Film Feature: Why Studios Need to Start Working on New Harry Potter Movies Right Away

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2. IT CAN’T FOLLOW THE BOOKS EXACTLY

This is a hard one because, as moviegoers, we’re so used to traditional book-to-film adaptations. We’re used to one book = one movie. And it’s funny how revolutionary even splitting one book into two movies – as they did with “Deathly Hallows” – seems to normal audiences. It just hasn’t been done before. And, while somewhere down the road, it might be time for another “Sorcerer’s Stone” adaptation or another “Chamber of Secrets”, for right now, I think it would be best if any new Potter adaptations forgot about the books themselves as framing narratives and, instead, just focused on assembling together the proper storylines to make a movie.

Let me explain – what if, to start off a new series of Potter animated films, the first film didn’t follow the story of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”? I’m not saying that the animated films should ignore the order of the series or invent new material, but what if they, instead, created a new story chronologically out of all of the material Rowling created in the seven novels? What if the first new film – let’s call it “Harry Potter: Year Zero” – instead focused on the drama and machinations that came together to send Harry to Hogwarts in the first place? Rather than a straight adaptation of “Sorcerer’s Stone”, we’d get all the pieces of back-story and history that we now know had to happen to make “Sorcerer’s Stone” possible.

Pottermore
Pottermore
Photo credit: Pottermore

Because any new Potter series can’t be afraid of spoilers in the traditional sense. If you want movies that will simply introduce kids to the books, leaving them blissfully unaware of what comes next, send them to the Radcliffe movies. But, if you want a living, vivid adaptation of the Potter series, made for the billions of people who already know and love the series, you have to tell the story differently than J.K. Rowling did in her original books. Have “Harry Potter: Year Zero” show us the fall of Voldemort’s first reign, Peter Pettigrew’s betrayal of his friends, Sirius Black being sent to Azkaban, the final sacrifice of James and Lilly Potter, Dumbledore leaving Harry with the Dursleys… set up the world, the motivations, the character arcs that will last throughout the entire series and – BOOM – end the first movie with Harry getting ready to leave for Hogwarts for the first time.

Then, as we follow Harry through years one, two, three, and beyond, you’ve already established a network of parallel stories that strengthen and enhance Harry’s heroic quest. Fine, you won’t get to debate “Is Snape evil or not?” or “I wonder if Sirius Black really was a death-eater”, but, thanks to the popularity of the novels and the films, those cats are already out of the bag. Let’s not go into another Potter series with our head stuck in the sand, having to pretend that we don’t know what we definitely already know. Let us go into the series knowing that, while Harry is struggling through his first year, Dumbledore is looking for the deathly hallows, Snape is on Harry’s side (but hates him), Ron’s rat is an evil bastard, Hermione and Ron will definitely hook up, Dobby will become a tragic hero, and so forth.

In fact, there are so many storylines that this approach could open up, this alone might make it impossible to confine each movie to the range of a specific book. Once you insert Hermione’s house-elf activism (even haters need to admit that the whole SPEW storyline pays off beautifully with Ron and Hermione’s first kiss) and Sirius Black hiding out in 12 Grimmauld Place into “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” – maybe that makes the story too big for just one “Goblet of Fire” movie. Maybe that means there needs to be “GoF: Part One and Part Two”, maybe that means they explore multimedia storytelling options – like the TV show/movie plans for Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series. Maybe you don’t even call the movie “Goblet of Fire.” (Call it “Year X”, call it “Harry Potter, Chapter X, or, heck, just let Rowling come up with a new title.) But, however, they approach it, it ultimately means that the overall story – the complete saga - is more important than the traditional novel structure of the seven original books.

And the great thing is – all of this material exists. It’s material that was cut out of the Radcliffe movies, or it’s material that was flashback fodder that can be worked back into the main plot. Even the new material that Rowling is writing for the “Pottermore” website could be weaved into the narrative for the new movies. Look at what Peter Jackson did with “Lord of the Rings” – taking material from Tolkien’s appendices to bolster the storyline, moving bits of action from book to book to make the movie versions better. The same thing could work for Harry Potter. Even though the subplots and added material didn’t appear in the series’ original timeline, while it was being written, all of these storylines are definitely part of the collective over-arching Potter timeline that we’re now all familiar with.

S Marriott's picture

Horrible Idea

Animated? - Maybe
Linear? (no flashbacks/foreshadowing?) - Wow really, really horrible idea.

Honestly I think each book should be broken down into at least a mini-series by the BBC (admittedly with better production values than most of their series) since it would provide ample opportunities to highlight characters/subplots that the films lost (Peeves, Winky, the Twins Joke Shop, etc.), but the narrative and the mysteries that are encompassed by it throughout the novels are probably one of the greatest strengths of the series.

Anonymous's picture

no to everything.

no to everything.

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