Hello, lovelies! Welcome to the most nonsensical and nerdiest post I’ve ever done. I had so much commentary that I had to split it into two blog posts. I’ve been rereading the Harry Potter series this year and wanted to watch the movies again. I was planning on just ranking them like I did with the Marvel movies, but I started writing notes in my phone or laptop while watching to movie to put in the blog post. After sending them to my friends and laughing a lot, I decided that there was enough here to make it it’s own blog post. (Plus, if it was included in the movie ranking, it would be out of order.)
I’m going to be honest, this post isn’t going to make a lot of sense. It’s not super useful, but it was really fun to write. I’ll get back to my regular content next week. Anyway, here’s my commentary on the first four movies.
//Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
This is one of the two movies I watched before reading the books. I think I was eight when I watched it, and the only thing I remember when reading the books three years later was the devil’s snare and a creepy face being under the turban.
- This movie nailed all the Dursley scenes. From Harry’s cupboard, to Dudly complaining about presents, to Uncle Vernon’s reaction to the letters…it couldn’t have been executed better in my opinion.
- This is something the movie did better in the books: They specifically show Quirrell not take Harry’s hand when he goes to shake it, while Quirrell does shake Harry’s hand in the books. It fixes a plot hole.
- The Weasleys! <3 All the actors are still the same. We don’t see Ginny ouside of the train station scene, but she stays on the whole movie. I wonder if they knew that she and Harry would end up together when they filmed this. I don’t think the last two books were out yet.
- Hey, it’s Susan Bones! Does she have lines in any of these movies? How can I recognize her instantly? So many of the background actors grew up in the series, so we see them in the final battle years later.
- Who’s the guy Hermione is talking to on the way to the great hall? We never see him again. She just tells him about reading Hogwarts: A History, then he never comes back. The majority of the side characters are recognizable through the years, but we literally never see this guy again.
- Why are Snape’s scenes so bad? I know he can act, but he’s so over the top in this movie. Does this have a different director?
- The CGI for the quidditch match is SO BAD
- I think this is one of the few times we see Hermione actually go home to her parents.
- Harry seeing his parents <3 In the book, he saw some of his other family members too, but this is still cute. I wish the movies showed how young Lily and James were when they died. I think they were 21 or 22 when Voldemort killed them.
- I find it funny that they had to film the scenes where they say “sorcerer’s/philosopher’s stone” twice because publishers used different titles in different countries.
- Ron is so cute when he says “Hagrid, How’d you get one?” when asking about the dragon’s egg.
- I don’t think we ever see a unicorn again.
- Hagrid is playing the Harry Potter music score on a recorder. Does this tune exist in the Harry Potter universe? Is it like a common song, or did Hagrid write it? This is the canon information people should be talking about!
- Hermione is doing spells in first year that Harry teaches the DA in the fifth book (ex. Petrificus Totalus)
- This scene scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. I remember my mom made me turn off the T.V. right when they got stuck in the Devil’s snare and I had no idea how they were going to get out.
- Ron literally got smashed in the head by that chess piece in the book! The movie makes it look like he’s a total weakling and passed out for no reason.
- The effects here weren’t that bad (of Harry burning Quirrell’s face off)
- Are there earwax flavored jelly beans at Harry Potter World? There has to be, right? After this specific scene.
- Imagine being a Slytherin and celebrating with your house colors everywhere only for Dumbledore to change everything.
- How did Dumbledore know about Neville standing up to them? It’s one of those “Dumbledore knows all” moments, but does he watch the students or something?
- This movie followed the books almost perfectly. A few details were left out like Hermione picking the poisons, but overall, it included the important scenes.
//Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- They packed so much of the first few chapters with the Dursleys into ten minutes. I’m impressed. These scenes are still very memorable.
- Draco just ripped out a page of a book in the bookstore, put it in his pocket, and put the book back. Is there any significance to this, or are they just showing that Draco is an asshole. (Later on, we see him take a person’s present in the common room and start opening it. I guess this was their way of showing the child viewers that he’s a selfish character.)
- Hermione’s parents! I wonder how they got into Diagon Alley. Were they just able to go into the cellar of that bar and tap the bricks?
- Thank you! Snape’s acting is great in this scene (his first one)! What happened in the last movie?
- Lockhart is exactly how he was in the books, though I wish they made him more annoying. There were so many scenes in the books showing how jealous he was of Harry’s fame.
- Lol. Ron and Hermione run to the bathroom stalls feeling sick from the polyjuice potion, and Harry just takes another sip of it as they ran away.
- Wait. There was someone in the Slytherin common room throughout their entire conversation? (Malfoy with Harry & Ron as Crabbe & Goyle). There was a girl sitting at a desk in the background glancing at them. Also: “I didn’t know you could read” is the best line in this movie)
- Moaning Myrtle was perfectly cast. Exactly how I imagined her.
- Harry has really good handwriting for a 12-year-old boy
- Why did Ginny rip the feathers out of his mattress to find the diary? That feels a little excessive. I doubt Harry hid it that well. His mirror is also cracked.
- Hedwig is totally a stuffed animal in this scene
- Wood took the quidditch match being canceled really well. He’d have rioted in the books
- Can’t the Fat Lady snitch on anyone who has left the portrait hole in the middle of the night? And does Filch ever sleep? He just wanders the grounds at night.
- I love how Fang just got into the car without question. No one told him to do it. He just hopped in. And the car moved its seat forward so that Fang could climb into the back seat.
- I know that this car is a deus ex machina moment, but I love that it’s just going to chill in the Forbidden Forest forever because it was so pissed at Ron for running it into the Womping Willow
- Aaw, Harry and Ron bring flowers to Hermione every time they visit the hospital wing and switch them out with old ones already in the vase.
- Well, forget his memory. He’d have broken his spine. [Lockhart] (He smashed into the rocks when the spell backfired)
- [Ron hits memory-loss Lockhart in the head with a rock] Was that really necessary Ron?
- Is this the longest Harry Potter movie?
- Cue the coolest anagram in history: Tom Marvolo Riddle = I Am Lord Voldemort
- I think this is the most Ginny has spoken in this entire movie.
- Wait! So Lockhart straight up forgot the existence of magic? But he still knows what magic is. (When Faux flew them out of the hole, Lockhart said, “This is like magic!”
- I’m gonna miss this Dumbledore. I like both of them, but this actor is how I imagined Dumbledore looking.
- Ha! I never noticed the look Ron gives Dumbledore after discovering Errol got lost sending Hagrid’s release papers.
- Aaaaw, the last line in the movie is “It’s not Hogwarts without you, Hagrid.”
//Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Does Dudley not have any lines? Did they do this so they could pay him less? (He’s not an extra, but you have to pay extras more when they have speaking lines.) He just changes his facial expressions as his Aunt Marge floats away and nods when people speak to him.
- There’s the playground from the 5th movie.
- Stan Shunpike is another character who was perfectly cast.
- Why are things written diagonally and sideways on the newspaper?
- He was only at the Leaky Cauldron for a day? He was there for weeks in the books.
- [Housekeeping knocks on the door and magical creature roars at her, blowing her hair back] That was very Hotel Transylvania.
- It’s the new Flitwick. I forgot that he had a casting change. This one looks nothing like the original.
- They call Lupin “R.J. Lupin” more often than “Remus Lupin.” I don’t remember that happening in the books.
- There’s so much thought put into background conversations while main plot points are happening. Like Fred and George teasing Ron about the newspaper, while Mr. Weasley talks to Harry about Sirius, or Seamus and Harry complaining about the Fat Lady [Portrait] not being able to sing.
- Aaaw <3 I wish we had more scenes of the five of them having fun together in their dorm room (Harry, Ron, Seamus, Dean, and Neville). It’s nice to see them goofing around and catching up after the summer holiday.
- This is following the books pretty well so far.
- [First Quidditch Match] Is that supposed to be Cedric?
- If you hadn’t read the books, you would think that Lupin was in love with Lily at one point based on this scene [When he’s telling Harry about her]
- They saved an hour for the last few chapters.
- Sirius’s acting is amazing. You can see the suffering he went through in his eyes
- Ron is trying to act manly to Hermione by saying his foot would have to be cut off. I can’t believe this conversation wasn’t cut out in the script.
- So Scabbers tranformed back into Pettigrew in clothes. But when he transformed back into a rat, he left clothes behind.
- Wow. This Dementor scene is scary. You can see them sucking out Harry and Sirius’s soul while they scream.
- Aaaw, Harry looks so happy daydreaming about his future life with Sirius living in the country.
- So…Hogwarts (a school) has a prison cell in a tower without any guards that a third year can blast into with one spell… Yup. Seems to check out.
- Since when does Sirius have finger tattoos? Where did he get finger tattoos? I doubt there are tattooists in Azkaban.
- I wish they had shown Snape barge in with the Minister of Magic accusing Harry of helping Sirius escape. It’s okay, though. They fit in a lot of plot twists into one hour.
- I guess this takes place before the last few quidditch matches since one of the background kids mentioned how the Firebolt would help them win the tournament.
//Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
I watched this one when it came out on DVD. I was probably eight or nine. I didn’t pick the movie. Two of my older cousins wanted to watch it and I just happened to be there. When I read the book years later (2008 I think), I could only remember bits and pieces of the maze, Quidditch World Cup, and the Yule Ball.
- Wow. They introduce Barty Crouch Jr. from the get go.
- I wish we’d get to see the Dursleys. I love all their beginning scenes.
- How are they going to make the plot work without Winky? She’s the reason Barty Crouch Jr. was able to escape and conjure the dark mark in the first place.
- Why are Harry and Ron wearing Bulgaria hats? They supported Ireland. I guess it makes it easier to explain Ron’s Krum obsession.
- Wow, they showed Barty Crouch Jr. again. I wonder how he got a wand since he used Harry’s wand in the books to conjure the mark.
- Harry literally writes “Sirius Black” on the envelope of the letter…yeah, sure, that makes sense. (I get that they did this for movie watchers so that there wouldn’t have to be dialogue explaining the letter, but it doesn’t work well with the fact that Sirius is in hiding.)
- Ouch! Hagrid literally stabs Flitwick’s hand with a fork. It went in deep too…
- I like how they’re panning to Moody while Barty Crouch is talking. Minor foreshadowing.
- The scene showing Karkaroff entering the Goblet of Fire room in the middle of the night is good misdirect.
- It looks like Emma Watson is looking straight at the camera when she obnoxiously tells the twins that the plan won’t work. Also, James and Oliver Phelps are so great at Fred and George. Their chemistry is hilarious, which make their jokes hit harder.
- Everyone complains about this scene, and they are completely right. Dumbledore would never shove Harry like that!
- I know that Harry and Ron are arguing, but all I can focus on is that giant circular rainbow lolly pop in a vase on Harry’s nightstand.
- Rita Skeeter is by far one of my top least favorite characters. She’s up there with Umbridge and Voldemort for me. She’s not in the movies as much, but she was the worst.
- Jeez, the Hufflepuffs are assholes. They literally block the doorway so that Harry can’t get through just to make fun of him. I don’t know where the whole “Hufflepuffs are nice and loyal” came from because every time Harry describes a Hufflepuff character in the books, he uses words like “pompous” or “annoying.”
- Also, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this already, but the movies have yet to tell us what each house stands for. At no point has anyone said that Ravenclaws are smart or that Gryffindors are brave. In the first movie, they just said that the kids would be sorted into four houses, and that was it. All we hear is that the Slytherins put out the most dark wizards from Ron. I wonder how many people who have watched the movies don’t actually know what the houses mean.
- Lol. George just shouted, “Well done dragon!!!” after it crashed over the professors’ seating area.
- Who are these gaggle of girls bringing Ron inside after he’s rejected by Fleur?
- I know that Hermione’s dress was blue in the books, but I don’t see it being pink as a huge problem here. Mainly because the point of this scene is to show Hermione standing out and surprising everyone in the books. All the decorations were a silvery-blue, and Cho and Fleur’s dresses were those colors, so Hermione would’ve blended in with the background. Because film is a different format, they had to show this part of the book by making her contrast the color pallet of the scene and to make her stand out in the dance scene with Cho and Fleur.
- I love how excited Neville is about the dance and how much fun he had. Him practicing in the room and being the last one to return from the dance were such happy scenes.
- Can we talk about Moaning Myrtle being 12 and watching Cedric and Harry naked in the bath?
- I love Neville, but Dobby is the one who got Harry the gillyweed.
- I appreciate that they used creepy mermaids because sirens are super romanticized in books and movies.
- I love that Seamus is the first one to wrap a towel around Harry and rubs his arms to warm him up after he gets out of the lake. I’m reading Order of the Phoenix right now, and the two of them are in a fight, so it was nice seeing that in the movie.
- Barty Crouch dies almost immediately after the scene of him talking to Harry. I wish they showed Harry talking to Krum when they found the body instead of with Hagrid, Ron, and Hermione (who are singing the school spirit song in the background, by the way)
- So…Dumbledore has a bowl of candy that are biting leeches…. That checks out.
- This maze had SO MUCH potential! It could’ve been a lot cooler.
- Cedric and Harry were on much better terms in the books. And Cedric got less screen time than I thought.
- 🙁 He’s dead
- I forgot that we see tiny-weak Voldemort as a blob in the movies. Eugh.
- It’s lucky that a robe came with Voldemort’s transformation after being thrown naked into a cauldron. It reminds me of Pettigrew’s transformation from rat to human.
- Harry and Cedric’s dad crying over Cedric’s body is the most heart breaking scene in this movie.
- My biggest problem with this ending is that we never find out what happens to Barty Crouch Jr. They never tell us in the movies that he’s killed by dementors or what the Ministry spreads about Harry. I’m okay with the latter because it’s discussed at the beginning of the next movie, but we’re never told what happens to Crouch Jr. after they save Moody. Does he go to Azkaban? Do they not use veritas serum again for his confession to the magical community? Is he dead? What happens to (the film version of) him?!
- I wish we got to see Sirius in person in this movie to establish his and Harry’s relationship more in the film universe. It would’ve made his death hit harder in the fifth movie.
Well, that’s it for now. Part 2 will go up next week. I hope you enjoyed reading this if you’re a massive Harry Potter fan and I hope you were able to understand the context of everything. Until next time!
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What’s your favorite Harry Potter movie? What comments do you have on specific scenes?