When HBO first announced a series-length version of the Harry Potter franchise, most fans had a single question: why? The movies only began 25 years ago, and they hold up pretty well to a rewatch. But the powers that be at HBO kept saying this series would be different: there’s more screen time to show bits that were cut from the movie, there are bigger stars involved, heck, the first season is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone instead of the Americanized “Sorcerer’s Stone.”
Well, now, we finally have some footage that can speak for itself, and what it’s saying sounds awfully familiar. Check out the trailer below:
Why does the new Hogwarts look the same as in the movies?
The trailer shows everything you expect: the golden trio of Harry (Dominic McLaughlin), Hermione (Arabella Stanton), and Ron (Alastair Stout), as well as the esteemed faculty, including Albus Dumbledore (Jon Lithgow), Minerva McGonagall (Janet McTeer), and Severus Snape (Paapa Essiedu). We also see glimpses of iconic scenes from the first book, including Professor Quirinus Quirrell (Luke Thallon) and the life-size Wizard’s Chess.
The only things that seem especially different are the emblems of the houses, which, surprisingly, are worse than the old designs.
This brings us to a bigger question: Why does everything look the same? There’s one major theory, and it’s not what you think. This Hogwarts may look so similar that the theme parks all over the world are just as accurate to the TV world as the movie world. It’s a capitalistic reason, but at least it’s a reason?
A strange time for Potter fans
Of course, no conversation about this series can overlook the outright transphobia from J.K. Rowling. She has even founded the J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, which “offers legal funding support to individuals and organisations fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life including the workplace, sports and clubs, and protected single-sex spaces.” In other words, it’s a fund dedicated to taking rights away from trans people, in particular trans women.
We’re now in an era where being a Harry Potter fan is more complicated than ever, and each casting announcement was met with critiques of the actors for being complicit in her mission. (Or, in the case of the child actors, perhaps their parents.)
At the end of the day, this series did not need to be made, but since we have no power to stop it, the least we can do is meet it with criticism of both the product itself and the ideology it indirectly supports. We already have Harry Potter, and if this is a cash grab, we should be wary of where we put our cash.
