How many of us are doing this, I wonder? Come November, it will have been ten years since the first Harry Potter film, directed by Chris Columbus, was released around the world. It's already been more than 10 years since we all entered the age of breathless cynicism surrounding major entertainment projects. These days, oohing, aahing, and tsking about the latest casting announcement for the new Twilight movie, or the impending Hunger Games series is old hat, but it started (at least, for me) in 2000, when the world was first introduced to Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint. They were all pretty much unknown, yet these days, they've turned into an earnest Broadway performer, a budding fashion icon, and a happy oddball character actor.
So, as I said, with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 less than 3 weeks away, I wonder how many of us are going back to the early films or watching everything up to and including the final installment. Because I'm married to someone who's always been far more fanatical about the Harry Potter film series than the books (we've both read them all, but I was way more amped up for the releases of the last two books), I've seen all of the movies countless times. The only difference in watching 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher everywhere else in the world, but you know us Amurricans think philosophy is a snooze, so Sorcerer it is) was watching the Blu-ray version.
Watching HDTV is as old hat to me as is reading about casting announcements, but every now and then, I'm reminded of one of the negative aspects of high-definition content. On the one hand, with HD quality, you can see every pore, every color, and every element of an image. On the other hand...well, you can see every pore, every color, and every element of an image. I'm sure it registered with me in the past, but when I watched one of the major action sequences of this chapter of the series--Harry, Ron, and Hermione taking on an escaped troll--I was presented with some truly awful special effects. I suppose that Columbus and his special-effects crew was able to get away with Harry astride the large troll being, literally, a cartoon, because of how rapidly both characters are moving, but 10 years down the line, it's almost cringe-inducing to watch. There are a couple of other moments where the special effects show their seams, but that's something I can forgive more than the troll scene.
In some ways, I bet the folks who've been involved in making each Harry Potter movie look at the first one as a mulligan, creatively speaking. The fever pitch surrounding the book series hit its highest initial peak in the summer of 2000, when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released to the worldwide public. Everyone read every word of each book. We all knew the series in and out, and some people went much further with their fandom, as we all do depending on the story. The producers of the film knew that they had a seriously hot property on their hands, but it could blow up in their faces very quickly if they made one step wrong. I can understand that from a business standpoint, mind you. The Harry Potter series has proven, predictably, to be one of the biggest cash cows Warner Bros. Pictures (or any film studio) has ever had. We all know that the first reason why there's even a Part 2 to the final installment is to make more money. Yes, I can delude myself into thinking that the final book just had too much for one movie to cover (unless said movie was six hours long). But we all know money is the biggest draw for Warner Bros. If they could do what The Onion joked about last month--splitting the last five minutes into five separate movies--they would.
My point is, Warner Bros. didn't want to screw up any Harry Potter movie, so the producers and Columbus had to tread carefully. Very, very, very carefully. They may have figured that as long as they stayed faithful to the first book, audiences wouldn't charge at them with torches and pitchforks. The problem, creatively, is that by the time the first movie came out, the fourth book had been read, and re-read, countless times by the devoted fans. What's more, we all knew that the first book from J.K. Rowling was so vastly smaller in scope to even the fourth one--gasp! a Hogwarts student gets killed, and that's just when Lord Voldemort makes a massive return--that it's almost quaint to watch the first movie and think of its minor-league aspirations. So, yeah, I can understand the producers' wariness to make one wrong step with Sorcerer's Stone, but no amount of concessions can eliminate one fact: Chris Columbus is not a great director, and for these movies, you either need a great director or a director who can fool us into thinking they're great. Columbus isn't a woeful helmer; he can point and shoot just like most filmmakers. But giving this man the keys to a massive franchise was too safe a choice, especially when you consider that Warner Bros. wanted Steven Spielberg (which makes sense, more for the first two films, honestly) and would have been fine with Terry Gilliam. (I want to see the alternate-universe version of the Harry Potter film series, where Gilliam directed the same cast. Can you imagine what that would've looked like?) Columbus, while an 80s-era protege of Spielberg, was too bland, too simple, too American. In a series where no American characters even existed, it's at odds for Columbus to direct the first two chapters.
When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was released in theaters, a good portion of critics went nuts for it. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, I remember, were over the moon, the latter comparing it to The Wizard of Oz. While it's probably true that, 50 years from now, the Harry Potter series will be remembered fondly, I don't think that, even in 2001, I knew why the comparison made any sense, qualitatively. On the one hand, bringing so precisely to life the world that Rowling began creating works out well. Each performer was cast well, because they exactly fit the character they were playing. The evocation of Hogwarts looks, mostly, accurate. It fails, though, in the same way that the first two films in the series fail: it looks fake. I recoil when I see a movie or a TV show wherein characters walk around a clearly fake environment. Sometimes, it can't be helped, but here's a movie where money was thrown around willy-nilly. As the series has progressed, that money has been well-spent, but in looking at the Hogwarts of the first film, it reminds me of the climax of Blazing Saddles, where the good guys build a facade of the town that the villains want to ransack, hoping to divert them. That's what Hogwarts looks like in this movie: a facade, ready to tip over when it's attacked by a stiff breeze.
20 years from now, I wonder if Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint will wince when watching footage from this movie. None of the kids are bad, mind you; all are given monumental tasks just in becoming these beloved characters, and acquit themselves well enough for child actors. But a lot of the tics that have haunted each of them (Grint's cartoonish mugging, Watson's propensity for acting with her constantly moving eyebrows, and Radcliffe's apparent insistence, early on, in almost baring his teeth in every shot) show up here and don't leave. To be honest, there's nothing too notable from the actors here. The only person who really sticks out is Ian Hart, who gets probably the most thankless major role in the entire franchise. Does anyone remember Professor Quirrell? The villains in the subsequent films usually have more substance or more connection to the overall mythology, but Quirrell gets one big scene and Hart overplays it as much as he can. The other adult performers don't go too far out of their comfort zones, which means they're almost underplaying; Alan Rickman, an inspired choice for Severus Snape, in particular, recites his lines at the lowest possible boil. (My favorite delivery of his comes much later in the series, though: "You....just....know.") Hart's over-the-top style wouldn't be matched until Helena Bonham Carter showed up in the franchise.
Every time I watch the first two films in the Harry Potter franchise, though, I forget that someone other than Michael Gambon played Albus Dumbledore. It's not that Gambon was so indelible as Dumbledore, but he's had a lot longer to work with the character, and the material he's had is a lot more substantial than what Harris had. Harris was a very talented actor in his time, but either because Columbus told him to do so or because he chose it, he plays Dumbledore solely as a grandfatherly figure. While that's not a bad decision--certainly, the complexities that defined Dumbledore don't rear their head early on in the books--I always wondered if Harris would be able to convincingly change on a dime once the third film came around. He's fine here, delivering his dialogue in a twinkly manner, but he's treated as an afterthought, as is Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall. Only Robbie Coltrane, as Hagrid, makes a serious mark here, but that's because Hagrid has a lot more to do early on in the series.
These days, I don't watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that much, nor Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which almost seem like British versions of The Goonies. Part of this is because so much of what made this series of books become so classic came after the first two books. Don't forget, the hype grew bigger once Prisoner of Azkaban hit the bookshelves. I eagerly await revisiting the other films in this series, but my hopes are only marginally higher for the second installment, in large part because it's better known as The Kenneth Branagh Show. Branagh gets a delightfully hammy part to play and does so marvelously, but at least he's actually having fun. The first film doesn't have a lot of fun in it, to the point where even transitions--such as when Nearly Headless Nick, portrayed by John Cleese, all but announces to the audience that Harry's become the Gryffindor Seeker--seem rote and lifeless. Lifeless is the worst thing any of these movies could be.
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