Harry Potter: A Look Back

With the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” one of the most ambitious projects in movie history draws to a close. The ending of this film franchise is in many ways more significant than the ending of the book series. A seven part series of books released over the course of a decade happens all the time. But movies are different. Rarely does a movie studio commit to keeping the quality of a movie series at the same level while sticking to one long running narrative for so long. When it is finished the Harry Potter franchise will be the most successful movie franchise in history. Its closest competitor is the James Bond franchise and that has over 20 films to fall back on.

Let’s take a look at why it is special and compare it to some of the other long running franchises out there. First, in one decade the franchise has managed to release 8 movies. Over all of them the lowest (“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”) has a rotten tomatoes score of 78% which is pretty good. It means that when taking the scores from all the critics across the country not one Potter film has been a failure. Over the course of 8 movies (early reviews has the last film earning a 97% rating) not one has been considered a bad movie. In fact all of them have grossed over $200 million domestically and over $500 million worldwide. No movie series has been able to maintain that same level of consistency across the board. The Star Wars franchise matches it on a money basis, but the last three are almost all universally panned. The James Bond franchise comes close to matching it from a money perspective, but it has needed 22 films to do that and it doesn’t have a overarching story, each movie (except for recent entries) stands on its own and is new audience friendly. Star Trek, X-Men, Superman, Batman none of these long running franchises come close to doing what Harry Potter has done. And remember he’s done it all in one decade.

But of course Harry Potter has made money, the books are loved by almost everyone that reads them, and almost everyone has read them. With that big of an install base Warner Bros. could have just put up a few cardboard sets, hired a couple of kids and some adults that sounded British and then just sit back and count the money. Fortunately they didn’t do that. They gambled that interest wouldn’t decrease in the series by green lighting multiple movies at once, hiring established British actors, hiring well known directors and striking deals to remain with the same cast throughout the movies. This consistency has brought even more gravitas to the release of the final movie as we are saying goodbye to the portrayals of characters that we have been able to spend close to 20 hours with.

The first two movies introduced us to the movie world of Harry Potter. They were both full of wonder and excitement. And Kenneth Branagh, every time I watch “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” I spend half the movie just speaking his lines, which are delivered perfectly. The third movie was a breath of fresh air. It remains to the day my favorite of the series (I have yet to see the last movie yet). “Goblet of Fire” felt like a straight up action/adventure movie. “Order of the Phoenix” is my least favorite of the franchise, both in book and movie form. The problem comes from the fact that Harry isn’t very likable in this chapter. However, I do realize how important it was to make Harry more human and not have him be the perfect hero throughout the entire series. The sixth and seventh (and I will assume the 8th) feel like one long epic movie. Together they form a fitting topper to the delicious cake that the previous five movies have built for us.

I don’t know what is next for Harry Potter. I will be checking in on the new Pottermore website that Rowling is launching later this year. For those looking for somewhere to go I do have a few recommendations. For the younger crowd check out “The Hunger Games” or the Percy Jackson series. Both are great reads, I don’t really recommend the Percy Jackson movie, but a movie based on “The Hunger Games” will be released next year and I am already getting hyped for it. If you’re a little older and want to try something more advanced I recommend “A Song of Ice and Fire” by George R.R. Martin. It is another 7 part series that hasn’t been completed yet but I haven’t enjoyed reading fantasy so much since I read “The Lord of the Rings.” Note that this is a dense series and if you found LOTR to difficult to get through it is best to pass on this and check out the HBO series “Game of Thrones” based on the novel.

Harry has proved that he can do magic in the literary world, the movie world and the video game world (the Lego Harry Potter games are awesome). Next we’ll see how he does in the social media world. And even if he’s not able to work his magic there, I am sure that I will still lose a lot of weekends in the future to always popular Harry Potter Weekend on ABC Family.