced this is not enough. once you've read more, once you grow up, you can see the many wrong things with these books. even if you loved them once. that's how i feel anyway.
I disagree on statements in this video made at about 27:30 and the adjacent parts about House Elves. Hermione Granger, the unambiguously smartest character in the book apart from maybe Dumbledore, is constantly complaining she is the only one bothered by the situation of the house elves, their own acceptance of this situation, and often nagging how stupid that is. She is trying to build an activism group for house elves, but eventually forced to abandon the effort for reasons of public indifference towards it. Please check your research about this topic. You are clearly missing this because it was cut from the films. I´m not writing this to alleviate obvious conservative beliefs of the author, but because its just not correct. Also, searching for "toxic" or "conservative" agenda in the book is pointless and misappropriate. The opinions and situations of characters in fictional works do not need to correspond to the authors own beliefs. From my reading (I have the english original print despite coming from Germany) the book is generally benevolent. It also is often critical towards problematic political situations, but does not claim to have solutions to them, so they are only shown as problematic, not more. This is evident for example in the situation with "bugging" of R.Skeeter in book 4. Hermione obviously can´t prohibit the yellow press to work, so she is powerless to change the situation except for preventing R.Skeeter to publish more indecent revelations about herself and her friends. ed1. yeah, after continuing to about 33:00 you notice this yourself.
She gets crap for the activism because she's trying to trick the elves into freeing themselves when they are not ready to, which would make the situation worse, a lot like a lot of modern social activists are making the cause they fight for worse of
though at this point i have very little love left for the hp series after all of jkr's bigotry, just from a marketing standpoint i'm baffled as to why they decided to retell the original story instead of doing a marauder's era series. i'm not in touch with the fandom anymore but any time i cross paths with it online, it's mostly people talking about the marauders. seems like one of the few corners of the series that still has an active and engaged following and i have no idea why they aren't capitalizing on that
the lighting of this video getting progressively darker is ABSOLUTE CINEMA.
Lol
it’s called a sunset it actually happens in my neighborhood every night it’s pretty crazy
@@krakatoa4747 life is full of wonders!!!
Amazing he filmed it in just one sitting like that 😅
It was inspired in the lighting from the movies 1 to 7
This is all so that they can have Dumbledore actually be calm when he asks harry about the goblet of fire lol
Which is funny because that’s the most interesting scene in that movie
Dumbledore's gonna be soooooo chill that people will complain.
HARRYDIDYAPUTYANAMEINZAGOBLETOVFIYAHH
@@amberr3662 *Dumbledore said calmly*
i almost hope they have him go even harder with that line this time
I just feel bad for the kids they end up casting. Those kids won't deserve the shitstorm thats inevitably going to come their way regardless of how this pans out.
I saw a screenshot of a tweet that they had to do an open casting call for the child leads.
Probably because the existing pool of child actors and their parents don’t want to make money for Rowling.
@@megmcawasnt the movie open casting? They went to schools looking for the main trio. Emma was discovered after her school announcer auditions and Rupert sent in a VHS tape
Not to get randomly existential or anything, but child actors have always felt like a weird ethical grey area for me. Even if they genuinely *want* to be in a movie or show, it’s their parents who do the consenting. Which, with stories as huge as HP, makes you wonder how many of the parents are genuinely supporting their kids vs. looking forward to the proxy fame and direct fortune.
The ten- and eleven-year-olds won’t be the ones ultimately deciding whether to support something that gives a TERF even more money and relevance. But there are plenty of jerks on the internet (and even misguided mainstream media) who would either end up scapegoating the kids anyway, or would use them to prop up their own bigotry.
@nerijas5295 I work in children's theatre, and yeah, there are a lot of safety precautions you need to have in place. We put in a lot of legwork to protect our kids, both in person and on the online spheres. Any time children are working, there is a mountain of potential abuse you have to carve away. Big studios typically only put in enough work to prevent a lawsuit, and it breaks my heart.
I still absolutely think you can have child actors in an ethical way, but I doubt WB is going to put in the right kind of effort. Especially if they cast any poc kids in the main set. Studios tend to pick vulnerable actors for progressive points and then do nothing to defend them from the backlash.
It should have been animated, but for some reason executives(and a big portion of the audience) think animation is a genre for kids and not a medium that can tell endless stories.
This is what I always felt! It would separate it and give it a chance to do things live action can’t portray. Also it wouldn’t matter if kids got older or actors left or died because there could be a sense of continuity that the original couldn’t.
iCarly is for adults and South Park is for kids.
I thought that too, but then look at the terrible animations we get like the upcoming LOTR anime
@@curtiswest7849 And in the worst ways possible, this is fairly accurate.
@@CheezMonsterCrazy 😆 that's why I said it!
Took me 3/4 of the video being frustrated at the lighting to realise it was a hbo joke 🙈😂 touché. Can’t wait to not see any of this new series 😅
Is it not a joke about how the movies got darker? Not necessarily about hbo
I felt as if I was watching House of the Dragon. Thanks.
I went to the comments to check it a few minutes in
Took me reading this comment lol
what's the joke?
Remaking a book/movie series that was originally very well received, not that long after original release, at its historically least popular state- due to the author, mostly- AND attaching her name to it is just an absolutely terrible idea. I have no idea why this ever got approved
Money. Money. Money. Capitalism does not care about anything but the bottomline. Mostly short-term. Long term it would be wise to focus on maintaining the franchise, but its a risk they are willing to take. Cause it will make money. Star Wars probably lost lots of money right after the disney trilogy, but I'm sure they made it back with the TV shows.
It's been over 23 years since the first book had an adaption. It's been plenty of time. It's also better than making up random stories about the series with the failed fantastic beast spinoff. WB is treating this IP like a break in case of emergency for easy money.
@@gilbertoflores7397 I think we disagree on the definition of plenty of time, honestly. The films aren’t outdated, they still visually hold up. Remaking them at this point screams “we have run out of ideas, hand us your cash”
@@princessadrigirl6774as someone who loves the movies, there’s a lot even in later movies that doesn’t hold up visually, like them flying through the burning room of requirement. Also, there’s endless post online about how much the movies left out from the books that a show could include
It got approved because of money. They’ve made billions, the billions have slowed down, so time to make more billions (or try)b
Marauders show is so obvious, it’s the biggest missed shot ever. Literally has an amazing school setting, great characters and character arcs, inbuilt powerful villain/threat.
My tumblr dream honestly ✊😔 but instead we got bullshit after bullshit seasoned with transphobia ❤
And you can do the whole Snape gets cucked by James thing. I mean, he didn't but HBO would 100% do that for the DRAMA. Or worse they'd try to force a love triangle.
If you don't like JKRs TERF stance, there is a fanfiction series of the Marauders. Definitely watch that and not this cash grab.
Tbh I'm not so sure a school centered marauders series would be very interesting. By all acounts they were normal kids are normal school besides for lupin being a werewolf which made them become animagi. If you made a series about them after they left school, those mysterious three times James defied Voldemort, that would be interesting. But I think it way more interesting series would be about the founders. We know virtually next to nothing about them except for the fact that they were great witches and wizards. You have a good screenwriter just that with the Harry Potter IP, it would be an amazing show.
nah, marauders would be amazing.
1. They Were as good as our golden trio if not better, all of them exept lupin obviously managed to become animagi by themselves by their fifith or sixth year i guess. They were school legend arguably as popular and charismatic as the weasley twins (young sirius x james antics would be delightful to watch)... also they litteraly created the map.
2. A lot of major characters of the books were in their teens/early adulthood, makes for really interesting character développement (The Black Sisters dynamics, regulus, a young snape going dark, him and lily dynamics, pete pettigrew's evolution from friend to ultimate backstabber, Petunia's muggle POV ) the possible storylines are endless...
3. Mfckin' Tom Marvolo Riddle in his prime would be absolutly terrifying bro like ain't no philosophical gellert Grindelwald scheming tryna steal bambi's lil cousin and stuff. Just Absolutly ruthless Voldemort on the come up...imagine that.
Harry Potter was a generational phenomena. We talked about the plot in school, met for late night (lol at 9 pm) premier sells in costumes, made our own fanpages and merch until WB stopped that with copyright claims. Governments praised the books for making children read again. In Edinburgh, London and Oxford there are themed tours. But its done today, in Europe more then in Asia and the USA, living of nostalgia nowadays. The USA media need to understand stories are supposed to END. The Artus saga had an ending, the Nibelungen, Shakespeare's plays, every single novel. Repeating the same story to milk it does not work out on a long run...
the comic industrie runs on that
@@Gotten1888 and fails, currently... 😆
This is demonstably untrue. Do you think Superman would have been better off ending back in the 40s?
@@GreylockMountain Yes.
@@internetkurator9256 Then you're just wrong. Huh, it's actually funny how simple things can be sometimes. You personally not wanting more of it doesn't mean more shouldn't exist.
It bothers be that Hollywood's fear of risk has become associated with comic book movies. Comics take some of the biggest swings in the medium of story telling. Superman lived 400 years into the future and fought two robot clones of Hitler, batman once wandered a wasteland and carried jokers severed head in jar, the entire Marvel Universe was saved by Franklin Richards (a six year old boy) when he created a pocket dimension to keep the Avengers and Fantastic Four safe when they were almost killed by Charles Xavier being possessed by magneto. But they never adapt those stories. They just make movies where Iron Man acts like Dean Martin.
I don't think the Hitler clones were robots, they were just humans? The robots in that story were different. But could be wrong
or that one time Iron Man melted with his suit... yeah. Hollywood is Boring; The Sky is Blue
The 80s called, they want their storylines back. Those stories are too goofy to tell especially when the cost of telling them is a couple hundred million for all the CGI involved with superhero films nowadays. Most of the stories that tried to do something different outsides the mold were tepid at best, nobody saw them. The market for comics movies got too oversaturated red and most of the core cast have already moved to other projects. Disney is better off freezing their MCU nonsense and DC can just not do them. They can come back when the movie doesn't need half a billion to be profitable and one of their main stars isn't getting arresting for attacking his girlfriend or whatever the Flash dude did.
@sws212 So, the stories I mentioned are from 1995, 1997, and 2019 respectively. Not the 80s. The 80s are kinda the problem though, it seems like alot of non comic fans who like comic movies, think that the only acceptable comics to read are Frank Miller comics from the 80s. Dark, gritty, with an indeterminable message and theme. But since you got the year wrong I assume you haven't read these books, so on what basis are you calling them goofy?
Also I don't want a million interconnected Marvel movies. I want good movies based on comics. Maybe a new take on the Mask or Spawn. Maybe a The Maxx movie. But with effort put into it. Taking the weirdest parts of comics and making them tangible. I don't need a huge CGI budget, I don't need a star studded cast. I just need creativity. Like your main point seems to be a beef with Hyper Capitalism, not Comics.
The first Fantastic Beasts movie was not bad by a long stretch. It actually did a lot of really great things, and I'd argue that the choice to make the movie about some random throwaway character is actually the right choice for quality. It's a step in the opposite direction of the shameless fan-service/sequel/reboot territory. It was actually original and stood on its own, while still exploring aspects of the world that people fell in love with. That's what expanding a franchise should look like, taking a beloved world and telling new and unique stories within them rather than the obvious ones that everyone asks for. The sequel, however, fell into that shameless fan-service sphere with all of its attempts to tie it into Harry Potter.
I highly recommend the video "The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" by Pop Culture Detective, which touches on a lot of what makes the first movie (mostly Newt Scamander, admittedly) so good. I'll also add as someone who was recently diagnosed autistic, that Newt's character seems heavily coded autistic but is portrayed in a very positive and not super stereotypical way, a kind of representation that is severely lacking in media right now.
I super agree with you. Loved the first film so much. I think the failure is fantastic beasts 2 and 3. They forced the story of the wizarding war into newts story and as a result they were both worse than the first fantastic beasts. I would have watched ten films about Newt and his friends just adventuring around the world, solving problems related to fantastic animals and helping people everywhere they went. It could have gone back to the HP roots of mystery stories, and I would have loved it. Instead they forced Dumbledore and Grindelwald into Newts films, resulting in canceling the whole franchise because the writing was too scattered and no one was interested
I agree with you! I would have loved a mystical, 1930s version of Steve Irvin. Makes me so mad that they chose to focus on Dumbledore and weird family connections instead
I’d like the fantastic beasts movies better if they’d done separate movies for newt and separate ones for dumbledore/grindlewald. Their stories just don’t make sense when combined.
@Cruizinelli12 Il liked the first movie a lot. As for the second, I thought Dumbledore/Grindlewald was going to be a Wizard WW2 Era movie. Wizards and the Allies covertly fighting against the Nazis and their Wizard associates (the Nazis really liked occultism). But instead Grindy shows that the muggles are bad because they started WW2 meaning the wizards are fighting someone who wants to stop the war. It was a mess.
I agree!!!
Even as a (non asian) kid, I read the name "Cho Chang" and I was just like, "REALLY..?"
The worst part is, Rowling is so good at naming. Say what you will about the woman, but she is damn good at naming things. And yet when it comes to Cho, she just did not care.
I've met plenty of asian people with similar names, there's no problem
@@mnmnrtno you haven't
What's wrong with it, though? I'm not being a contrarian, I really don't understand.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Cho Chang isn't a name, that's a big thing. Cho could be a Korean last name, but it isn't something which would be used as a Chinese first name. Joanne has an amazing ability to pick interesting, iconic names and when it comes to Cho Chang, she just falls flat.
I think HBO cannot be trusted with their current management after the season finale of House of the Dragon. The CEO got involved and demanded 8 episodes instead of 10 and stayed with that even when there was a writer's strike and nothing could be changed. The fact that he would meddle in their biggest show and actually make it worse, there is no way this Harry Potter series would not have this sort of meddling. This new management is not the same HBO that signed on for infinite seasons of Game of Thrones. THey cannot be trusted to fucked it up and they will because they are so blinded by money. I think the fact that the first thing they did after the merger was a planned Twilight reboot says it all. It's not about quality, it's about trying to squeeze all the money out of things and if they can't they will shelve things (like Batgirl) so no one can ever see it. If anyone is excited show them the last episode of House of the Dragon and I think that excitement will die immediately. They ruined my excitement about the whole world of Westeros shows they have coming up because Zlavits is going to put his little fingers into everything and sacrifice quality for the all-mighty dollar.
It makes me kinda worried about The Last of Us, but it seems like management is keeping their noses out of it for now?
Seriously, why adapt the dragon civil war if you are unwilling to have the dragons fight because too expensive?
I always had a hope that if they did ever plan a reboot/retelling of hp that they would do it as an animated series. With the success of series like arcane, I don’t think it would be too out of left field.
Don't forget The Clone Wars either! It's one of Star War's most popular entries. I don't know why Hollywood is so afraid of animation!
I wish we was getting HD re releases of the old Harry Potter games on modern consoles instead
Now this is a million dollar idea!
@@Umbravitae19 I also want the GBC and GBA Harry Potter games on NSO
This would feel like less of a cash grab to silence nay-sayers.
@@DogDayFromPoppyPlaytime180I miss those!
@@cherryjello777 I still have and play them I love the Harry Potter games
I have to disagree with one thing emphatically: the movie industry was always profit driven and most artistry had to be fought for tooth and claw except that now advertising and data analytics have developed far far more and there's much more data on what sells and how to cater to the biggest audiences. After all, people say Blazing Saddles couldn't be made today, but it also barely got made 40 years ago, and the movie industry monopolies were broken up 40 years before that. (Approximately in both cases)
TL,DR: society has gotten much better at capitalism in and after the Information Age.
You know, I've never considered how similar the straight-to-streaming and Marvel secrecy/green screen is to the studio-exclusive contracts in the golden age... Although I can't imagine a studio wanting an exclusive contract these days because it means they'd have to guarantee work.
@@Manakuuchiha I was literally thinking earlier today like "Did they cast Harry Styles in Eternals and similar actors just to have that established relationship whether or not the movie goes well?"
It does seem like this trend has reached a peak though, and is only getting worse. Take something like Lord of the Rings, for example...what studio would take a big risk on an unproven IP with an unproven director, and green-light three massive movies today? That's not to say it didn't take some fighting even then, but it feels like those kinds of punts are impossible now.
no one wants more harry potter junk. hbo, i'm begging you, adapt freakin ANIMORPHS, it would be so rad and no one has tried in like 20 years. come on
RIGHT!! would love a modern animorphs adaptation!!
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style.
Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style.
Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
The animorphs graphic novel is pretty good so far... But yes I agree HBO should adapt it, dark-and-gritty style.
Also KA Applegate seems to be genuinely good and non-problematic.
Psst HBO…adapt Redwall
Rowling fell into my bad graces back in 2013/14, a time during which an active independence campaign was running in Scotland whcih was engendering much healthy debate.
Anyway, along she came throwing her weight behind the anti-independence campaign and likening people who supported Scotland's self determination to death eaters, which to amyone who has ever interacted with a supporter of Scottish independence will know is a completely fatuous notion.
Perhaps we should have been less surprised though given how Rowling portrays slavery as "common sense" and abolishionists and swivel eyed lunatics.
JFC, what is it with her and calling everyone who disagrees with her "Death Eaters"? Actual Scottish people who wanted independence AND trans activists? And it's pretty disturbing that they're both just groups of people sticking up for rights and self-determination they don't feel are provided by the current social order. I would 💯 read any pastiche novel that presented the conflict in the HP novels from that perspective.
There's another reason she opposes Scottish Independence. An independent Scotland would mean she can kiss her Westminster gifted-billionaire tax breaks goodbye. And she is a staunch neoliberal and Blairite, hence her reluctance to accept anything left of Tony Blair or that espouses anything other than outdated, myth of meritocracy-pushing "End of History" bollocks.
When has she ever said slavery is common sense 😂
@@EjayT06 Perhaps common sense isn't the right way, but the way she puts it across as "just-so... that's just how it works and we can't/won't do anything about it". Anybody who tries to fight this obvious injustice is seen as a swivel eyed lunatic.
Yeah, she literally wrote in that slaves "enjoy being slaves" so tbh we should've seen it coming xd
People don’t talk about the only black adult character being named “Kingsley Shacklebolt”…. Shackle… bolt…
💀
🤔People talk about it constantly though
1. They do, almost constantly.
2. What even is the problem?
@@apilolomi I apologize if English isn’t your first language but shackles are famously used to keep people in bondage usually against their will… it’s a bit less than ideal that Joanne thought to use shackles as the only black man’s name
@@tgovaniAlso, I want to point out the ‘lightning association with black character’ trope to add onto your comment.
My classmate told me that he couldn’t read Harry Potter because it was satanic or play Pokémon because it supported evolution. This was 2010 in California
That's the same stuff religious parents said about it in the 90s and 00s when they were coming out. Good to know the crazy religious nuts never change.
How the turn tables
Yeah, having been indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity, don't be too hard on the guy. It's hard to break free and when you do, the usual result is losing all your friends and your family. The price of freedom is too high for some, so they stay willfully ignorant.
based
@mnmnrt boring troll. Get a real hobby
The one reason I can see why anyone wanted a tv adaptation that they were one of the five people who were mad peeves was not included in the films
I'm one of the five! Love Peeves!
who tf is peeves though, seriously
@@springshowers4754 Peeves is a mischievous spirit called a poltergeist that lives at Hogwarts and has a fairly significant presence in the novels. He's basically just a pest/nuisance, but he's fun and wacky and can have really good moments, especially when played against Filch, who DESPISES Peeves and basically assumes any disaster is probably his fault. He's just a quirky piece of world building that never had huge plot significance, but still added a ton to the flavor of the wizarding world.
@@jaredwonnacott9732 oh ok. I haven't read the books since middle school, so he must have slipped my mind.
Wait, Peeves isn't in the movies??? how did i never realize this lmao
I will always stand by this: Fantastic Beasts should have been a book series. And I love the first movie. But the plots don't feel like movie plots. The screenplays are written like novels, so let them be novels. Maybe the cancellation was a blessing. We can get the final installments in a format that fits.
Yes, it should've been like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, she probably knew early on there was going to be a movie, but Collins is an author of novels. I'm not saying you can't be both, but it's always a bigger risk to go into a new medium.
I honestly agree, those movies felt like they were written like a novel and not a visual medium, the movie constantly implemented storytelling techniques specific to the written medium and further fumbled by failing to incorporate visual storytelling techniques.
I’m a storyboard artist and I’ve encountered a lot of scripts over the years that were so obviously written by a novelist who didn’t understand the visual medium they wanted to work with 😓 while things like story structure and character arcs are universal to all storytelling mediums, many storytelling techniques are VERY medium specific. Honestly, if so hadn’t taken creative writing classes as my electives at university I don’t think I would’ve ever appreciated just how differently you have to approach storytelling depending on the medium you’re using.
For instance, internalisation (especially when using First Person narration) is an amazing technique in a novel, such direct access to a character’s inner thoughts is the written medium’s greatest strength, but if you try to do a 1 for 1 of that in a visual medium like a movie, it’ll be an awkward voice over monologue completely detached from the visuals, visuals that could otherwise communicate the same information, mood, etc via its own medium specific techniques.
Conversely, I’ve read books by authors who clearly were envisioning their story as a movie and their descriptions read more like the art and camera direction annotations on a screenplay than actual prose 😅 such novels are trying so hard to make the reader experience their story as a movie and are basically trying to tell their story via visual storytelling techniques and get bogged down trying to make the reader literally “see” their story as vividly as you see a movie rather than conveying the story through any of the non-visual storytelling techniques that good novels always use.
So it definitely goes both ways; novelists and screenplay writers have to be VERY careful whenever they write a story for the opposite medium to what they’re use to, I’d honestly never advise writers jump from one medium to the other without explicitly studying the storytelling craft of that medium, you can utterly ruin a story if you don’t understand the medium you’re working with!
@@Sanakudou i recall when Hogwarts books first had geocities fanpages & i wrote real diary from syudent perspective,,,,myspace 2003,, 2010..i wrote 7 year ,, 25,555 day journal,,each hour a new class,,, new blog page every day ,,every hour ,,,i was a wizard all right ,, i would post & forget & never go back to edit,, cos i had no time ,,i was always typing 300 words an hour..lol...i 'd do it again too.....by 2015 we got the Ilvermorney School.. but no basic origin ,, so i made it up,, another 25,555 days,, in 2022 i thought ,, ah job done,, ah tv show,hmm.please hold ,,ok a Harry Potter tv show,,yeah ,,new 7 years til..2029.. hey show til 2036,,yeah 14 years ..more,,teehee ,, by 2040~ 2047.. thats 50 years ,,like starwars 1977~2027,, wow we got old,,
It's just interesting. I remember people talking about wanting this on Tumblr years and years ago. Must have been 2014. There was this post saying, "no but imagine Harry Potter as a tv show sort of like Game of Thrones where each season is a book and each episode is a chapter everything could be fleshed out" And this was quite popular. It's weird to think about it in retrospect, because no one could have seen things unfolding like this at the time.
Kids on Tumblr thought no one was listening to them. Fandom became extreme there, but it was just a way for them to express their creativity. It was never supposed to make it to the mainstage and no one ever thought it would the way it is now
I think back then it was more of a hypothetical "what if..." and even then, it was long before all the vast majority of these other additions to the franchise and before Rowling went masks off...
Good point I was there damn, I think even still at the time I thought how do you even recast
Harry Potter is not even that good an IP, you can’t copyright wizards and you can certainly expand on them better than Rowling with her 7 wizard schools that don’t even have names in random ass countries and her characters like Sheamus O’Carbomb. Harry Potter could be replaced my an innumerable amount of fantasy IPs
@@solarydays how is it a great IP? Name 1 original idea, you can’t, it’s all generic fantasy with a British slant
The concepts like the house elves, so called ‘half breeds’ like Hagrid and the Centaurs not being treated equally to wizards EVEN by the ‘good’ ones is actually the point. Good, kind and clever people can participate in bad things just because they’re normalised. That’s why Hermione as an outsider could see it and Ron couldn’t.
Ding ding ding, I’m only halfway through but I’m gonna guess that he didn’t read the books so has no idea SPEW was omitted.
@@hayleyhellbound9513 The whole point of SPEW seemed to be 'Hermione does activation wrong.' It was treated as a joke, not as something positive. And while, yes, there is point that even 'good' people might not be 100% good, nothing is done with that point in the books or films.
But remember, Rowling made the narrative say Hermione was wrong and this system was CORRECT. Which is absolutely disgusting. Rowling had this entire book give a whole "Oh Hermione, you'll understand when you're older!" Giving a, "She's DIFFERENT. She's one of the GOOD ones. The EXCEPTION!" Which is... putrid. This is a real thing.
And it's in these book and it should make your skin crawl. If a narrative has to do this sort of override, it's not a good narrative. It's telling the readers they're too stupid to make their own connections. This isn't what happened. There is a sort of caste system for magic in Harry Potter and Rowling is just fine to let it exist. Exceptions like Hermione are different because she's a human. Everyone else? Forget them. They are the rule.
That SHOULD bother you.
you are forgetting one thing, if you are going to comment on it you have to show actual consequences and growth. its not the so called good ones doing it being the problem, its JK Rowling shows in the text and dialogue they are being correct. Why else would she describe every bad person as ugly and fat if not her thinking some of is ok?
Bang on. There are many things that have aged poorly in the books, Rowlings obvious disdain for fat people being the most obvious to me but the wizarding world being full of immorality and discrimination is one of the nuanced aspects of the books.
At no point are you encouraged to think that Dobby's treatment is ok or the way Hagrid is shunned a good thing, the treatment of prisoners at Azkaban is explicity pointed out as being morally rephrensible, and Sirius's character is shown to be permanently damaged from his experience.
JK Rowling has become a deeply reprensible character and if you examine her works then of course you'll find traces of it but the media literacy of the people going through Harry Potter looking for problematic issues, they always settle on these easily disprovable points and it's sad to see.
Hey, so, I was personally only a year or two older than Harry himself as the books were coming out. I have dark hair and wear glasses and was a scrawny kid; this passing physical resemblance combines with a love of the books and literally earned me the nickname "Potter" which was used by *everyone I knew*, family and teachers included, and lasted until I finished high school.
To say that the Harry Potter books were formative for me would be a hilarious understatement; I read every book through at least a dozen times, and the longer ones easily more than that - Order of the Phoenix was my favorite.
When it later developed that Rowling was becoming what she is now, it was *agonizing* for me to try and associate the love, friendship, whimsy and fun I'd always felt reading the books with... what the author now was. It was only three years ago now that I managed to convince myself to throw away my last remaining hard copy of Order, and it was a painful experience which took that long to build towards and convince myself was the right thing to do.
This is all to say that your description of the communities which sprung up around Harry Potter as being full of loving, inclusive, friendly people has helped to... I'm not sure, create a distinction in my mind between what Rowling is, and what Harry Potter is. I'm not exaggerating when I say I had to duck into the bathroom at work to hide my tears while I thought about what you'd said, and how having a lingering love for the series I felt it was my duty to distance myself from might not make me as much of a traitor as it always felt like I was.
I say this with absolute sincerity - thank you for, in at least some small way, giving me back a part of something which had meant so much to me for such a large piece of my life.
I'm thirty six years old now and will never spend a single dollar of my money in a way which might have any chance of reaching Rowling, but you have helped that twelve year old boy nicknamed Potter within me stop feeling guilty for existing. Again, truly, thank you.
Chapter Timestamps:
Chapter 1: Franchise fatigue 3:19
Chapter 2: Reboots 4:52
Chapter 3: State of the brand 8:59
Chapter 4: JK Rowling 17:29
Chapter 5: Is Harry Potter bad, actually? 20:50
Chapter 6: The discourse 35:32
Chapter 7: The movies 38:42
Chapter 8: Mystery 45:08
Chapter 9: Could they pull it off? 47:54
Chapter 10: Death 52:05
There are thousands of great fantasy books that would make for great movies or tv shows but companies keep overlooking them so they can keep milking series for a quick cash grab.
Coming back because I have more thoughts: I think there's a difference between the things the books' messaging was couched in and that messaging itself, and I think that gets pushed aside in a lot of retrospective looks at Harry Potter. Which, honestly, is understandable! I think you can make a good case for themes like the endurance of love, the importance and even beauty of death as "the next great adventure", and the strength and solidarity that comes from finding Your People being muddled and even ruined by the fact that Rowling regularly relies on misogynistic, racist, classist, ableist, fatphobic, transphobic, etc. characterizations of the characters who are supposed to be bad people, do bad things, or act primarily as set dressing. I think you can make a good case for those themes not being able to reach their true potential when put in a story whose protagonist is ultimately quite passive and a protector of the status quo, along with his friends and allies. I think we _should_ be able to make those cases, because I think that's how the next generation of writers learns to do better. But I also do ultimately think that, at that time, she meant well, and I think that for those of us who did speak that same language of tropes and stereotypes, who did understand the status quo as a good thing worthy of protecting, in writing a very basic "discrimination bad" story, she gave us some important tools to start deconstructing that language and understanding, even though she has clearly reached her own limits of that deconstruction. I think people like to mock the idea of Harry Potter being anyone's social justice starting point, but as someone who did grow up fairly conservative... I mean, it was for me, and I think it was for a lot of other fans I met and befriended over the years. It'd be a stretch to call it progressive for its time, but it was the first place I really learned that sometimes, questioning authority is a good thing.
I guess what all that boils down to is that I can never really dismiss Harry Potter entirely. It's not an active part of my life anymore; it won't be as long as Rowling keeps going after trans people (and occasionally weaponizing lesbians like me in order to do it). But it was formative to me in a lot of ways that I think it would be pointless to deny, and I do think there's a lot of revisionism and unnecessary shaming going on when we say it was never good and we all should have known. And in line with (maybe expanding on?) what I said in my earlier comment, I think I would be curious at the very least to see what could be done with a TV reboot -- after Rowling has died and can no longer funnel her money toward organizations and policies that seek to make life worse for my friends. I'm not thrilled that this is happening so soon. But eventually.
I think that's a very balanced a reasonable view (and I wasn't even part of the target audience for the original HP, having been around 16 when the first books came out. I do like the movies though). Are there flawed details in the series? Yes. Is the world-building flimsy? Absolutely. Did JKR bit off more than she could chew with it as the story got progressively darker and more adult? Yup.
But did this series capture the imagination of millions of young people with its themes of magic, friendship, loyalty and standing up for what's right? ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY. I think by the end it fell victim of its own success, with people caring so much about it that they (and JKR herself) wanted it to be more than it set out to be: a whimsical magical story for children. When it failed to deliver, and when JKR fell into her current political stance, it was ripe for criticism, to the point where it's annoying how some people try to tear it apart over quite minor details, like they'd be embarrassed to admit there's anything good about it.
It's a bit like with beloved sitcoms (like Friends or How I Met Your Mother) when after a period of adoration there comes a time of reassessment and suddenly everyone in those series is toxic and can't do anything wrong haha.
All of Rowling's beliefs are correct
word.
i think some people severely underestimate the general awareness of jk rowling’s behaviour there is in the general public. your typical coworker or friend of a friend at best has a vague knowledge that jk rowling has been cancelled but that does not impact on their love for harry potter in any way and would gladly devour a hbo series
Back when the reboot was first announced, I watched a video from either Jessie Gender or Council of Geeks pointing out the announcing the new series was a strategic ploy by the cash-strapped copyright holder. I can't remember all the details (and I don't feel like rewatching the entire thing just to place a RUclips comment) but the theory was that rights to the Harry Potter IP was one of the biggest asset they had, and the original seven novels was the most reliable money maker. So they pitched the series to their shareholders/bank/corporate partner as a way of pointing out how solvent they were in the long run. This strikes me as the most probable answer to the question about why they were doing a reboot now.
Honestly, while it's impossible to to know yet, I find myself wondering how well this show will do. For the OG fans, their loyalty is already cemented to the movies. For younger kids, for whom 'Harry Potter' wasn't their childhood, they know the author as that unhinged transphobe who cyberbullies any woman she deems insufficiently feminine by Caucasian standards. Thus if they do give the show a try, it'll be with a jaundiced eye. If it's good enough, they'll probably watch it, but I doubt they'll fall in love with it like Millennials did.
And that doesn't factor in what stupid things JKR does in the meantime to further destroy her reputation in the meantime. I commented that on another video about the upcoming series, before her online harassment of Imane Khelif. We've got roughly two years to go before the new series airs, so it's almost a given that Rowling is going to say more hateful things in the interim. Not only will turn off potential new fans, but even the long time HP stans may find it increasingly difficult to justify continued engagement. Just sayin'.
@@astrinymris9953 Jessie gender is a moron
It is honestly a baffling choice to make the show to begin with and shows how disconnected corporations are with reality, for now we can only let time pass and hope to god that the writer gets succesfuly sued by Imane Khelif
@@sentineluno i hope she doesn't again, Rowling is not an evil person, and damn it i desire to see the show see the most accurate harry potter, not fucked over by some of the screenwriters. and the limits of 2 hours
@@wolftitanreading5308
... she's probably one of the most evil people i can think of. The woman is a complete monster.
@@cristianoliver4447 then you have never lived your life. There are far more evil woman out in the world. Rowling has done far more good then evil.
I really appreciate the section on "is harry potter bad, actually?" I think it's a reflex people have to write off a problematic person's past work as actually having been bad all along which always seems to be kind of missing the point.
It’s the only way for most to reconcile somethi by they love being made by somebody they hate.
I imagine if it turned out Tolkien was a turbo racist and ate children nobody would look at his extensive world building with glee or that anything he ever made had any impact or was ever good despite literally all evidence to the contrary.
@@creed8712 I mean, his world building does contain a considerable amount of racism that people do regularly revisit without having to critically pan the rest of the books because they aren't actually that comparable to HP. HP does have a lot of writing flaws entirely separate from even its problematic elements. I think a lot of people like to pretend they ALWAYS saw it when they didn't, or pretend there's nothing redeeming or interesting about them (the films I think highlight the best of them whilst trimming the worst writing choices or at least distracting you from them). But... they actually aren't particularly well written, especially on a revisit. The bloat alone in those last few books...
@@elena_1776 I flat out hate that treatment cause again any books written before literally last year could be considered problematic and if the world is always perfect and has no problem then why the hell should we read it it tells nothing.
having different opinions than you isn't problematic
@@merchantarthurnthere's no racism in lotr, since there are no real races in it.
I think Rowling has had some kind of mind break where after she finished writing the original series, I think she has come to quietly resent it over the years or something cuz she doesn't seem to care how the quality of the associated projects have gone over the years. This reboot is gonna be a hot mess
And it all stems from her failed follow-up, where the only person who wasn't straight or white was the serial killer big bad. After that flop, she took the crack pipe all the way to supporting literal n@zis.
Not sure about the mindbreak, but I think she should have realised Twitter was a dumbster fire and should have handed her account off to an assistant. I think she fell down the rabbithole of the worst of the worst, one step at a time, and because she's living in a bubble of her own money and making, she's no longer in touch with the themes she fought for while working for Amnesty International and being a poor mum living on welfare. I personally think money and social media corrupted her and she's a shell of the person she was when she created the series. Yes, there were some troubling nuances in the books even then, but some of them can be brought up as part of upbringing and society at that time. But there's just no excuse left for her blatant opinions regarding minorities, especially trans people.
I think she got richer than she ever thought possible and got bored. Give me millions, I'd never be bored, and I'd actively help the world.
@meowmachine9147 she gave so much money away she lost billionaire status, so I don't think that's it.
Honestly, my biggest gripe with HP at the time, when I was a kid reading the book with my mom and brother, was that I identified a LOT with Hermione as "the girl of the group" and "the super smart kid with top grades", and she was CONSTANTLY mocked and put down, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly, often by her two best friends, for being a nerd, and a miss-know-it-all, and for speaking in an annoying way, all things I was regularly mocked for and super insecure about IRL. The story was good, but I never invested myself emotionally into it because of that. I could never believe Rowling stood for inclusion, beyond a basic (by my local standards) "nazis are bad and racism is bad" message, because her opinion on anyone who was outside the norm in a way she deemed annoying was clear from the start.
My childhood series was Ewilan, by Pierre Bottero. It has imagination-based magic, wonder and enchantment for days, well-developped characters, and the main character's friends don't sound like my fucking middle school bullies.
I'm pretty sure Hermione was JK's self-insert character. If anything, she's trying to depict a reflection of reality there based on her own experience. That's my opinion anyway.
You know who asked for this adaptation? David Zaslav, CEO of HBO. Maybe not him specifically, but he has openly and frequently talked about how interested he is in franchises that print money.
He knows that Warner Bros Discovery really needs to pay off its debt. And he will do anything to make sure the debt is paid, even if it means dismantling the company piece by piece.
im the nerd that liked the first fantastic beasts movie... for the beasts
That's what they should have focused on tbh
Did anyone else feel like the Cursed Child made Bellatrix have less of an edge in hindsight? She’s supposed to be insane and obsessed with Voldemort, but if she was carrying his child wouldn’t she have stayed safe until birthing the child? She would be supposedly pregnant around when she killed Sirius Black.
It makes it seem like she was just some girl who Voldy took advantage of, not a woman who decided for herself to be evil. Idk, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Makes her attempt at killing Ginny make less sense as well. You’d think you’d at least have a look of realization that she too is mother that is about to orphan her child when Molly stopped her
Cursed Child is non canon
No one ever accused Joanne of consistency
It also makes no sense given their interactions in the main series. It's so obvious Voldemort isn't interested in Bellatrix romantically/sexually. It was one sided (on another note, imagine a guy with no nose still not wanting to date or shag you - ouch 😂).
Maybe they just did a ritual or something, but that's still pretty dumb. There was no need for Voldemort to want a child. It's even canonical that he gets triggered by crying infants.
We already got a new Harry Potter for the future, and it was actually better than the original thing. It's called The Owl House.
That's finished though
@@dreye3215 Who cares? So is Harry Potter.
@@emperor_msk Also, if we don't get more Owl House then the image of the original core story may remain untainted. What has the Harry Potter franchise put out since the movies ended that's been good or memorable? The first Fantastic Beasts? Perhaps. If we're being charitable. But all the set up got screwed up thanks to those horrendous sequels. I can't think of anything else that's been memorable or seen in an overall positive light.
I liked the Owl House as much as the next periphery demographic watcher but you're absolutely on one if you think it's anywhere close to HP, either in reach or popularity
@@GreylockMountainno one said anything about it having more reach or popularity, they said its better, better does not mean more popular
I agree that Harry Potter is a pretty good series of books and movies, but seperating the art from the artist is a harder pill to swallow when the artist is still alive to directly benefit from any financial endorsement of the product. As much as the series was formative for me as a child, nowadays I'm steering clear of it until Rowling's out of the picture.
Exactly. Any money she makes off Harry Potter goes to fund her efforts to hurt people.
Ah, well. I grew up with Harry Potter and I do understand why my generation can't let go, but at the same time it's hilarious to see adult people refer to themselves as Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Co. on dating apps. I get it, Harry Potter had a huge impact on us and it's okay to love it, but we're at a point where it's romanticised too much and with that comes that any new movie or series set in the Wizarding World is doomed to fail. Nothing can compare the nostalgic feeling a whole generation carries and can't let go of.
Accept that companies want to milk your precious nostalgia as much as possible. If you want to cherish your feelings towards Harry Potter til the end of your days: just ignore every new production instead of complaining it will ruin your childhood memories. Same with Disney. Just ignore it and you can live with your own imagination of Harry Potter or Arielle forever and ever.
If it's hilarious for grown adults to call themselves by a fictitious school house it should also be just as hilarious when they refer to themselves as having incorrect chromosomes.
@@orphanedhanyou I am begging you. Interact with real people outside. No trans person pretend they have the opposite chromosomes. They dont deny what they were born as. They just would like you to use preferred pronouns, and also take a shit without being told to get out, it isnt that hard.
@@orphanedhanyou wtf?
@@VisceralSupreme It's a transphobic troll.
Yeah, how dare they enjoy something that became normalized to enjoy with friends and family. Simple minded idiots that they just don't sulk and hate everything absent mindedly.
You choose this mindset.
HP is not great literature. It's a children's story by a children's author who grew past her abilities. The fundamental magic and economics were completely ignored or unacknowledged. It's a fun world, but can't compare with Middle Earth or Dune. An active editor empowered to push back would have been a huge help. Once they started filming and needing prompt content, there was no hope for fixing the technical issues with the world building.
exactly, not to mention about the morals of the story, it's so deeply tied to her own political view
>It's a fun world but can't compare with Middle Earth or Dune
I disagree. I think a fundamental aspect of the reason Harry Potter doubles either of those franchises in total gross (at least movies-wise, but I'm sure the monetary gap is just as wide with books) is precisely because this nerd fantasy has greater appeal than the other two nerd fantasies.
No one is looking for formulae laying out how Transfiguration works - they want to go to Hogwarts.
@@pbradleyking Fantasy literature can still be great without needing to be just as great as the two most popular and widely loved fantasy/sci-fi worlds ever. Hakeem is still an all time great even though he’s not Michael Jordan. No nuance to your argument.
@@GreylockMountain If you wanna base quality on the amounts sold you're ignoring factors such as: What era it came out in, how many installments were written (LOTR has 3 books, so naturally HP's 7 will make more money), who it was sold to (Harry Potter came out during the era where teaching kids to read was at an all time high thanks to books such as the goosebumps series and animorphs, while when LOTR came out, children did not read books, not to mention the amount of people on earth was nowhere near the same amount). That's also not mentioning how we then default to Endgame being the best movie ever made? Or Justin Bieber being the best musician of his time? Not how these things work.
@@dn5633 I disagree tbh. HP isn't great literature by any stretch of the imagination. After book 2, they all lost the plot and are terribly written. It just happens that the movies also came out and fit so well into the zeitgeist that it shot the franchise into the stratosphere. That's not a bad thing by any means, but the movies play a huge role in the continued success of HP. The first book was a huge success on its own, but the latter ones gained alot from the movies, the soundtrack, the acting, etc, which replaced alot of the bad stuff in the books.
I would've loved a series on Umbridge honestly, been saying this for years, we have no clue to why she is so evil, why she believes what she believes, nothing... we got more on Voldemort and he is less hated than her
I wouldn't say the books are "bad"... But they aren't great either. They're accessible and easy to read, Rowling seems to be good enough at pacing to keep events moving and keep the reader engaged. Otherwise, they're incredibly shallow and unless you're right leaning and libertarian, they are too steeped in Rowling's worldview for any message to stand up to adult scrutiny. Once you include her complete inability to accept any kind of criticism or to admit to any flaws or plot holes, the veneer of nostalgia fades quickly.
They're perfect for kids, but there are other books that are perfect for kids that age way better for an adult to read.
I never got that impression at all, and I'm kinda shocked so many people nowadays read the series as some sort of rightwing propaganda. I guess some things got lost in translation because I diodn't read them in English.
@@joshuagreen818 How on Gods green Earth are the lessons from Harry Potter right leaning
@@dn5633If read with a political lens, Harry Potter has pretty horrible politics. It’s steeped in 90s neo-liberal “we don’t need to change the system” bullshit. I mean, Harry literally ends up being a cop defending the same broken system that gave him so much trouble as a teen. Not to mention the narrative condones slavery as long as the owners are nice. Shaun has a really good video essay that goes into the shitty politics of Harry Potter if you’re actually curious.
@@edienandyyes this!!!!
I dont understand why a reboot, just tell a new story mate:
- the hogwarts founder's
- the marauders
- the 7th year for Neville under voldemorts regime
- first gen after the war
- adventures of the Phoenix order
- and, and, and
HBO, what about instead let`s adapt the most popular HP fanfics. Now that would be something.
The squid and the castle? 👀
Manacled 😢
Finally. _My Immortal._
i think it's kind of disingenuous to frame the criticisms of harry potter's larger themes as nitpicking the books to prove that jk rowling has always been evil or whatever when these are literally criticisms that already existed that people were already talking about years ago before she became poster child of the terfs. it really doesn't take much time to realize the books can be interpreted that way if you stop to think about them at all. like "why did jkr introduce slavery and then make the main character a slave owner in the happy ending" was a criticism my friends and i could come up with in middle school before the second deathly hallows had even come out, easily during the time that harry potter was seen as a masterpiece and jkr was seen as some kind of pop culture god. they aren't small issues. they were actively getting in the way of us enjoying the stories and we were writing fanfiction in our heads to solve the problems this posed for us. and we were HUGE harry potter fans who literally ran around during break time pretending to duel each other with pencils. these problems weren't just always there, they were also always obvious. i can't even remember how many times i met another harry potter fan who went on a rant about how it's ridiculous that everyone makes fun of hermione for being against slavery. we were children and we could make those critiques. because it's literally right in your face. the comic relief in book 4 is that hermione wants to abolish slavery.
if you look back at critiques of harry potter and its world even from before jkr came out as a terf, these same critiques are already present. we were like 14 (around 2013ish, so before jkr started doing terf shit online) when we realized harry potter was poorly written upon a reread, and we were huge fans of harry potter. sometimes bad people do make good things, but harry potter is just mediocre. from a craft perspective it's not particularly well written or creative, and from a moral perspective the hero character is literally a slave owner in the happy epilogue, and that's not even touching the whole systemic oppression of all other magical species by wizards or the rampant fatphobia. harry is kind of insanely passive and also an asshole. none of the characters get real development. 90% of the books are boarding school book fluff completely unrelated to the actual plot, which gets ridiculous in the second half of the series when wizard hilter is out and about and we're reading about our characters just chilling and doing homework most of the time. it's just not a good series. half of the ideas in the books that are hailed as creative are ripped whole cloth out of the worst witch series. the reason anti hp people had the "read a different book" criticism was partly because they were just hating, but also they did have a genuine point. harry potter is just not well written and once you start reading other books, you realize that.
like, you said it's grounded in altruism and thematically dedicated to the liberation of oppressed people. but it's objectively not. like voldemort is simultaneously a blood purist wizard supremacist racist nazi character who wants to oppress more people, but he's also the only one trying to reach out to the other oppressed magical species and offer them better treatment. both of those things are true and they're completely contradictory. all of magical society is built around wizards having the ultimate power and other species not even being able to use wands. this kind of stuff is mentioned repeatedly in the books which is why i still remember it. but they don't do anything about this. harry and co are only interested in maintaining the status quo. slytherin house is a cesspit of blood purist ideology, but even in the epilogue it still exists. nothing changes. slavery is introduced and it still exists. goblins and centaurs and giants and so on are treated as second class citizens despite being intelligent and this never changes. harry isn't even altruistic. he's basically a millionnaire and his best friend's family lives in poverty, but he doesn't financially help them out with anything. he doesn't even OFFER to compensate them for the car after driving it into the tree. he doesn't even buy ron any christmas presents! they're supposed to be best friends! harry and co decorate the severed house elf slave heads in sirius's family's house with christmas hats over the holidays. what part of this is altruistic? what part of this is thematically dedicated to the liberation of oppressed people?
the problematic "undertones" aren't "there if you go looking". they are overtones. the book is actively slapping you in the face with how horrible these people are. i think the audience harry potter ended up cultivating says far more about the fans and the communities we created than it does about harry potter. we got what we wanted out of the books. we looked at a series of books in which the heroes want to continue to oppress others and we decided they didn't actually want to do that and that they were good people. part of the reason why is also that the movies left a lot of this malice out, so it's easy to remember that version of the story.
How are you gonna complain about overarching themes in Harry Potter when you don’t even acknowledge that the books constantly talk about being kind and treating others with respect, especially when it comes to house elves.
House elves are representative of a poor working that can still be representantes today, as plenty of employees are overworked for little pay, and plenty are eager to get the chance to work, which makes them easy targets for abuse-immigrants, recent grads, people passionate about their jobs…
Having an extreme example of this in a child’s book, making them think about why we should be kind even to those we wrongly consider “lesser” ( everyone who thinks elves are lesser in the books is punished)
You can always strip away parts of media and see them in a bad light, but looking at the whole picture it’s clear the authors intent was not for the reader to think slavery is ok…
Basically word for word the comment i wanted to make lol. he mentioned liking the books when he was 7 and it made me wonder if he's ever actually read or analysed them since through an adult lens. Nostalgia really can rot your brain if you let it. I recommend Shaun's video on Harry Potter, Shaun did not grow up as a fan so it's interesting seeing a totally fresh adult take on the stories.
@@pedroedmond3008Given how much people are arguing about it, I question any statement asserting that the author's intent with regard to this subject is clear.
@@adamdavis1648 Argument isn't a gauge for intent though, plenty of people argue about evolution, argue that it's a theory, though only because they don't bother to actually study it and understand what it means, devoid of any external biases. Information is always trivialized when the masses mosh it into generalized assumptions.
Whether the slavery in Harry Potter is meant to represent literal slavery, a metaphor of old British servant class, or even just loyal animals, is up to debate, but the author made it very clear that, regardless of how they got there, treating them with respect and kindness is the most important thing you can do.
@@pedroedmond3008 Even if the elves are a represetation of poor folk and not slaves, it's STILL a terrible analogy that relies on the reader just being fine with there being "good" exploiters and "bad" exploiters.
It's clear that Rowling was basing the house elves on the old european folklore of elves, goblins and the like that would come in the night and do housework for people. Like the tale of the cobbler. In these various tales, the creatures would do work for free, but would get offended when offered payment and sometimes 'punish' the person by never returning or doing work for them. In these tales they were mischievous and worked on their own code. The trouble is, Rowling took these fun concepts, and turned them into creatures that were bound to masters and easily abused. What they should have been, even by folklore's standard, are autonomous creatures with their own free will who cleaned of their own accord and left as soon as their current target did anything to offend them. Would have made for WAY more interesting story telling to. Imagine Hogwarts having fun quirks like "omg don't leave red socks out for laundry on thursdays! the house elves will quit on the spot and we'll have to hope a new batch fills the spot by the weekend or we're really going to have issues".
House elves should have had the power in these dynamics, not the other way around. That's the POINT of the fairtytales.
If we're talking about racial sensitivity, taking nothing away from your main point, we need to recognise Parvati Patel as an explicitly named Asian character, long before Cho Chang.
her poor sister Padma was mentioned even less. she was basically unwilling arm candy for Ron at the Yule Ball when he couldn’t go with Hermione
not racist
Y'all I don't think the Indians who live along with all the other Patils and Padmas care about this. Like we love that there's people who r named like us. N we cringe at the pronunciations. We don't really have the energy to care.. Wait u prolly don't too. Lol. We just njyoin some internet drama
So? Did you expect them to have white, western names so it would be less “problematic”? 💀
They should have named her Streetshitter McGee
The morals have aged well because they aren't nuanced.... like at all. Saying racism bad and leaving it there gives no room for bad actors to attack it. Which is good but its also kinda lackluster.
I kinda think the morals have some cracks in them if anything. In short there aren’t really any bad actions so much as there are people that we’re supposed to hate. Like, Harry can own a slave cuz he’s chill, but dobby must be freed because a bad guy owns him. The entire story is dedicated to returning to a comfortable status quo that the well to do protagonists can benefit from, merely by killing the big bad guy. None of the inequality or racism is ever systematically addressed by the end of the books. And Harry and his friends all get to become wizard cops and politicians lol
@@happyfriendshippalthat’s just reality though.
@@creed8712 explain
@@happyfriendshippal how did ww2 end exactly?
@@creed8712 the Japanese surrendered to allied forces under very complex political and cultural circumstances. the atomic bomb lays dubious at best claim to ending the war if that’s what you’re getting at
I feel so bad for the new child actors filling in the colossal shoes. Especially if they enjoy their time filming season 1, only for later seasons to be cancelled if the show fails.
There is nothing that this show could do that fanfiction hasn't. Lets be so honest. Every awful storyline element, racist undertone, or transphobic statement has been explored and fixed through the unimaginable mass of Harry Potter fanfiction on AO3. The marauders era fandom (built on almost no canon information) has taken on a deeply queer 'fanon' and produced more literary content than my public library could hold, and that alone is reason enough to know that a reboot is unnecessary. Unless Rowling dies almost immediately and somebody interview-with-the-vampire's that shit (lets it be gay) there is no concievable point to me
Women are people who were born female.
Maradeurs fandom already has countless movies and series, its called "Teen wolf" and "Euphoria" and "Smallwille" and "Winx live action" and countless other ips about 20-year old schoolkids engaging in vague mysteries and relationships
Interview with the Vampire was always gay. You don’t have to have physical sex to be gay. Anne Rices books are filled with queer people and themes. She was always a vocal ally. Her son is gay and she had started talking about her own lack of internal sense of gender when she was tragically taken from us.
@@KOTEBANAROTGod, I sometimes still can’t believe live action Winx was made.
It makes no sense cinematically, but perfect sense financially. Rowling has proved she can't make anything else decent; her input to the scripts on Fantastic Beasts was considered a big factor in why the films are so poor, and her adult fiction is overlooked unless it's stirring up controversy. HP is the cash cow, and the next generation aren't going to buy in unless there's a constant refreshing and laundering of the brand to keep it headline-relevant when the only thing we hear about Rowling, over and over, is a tirade of bigotry. It's a cash grab, and keeping the new park in-line with the old branding shows how little faith anyone has that it'll even take off.
I feel like it's still a bit too soon to gauge what the parks really think of the show since we've barely got anything besides talk of the show's announcement itself and some casting calls (to my knowledge anyway). I do agree with everything else, though, it's pretty blatantly a cash grab.
As far as faith in the show goes though, I'd wager the parks would be shooting themselves in the foot if they chose to cash in hard on the new show, only for it to be bad. Still, I doubt that there's much the parks can do with what little there is to advertise or 'cash in' on with the new show right now, so when we actually see more coming out about the show, will we get a better impression on what the parks think.
I have that weird feeling that nobody will care after season 2 and it might get canceled after season 5 or undergo major changes
I like that you tried to be as nuanced as possible with this. It's hard to find anyone who has given HP any artistic credit, because it did have merit until so, so recently. I'm no longer a JKR supporter, though I was a fan literally since day one. It's been hard for me as a huge HP fan *and* a trans man to compartmentalize all of this. Thanks again for talking about this and being real.
A work of art lost its merit because its female author holds her own opinion of womanhood? Interesting. (And by that I mean I find it condescendingly interesting.) I still like The Fugees’ music even though Lauren Hill hates me for something I can’t control.
@@DanLovesBooks because it's terf author denies the OPs manhood*
But still not really, no, because a lot of people have been dissecting the series for years even before Rowling started being a bigot and it just never was that good.
@@Jane-oz7ppSaying HP was never that good is actually crazy.
Can you help me try to understand why people are so angry with Rowling? I was a HUGE Potterhead during the release of the books but drifted away from the IP post-Deathly Hallows. I've never read Cursed Child, never watched the 2nd Fantastic Beasts, and don't follow J.K. on Twitter. I've only heard about the political issues peripherally.
Please correct my understanding of events. To me it seems like J.K. Rowling genuinely wants to be an ally to the trans community. However, she thinks there should be a distinction between women and trans-women. She would still like to acknowledge trans-women as people who should be respected as much as anyone, and treated with dignity. It seems like she agrees with most of your values, genuinely wants to be an ally, and means well. The disagreement comes with her definition/distinction between woman and trans-woman.
I don't mean to be dismissive at all. And I understand why someone could feel hurt by this "disagreement" (there is probably a better word to use). But is it really enough to call J.K. a "bad person"? She means well. You have to meet people where they are. J.K. seems to be an ally more than an enemy. She seems to want to help more than most people.
@@Jane-oz7pp jk has only said trans women and women are different...shocker. and denying ops "manhood'? R u serious? The op us trying to mimic being a man to relieve dysphoria, they're "manhood" isnt real .
A Series of Unfortunate Events clears Harry Potter any day imo
The only way I can really see this working in a new adaptation is to also change the visual media; if they did this as an animated series, I think it would probably work magnificently
Yeah unless they’re willing to shell out GOT level money per episode it’ll end up looking cheap. You can bet your ass there won’t be practical effects, it’ll all be added in with CG
JoJO just wants a new cast to try to overshadow the ones who turned against her over her bigotry,
She either doesn't realize these ones will also grow up, or she just plans to replace them too
@@solarydays She wanted to continue working with the golden trio but they all spoke out against her and her disgusting views so she feel's vindictive towards them.
@@solarydays I'm not saying its the plan but I understand why people think this way, Cause she is extremely bitter especially towards Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson because they have been extremely vocal against JK Rowling.
@@solarydays She did? Both statements are true lmao, She did want to continue working with them and they did not with her so she became bitter and resentful this is a fact not a make up your mind thing.
@@solarydays Are you drunk? Like is there something wrong with the way you read or think? She did wanna work with them I was just reiterating that, Do you not understand that when someone replies to you they are referring to what you were saying or is this somehow magically lost on you?
I hope they dont actually bother going through with it, but if they did start it, can you *imagine* her meltdown when it's inevitably canceled early (streaming shows just don't run that long, the economics of the model are so bad, especially for a show that will be expensive as hell to produce and the only possible product placement is its own merch.)
It’s going to do shit because it’s going to be shit and unsuited to steaming, but she’s going to spend all her time saying it failed because of a woke mob
Yeah, the eight movies she had just do not happen. She got lucky.
@@ezrafriesner8370 lol nah, the show will do just fine as long as it’s decent…everyone knows the woke mob can’t cancel shit
@@Golami224 lol it wouldn’t be a “woke mob”, it would just be another case of studios pouring money into a show that doesn’t offer sufficient returns cause the streaming platform economic model is kinda a nightmare and hard to finance. Shows get canceled very very often on streaming platforms because they’re hard to make money off of
If they wanted easy money making Graphic Novel/Manga adaptations of the books would be an easy bet. But JK Rowling doesn't like comics and doesnt think they're "real books" or whatever. If they wanted some easy money I think making a Harry Potter anime or cartoon adaptation would be a slam dunk.
Soon Imane Kalif will own Harry Potter, I’m looking forward to what will be in store under her leadership of the brand ❤
Pigs will fly and hell will freeze over before that cheating man gets the rights.
oooh - arent you edgy.
@@veronicamaine3813 no.
@@veronicamaine3813 You don't know what edgy means if you think this is edgy.
Okay, well, after finishing the video and reading the comments, I feel like one more comment is necessary. My previous comments were all counter-points to things you said, but after seeing that the current comments seem to skew more in the negative direction than the positive, I think it's necessary to mention that this was an excellent video. Your arguments were very well-structured and thoughtful, and eloquently expressed. And the shifting of the recording setting was a cool touch as well.
All in all, this video felt extremely professional and kept me thoroughly engaged to the end. It's certainly the quality of video I wouldn't be surprised to see on a large established channel.
For me, at least, this HBO reboot is just a cash grab. It’s too soon after the series. And with JK Rowling beliefs I’m not looking forward to it especially that my beloved book series will more likely get made terrible
oh boy do I remember the satanic panic over HP! I was only a small child during the original one back in the 1980’s, but I definitely remember the HP one! I was in middle/high school at the time, and I will never forget my parents’ friend calling our house to leave a message (on the good old answering machine) begging them not to let me or my brother read HP. Because it was against Jesus or something. Thankfully, my parents never really prevented us from consuming any media as kids. It’s probably because they were both working full time, but still. We got to watch way too much HBO, even the R rated stuff, and listened to whatever music we wanted. So they weren’t about to start taking books away from us. That woman who left the message probably loves the franchise now, given rowling’s new allegiances and all. Wouldn’t be surprised to see any of those ridiculous stay at home moms who wanted to burn every copy of the half blood Prince then, now sporting a “I stand with jk rowling!” or “this witch doesn’t burn!” shirt.
And all the dorks who grew up loving it hate it now because Rowling spoke the truth. You are the same as the crazy religious people.
@@espo221bOK holocaust denier.
Where I lived there was no Satanic panic, I didn’t even know it was a thing back then until I read about it on the internet when I was 17. I’m from Spain
I LOVED the series but growing older I was just kinda starting to feel off about some aspects. I mean as a girl it was kinda always bad because there are so little female characters and they all suck. JK Rowling REALLY hates woman (not just trans woman) and it really made me hate everything gilry about myself . 10/10 recommend a video "Top Top 28 Female Characters in Harry Potter (and what they say about J.K. Rowling…) "
But like the thing that made me get the ick in fist place is the slave race that wants to be inslaved and that slavery is only bad if they treat their slaves bad and just how she wrote about Hermione wanting to free them. But now as an adult it is hard to read because its impossible to "seperate the art from the artist" because like the world building is so based around fasism is okay or atleast if we do it and slavery is fun and acutally what if we did an antisemitism and fatphobia and the list just goes on. I dont say it lightly or as a joke, so much of her world is just rasist but not to show its bad just to be like in a world i had all choices to create I will create rasism and let it exist. There are so good long videos about this, i cannot explain it all in a comment.
Even though I want to enjoy it as when i read it it is not like good writing, it is just nostalgia.
What on earth are you talking about? You weirdos just invent problems to get upset about.
You mean the video where the girl complains that an unseen for most of the series author of textbooks didn’t have more of storyline?
The only women that are "good enough" are mothers who are celebrated for being only mothers or sacrifice everything for supporting their husband. Even then there's always a xenophobic stab at who they are, like Molly Weasley. There's ALWAYS an insult. Always something. Always a comment that makes me go, "Holy crap, even Roald Dahl isn't this hateful unless someone is evil for evil's sake." Narcissa Malfoy gets a pass and less insults just because she had a child and she's putting up with her husband's goosestepping because OH BUT BEING A MOTHER AND WIFE. HOW NOBLE. Give me a break she's got an armband on, too.
But despite loving McGonagall she still has vitriol towards her for never loving again (and the cat lady thing) which is... what's the point? She gets the Dumbledore treatment; we only find out later she gets nieces and nephews she's devoted to which, okay why are you WEIRD about women being single or not having children in their lives or being even remotely feminine?
It's WEIRD. It's CREEPY. This obsession is really weird because then she'll go OH WELL SHE LOOKS LIKE A MAN OR A PIG for other characters she wants to deeply villainize. What. Even as a child it felt deeply unsettling. I like pink. What's wrong with me then! I was going through puberty and my weight fluctuated each week. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME, JOANNE?!
that video was really good and eye opening
the point of her mentioning that character is that a female character that was only mentioned ONCE made it onto the list of female characters mentioned THE MOST IN THE SERIES. if the series had actual care put into its female characters, all of the female characters on the list would be mentioned at least 5-10 times. and video dives into the character arcs of the most popular female characters such as ginny, molly weasley, mcgonagall. almost all of their motivations are tied to their relationships to male characters, or being a mother.
You’re right: it’s totally about money. And I have to believe the studio has done their research that there’s enough people that will want to watch it that they’ll make money. I also think that they’ve seen that JKR is sort of a one-hit wonder. Just about everything she’s done since those first seven books have made the Wizarding World franchise worse. If she’s going to be deeply attached to it, a HP remake is really the only option.
There are so many other stories that could be told from within the universe, but because of JKR, we’re stuck with either bad stories or remakes.
Sure man let's get a series out of a beloved children series like, nearly ten years after its relevancy has faded, and its creator is embroiled in a controversy that has placed the series under brand new scrutiny where people without nostalgia are analyzing it and everyone who was a diehard six odd years ago is starting to realize that the entire series was actually pretty poorly written but we couldn't see it because we were children. This is a good idea.
I really want to know where you're at that HP's relevance has faded, because it sounds like you're letting your distaste for Rowling color your perception. The books and movies are still insanely popular. And if an entry is good, like last year's Hogwarts Legacy, it'll still crack $1B.
How was it "poorly written" exactly?
@@sandyg4646 Extremely poorly written. If you read some better books, you'll quickly realize it.
@@7PlayingWithFire7 that's not an argument..just an opinion
Women are people who were born female.
woah i assumed this was a big channel until i went to subscribe at the end of the video!! great job man; can't wait for more of your videos :)
There is a lot I agree with here, but the idea that Harry Potter is "explicitly anti-fascist" enough and its themes are so obviously there that conservatives won't go to bat for it is absurd. They fucking play MGS and don't comprehend the blatant anti-western sentiment in it, and the earnest adoration of Che. They watch Robocop and don't see that its politics condemn them. You put too much weight onto hypocrisy and consistency.
Sigh.. I’m all for new ideas being done, however as a kid I always thought a animated Tv show of Harry, Ron and Hermione and their daily lives at Hogwarts depicting the rest of the school year outside of the main events of each book/movie would have been a fun idea. It would be animated and therefore not confused with the movies, but also explored all the growth and events that happened in a school year outside of the main plot of the books/movies.
Each season was a year they were at school, and we could really get views into other characters times at Hogwarts as well and see some events that weren’t given time in the movies. Obviously now that I’m a little older and the final books and movies have been released I realize that’s a lot harder to pull off well and and adapt faithfully. However a full remake of each movie to accurately tell the stories of the book THIS soon is a level of overkill that even Disney and their mass production of Star Wars hasn’t reached… yet.
There was some absolutely fantastic moments in this video but... It's a little frustrating that the acknowledged critiques stop at social critique because whilst bigotry does make a series worse, there's so much MORE foundational to HP's poor story telling (and I say this as someone who "was a fan" in the sense that I enjoyed the first four books and then forced myself to "enjoy" the last 3 because it was the only interest I had that anyone else was enthusiastic about). Bloated page counts, dull and tangential story telling (my god, book 6), inconsistent moral messaging ("good characters can fat shame but bad characters cannot" is bad not only because it's problematic, but because that's inconsistent and sloppy), poor tone control, copious moments where characters you're meant to like get unbearably grating, bad/missing foreshadowing (the deathly hallows are a particular standout - though clearly it's not for lack of planning, because the horcruxes were well established even if the magic changed), an unsatisfying conclusion that's about Who Got A Wand We Just Learnt About instead of a core theme or the protagonist's skill/traits, a further unsatisfying conclusion where it feels like a lot of potentially positive changes for the world were ditched in favour of the status quo.... the list goes on. And without getting unnecessarily CinemaSins Nitpick about it. It's part of the reason why the FILMS are particularly good - the scripts do a good job of trimming the fat and neatening the edges and I do think this recolours the original in a lot of people's brains because they are so iconic and memorable.
Now of course the films took their material from the original so it's not as if there was nothing in those books that was 'good', so I can't fault anyone for being able to get past the flaws in them and genuinely enjoy them. But I know when I revisited them in that gap where Pottermore started getting weird but JK hadn't gone off the deepend yet I found myself walking away thinking "they... weren't that good, actually".
As for the problematic elements - it's important to continually recontexualise that these are books for kids. Kids that are meant to age with Harry, sure, but still children. "This could be taken as a commentary on how activists are dismissed as annoying because hard truths are difficult to stomach" rings hollow when it's alongside a house elf who is depressed and alcoholic as a direct result of being freed from slavery. Most adults would probably not read it that way, let alone 13-14 yr olds. It's not revisionist to understand that the books problematic elements HAD been critiqued for years by minorities who finally started to be listened to as the cracks in JKR's armour started to show during Pottermore's early years. Unshockingly, it wasn't popular or often safe for marginalised people to critique the cultural juggernaut that was Harry Potter? I dunno man, "Cho Chang" has always been a racist name (etc) and people finally acknowledging that isn't "revisionist". That honestly added a weird taste to the rest of this video that was otherwise good. It's like... okay to have complicated feelings, it's okay to acknowledge the books/films had plenty going for them, but it felt... defensive. And for what?
Right, like it must be easy to sit there as a white guy and dismiss the criticism that people of colour have been saying for decades as nitpicking and twitter discourse just because he can't get over something he liked as a child maybe not being as good as he thought it was when he was 7 lol. Like it's fine to recontextualise and reevaluate things from your past with a more mature outlook. Healthy, even. More people should do that.
@@eyeballjay Absolutely. It's easy to get individualist about it too like.. .you don't need to defend /yourself/ that you were one of many people who didn't notice/didn't care about the bigotry throughout the books. I know I sat in that area in late teens/early adulthood even though my overall opinion on the books had wilted from a general quality perspective. I feel like that's what happened here.
Well said!
If fanfics and the public domain has taught me, the Harry Potter franchise doesn't need rest, it needs to be free from corporate hands and Rowling's hands to let other fans and artists rejuvenate it with their own progressive ideas that changes it in a positive effect moving forward.
THIS, the amount of great writing made by fans is outstanding and fixes many of the issues that many have with the books and even expands the universe in actualy good and interesting ways
I honestly don’t need a reboot…I love when they do stuff like “Tales of the Jedi” for Star Wars. To have small things focus of other characters that weren’t prominent in the films series. But…🤷🏻♀️
They can update the books to what they obviously always meant to say, according to JKR.
Make all Death Eaters LGBTQ, Draco becomes crossdresser Drag-o, Hermionie makes studies of the age at which teenage girls are most ripe and fertile, Ron dies, so Hermione can get together with Harry, Dumbledore is now straight and has 23 children with McGonnagall (also he‘s played by Matt Walsh), Umbridge is a butch lesbian, the Dark Mark becomes the Rainbow Mark, and Voldemort‘s favourite spell is „Awokeakedavra“. Music sounds all like a Richard Wagner opera.
That is funny how people hate Rowling for both being too inclusive and not inclusive enough...
Sound fuckin awesome
@@CarmenElRose literally nobody hates rowling for "being too inclusive" lmao
@@7PlayingWithFire7 I do. I knew the franchise was fucked the moment she said "well ackchually dumbledore was gay all along"
The funniest bit of this is actually that Wagner was one of the biggest inspirations for John Williams. His concept of the Leitmotiv is visible all throughout John Williams' work. The entirety of the Harry Potter soundtrack is heavily inspired by Wagner. So the original soundtrack already actually sounds like a Richard Wagner opera.
I think you underestimate how much conservatives will contradict themselves. They will absolutely support the new show just because jk Rowling is involved and will constantly try to claim it's anti woke, regardless of what it does...
I liked Newt Scamander. He deserves a show focusing on his non-world-in-peril adventures, but who wants to give Rowling more money?
I've been looking for a video like this for a little while now without even realising it, amazing content wowowow
i wanna add my own thoughts because I've been reflecting on my past relationship with the material ever since the news came out that she might be being sued sometime soon
i think there's something positive to be said about Harry reconnecting to a past he never knew
I do truly think that the series peaks in its thematic richness in Prisoner of Azkaban, with that whole story being a beautiful exploration of how Harry can reclaim a relationship to the parents he never knew through spending time with his dad's old friends
everything regarding how his patronus is conjured from a memory that he isn't even sure is real is super touching and I'm sure people never knew their parents would be able to find themselves in Harry in those moments
in short, I love the part when Sirius tells Harry that the ones we love never really leave us, pure and simple
that's when the series is at it's strongest, to me
to me, everything that follows is weakened once you come to terms with the idea that the finale centres on a fight to vanquish fascism written by someone without a solid grasp on how fascism should be confronted - the fact that Voldemort is essentially defeated by wand loyalty mechanics rather than by anything explicitely anti-fascist speaks for itself - hell, Harry owns a slave by the end of the series ; ;
with that being said, I'd be remiss not to mention Newt Scamander as a character. I do think that he's an amazing example of a positive masculine role model; kind, empathetic, peaceful, and I think it's brilliant that many read him as a positive example of an autistic protagonist,,,,, but you totally hit the nail on the head when saying that it's a shame that those movies aren't built for him and are instead concerned about a conflict nobody cares about
I only ever stuck around for the first fantastic beasts film, didn't see the sequel because I wasn't comfortable seeing a film with Johnny Depp in it in 2018 and cut ties with the franchise once JK went fully mask off in 2020 but I still love Newt himself, at least conceptually
10/10 video, it feels like it was made by someone who's been making video essays for years - I'm sure next time the Harry Potter special interest takes over me, I'll be rewatching this, alongside Shaun's video and the ContraPoints video ^^
10/10 comment, great pin.
I'd like to say that I think the themes of the Harry Potter novels are different. It's not a story about a fight against fascism, but a story about the fear and acceptance of death in all its nuances. It's about learning what death is and how it feels for the people left behind (> dementors, which double as a symbol for depression), about understanding and being faced with death (> seing Thestrals), about the fear of death and trying everything that's in one's might to escape it (> Horcruxes), about sacrifice and love and protecting the ones we love by sacrificing ourselves (> Lily and the protection she gave Harry, mirrored by the deaths in the Final Battle of Hogwarts) and finally of accepting death and welcoming it (> Into the Forest), also about manipulations (>diary), media image vs personal image (> Kimmkorn), propaganda (> narrative "Voldemort is/is not back") and the difficulty of breaking through perceptions in a closed-off society (> purebloods/ houseelves / goblins). Love and friendship and loss are integral parts of Harry's story, repeated over the novels time and time again by the mentor figure Dumbledore and that's why the final battle against Voldemort is so satisfying because by his actions he created the person who's responsible for his downfall. I personally think that Harry Potter is a story about themes and the problem with the Fantastic Beasts movies is that JK R. lost sight of that and tried to incorporate all this storylines into a script without getting a pushback from a seasoned editor and screen-writer. Just my few cents, don't want to negate your opinions.
I used to also love harry potter more than just about anything when i was really young. But as i got into my mid teens, a lot has tainted the franchise for me. I consumed much more literature that was frankly not aimed at kids. So, on top of the shitty additions to the franchise, i looked back at how flimsy the writing was for the original series. And rowling being repugnant doesn't help either. They are ideally books made for kids to enjoy, and it accomplishes that. But also, there are similar books made for kids that engross adults as well.
Yeah I don't think they are necessarily bad, they are just not at that level of other great fantasy
@@ricebix theyre really mid though. it is the biggest crime to literacy that her books are the most sold books of all time after the bible
rowling isn't repugnant.
Or
......and heres a crazy idea.....how about adapting a long book series that hasnt been done before ? Take a leap of faith maybe.?
And stop beating a dead horse?
Sincerely, a potterhead who rereads the books and re-watches the movies on a yearly basis.
IKR, you can tell that the executives just live outside of human costums and just see the numbers and statistics without any of the context, making baffling choices like this
When it comes to Harry Potter's quality and if it had good morals/lessons, I think the problem is that: no matter how kind and and empathetic Rowling tried to be, she got in her own way. I don't think she was ever the rabid bigot secretly waiting to be let loose on the world. She self radicalized because she became so socially isolated, has clearly never dealt with her trauma or insecurities, and is surrounded by yes men. Ursula K. Le Guin was right in her assessment that HP was “stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.” Bullying in British schools is normalized to a greater degree than in American or Canadian schools for one thing, for example. Her world building is shallow - I was in the fan fiction side of HP and let me tell you, I had to do so much of my own world building to fill in glaring gaps that I was basically creating my own universe. I found Rowling was good at creating sets and scenes, establishing an aesthetic, but nothing deeper than that. Rowling suffers, in my opinion, from a very narrow world view and a shocking curiosity about the world.
And to go back to Le Guin, who I found later, I don't think Rowling should get a pass about writing "in a different time". A Wizard of Earthsea came was published in 1968. It features a mostly non white cast, an intricately built world, and a very deep magic system. It tackles themes like growing up, faith and belief, gender, power and responsibility, balance with oneself and nature at large. In contrast to Rowling, Le Guin was always inquisitive, challenged her reader's perceptions (regardless of target demographic), and was always willing to grow and change and challenge herself as a person and an author. Rowling is not, in my opinion, capable of such thoughtfulness and that will always hinder her works - especially Harry Potter - when it comes to the value of her stories.
WAIT THEY FULLY CANCELLED THE REST OF THE FANTASTIC BEASTS MOVIES??? WHY AM I JUST NOW FINDING THIS OUT LOLLLLL
My breakup with this series has been one of the most painful and the most protracted breakups of my life, and so for that reason and a whole host of other reasons (including what you've covered in this video), I really do wish they'd just scrap any attempts at a reboot at _least_ until Rowling dies and she isn't funneling the money she makes from her IP into anti-trans organizations and politics. I'm grateful for the good messages the person she used to be had to share about the tangible forces involved in love and loss... but I can't look at it again until the person she is now _is_ no more. I would love for that to mean she deradicalizes one day, but I'm not holding my breath.
Well-made video, in any case. It's nice to hear nuanced takes about the franchise itself no matter how people feel about it... and I think I do kind of miss talking about Harry Potter.
Same here.
Jeez, get a grip
@@AgentGodzillaRP1701 Jeez, get a life outside of putting other people down online ;)
Seriously, large portion of the fan base is hurt. This show isn't going to fix that. And Rowling is going to go nuts when this show doesn't do well
@@ramywiles rather have the series and Rowling alive then your bs wants. Rowling has the right to make money off her work
“No precedent for a reboot of a huge franchise this soon” The Amazing Spider-Man would like to have a word with you 😂
your take on the concept of death in harry potter reflecting in what is happening to it in the real world gave me goosebumps. i never thought of it in this way but it captures the essence of everything we say about this reboot era in general, and in harry potter in particular, so poetically and beautifully. thank you for that
If anything, this series should be an anthology of scenes that either couldn't make the movies or had to be condensed for runtime. We don't need an entire season for Prisoner of Azkaban, but a book-accurate Shrieking Shack scene with all the Marauders' details? Yes, please.
there’s also the disadvantage that full seasons of high quality shows now take foreverrrrrr to make, and have a much higher likelihood of getting cancelled somewhere in the middle, which would make its existence even more meaningless. and with child actors they need to have a very tight time frame so they don’t grow up too fast. i have very little faith they’ll pull it off
Honestly I don't think this will make it to the screen, based on absolutely nothing just a feeling I have
If I actually cared about Harry Potter enough, I'd say the best they could do is take the Animated style of deathly hallows story and tell a new story for a new generation.
it is a major oversight in your critique that you do mention that the books are very misogynistic, classist and fatphobic. If you talked about those things along with the racism and slavery, could you still really claim that the work is good and holds up?
Yes because those arent the merits of the criticism and if anything the books intentionally shine a light on classism, even if it doesnt magically solve it.
Cute how millennials attempt to reconcile their childhood love for a series of books with their much more recent drive for self-validation via attention whoring on social media. Cute and pathetic.
I could, but I’m not triggered by the author having her own opinion about womanhood. They’re fun books to read. Can’t have a good story without struggles, so sometimes the author has to touch on sensitive subjects. Would love to see your bestselling book that gets millions of people to read it and which contains nothing anybody might find disagreeable.
You could claim that the messages surrounding love, friendship, loss, grief, mortality, questioning authority, etc. are still worthwhile, even though they're not at their most expansive and true when couched in misogyny and classism and fatphobia and racism and weird accidental slavery apologia and upholding of the status quo. I think those nuggets of good have kept people afloat in the fandom for a long time (though I personally was on my way out with the second Fantastic Beasts movie, let alone when Rowling came forward as a vocal transphobe).
It's weird because the more you look into it, the series is just so at odds with itself. You have such great themes about bigotry and friendships and love while at the same time you have Rowling promoting fascism, sexism, and slavery.
All I will say is as a 32 year old that loved and grew up with Harry Potter and I still love it. I don't care for a reboot a animated series maybe but a full reboot it's a no for me I agree it's a very bad idea they will ruin a lot of peoples childhoods older and younger. As for politics I don't take sides I am staying very far far away from it same with religion.
Im seriously impressed by the quality of this and just really like your overall vibe. You've got a new fan for sure bro.
There was a time where I would have really loved a marauder’s show but after all these years of jk rowlings terrible behaviour, I really don’t enjoy Harry Potter anymore :/
You are the definition of an NPC. I feel bad for you
If you had a story where in the end all the injustices of the world were righted by the actions of the main characters it would be so much less realistic than a magical school for witchcraft and wizardry already is. I can't suspend my disbelief so much to accept the villain is dead and the whole of society just changes every bad thing about themselves.
Change always happens incrementally. Always.
The fact that it will be more like the books *the books that are pretty racist and sexist and have a lot of things that were super problematic to the point that the movies decided not to show them even back then makes the idea of the reboot even worse
Fantastic Beasts j shoulda been about Dumbledore and Grindlewald since those were the only compelling plot beats
My opinion on the movies hasn't changed at least: only the first two are worth watching as fun, lighthearted, fantasies.
Even if I was still willing to consume hp, I think there is not just a question of quality in new adaptions, but also in how they are going to appeal to fans of all ages. It is a children's series, but the new content seems torn in trying to appeal to adults just as much.
when i was a kid, watching harry potter movies for the first time after reading each book, of course i was angry it didn’t fill every hole and didn’t cover every plot line and even ruined favorite characters like ginny. back then i really wished it was a series instead of movies. i wanted them to one day make this series for real. but growing up, i grew to appreciate everything the movies gave besides all the details of the plot, like the amazing cast and the wonderful set and music which are now so tied to the story. and as you said, the books are still here. and i’m actually happy that there are some scenes and characters that i’ve never seen on screen cause it gives them freedom in my imagination. i find it hard to remember how i imagined some things from the books because instinctively think of the movie now. but the unadapted scenes are left pure in my imagination
Great video! I also often talk about how “they don’t make movies like they used to” literally, recently rewatched the OGs with an eye for cinematography and there is some great stuff with perspective, lighting, color grading, especially in the first three, that really sets the mood. The problem is that both the literal medium (the OGs were shot on 35mm film) and the studio structure have significantly changed (and IMO worsened) the visual quality of all media, especially TV.
Is it a bad idea? Yes
Do I still desperately want scenes of the golden trio in Gryffindor common room goofing off and having fun that I can hold on to when I'm really stressed? Also yes.
Only if the common room is the same as the OG one though xd
The criticism towards the name "Cho Chang" is utterly stupid.
Cho Chang is a perfectly beautiful, normal name in Chinese. Chang is the romanisation of the Chinese surname 張 in both Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking countries except in Mainland China. It has a more common variation "Cheung" which happens to be another Cantonese romanisation. 張 is the third most common surname in Taiwan, the fourth most common surname in PRC and the most common surname in Shanghai but it is also a Korean surname. Zhang is the romanisation of 張 using Putonghua (Mandarin) pin-yin system which is mostly only used in mainland China. 張 is more commonly romanised as "Chong" and "Cheong" in Singapore and Malaysia. Chang and Cheung is also the romanisation of the Chinese surname 章 in Cantonese.
Cho is the romanisation of many Chinese characters including 秋, 卓, 草, 曹, 楚, 早, 祖 in Cantonese. 秋，卓，楚，早 are the ones more commonly used in given names so I am only going to elaborate on these.
秋 originally means plentiful harvest but it can also mean "autumn". 卓 means "excellence, outstanding; profound; brilliant; lofty" but it is more commonly used in 2-character given names. Just so you know, 卓 is also a Chinese/Korean surname. 楚 is the name of an ancient Chinese state and originally means thorns, but it can also mean "arranged in order", "well-dressed", "a lovely lady" or "clarity". 早 just means "the morning" but I happen to know someone with that given name but with a different surname.
Cho Chang is translated as 張秋 in Chinese, which basically means "Autumn Chang". I actually happen to know someone from primary school with that exact same name and romanisation when the Harry Potter movies were still coming out. This classmate of mine was incredibly disappointed by the fact that she got sorted into Hufflepuff instead of Ravenclaw in that Pottermore sorting quiz. As a kid, I used to have a headcanon that Cho Chang was a Hongkonger who moved to the UK due to the worsening political climate before the 1997 Handover as it was very common for Hong Kong families to emigrate to the UK back in the 80s to 90s. That would explain why Cho Chang didn't have an anglicised name as she was not born in the UK and most people from Hong Kong back then rarely put their anglicised given name as their legal name.
I have actually never heard from anyone I know who grew up in Chinese-speaking countries or speak Chinese criticise this name. Cho Chang is a very commonly adored character in Chinese-speaking countries and the only thing I have seen people complain about her is her lacking characterisation or the fact that she didn't end up with Harry. I only learned that people didn't like this name after moving to an English-speaking country for university and I am tired of having to explain this repeatedly.
People who make this "criticism" are the type of persons who think JK Rowling hates hungarian people because she made "Hungarian" horntail the worst dragon 😭
So basicaly the hate to the name is bad faith critisism that forgets to take into account the opinion of the culture they assume they are protecting, who could've fucking guessed
God this wave of bad faith critisism towards HP is rough, like the video said, it's not perfect but it does have tons to apreciate, DESPITE the writer.
I'm not Asian either so I'm not going to try and dispute anything you said about the name, but I have seen multiple Asian people criticising the name and I think i'm gonna listen to them over some person in youtube comments who claims to have never seen Asian people criticising it when they have been. For like decades lol
Also I don't think joanne would have known or considered any of this because she is dense as shit lol, especially when it comes to cultures that are not her own. It has been shown time and time again
@@sentinelunoI agree and love your comment. My only criticism is "wave"? "Cho chang" was a criticism of white liberals 2 decades ago. Said criticism is probably not just because the name is on the nose, it comes eerily close, by virtue of coincidence, to "ching-chong" highly offensive language mocking.
Setting aside my personal feelings about HP as a whole after Rowling's downward spiral, and whether or not I'm betting my future Schadenfreude supply on this project's failure, I think this reboot finds itself in a bit of a Sailor Moon Crystal tight spot. Which is not good.
SMC presented itself as a truer-to-manga animated reboot of the 90s Sailor Moon anime, promising to stick closer to the author's original intent and fix some issues the first adaptation had. It ended up rehashing a story that manga readers were already abundantly familiar with (often with a panel-by-panel adaptation), then timidly trying to introduce changes that didn't freshen it up, had an unmemorable music score (as opposted to the original), was plagued by animation errors due to its commercially rushed release, and was visually so unremarkable that by season 3 it started heavily drawing from visuals of the original anime to the point that it felt less like hommage and more like just riding its coattail in an attempt to be recognisable. Which made it feel all the less necessary.
In the end, it was axed at three season out of five, and the final two arcs (which ironically were where the original adaptation floundered and could have been the promised improvement) were wrapped up in two feature-length movies rather than multi-episode seasons.
My expectations are extremely low after seeing Percy Jackson and Netflix's ATLA. Both of them were utter garbage. These companies love to brag about their tv show budgets but they look like crap. Where does all the money go? And i get why the kids suck at acting, they're kids, but why do the adults?
I feel like people still quote/reference barbie fairly often? like "my job is Beach", people say "my job is Emails" or just last week glen powel talked about ryan gosling like "he's everything, I'm just Glen". I feel like "she's everything, he's just ken" is also a common meme format. (I know it's not the point of the video.....)
Let old things die, make room for new things ffs
also, is HP bad story? yeah, it is.
formative? for many children it was a special book series, but one cannot say something is good because you have fond feelings for it.
no, i don't think i can call it revisionism, lot of the fans at the time were children. how were we to know better. but the books did have critics, even back then. but you cannot say you are biased and not agree that you are wearing nostalgia goggles.
it was like that because it was so popular, it was everywhere. we read it in school, it was visible in every bookstore. then movies came and the marketing was just wild. but in fact the story itself is not good at all, there are so many other magical books out there(like the secret of platform 13), if only one would stumble upon them(or your parent). there is very little that was new in there, Harry as a MC was underwhelming, characters were killed randomly, it did not seem to know what it wants to be, the rules were made as we read on, the ending was just so bad and the status quo didn't change despite the wizarding world being so fcked up. slavery, fatphobia, bigotry, slytherins... there is so much of it, you mentioned some of it.
i can see however very little of value in these books. like wow, no persecution for muggle-borns and half bloods? that's what we achieved by the end? that is the triumph we are celebrating? i'm sorry but with so much wrong introduced this is not enough.
once you've read more, once you grow up, you can see the many wrong things with these books. even if you loved them once. that's how i feel anyway.
I disagree on statements in this video made at about 27:30 and the adjacent parts about House Elves. Hermione Granger, the unambiguously smartest character in the book apart from maybe Dumbledore, is constantly complaining she is the only one bothered by the situation of the house elves, their own acceptance of this situation, and often nagging how stupid that is. She is trying to build an activism group for house elves, but eventually forced to abandon the effort for reasons of public indifference towards it. Please check your research about this topic. You are clearly missing this because it was cut from the films.
I´m not writing this to alleviate obvious conservative beliefs of the author, but because its just not correct. Also, searching for "toxic" or "conservative" agenda in the book is pointless and misappropriate. The opinions and situations of characters in fictional works do not need to correspond to the authors own beliefs. From my reading (I have the english original print despite coming from Germany) the book is generally benevolent. It also is often critical towards problematic political situations, but does not claim to have solutions to them, so they are only shown as problematic, not more. This is evident for example in the situation with "bugging" of R.Skeeter in book 4. Hermione obviously can´t prohibit the yellow press to work, so she is powerless to change the situation except for preventing R.Skeeter to publish more indecent revelations about herself and her friends.
ed1. yeah, after continuing to about 33:00 you notice this yourself.
She gets crap for the activism because she's trying to trick the elves into freeing themselves when they are not ready to, which would make the situation worse, a lot like a lot of modern social activists are making the cause they fight for worse of
though at this point i have very little love left for the hp series after all of jkr's bigotry, just from a marketing standpoint i'm baffled as to why they decided to retell the original story instead of doing a marauder's era series. i'm not in touch with the fandom anymore but any time i cross paths with it online, it's mostly people talking about the marauders. seems like one of the few corners of the series that still has an active and engaged following and i have no idea why they aren't capitalizing on that