The Potter Phenominon

Everyone wants to be Harry Potter. Everyone. This is both a good and a bad thing, and shows us how when trends start, they are very, very hard to stop.

While Potter started quite a few trends we’ll just be discussing the following

·      Adaptation of the YA

·      More focus on setting and world construction

·      The revival/refocus/spread of the actor-centric franchise

Adaption of the YA

Yes this is probably the most obvious of the things Potter has kicked off, in his wake, we see Lord of the Rings, Hobbits, Hunger Games, Golden Compasses, Series of Unfortunate Events, and even the terrifying Twilights and Mortal Instruments in film. Now there are others like Captain Underpants and Artemis Fowl (still pending) that aim to follow, as each studio pursues something so difficult to make now, and so rare, the franchise and the fandom. You want real money as a studio, it is no longer the amazing one off film that does it, though frozen may beg to differ, it is the remake, the adaptation and the franchise. Especially the franchise. Yes these were around long before Potter had come, but he seemed to bring it about with new force like Voldemort after his rebirth, a great and terrible force that did not always pan out for the studios. One need only look at the adaptation lists, and the reviews that came with them, to see that among the earlier candidates, only the works of Tolking, the Hunger Games and Twilight seemed to thrive, while works like Narnia, Golden Compass and Mortal Instruments seemed to plunge down. 

This is a new problem as studios seek out YA (young adult) works to adapt, they must be family friendly, and have some element of darkness. But this is a moderately stupid way to go about things, as the first movies, while dark, were more light and whimsical than their successors, even reflected in the presentation of the WB logo at the start, going from gold to a near pitch black. This is a problem I don’t think many people realize as part of the YA trend, that when you start dark, you MUST leave room to go darker. Harry had this at a perfect point as the darkness he confronted intensified with his age, allowing people to grow up with him. Though this does not necessarily apply to all YA adaptations, as the real solidifier of YA seems to be Twilight in how the conflict’s pacing and rise is not really a matter of darkness and threat, but one of romance and choice. This is even reflected when looking at the Hunger Games, where the world is already dark, and there is no moment of wonder, but rather could be pushed past the points of Darkness to around Harry’s fourth year and intensifies slowly from there, to a full blown war.

Looking back on the failures however, you see the other follies, that studios do not cater sufficiently to the fans at times, that things were pushed together that shouldn’t have and that on occasion, the worlds involved are not sufficiently fleshed out, to a point where a newcomer would understand quickly what was going on. This is admittedly one of my problems with the Twilight films, as it takes quite a while for the vampiric elements to come out for my tastes, and that as a film, it felt too stretched out, even though the pacing on paper seemed decent.

Setting and World Construction.

Let me preface. Rowling is not Queen of World building. She is very talented at it, and has a slight potential to end up as a sort of modern Tolking (whom I would consider better at it than her presently, when it comes to backstory and mythology, but it is rather difficult to beat Tolking at that, so let us just agree that she is great at it, but perhaps not the greatest, but I digress). Though it is this that debatably got people to truly look at Harry. This is what creates fandoms (Star Wars would be an earlier example), not so much the characters so much as the world and the conflicts in it. It is the ability to slip into a character’s skin and observe, to feel like you are a part of that world and to want to ingrain yourself  in it. This is something that has been slowly getting emphasized (or so I feel like it) as you see successful world-films like Avatar, or the Hobbit or Hunger games or Narnia. You see the world, you are explained parts of it and things are built upon that understanding. It is a long series of potential Checkov’s gunmen that you see that come back consistently, fading in and out, we see stupefy used at the quidditch world cup and it comes back to us. We are treated to how Sirius could escape Azkaban and the dementors and they come back.  Things are introduced, dismissed and brought back as it is not a villain of the week but a rather real-feeling world, leading to theory and investment into figuring out how it works. The only group that has potentially built a cinematic world better than Potter or Lord of the Rings would be Marvel and the Cinematic Universe, where characters are connected through so many strings. We see our Fury, we see Agents of Shield and it connects to the Kree which connects to the Inhumans which could connect to Hydra and Captain America 3. This is something that perhaps more people should take from the worlds of comics, being the creation of these ties to stitch worlds together, but Harry is perhaps what pushed this forward, to focus on fandom and the world, rather than the characters, as it has been shown that people seem willing to come back to the world, even if there are different faces (see Korra or Fantastic Beasts, or the sales of Beadle the Bard).

The Spread/Revival/Refocus of the actor-centric franchise.

I’m willing to attribute this one more to a certain captain on some level, though I do give Harry his due when I say that when the movies were being filmed, I did worry on some level that they may recast the Trio. The problem with YA series, another which possibly doomed Percy Jackson, is that the time limit for the series is inherently fleeting. You could not have a 5 year hiatus between hunger game films.  You cannot wait 2 years between each Percy Jackson film, and there is NO way on earth that you can have an Unfortunate Events sequel given the time that has passed.

Actors age. They scar, and while films like Tron Legacy show that we can potentially keep our actors forever, it is this limitation that seems to have pushed the idea that the franchise is centered on the actors to some extent. There would not be a Harry Potter film without Dan, Emma and Rupert. There would be confusion if Maggie Smith were recast, and absent the death of an actor in the case of Dumbledore (and admittedly that was early on and after a switch to a new director who changed another character’s look)  it seems that there would be few other people that could fufill such roles. This has lead to actors becoming inextricably tied to the role, unlike earlier films where they may be recast, like Keaton’s Batman changing to Clooney. Unless people are rebooting, the changes seem to be hard-met, with the Spiderman films being an example of this  (and they will, like other films, meet the same YA challenge as the actor ages).

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is inherently limiting, and given an actor gaining success in a role, they have motive to make other plans to avoid being tightcast, as you would see Mark Hamill attest to in some of the early comments in his career. Though this is debatably something Marvel found a solution to in contracting people into multiple films for the studio, though we will see how successful this is  with a possible fourth Ironman film.

So is this to say that Potter has lead to the ruin of cinema as in a poor attempt to ape his success, studios try to capture that lightning scar in the bottle yet again? No, it is not.  Rather, the wrong lessons are learned, or the right lessons are and then they are applied in the wrong way. Do not rush the films, or you will be Unfortunate Events. Do not split things too thin, or you may make the worst mistakes of the Hobbit. Do not start, if you cannot rely on your cast.  Contract them for multiple films. Don’t be afraid of changing some cast if you can. And most of all… feel free to look beyond the constraints of YA to find success. While I would say Last Airbender was a horrible film, it’s properties like that, newer ideas and characters that need to be brought out, that have potentials to create and build worlds as we journey along with our protagonist, growing and learning as they do.

So what do you think reader? Is this an overblown effect to attribute to Potter, or a sign of the times that the series was lucky to enter in?