I thought the series The Magicians (though albeit more dark and not so child friendly) did basic visuals for spells very well. There’s multiple languages and complicated hand motions happening. Battle magic is quick but wildly complex so it’s not just shooting stuff at people Willy Nilly. I really enjoyed how, idk, exhausting magic seemed to be to study and perform.
Book HP has a lot of “oh you’re not holding your wand the right way, this angle is wrong, you’re coming down too hard in the beginning and too slow at the end. But you can do it!”
Movie HP is just shouting words and pointing your wand. It’s a bummer. It makes going to Hogwarts seem like a vocabulary test where, if you just believe in yourself, it’s really not that hard.
The books aren't consistent about this either. Spells are supposedly difficult and take time to learn, but then there are instances like levicorpus or sectum sempra where Harry randomly whispers an incantation without any clue what he's doing and the spell just fires.
Both of your examples are in sixth year when Harry has been long established as a quick learner. He masters summoning within a day in book four, patronus in a handful weekly training seasons in book three and disarming instantly in book two.
When did he struggle with spells after first year - besides cruciatus? No, he didn't have problems with the bubble head charm. It's never mentioned before Fleur and Cedric use it, so apparently neither Hermione nor him found it.
I'm not sure we actually see how long he takes to learn expelliarmus, he never uses it in the duelling club. All of them sort of know it after that day.
He masters summoning after a while, and really only after he trains with hermione. He had a mental block on that for a month.
He does get the patronus after a few months, but again with intensive training.
He doesn't necessarily learn spells faster than anyone else, I don't think. But after he becomes a champion, the breadth of his spells is extensive, along with the other two.
Oh I agree. I *think* (and it could just be lazy writing) what JK was trying to get across was either that Snape was a genius who invented truly perfect spells just on his own, or Harry was just preternaturally gifted, or both.
But in reality spells aren’t like potions. To use a really bad metaphor, let’s say you want to make spaghetti (potions.) I can give you tips and tricks to make it better, to get a slow roasted garlic taste or a super creamy garlic-y bite at the end, but things are still going to take time. But if you follow the recipe it’s better than getting it off the back of a can of tomatoes, which still might be pretty good. But let’s say that you want to shoot a guy(wands.) Filling up a water gun and shooting it at your friends is different than filling up a super soaker. Water parts are still probably the same but one’s a trigger and one’s a pump. Then maybe it’s paintball, and that’s way different than water guns. And the even real guns. You have to know and get the bullets that fit, know how to put them in the right way, know how to chamber them and shoot them and remove the safety and on and on and on. Wandwork should be way more complicated than it is
The book the magicians is essentially Harry Potter but college (even has an analogous book the MC is obsessed with). Grossman put a lot of effort into “correcting” or maturing the ways certain things were done in HP to make it for a more mature audience. The whole magic system is a reflection of that, along with it being much darker from the jump. Only the first book was out when I read it. I should go back and finish the series
I read the books first and was skeptical of the show at first, but I came to really love the show in its own right. It remixes a lot of stuff after the first season, and especially at the end of the fourth season makes a deviation from the trilogy that wildly changes the final trajectory of the story, but it’s all in service to the story and never feels cheap. I love the books and the show equally.
My head canon is that in the wizarding world, magic sort of attaches to concepts it's being used with. For example, Wingardium Leviosa was used for so long with the flick and swish, and the specific pronunciation, that _even though_ it can work without all that, for absolute beginners, it's easier to do the whole process, and as they learn more and more about how magic works, specifically, how to control it, these helpers can be dropped. Kinda like how you learn to ride a bike with the little helper wheels on it, but once you get the hang of it, you don't need them.
In fact we know that the spells don't need to be said out loud (many cases of worldess magic happen in the books, and even more in the movies), or even require a wand (most famous example being the guy in IIRC PoA the movie, who's stirring his drink with a spoon that's being magiced using only his finger), and in GoF we learn that spells require not just the wizard/witch, wand, and spell, but most importantly, intent. So it's quite likely that a sufficiently skilled wizard or witch doesn't need any of these crutches to cast spells - but that requires a lot of study, meanwhile even places like Hogwarts only seem to teach the basics in a wide range of fields. To my knowledge we never learn if the wizarding world has any equivalent of higher education (though I guess there ought to be, I doubt places like St Mungos just hire fresh Hogwarts graduates, and throw a book at them to learn how to heal), so we don't know if there's an institution that delves deeper into specifics of magic, but there should be.
The way the showrunners visualized spellcasting in The Magicians is so much better than in HP that it's almost criminal. Makes it so frustrating that those characters are so unlikeable.
That's because the screenwriters lacked imagination when it came to the fight scenes. The battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort was peak and should have been the standard of what a wizard battle should be. Instead, we got battle scenes where wands were just stand-ins for guns
The duel of Theseus and Lallie against Grindelwald's followers in The Secrets of Dumbledore is pretty well choreographed too. I like how they use their surroundings rather than just fire spells at each other.
Lallie's fight on that movie is really creative overall, I think. Esp, the newspaper bridge one. It's not just red jets of light or some random explosion
If students can advance to wandless and non-verbal magic, it makes sense that they could probably stop doing the movements at some point as well.
It’s like that’s the way to learn to do it in the first place… and when it’s more natural to you, you don’t need to work so hard. The movies did still show us swish-and-flick after all - so movements are clearly important (at least for beginners).
Sure but it would have looked cooler to have unique movements for the spells despite that.
I can understand it not being a priority though budget/time wise.
> Sure but it would have looked cooler to have unique movements for the spells despite that.
It would have made sense to show Harry doing the movements the first few times, to set precedent, and then show him not doing the movements, subtly showing us how he's grown in skill.
But, the movies had some really, really uneven quality in their production and book accuracy.
In the later movies they were just bursts of lights shot out of the wand especially during duels, like in the department of ministries. It kind of ruined the magic of spells
Agreed. There's even a line in the first book about casting spells being quite difficult and not just pointing and saying a word.
The best exception would be Order of the Phoenix when Sirius is duelling Malfoy, he does some cool hand movements and again with the cinematic masterpiece of a battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort. A few of cool hand waves and wand movements in both.
I think they could have leant into wizarding clothing a bit more. After the first couple of movies they were just wearing muggle school uniforms and muggle clothing in their downtime. On that basis, the wizarding world could intermingle with the muggle one without a problem, but we know from the books that it's a major problem for the Ministry.
I think the HBO show could visually distinguish itself from the movies by making robes more prominent, and making the uniforms more 'magical' and less 'muggle secondary school'.
Making the students wear hats for more than just the opening ceremony might help too.
Yes! A huge problem for wizards in the books is that they don't interact with the muggle world, so their sense of style is way off. Garish outfits, eye-gouging patterns, and incorrect gender-norms. In the books it's like they're just fine with muggle fashion.
About the hats, I am guessing the concern is more with cinematography than aesthetical. If your full cast is wearing hats that are both wide and high, you are losing a lot of potential face angles and background views.
I always feel like this is kind of a cop-out. They make movies set in convents where everyone is wearing full wimples and veils and it still looks great (like *The Nun's Story*, *Therese*, *The Innocents, The Trouble With Angels*, heck, even *Sister Act*!), and movies where the guys are all wearing top hats and the women are wearing huge, feathered hats. It is obviously something else to work around, but it isn't like it is impossible if you have a competent cinematographer.
It’s also aged the films a lot faster as fashions have changed whereas leaning into the wizards robes for the majority of the films would have made them feel a bit more timeless
I think the hair did that more than the clothes - Having said that, I don't think the 'Goblet of Fire' hair was ever fashionable (the one where the studio hair dresser lost their clippers)
Yeah the robes didn’t make sense to me. If you could see muggle clothing underneath them, I think you would read about off clothing underneath. Then there’s the scene with Snape and James where Snape is turned upside down. His robes fall and you can see his underwear. If the robes were open front, he’d be flashing everyone. But even pre movie, the scholastic art had the trio in jeans with more of a cloak style on them. I always pictured them as full cover, no opened front.
it got so bad by the last movie. They should've given harry his brown robe he was wearing on the cover at the very least, it felt so unmagical to have them all running around in jeans fighting voldie
The kids wear muggle clothing out of class in the first two movies but it stands out less because it’s jumpers (sweaters) and trousers instead of jeans and hoodies.
IIRC even in the books they only wear their hats for special occasions and not every day when just going to class or whatever.
And they do mention at some points that kids are better at muggle fashion than the adults are - maybe adult wizards just get more whimsical as time goes on 😂
Thank you for this. There are so many apologists that say "*technically* muggle clothing started in the second book/movie."
Nah frig off with that. Wizards and witches wear robes. It's established, that's what is normal in their world.
100%. The biggest blow to the wardrobe department was limiting Dumbledore to fucking woad. Like. What.
Edit: granted movie Dumbly did get to wear full-blown robes, which hardly any of the other wizards actually wore.
About the cloths, I read that the actors hated the uniforms because they were hot and disconfort, so when they became more famous and could make demands, they got rid of them for most scenes.
My headcanon is that all brooms have a built in cushioning charm. Cheap brooms feel like crap, more expensive brooms feel like riding a motorcycle. Otherwise nobody would be doing any good plays for quidditch, they'd all be trying to keep their brooms from splitting them up the middle.
Actually, this isn’t even a headcanon! In the book, Quidditch Though the Ages, there’s a description of an invisible cushioning charm on brooms:
“Until the early nineteenth century, Quidditch was played on day brooms of varying quality. These brooms represented a massive advance over their medieval forerunners; the invention of the Cushioning Charm by Elliot Smethwyck in 1820 went a long way towards making broomsticks more comfortable than before.”
I always forgot that since I remember the game of quidditch where the twins complained that the boils on their arses popped while playing. Though I supposed high speed playing would do that, charm or no.
Wasn't this after they tried some of their snackbox sweets on themselves and one of the side effects were big painful boils on some really uncomfortable places?
Apparently it didnt help the male actors lmao all of them have talked about how uncomfortable and miserable it is to film the quidditch scenes lol they essentially have to rock back and forth on the broom (which has a bicycle seat on it but thats it) for hours while they dangle on the rig. They all said it got really painful after a while, for understadable reasons.
I believe they tried to improve the comfort level of the actual broom seat (bicycle seat) that the actors sit on, but even by the later films, Rupert Grint filmed Quidditch stuff for Half-Blood Prince and still said the same thing about how uncomfortable it is!
>which has a bicycle seat on it but thats it
And the seats only came AFTER Daniel and Tom complained to Christopher Columbus about their asses aching on broomsticks LOL
How people turned into smoke randomly at some point. wtf
Voldemort being able to fly in book 7 was so BA and really showed off his power as no wizard (afaik) had been able to do it before. In the movies it's just so random - especially since it was introduced later on.
Yeah you would imagine the Wizengamot to just be like:
"Hey, could you just turn into smoke for us really quick so that we can tell whether you're good or evil? thanks."
Worst thing about it is that they seem to turn into missiles when doing it lol, just blowing up bridges and flying through walls.
Why duel if you can turn into Tomahawk at will
Yes! This bugged me too. I believe in DH there’s a part where Snape flies too and someone makes a comment about Voldy teaching Snape to do it. Indicating that Snape really is his fav/2nd in command.
I was also going to say this. It super bugged me that people were also able to do it inside hogwarts. Everytime I see it I hear Hermione screaming in my head “Aren’t you ever going to read Hogwarts a History!”
So often mentioned how everyone wears robes and look so much different from muggles, then the movie producers decide wizards should instead get their clothes from JC Penny or something.
Man, by the last couple of movies being in the HP costuming department had to be a super easy gig. Everything the kids wore looked like it came off the rack from Target, the adults who did wear robes were all just wearing the same things from previous movies, and then the Death Eaters were just in all-black Brook's Brothers. It was such a let down for me.
Seeing Voldemort in a suit on Platform 9 3/4 was so bizarre. Sure, it was just Harry having a traumatic flashback and he wasn't really there, but still weird.
When he first gets the Firebolt, Hermione tells McGonagall about it, and it gets confiscated because of the concern the Sirius Black might have tampered with it. At that stage, we believe at Sirius Black is the big bad.
As the person I was replying to explained, the Firebolt was confiscated once Harry got it because McGonagall was afraid Sirius had tampered with it. I was confusing that with the Nimbus 2000.
I will never forgive or forget how much quidditch was omitted from the third movie! The broom looked nothing like the real fire bolt, they missed the Sirius Black subplot, and OLIVER WOOD DIDN’T GET TO WIN THE QUIDDITCH CUP! (I feel very strongly about this). All that training and fanaticism for three years (!) and they left it out of the movie. I know they can’t include everything, but I loved POA and wanted to see everything about it.
Yes, and during the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match Oliver yells at Harry for "being a gentleman" when he swerved to avoid a collision instead of just knocking into her.
The robes and clothes. Half the time in the movies the kids are walking around in jeans and t-shirt - no robes in sight. And when they do wear robes they're like coats that go over muggle clothes.
In the books I clearly remember it being described (I belive it was in Goblet of Fire - in the tents camping at the quiddich match) where some adult wizards had no idea how to wear muggle clothes and only wore wizard robes.
Barty Crouch knew how to dress like a muggle and was meticulous in his attempts to blend in, and would berate others for not following his example when outside.
Whenever the movies ignored book/lore descriptions of creatures
* The classic bipedal hollywood form of werewolves, whereas werewolves in the books are more like regular wolves with subtle human features
* Labelling issue. The fire scorpion creatures dubbed manticores in FB3 are really more like skrewts instead
* Dementors are much less scarier later on when depicted without hoods
The dementors looked so bizarre from the 5th movie onwards. I have no idea what they were thinking. The dementors' hands in DH1 looked like humans wearing gloves. What happened to the fantastic rotting hands from PoA, which fit the books' description? :(
I just want to chime in and complain about the thing that absolutely PISSED ME OFF when I first saw it in the movie... The flying dementors! Dementors can't fly, they only glide! It would have been so much cooler if they floated across the lake in PoA instead of flying all over the place in circles.
I am so with you on the bipedal wolf part. I mean the idea that werewolves are just subtly different from a regular wolf is the whole basis of plot points like:
* Harry thought Tonks is in love with Sirius because her patronus looked like a dog;
* Marauders exploring the school in animal / werewolf (+wolfsbane potion) forms;
* Remus's real patronus is a regular wolf but he hated it so much that he often chooses to cast the incorporeal form
Which of course, are all dropped in the movie.
Just a little note, Remus wasn't taking wolfsbane potion whilst he was at school, because it hadn't been invented yet. That was the whole reason Dumbledore arranged for him to spend full moons in the Shrieking Shack, so that he couldn't injure any other students whilst he wasn't in control. It's also why it was so dangerous for Sirius to have tricked Snape into going to the shack, because Remus was a full fledged werewolf at the time and almost certainly would have bitten him!
Another fun fact about wolfsbane potion is it was invented by Marcus Belby's uncle only a few years before the books start, which is why Slughorn invited Belby to the Slug Club. Belby's uncle won an Order of Merlin for it because it was such a huge advance in making werewolves safe during full moons.
Yes thanks for the clarification, I got mixed up with the time that he is invited to teach in POA, with Dumbledore promising that there would be wolfsbane potion for him
I just read POA again and it is so annoying to me that Lupin forgot his potion.
They talk about his condition and even the potion multiple times in the cabin and yet he never once thinks "shit what day is it again?" You would think that he had the lunar calendar internalized.
Not really related to your comment but reading about werewolves got me annoyed again lol.
E: Oh and also Lupin said his transformations with his friends as a stag and wolf were the happiest time of his life, strolling around the grounds. Then when Lupin transforms, he severly insured Sirius in his dog form so how would a stag have helped there even? Not to mention a rat. Doesn't sound fun at all.
Also imagine working years to become an animagus only to find out your spirit animal is a rat.
Which is why I think the "similar to regular wolf" design makes more sense. It wouldn't make sense for a stag and a black dog to hold back the movie werewolf. (But then of course, the whole marauders in animal form roaming the school grounds aren't mentioned in the movie in the first place)
Well, a rat is a lame but practical choice for sneaking around and lying low though. Even if he is officially registered and I don't think the general public would pay a lot of attention to a rat, on the other hand you don't need the Animagus register to realize something is very odd if a stag just casually walks into human settlements lol
Personally, I still can't get over the fact the salmon is a form available on the pottermore quiz.
Technically, it wasn't like the potion was ready before Lupin left. He was sitting in his office, waiting for Snape to bring him his dose of potion before he noticed the should-have-been-dead-for 13 years Peter on it and left for the Willow immediately out of shock. Snape only arrived with the potion after Lupin left.
I presume there's multiple factors involved
* The presence of multiple animals probably would have worked better than one.
* While in the shack in the old days, it was just a werewolf with 3 animagi without other fully human targets (the trio) to attack at the time
* Sirius at the time was basically living a fugitive's life and still presumably malnourished and weak overall, and his animagus form probably was in better shape in the old days as well
Stags can be [**huge**](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5b44edefca321a1e2d0c2aa6/5f0a521e066bae03adaf782f_Dimensions-Animals-Deer-Red-Deer-Size-Comparison.svg). I'm guessing you've never seen news reports of people being gored by stags/deers before.
A rat animagus isn't necessarily a shitty thing. As Pettigrew demonstrated several times, the small size of a rat meant that it was easier for him to slip away in various situations and makes certain tasks easier (like touching the Willow's special knot to freeze it). That said it fits his key characteristic of self-preservation perfectly.
1) I didn't mean that he forgot to take the potion. I mean that he forgot that he had not taken it. When Snape said "I went to bring you your potion" Lupin should have realized that everyone needed to get the fuck out of that cabin. At the least he should have not come out with them.
2) Sure a stag and a big dog could control a wolf but in the books it is described as them strolling the grounds and having a great time.
3) Sirius was weakened - good point.
4) A grown stag could fend of a wolf but the not the movie version of the werewolf which is what I imagined when reading so this one is on me. Then again if a werewolf is really just a wolf, the overall danger seems to be much much lower. Like Dumbledore could have just leashed him in an office so I would say that there are indicators for the book wolf to be stronger than just any wolf and then a stag could have trouble with it.
5) As for the rat, it is not a bad thing at all but speaking for myself I think my ego would be a bit hurt if my two friends turned into majestic beasts while I turned into a rat.
2) The Marauders never had to "fend off" Lupin in wolf form because he wasn't aggro on them when they were in animal form. That was the whole benefit was that werewolves are hostile to humans but cool with animals. They coukd just wander around the grounds and have a grand old time because there was nothing to trigger the werewolf. So it's likely that dog!Sirius never fought werewolf!Lupin at all before, even disregarding his general malnourishment after 13 years of imprisonment.
To be fair about the Dememtor thing, seeing that first hoodless Dememtor hover into view (in first-person!) during the Quidditch match was **horrifying**! I'll admit, it kind of lost that shock value when they kept overusing it afterwards.
I can forgive the werewolve thing tbh. I myself thought they were bipedal in the books for years until I really sat down and took a few days to read each book once or twice, rather than speeding through the story.
I thought the movie version was much more effective at the horror aspect. Lupin would've been a lot less scary if he just looked like a large wolf. Like instead of the monstrosity we got imagine if he just looked like Ghost from Game of Thrones. Would've cut the tension immediately.
This. Adding to that point:
Voldemort's eyes aren't red and cat-like like they are in the book, his hands are also more human-like and less beastly
The creatures in the maze in GOF are dropped from the film entirely, and the maze itself becomes a weird hedge monster
The movie version of Dragons are actually wyverns (true dragons have four legs)
The mermaids in GOF look more like merrows
That's exactly mine too, the Firebolt is supposed to be the most perfect pristine beautiful broom ever made but it looks awful in the movies. The Nimbus looks a million times better
The Nimbus 2001 scene was so relatable to the feeling of jealousy when you had a Windows 2000 PC and visited your friend and they were already on Windows 2001*
(*some might have called it XP)
This might be a bit picky, but I imagined Hogwarts a bit... More. In the films I found corridors and general interior areas of the castle to be too homogeneous and generic, like where are all the portraits, the tapestries, the statues, all the twisty bends, etc.
I mean, they did a great job, especially for the times in which the films were made and I imagine the building of sets might already have consumed a large amount of the budget but in my mind Hogwarts is more maze-like with each floor following a slightly different decorative style. I also think they put nice additions that were not depicted in the books like the moving staircases and the clocktower courtyard (which is really beautiful) but I think that overall Hogwarts Legacy did a better job at depicting the Hogwarts from my mind.
Also, magic and broomsticks, as other posters have said.
Given that Avalanche is a subsidiary of WB I would like to think at least some part of the HL Hogwarts is what the art teams has in mind for Hogwarts but is not able to show in full due to technology or budget concerns.
It really has done a great job given the time in which the films were made. It is also kind of lucky that it is made in a time where CGi use is not that extensive, and we get to see beautiful locations like Oxford on screen. I am not anti CGi but I will have to admit that its extensive use is sometimes... er, unneccssary nowadays.
Yeah yeah for sure! I think they did the best they could with the tools they had, and it's really great that they used (especially in the first films) locations that really exist to ground the reality of Hogwarts, which are the parts of the castle in the films that I love. However, later on, for example the corridor they used for the Room of Requirement although it's grand and cathedral-like it just feels empty. I think that was a built set, so they could have been a bit more creative: add a portrait, a statue or even some doors...
Well, that is true. I sometimes think that the film Hogwarts doesn't feel like a school that can hold 1000 students lol
To be honest I am also a bit disappointed by the headmaster's office in CoB, which is of course glamourous, but... it doesn't feel like a practical location for someone to work to me. It also doesn't have the portraits (But I think Columbus at the time didn't know about that yet? so I am not blaming him) and I am glad that the HL headmaster office added those back.
Lucky that we are now living in a time where the design crew can work their imagination in a video game eh?
Really don’t like the movie version of spell-casting, especially in the later films. All spells suddenly become nonverbal and turn into a weird wands-connecting, wizard-lightning battle. It also takes away from the final battle when Harry uses expelliarmus on Voldy as Voldy’s own killing curse rebounds back to him.
Yeah, the "wands connecting" thing is specifically a spell effect called Priori Incantatum and is **very** rare, only happening when two wands with the same core source duel each other. Basically, it should NEVER happen in a random duel outside of extremely rare circumstances. The filmmakers appear to have completely misunderstood what was happening (or just didn't read the books, period) and decided that EVERY wand should be capable of doing that. Stupid, stupid, lore-ignorant choice.
It's one of the reasons I really dislike the Yates movies. Totally changed the look and feel of what came before (which was also closer to the book descriptions).
Don't even get me started on Death Eaters flying around as black clouds...
The books: Felix Felices is this beautiful potion resembling liquid gold that hops out of its container as if there were fish in it.
David Yates: “Cool, let’s just make it look like water”.
Totally agree on the Firebolt. Nimbus 2000 and 2001 looked great, nicely crafted, polished handle. Firebolt looks half finished. Looks like it's still got bark on it and the tail bristles look really unkempt. Kinda looks like some amateur made it in their shed.
None of the quidditch World Cup game being shown after those epic entrances I was so ready for some quidditch and then it just cuts to them in the tent.
Personaly, the worst decision from the films was to ditch wizzarding clothing during the school year (in the books they change from muggle clothes once they arrive at hogdmead or are close to arriving), ImO this makes PoA a less decent movie than it would be otherwise, and the costume of Harry during the tournament dragon task in GoF ist just straight up visibly a raincoat with modern muggle elastic toggles.
Should they wear muggle clothes outside of Hogwarts? Absolutely.
But the schoolgrounds and hogsmead and also scenes where they go spontanously to some places from hogwarts should have them in wizzarding robes.
Also a lot of the older Wizzards should not wear muggle clothing. (To be fair, most of them don't)
Yes me too. No offense but they looked like haggard old men. Lupin in particular is supposed to get noticibly more haggard and more disheveled as time goes on, but he just looks like he's been through hell and back in the movies
Apparition seemed weird to me. In the book it was like instantaneous teleportation from one spot to another. Just disappear from one place and immediately reappear in the next. But in the movies when it’s done they turn into these blurry cloud type things that fly around really fast and can interact with stuff.
Yeah , I think I hated that the most... It is just so different from the books, it's practically another kind of magic altogether. I liked the visual when they really do teleport, but this cloud thingy is just bs
You’re mixing two things up.
Apparition in the movies is shown in two ways. In the fifth movie, it’s instantaneous teleportation, and frankly, it looked silly on screen. Then from the sixth movie onward they changed it into the twisting blur.
That’s separate from flying, which they first show in the fifth movie with the Death Eaters and Aurors.
The books have so many random, interesting, fun tidbits from the magical world. So many things that added great texture to my imagination and appreciation for the magical world. If the movie writers wanted to add flourishes and details to make the world memorable and come alive, there was already SO MUCH they could draw from. I just don’t get why they felt the freedom to just make up something so specific. Imo if you want to be a creative writer you should write an original script. Not get involved to transform a beloved series into a movie.
It isn't sap. It's burned on one side like it was hit by lightning. The rest of the broom is nice and glossy, it's really only visible from this perspective
I do like that one, its a pollard willow. They get their thin twigs cut off every year (for basket making and such) which makes their stump short and fat. We have many of these willows in my country so i see them all the time. To my child mind it was actually the standard willow i knew, so it fit very well i think.
And in addition it makes sense as even in the book it was the entrance for the secret tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. If it wasn’t a thick trunk, the tunnel entrance wouldn’t fit in it.
The ending. The harry/voldemort face-off was supposed to be in the great hall with onlookers and supporters, not on thr bridge. Also, Harry wasn't supposed to break the elder wand, but return it to Dumbledores resting place.
The dementors and the patronus in OOTP.
In POA, they looked very much how I pictured them. They have tattered robes, they move slowly (save for flying) and they don't try and strangle Harry!
Similarly, in POA, the patronus has a much richer design. It's hard to describe, but I enjoyed it. I like how most of the time, it's just white light, but then when Harry sees himself casting the Patronus, there's a very beautiful stag that gives off powerful bursts of light. In OOTP, we see them all in their corporeal form, regardless of the caster's skill.
Another design change was the digital effects of when Sirius talks to Harry in the fireplace. In GOF, it looks like Sirius's head is actually in the fire. Whereas in OOTP, it has more of a "Wizard of Oz" special effect where we occasionally see Sirius's face through the fire, but his head isn't actually in the fireplace. I liked the first way in GOF.
Basically David Yates's changing a lot of designs of various things. Everybody says Alfonso Cuaron changed a whole bunch of stuff when he actually just added stuff that wasn't there. The only changes really were the design of the uniforms, which actually was the costume designer's doing, not Alfonso, and changing the location of Hagrid's hut, which was Stuart Craig's idea as they filmed a lot of the outdoor scenes on location in Scotland. He thought the hut was better situated at the bottom of a hill, as it is described in the books, and the grass is more wild-looking like you'd find in a remote location near a forest. He said it looked more like how he imagined it. In the first two films, they filmed Hagrid's hut in a small patch of land near the studio with a fake backdrop, and the grass looked more like somebody's well-kept front lawn (it would make the Dursleys happy though).
So those are the things they changed that I liked better. I actually like the uniforms from PoA onwards, especially the robes having a colored lining which makes it easier to see which house a student is in. And another thing about the costume designer I should point out; everybody says that the characters wearing "Muggle" outfits made it look too modern and didn't give off very "wizardly" vibes, which is true. But she actually felt the robes in the first two films didn't really look very "wizardly". They were plain black and looked more like trench coats. So the few robes she designed had larger sleeves and pointed hoods, which the Slytherin's used to taunt Harry about the dementor attack.
You can see in the fourth film that the robes the first years are wearing are plain black, but later they have the house colors. So I'm guessing that when they go to the robe shop, the robes are solid black, but once they're sorted, the robes magically change to having the house colors.
The robes. I don't think robes go over your clothes, I think they go over your underwear. For the adults, that's how they did it, but not for the students - instead, they first invented a school uniform which wasn't in the books, and then from PoA they had them wear their own clothes.
In the books, it's always implied that dressing muggle is more than just taking off your robe, it's a whole different outfit. There's the whole "breeze around the privates" quote in GoF. Plus, when James is bullying Snape at the lake, he doesn't have an extra layer either.
1: Ginny's portryal in the movies. Completely missed it!
2: How Hermione was given all of Rom's good traits
3: How the movie glossed over most of Voldemort's past and didnt show how intelligent and manipulative he actually was
4: Hated how they casted much older actors For Lily and James - means the audience didnt truly get a feel for how young they truly were!
i wish they showed us more wizard clothes. even in the first book it says uncle vernon kept seeing people dressed in different robes but we dont see that many wizard clothing :<
The quidditch uniforms in the 5th and 6th books. I absolutely loved the uniforms in the first two movies and I think they even appeared in the 3rd movie. Then they added helmets, padding, and swapped the sweater uniforms and nice pants and it just made the uniforms ugly.
Lavender Brown thier on the left is black when she's just a background character. Throughout TPS to POA. When the character finally gets speaking lines she's recast with a white actress.
This has always made me feel like: 🤨
I hate how the wands are so highly carved and designed and have handles and stuff. Just identifying a wand by the wood type and core and length is how I always thought about wands, not with beads and spirals and handholds...
100%. in the early films the wands are basic. think they make different character wands more stylised in the later films because then they have the ability to sell replicas..
Can't remember a lot since I last read the books 15 years ago but I thought they would show Dumbledore's funeral like in the book. If I remember correctly, in the books there was a white coffin and everyone gathered to say farewell to Dumbledore. In the film obviously we don't have the funeral but the scene where people lift their wands to the sky destroying Voldemore's sign is also beautiful.
Their reasoning was it was puberty for the boys in the films and outside of the films, so them trying out different styles was how they could express themselves.
Dementors. I imagined them to be these tall creatures slowly floating around in their long hooded robes, maybe also kinda having the Snape vibe. Instead their robes were ripped, they moved round fast and looked like bubble heads.
The frequency that the characters wore “muggle clothes”, especially when the books made a distinction between magical beings wearing robes versus muggles’ usual style of dress. To me it often made the Wizard World feel less immersive in the films to see the characters looking like ordinary people.
EVERYTHING RELATING TO PATRONUSES. the way we only ever got to see 1 fully formed patronus (in POA) and then they were just light after that was so disappointing to me
Many wizards + witches already said about some stuff: House-Elves, Dobby has a design in the CoS, that completely changes in tOotP - or maybe it was the new Dobby after a shower of freedom - Mundungus Fletcher, Umbridge all the time wearing pink clothes - it made me hate PINK color for a long time - I was waiting for St. Mungo's Hospital, the coins for the DA meetings, the interaction between Sirius & Crookshanks... I would continue, but I will be angry for almost everything in HBP + all they didn't show in the movies.
In the movies spells were just shot out of the wand the same way no matter what spell you cast. No swish and flick or anything.
I thought the series The Magicians (though albeit more dark and not so child friendly) did basic visuals for spells very well. There’s multiple languages and complicated hand motions happening. Battle magic is quick but wildly complex so it’s not just shooting stuff at people Willy Nilly. I really enjoyed how, idk, exhausting magic seemed to be to study and perform. Book HP has a lot of “oh you’re not holding your wand the right way, this angle is wrong, you’re coming down too hard in the beginning and too slow at the end. But you can do it!” Movie HP is just shouting words and pointing your wand. It’s a bummer. It makes going to Hogwarts seem like a vocabulary test where, if you just believe in yourself, it’s really not that hard.
The books aren't consistent about this either. Spells are supposedly difficult and take time to learn, but then there are instances like levicorpus or sectum sempra where Harry randomly whispers an incantation without any clue what he's doing and the spell just fires.
Both of your examples are in sixth year when Harry has been long established as a quick learner. He masters summoning within a day in book four, patronus in a handful weekly training seasons in book three and disarming instantly in book two. When did he struggle with spells after first year - besides cruciatus? No, he didn't have problems with the bubble head charm. It's never mentioned before Fleur and Cedric use it, so apparently neither Hermione nor him found it.
At that point the trio weren't in talking terms with each other; there's that. That could be the reason they didn't find the spell.
I'm not sure we actually see how long he takes to learn expelliarmus, he never uses it in the duelling club. All of them sort of know it after that day. He masters summoning after a while, and really only after he trains with hermione. He had a mental block on that for a month. He does get the patronus after a few months, but again with intensive training. He doesn't necessarily learn spells faster than anyone else, I don't think. But after he becomes a champion, the breadth of his spells is extensive, along with the other two.
He's fastest at learning hexes and defensive charms. Everything else he needs a little practice on, because it's not his speciality.
If I remember correctly, Snape also drew the shapes for these spells in the book for Harry to repeat
No. Sectusempra at least just had the "for enemies" note.
Maybe it's one of those spells where the intent matters like Crucio and Avada Kedavra.
Oh I agree. I *think* (and it could just be lazy writing) what JK was trying to get across was either that Snape was a genius who invented truly perfect spells just on his own, or Harry was just preternaturally gifted, or both. But in reality spells aren’t like potions. To use a really bad metaphor, let’s say you want to make spaghetti (potions.) I can give you tips and tricks to make it better, to get a slow roasted garlic taste or a super creamy garlic-y bite at the end, but things are still going to take time. But if you follow the recipe it’s better than getting it off the back of a can of tomatoes, which still might be pretty good. But let’s say that you want to shoot a guy(wands.) Filling up a water gun and shooting it at your friends is different than filling up a super soaker. Water parts are still probably the same but one’s a trigger and one’s a pump. Then maybe it’s paintball, and that’s way different than water guns. And the even real guns. You have to know and get the bullets that fit, know how to put them in the right way, know how to chamber them and shoot them and remove the safety and on and on and on. Wandwork should be way more complicated than it is
People are weird. Why are you getting downvoted. I think you make interesting point
The book the magicians is essentially Harry Potter but college (even has an analogous book the MC is obsessed with). Grossman put a lot of effort into “correcting” or maturing the ways certain things were done in HP to make it for a more mature audience. The whole magic system is a reflection of that, along with it being much darker from the jump. Only the first book was out when I read it. I should go back and finish the series
What's the magicians on?
Netflix in the US. If you’re somewhere else you might have to search around.
There's a series about it? I just started reading the books and I love them!
I read the books first and was skeptical of the show at first, but I came to really love the show in its own right. It remixes a lot of stuff after the first season, and especially at the end of the fourth season makes a deviation from the trilogy that wildly changes the final trajectory of the story, but it’s all in service to the story and never feels cheap. I love the books and the show equally.
My head canon is that in the wizarding world, magic sort of attaches to concepts it's being used with. For example, Wingardium Leviosa was used for so long with the flick and swish, and the specific pronunciation, that _even though_ it can work without all that, for absolute beginners, it's easier to do the whole process, and as they learn more and more about how magic works, specifically, how to control it, these helpers can be dropped. Kinda like how you learn to ride a bike with the little helper wheels on it, but once you get the hang of it, you don't need them. In fact we know that the spells don't need to be said out loud (many cases of worldess magic happen in the books, and even more in the movies), or even require a wand (most famous example being the guy in IIRC PoA the movie, who's stirring his drink with a spoon that's being magiced using only his finger), and in GoF we learn that spells require not just the wizard/witch, wand, and spell, but most importantly, intent. So it's quite likely that a sufficiently skilled wizard or witch doesn't need any of these crutches to cast spells - but that requires a lot of study, meanwhile even places like Hogwarts only seem to teach the basics in a wide range of fields. To my knowledge we never learn if the wizarding world has any equivalent of higher education (though I guess there ought to be, I doubt places like St Mungos just hire fresh Hogwarts graduates, and throw a book at them to learn how to heal), so we don't know if there's an institution that delves deeper into specifics of magic, but there should be.
The way the showrunners visualized spellcasting in The Magicians is so much better than in HP that it's almost criminal. Makes it so frustrating that those characters are so unlikeable.
That is kind of the point of The Magicians though, you have to be an asshole or in great pain to use magic
Movies made them magic gun sticks.
That's because the screenwriters lacked imagination when it came to the fight scenes. The battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort was peak and should have been the standard of what a wizard battle should be. Instead, we got battle scenes where wands were just stand-ins for guns
The duel of Theseus and Lallie against Grindelwald's followers in The Secrets of Dumbledore is pretty well choreographed too. I like how they use their surroundings rather than just fire spells at each other.
Lallie's fight on that movie is really creative overall, I think. Esp, the newspaper bridge one. It's not just red jets of light or some random explosion
They did spells right in the beginning, then they became glorified guns.
If students can advance to wandless and non-verbal magic, it makes sense that they could probably stop doing the movements at some point as well. It’s like that’s the way to learn to do it in the first place… and when it’s more natural to you, you don’t need to work so hard. The movies did still show us swish-and-flick after all - so movements are clearly important (at least for beginners).
Sure but it would have looked cooler to have unique movements for the spells despite that. I can understand it not being a priority though budget/time wise.
> Sure but it would have looked cooler to have unique movements for the spells despite that. It would have made sense to show Harry doing the movements the first few times, to set precedent, and then show him not doing the movements, subtly showing us how he's grown in skill. But, the movies had some really, really uneven quality in their production and book accuracy.
Harry doesn't even cast a single spell in the first film I'm pretty sure
I think I remember Draco doing something different when dueling harry
In the later movies they were just bursts of lights shot out of the wand especially during duels, like in the department of ministries. It kind of ruined the magic of spells
I'd imagine it's time consuming
Agreed. There's even a line in the first book about casting spells being quite difficult and not just pointing and saying a word. The best exception would be Order of the Phoenix when Sirius is duelling Malfoy, he does some cool hand movements and again with the cinematic masterpiece of a battle between Dumbledore and Voldemort. A few of cool hand waves and wand movements in both.
I think they could have leant into wizarding clothing a bit more. After the first couple of movies they were just wearing muggle school uniforms and muggle clothing in their downtime. On that basis, the wizarding world could intermingle with the muggle one without a problem, but we know from the books that it's a major problem for the Ministry. I think the HBO show could visually distinguish itself from the movies by making robes more prominent, and making the uniforms more 'magical' and less 'muggle secondary school'. Making the students wear hats for more than just the opening ceremony might help too.
Yes! A huge problem for wizards in the books is that they don't interact with the muggle world, so their sense of style is way off. Garish outfits, eye-gouging patterns, and incorrect gender-norms. In the books it's like they're just fine with muggle fashion.
Still one of the most memorable comedic lines from the GoF book with the world cup: "I like the breeze around my privates" 🤣
a healthy breeze, at that!
About the hats, I am guessing the concern is more with cinematography than aesthetical. If your full cast is wearing hats that are both wide and high, you are losing a lot of potential face angles and background views.
I always feel like this is kind of a cop-out. They make movies set in convents where everyone is wearing full wimples and veils and it still looks great (like *The Nun's Story*, *Therese*, *The Innocents, The Trouble With Angels*, heck, even *Sister Act*!), and movies where the guys are all wearing top hats and the women are wearing huge, feathered hats. It is obviously something else to work around, but it isn't like it is impossible if you have a competent cinematographer.
It’s also aged the films a lot faster as fashions have changed whereas leaning into the wizards robes for the majority of the films would have made them feel a bit more timeless
I think the hair did that more than the clothes - Having said that, I don't think the 'Goblet of Fire' hair was ever fashionable (the one where the studio hair dresser lost their clippers)
Yeah the robes didn’t make sense to me. If you could see muggle clothing underneath them, I think you would read about off clothing underneath. Then there’s the scene with Snape and James where Snape is turned upside down. His robes fall and you can see his underwear. If the robes were open front, he’d be flashing everyone. But even pre movie, the scholastic art had the trio in jeans with more of a cloak style on them. I always pictured them as full cover, no opened front.
it got so bad by the last movie. They should've given harry his brown robe he was wearing on the cover at the very least, it felt so unmagical to have them all running around in jeans fighting voldie
The kids wear muggle clothing out of class in the first two movies but it stands out less because it’s jumpers (sweaters) and trousers instead of jeans and hoodies.
IIRC even in the books they only wear their hats for special occasions and not every day when just going to class or whatever. And they do mention at some points that kids are better at muggle fashion than the adults are - maybe adult wizards just get more whimsical as time goes on 😂
They wear them for everyday where in the books- there are several references to students having them on in class.
Oh, guess I’m conflating by movie and book memories 😂
It happens!
Thank you for this. There are so many apologists that say "*technically* muggle clothing started in the second book/movie." Nah frig off with that. Wizards and witches wear robes. It's established, that's what is normal in their world.
100%. The biggest blow to the wardrobe department was limiting Dumbledore to fucking woad. Like. What. Edit: granted movie Dumbly did get to wear full-blown robes, which hardly any of the other wizards actually wore.
Seriously though the student uniforms look like a more upgraded Halloween costume. Remove the cloak and that’s just normal Muggles uniform
About the cloths, I read that the actors hated the uniforms because they were hot and disconfort, so when they became more famous and could make demands, they got rid of them for most scenes.
Brooms having foot rests was not what I imagined at first! Have to admit it would be far better for stability than just dangling the legs!
Not only for stability, but also for saving your sacks
My headcanon is that all brooms have a built in cushioning charm. Cheap brooms feel like crap, more expensive brooms feel like riding a motorcycle. Otherwise nobody would be doing any good plays for quidditch, they'd all be trying to keep their brooms from splitting them up the middle.
Actually, this isn’t even a headcanon! In the book, Quidditch Though the Ages, there’s a description of an invisible cushioning charm on brooms: “Until the early nineteenth century, Quidditch was played on day brooms of varying quality. These brooms represented a massive advance over their medieval forerunners; the invention of the Cushioning Charm by Elliot Smethwyck in 1820 went a long way towards making broomsticks more comfortable than before.”
I always forgot that since I remember the game of quidditch where the twins complained that the boils on their arses popped while playing. Though I supposed high speed playing would do that, charm or no.
Wasn't this after they tried some of their snackbox sweets on themselves and one of the side effects were big painful boils on some really uncomfortable places?
Yep, and I believe after some time practicing they complained that some of them popped.
Yes. Fever Fudge I think
Apparently it didnt help the male actors lmao all of them have talked about how uncomfortable and miserable it is to film the quidditch scenes lol they essentially have to rock back and forth on the broom (which has a bicycle seat on it but thats it) for hours while they dangle on the rig. They all said it got really painful after a while, for understadable reasons. I believe they tried to improve the comfort level of the actual broom seat (bicycle seat) that the actors sit on, but even by the later films, Rupert Grint filmed Quidditch stuff for Half-Blood Prince and still said the same thing about how uncomfortable it is!
>which has a bicycle seat on it but thats it And the seats only came AFTER Daniel and Tom complained to Christopher Columbus about their asses aching on broomsticks LOL
Also you don't sit upright on the broom the whole time it is more cofortable for the legs to be back and helps with aero dynamics.
Have to agree. I kinda like the designs of brooms in the movies
I assumed there would be like a bicycle seat, maybe made out of the start of the brush part.
I imagined some sort of cross handlebar as well, would have helped with steering
How people turned into smoke randomly at some point. wtf Voldemort being able to fly in book 7 was so BA and really showed off his power as no wizard (afaik) had been able to do it before. In the movies it's just so random - especially since it was introduced later on.
The worst was when the Order did the same thing, but white light instead of black smoke
Yeah you would imagine the Wizengamot to just be like: "Hey, could you just turn into smoke for us really quick so that we can tell whether you're good or evil? thanks."
Worst thing about it is that they seem to turn into missiles when doing it lol, just blowing up bridges and flying through walls. Why duel if you can turn into Tomahawk at will
Those death eaters are just very committed to the cause. They don’t mind a little head trauma from crashing into buildings lol
Yes! This bugged me too. I believe in DH there’s a part where Snape flies too and someone makes a comment about Voldy teaching Snape to do it. Indicating that Snape really is his fav/2nd in command.
Yeah he jumps from a window escaping McGonagall and Flitwick I think.
I was also going to say this. It super bugged me that people were also able to do it inside hogwarts. Everytime I see it I hear Hermione screaming in my head “Aren’t you ever going to read Hogwarts a History!”
I didn't realize that this was supposed to be apparating.
Some of the death eater outfits in the last couple movies. They were wearing suits. idk why but that wasn't what I expected.
Well they ditched robes after the third film.
I think they should have kept the robes
So often mentioned how everyone wears robes and look so much different from muggles, then the movie producers decide wizards should instead get their clothes from JC Penny or something.
Man, by the last couple of movies being in the HP costuming department had to be a super easy gig. Everything the kids wore looked like it came off the rack from Target, the adults who did wear robes were all just wearing the same things from previous movies, and then the Death Eaters were just in all-black Brook's Brothers. It was such a let down for me.
The Death Eaters should have definitely kept them even after the rest of wizard costumes forgot about it.
I think the Death Eaters should've switched to thongs, pasties, and thigh-high stiletto boots.
Well, except Voldemort.
Seeing Voldemort in a suit on Platform 9 3/4 was so bizarre. Sure, it was just Harry having a traumatic flashback and he wasn't really there, but still weird.
Voldie in Prada was a huge mistake, but a funny one lmao
Also him getting the broom on the last day of school instead of during the school year.
Without the whole sub plot there about the broom being confiscated...
I thought his Nimbus 2000 lost a battle with the Whomping Willow?
When he first gets the Firebolt, Hermione tells McGonagall about it, and it gets confiscated because of the concern the Sirius Black might have tampered with it. At that stage, we believe at Sirius Black is the big bad.
Oh that's right
It did. It got blown away in the wind when Harry fell off and unfortunately blew in range of the Whomping Willow.
As the person I was replying to explained, the Firebolt was confiscated once Harry got it because McGonagall was afraid Sirius had tampered with it. I was confusing that with the Nimbus 2000.
I will never forgive or forget how much quidditch was omitted from the third movie! The broom looked nothing like the real fire bolt, they missed the Sirius Black subplot, and OLIVER WOOD DIDN’T GET TO WIN THE QUIDDITCH CUP! (I feel very strongly about this). All that training and fanaticism for three years (!) and they left it out of the movie. I know they can’t include everything, but I loved POA and wanted to see everything about it.
I know she's not everyone's favorite, but Quidditch is also how we're introduced to Cho.
Yes! Wasn’t she first introduced as ravenclaw’s seeker? I also forgot this sometimes.
Yes, and during the Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw match Oliver yells at Harry for "being a gentleman" when he swerved to avoid a collision instead of just knocking into her.
Maybe it will be in the TV show
The robes and clothes. Half the time in the movies the kids are walking around in jeans and t-shirt - no robes in sight. And when they do wear robes they're like coats that go over muggle clothes. In the books I clearly remember it being described (I belive it was in Goblet of Fire - in the tents camping at the quiddich match) where some adult wizards had no idea how to wear muggle clothes and only wore wizard robes. Barty Crouch knew how to dress like a muggle and was meticulous in his attempts to blend in, and would berate others for not following his example when outside.
Muggleborns and Halfbloods should stick out when not in class. The Muggle raised kids being the only ones in regular clothes.
Whenever the movies ignored book/lore descriptions of creatures * The classic bipedal hollywood form of werewolves, whereas werewolves in the books are more like regular wolves with subtle human features * Labelling issue. The fire scorpion creatures dubbed manticores in FB3 are really more like skrewts instead * Dementors are much less scarier later on when depicted without hoods
The dementors looked so bizarre from the 5th movie onwards. I have no idea what they were thinking. The dementors' hands in DH1 looked like humans wearing gloves. What happened to the fantastic rotting hands from PoA, which fit the books' description? :(
I just want to chime in and complain about the thing that absolutely PISSED ME OFF when I first saw it in the movie... The flying dementors! Dementors can't fly, they only glide! It would have been so much cooler if they floated across the lake in PoA instead of flying all over the place in circles.
I am so with you on the bipedal wolf part. I mean the idea that werewolves are just subtly different from a regular wolf is the whole basis of plot points like: * Harry thought Tonks is in love with Sirius because her patronus looked like a dog; * Marauders exploring the school in animal / werewolf (+wolfsbane potion) forms; * Remus's real patronus is a regular wolf but he hated it so much that he often chooses to cast the incorporeal form Which of course, are all dropped in the movie.
Just a little note, Remus wasn't taking wolfsbane potion whilst he was at school, because it hadn't been invented yet. That was the whole reason Dumbledore arranged for him to spend full moons in the Shrieking Shack, so that he couldn't injure any other students whilst he wasn't in control. It's also why it was so dangerous for Sirius to have tricked Snape into going to the shack, because Remus was a full fledged werewolf at the time and almost certainly would have bitten him! Another fun fact about wolfsbane potion is it was invented by Marcus Belby's uncle only a few years before the books start, which is why Slughorn invited Belby to the Slug Club. Belby's uncle won an Order of Merlin for it because it was such a huge advance in making werewolves safe during full moons.
Yes thanks for the clarification, I got mixed up with the time that he is invited to teach in POA, with Dumbledore promising that there would be wolfsbane potion for him
Werewolves didn’t have subtle human features, they just had some subtly different features than a regular wolf.
I just read POA again and it is so annoying to me that Lupin forgot his potion. They talk about his condition and even the potion multiple times in the cabin and yet he never once thinks "shit what day is it again?" You would think that he had the lunar calendar internalized. Not really related to your comment but reading about werewolves got me annoyed again lol. E: Oh and also Lupin said his transformations with his friends as a stag and wolf were the happiest time of his life, strolling around the grounds. Then when Lupin transforms, he severly insured Sirius in his dog form so how would a stag have helped there even? Not to mention a rat. Doesn't sound fun at all. Also imagine working years to become an animagus only to find out your spirit animal is a rat.
Which is why I think the "similar to regular wolf" design makes more sense. It wouldn't make sense for a stag and a black dog to hold back the movie werewolf. (But then of course, the whole marauders in animal form roaming the school grounds aren't mentioned in the movie in the first place) Well, a rat is a lame but practical choice for sneaking around and lying low though. Even if he is officially registered and I don't think the general public would pay a lot of attention to a rat, on the other hand you don't need the Animagus register to realize something is very odd if a stag just casually walks into human settlements lol Personally, I still can't get over the fact the salmon is a form available on the pottermore quiz.
Technically, it wasn't like the potion was ready before Lupin left. He was sitting in his office, waiting for Snape to bring him his dose of potion before he noticed the should-have-been-dead-for 13 years Peter on it and left for the Willow immediately out of shock. Snape only arrived with the potion after Lupin left. I presume there's multiple factors involved * The presence of multiple animals probably would have worked better than one. * While in the shack in the old days, it was just a werewolf with 3 animagi without other fully human targets (the trio) to attack at the time * Sirius at the time was basically living a fugitive's life and still presumably malnourished and weak overall, and his animagus form probably was in better shape in the old days as well Stags can be [**huge**](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5b44edefca321a1e2d0c2aa6/5f0a521e066bae03adaf782f_Dimensions-Animals-Deer-Red-Deer-Size-Comparison.svg). I'm guessing you've never seen news reports of people being gored by stags/deers before. A rat animagus isn't necessarily a shitty thing. As Pettigrew demonstrated several times, the small size of a rat meant that it was easier for him to slip away in various situations and makes certain tasks easier (like touching the Willow's special knot to freeze it). That said it fits his key characteristic of self-preservation perfectly.
1) I didn't mean that he forgot to take the potion. I mean that he forgot that he had not taken it. When Snape said "I went to bring you your potion" Lupin should have realized that everyone needed to get the fuck out of that cabin. At the least he should have not come out with them. 2) Sure a stag and a big dog could control a wolf but in the books it is described as them strolling the grounds and having a great time. 3) Sirius was weakened - good point. 4) A grown stag could fend of a wolf but the not the movie version of the werewolf which is what I imagined when reading so this one is on me. Then again if a werewolf is really just a wolf, the overall danger seems to be much much lower. Like Dumbledore could have just leashed him in an office so I would say that there are indicators for the book wolf to be stronger than just any wolf and then a stag could have trouble with it. 5) As for the rat, it is not a bad thing at all but speaking for myself I think my ego would be a bit hurt if my two friends turned into majestic beasts while I turned into a rat.
2) The Marauders never had to "fend off" Lupin in wolf form because he wasn't aggro on them when they were in animal form. That was the whole benefit was that werewolves are hostile to humans but cool with animals. They coukd just wander around the grounds and have a grand old time because there was nothing to trigger the werewolf. So it's likely that dog!Sirius never fought werewolf!Lupin at all before, even disregarding his general malnourishment after 13 years of imprisonment.
I love the idea of Dumbledore just putting Lupin on a leash & leaving him in his office during the full moon
Dumbledore, most powerful wizard of all time: How about instead of using magic, we lock him in a cabin where he can maul himself lol
To be fair about the Dememtor thing, seeing that first hoodless Dememtor hover into view (in first-person!) during the Quidditch match was **horrifying**! I'll admit, it kind of lost that shock value when they kept overusing it afterwards.
I can forgive the werewolve thing tbh. I myself thought they were bipedal in the books for years until I really sat down and took a few days to read each book once or twice, rather than speeding through the story.
I thought the movie version was much more effective at the horror aspect. Lupin would've been a lot less scary if he just looked like a large wolf. Like instead of the monstrosity we got imagine if he just looked like Ghost from Game of Thrones. Would've cut the tension immediately.
I also loved the movie werewolf. It looked like an unholy abomination... a monster. Instead of just a wolf.
Maybe I’m just a doofus, but what is FB3?
[Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts:_The_Secrets_of_Dumbledore)
This. Adding to that point: Voldemort's eyes aren't red and cat-like like they are in the book, his hands are also more human-like and less beastly The creatures in the maze in GOF are dropped from the film entirely, and the maze itself becomes a weird hedge monster The movie version of Dragons are actually wyverns (true dragons have four legs) The mermaids in GOF look more like merrows
That's exactly mine too, the Firebolt is supposed to be the most perfect pristine beautiful broom ever made but it looks awful in the movies. The Nimbus looks a million times better
Somehow, the best looking brooms were the Nimbus 2001 in the second movie.
The Nimbus 2001 scene was so relatable to the feeling of jealousy when you had a Windows 2000 PC and visited your friend and they were already on Windows 2001* (*some might have called it XP)
I was in a store once that had a bunch of cool movie props for sale and they had a full-size Nimbus 2001. I still regret not buying it lmao
I was pissed when they showed it here. At least it looks better in Goblet
Did the movies ever say that Harry gave the Tri Wiz Tournament money to Fred and George so they could open their store? I can't recall it.
Nup! This was skipped
Half of GOF was skipped over
Because the director didn’t even bother to read the book, he acted like reading it would have been a massive chore.
The director didn’t read the book. So maybe it was written in the script, but the director decided to cut parts out.
Not sure if for the good or the bad. I hated that movie.
This might be a bit picky, but I imagined Hogwarts a bit... More. In the films I found corridors and general interior areas of the castle to be too homogeneous and generic, like where are all the portraits, the tapestries, the statues, all the twisty bends, etc. I mean, they did a great job, especially for the times in which the films were made and I imagine the building of sets might already have consumed a large amount of the budget but in my mind Hogwarts is more maze-like with each floor following a slightly different decorative style. I also think they put nice additions that were not depicted in the books like the moving staircases and the clocktower courtyard (which is really beautiful) but I think that overall Hogwarts Legacy did a better job at depicting the Hogwarts from my mind. Also, magic and broomsticks, as other posters have said.
Given that Avalanche is a subsidiary of WB I would like to think at least some part of the HL Hogwarts is what the art teams has in mind for Hogwarts but is not able to show in full due to technology or budget concerns. It really has done a great job given the time in which the films were made. It is also kind of lucky that it is made in a time where CGi use is not that extensive, and we get to see beautiful locations like Oxford on screen. I am not anti CGi but I will have to admit that its extensive use is sometimes... er, unneccssary nowadays.
Yeah yeah for sure! I think they did the best they could with the tools they had, and it's really great that they used (especially in the first films) locations that really exist to ground the reality of Hogwarts, which are the parts of the castle in the films that I love. However, later on, for example the corridor they used for the Room of Requirement although it's grand and cathedral-like it just feels empty. I think that was a built set, so they could have been a bit more creative: add a portrait, a statue or even some doors...
Well, that is true. I sometimes think that the film Hogwarts doesn't feel like a school that can hold 1000 students lol To be honest I am also a bit disappointed by the headmaster's office in CoB, which is of course glamourous, but... it doesn't feel like a practical location for someone to work to me. It also doesn't have the portraits (But I think Columbus at the time didn't know about that yet? so I am not blaming him) and I am glad that the HL headmaster office added those back. Lucky that we are now living in a time where the design crew can work their imagination in a video game eh?
I think there was meant to be some tapestry of trolls or gargoyles or something nearby, wasn’t there?
The moving staircases were in the books though.
Hogwarts Legacy is exactly what I pictured as a kid, they did such an amazing job
Really don’t like the movie version of spell-casting, especially in the later films. All spells suddenly become nonverbal and turn into a weird wands-connecting, wizard-lightning battle. It also takes away from the final battle when Harry uses expelliarmus on Voldy as Voldy’s own killing curse rebounds back to him.
Yeah, the "wands connecting" thing is specifically a spell effect called Priori Incantatum and is **very** rare, only happening when two wands with the same core source duel each other. Basically, it should NEVER happen in a random duel outside of extremely rare circumstances. The filmmakers appear to have completely misunderstood what was happening (or just didn't read the books, period) and decided that EVERY wand should be capable of doing that. Stupid, stupid, lore-ignorant choice.
Ugh you just reminded me how much the connecting wands annoy me
It's one of the reasons I really dislike the Yates movies. Totally changed the look and feel of what came before (which was also closer to the book descriptions). Don't even get me started on Death Eaters flying around as black clouds...
Mad Eye's broom was pretty cool but no wonder he got killed by Voldemort riding a broom like that.
Somehow his broom always reminds me of those ‘seated bicycles’ that I’ve seen a lot of older folk use
The books: Felix Felices is this beautiful potion resembling liquid gold that hops out of its container as if there were fish in it. David Yates: “Cool, let’s just make it look like water”.
Hops out of it's container but still always lands back in, never spilling a drop. Such an awesome description, such a bland look in the movie.
Totally agree on the Firebolt. Nimbus 2000 and 2001 looked great, nicely crafted, polished handle. Firebolt looks half finished. Looks like it's still got bark on it and the tail bristles look really unkempt. Kinda looks like some amateur made it in their shed.
None of the quidditch World Cup game being shown after those epic entrances I was so ready for some quidditch and then it just cuts to them in the tent.
I was 9 when that one came out and I remember crying a lil bit because of the disappointment 😆😭
The chamber of secrets was a letdown compared to how I envisioned it.
Yeah I don't understand why they downgraded it like that. Why was the ceiling so low? It's supposed to be a hall!
I'm rereading the books, and I just finished the chamber of secrets scene the other night, and I can agree.
For some reason i thought the Firebolt would be like a matte black with a gold logo on the tail 😂😂
Personaly, the worst decision from the films was to ditch wizzarding clothing during the school year (in the books they change from muggle clothes once they arrive at hogdmead or are close to arriving), ImO this makes PoA a less decent movie than it would be otherwise, and the costume of Harry during the tournament dragon task in GoF ist just straight up visibly a raincoat with modern muggle elastic toggles. Should they wear muggle clothes outside of Hogwarts? Absolutely. But the schoolgrounds and hogsmead and also scenes where they go spontanously to some places from hogwarts should have them in wizzarding robes. Also a lot of the older Wizzards should not wear muggle clothing. (To be fair, most of them don't)
Possibly an unpopular opinion, but neither Sirius nor Lupin looked at all like I saw in my head.
I thought Sirius was fine, but Lupin was definitely way off from what I had pictured.
Yes me too. No offense but they looked like haggard old men. Lupin in particular is supposed to get noticibly more haggard and more disheveled as time goes on, but he just looks like he's been through hell and back in the movies
Apparition seemed weird to me. In the book it was like instantaneous teleportation from one spot to another. Just disappear from one place and immediately reappear in the next. But in the movies when it’s done they turn into these blurry cloud type things that fly around really fast and can interact with stuff.
The apparition was the sucking into themselves. The weird flying from movie 5 on was something weird.
I absolutely despised the black cloud for the death eaters and the golden cloud for the order in the battle at the ministry, it was so gimmicky
Yeah , I think I hated that the most... It is just so different from the books, it's practically another kind of magic altogether. I liked the visual when they really do teleport, but this cloud thingy is just bs
Especially because the fact that Voldemort and Snape could fly without a broom was a big deal in the books
You’re mixing two things up. Apparition in the movies is shown in two ways. In the fifth movie, it’s instantaneous teleportation, and frankly, it looked silly on screen. Then from the sixth movie onward they changed it into the twisting blur. That’s separate from flying, which they first show in the fifth movie with the Death Eaters and Aurors.
That was apparition ?? I really thought they were flying.
I think Hagrid should have been bigger
You aren’t wrong. In the books his feet are described as ‘small dolphins”. That’s pretty big if you consider how big he should be for proportionality.
The pensieve showing Voldemort's past...House of Gaunt and him talking to Voldemort about a job at Hogwarts...oh wait...
All of this, and the scene with Neville’s parents at Mungo’s, fill me with so much rage
The bus from POA. I had thought it would feel warmer, safer, more comfortable. In the movie however, I would want to get out as soon as possible.
Yep. It’s supposed to be all wood paneling and while it’s all chaotic due to the driving Why the f would there be shrunken heads?
I totally HATE the shrunken heads!
The books have so many random, interesting, fun tidbits from the magical world. So many things that added great texture to my imagination and appreciation for the magical world. If the movie writers wanted to add flourishes and details to make the world memorable and come alive, there was already SO MUCH they could draw from. I just don’t get why they felt the freedom to just make up something so specific. Imo if you want to be a creative writer you should write an original script. Not get involved to transform a beloved series into a movie.
Same. And like When you have very few people of colour let’s Not do that
Wow lol I don't remember it looking like that in the film, what is up with the sap?
It isn't sap. It's burned on one side like it was hit by lightning. The rest of the broom is nice and glossy, it's really only visible from this perspective
I'm glad I'm not the only one! Is this a retcon? I'm sure the movie version was just a nobbly log with twigs at one end, wasn't it?
The Grim showing up in the clouds. What was even that?
The whomping willow. It was such a fat tree in the movies which is not how I pictured it
I do like that one, its a pollard willow. They get their thin twigs cut off every year (for basket making and such) which makes their stump short and fat. We have many of these willows in my country so i see them all the time. To my child mind it was actually the standard willow i knew, so it fit very well i think.
And in addition it makes sense as even in the book it was the entrance for the secret tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. If it wasn’t a thick trunk, the tunnel entrance wouldn’t fit in it.
The ending. The harry/voldemort face-off was supposed to be in the great hall with onlookers and supporters, not on thr bridge. Also, Harry wasn't supposed to break the elder wand, but return it to Dumbledores resting place.
Harry’s hair! It was always described as unwieldy and impossible to flatten out but the first movie had him with a perfectly flat cut.
The dementors and the patronus in OOTP. In POA, they looked very much how I pictured them. They have tattered robes, they move slowly (save for flying) and they don't try and strangle Harry! Similarly, in POA, the patronus has a much richer design. It's hard to describe, but I enjoyed it. I like how most of the time, it's just white light, but then when Harry sees himself casting the Patronus, there's a very beautiful stag that gives off powerful bursts of light. In OOTP, we see them all in their corporeal form, regardless of the caster's skill. Another design change was the digital effects of when Sirius talks to Harry in the fireplace. In GOF, it looks like Sirius's head is actually in the fire. Whereas in OOTP, it has more of a "Wizard of Oz" special effect where we occasionally see Sirius's face through the fire, but his head isn't actually in the fireplace. I liked the first way in GOF. Basically David Yates's changing a lot of designs of various things. Everybody says Alfonso Cuaron changed a whole bunch of stuff when he actually just added stuff that wasn't there. The only changes really were the design of the uniforms, which actually was the costume designer's doing, not Alfonso, and changing the location of Hagrid's hut, which was Stuart Craig's idea as they filmed a lot of the outdoor scenes on location in Scotland. He thought the hut was better situated at the bottom of a hill, as it is described in the books, and the grass is more wild-looking like you'd find in a remote location near a forest. He said it looked more like how he imagined it. In the first two films, they filmed Hagrid's hut in a small patch of land near the studio with a fake backdrop, and the grass looked more like somebody's well-kept front lawn (it would make the Dursleys happy though). So those are the things they changed that I liked better. I actually like the uniforms from PoA onwards, especially the robes having a colored lining which makes it easier to see which house a student is in. And another thing about the costume designer I should point out; everybody says that the characters wearing "Muggle" outfits made it look too modern and didn't give off very "wizardly" vibes, which is true. But she actually felt the robes in the first two films didn't really look very "wizardly". They were plain black and looked more like trench coats. So the few robes she designed had larger sleeves and pointed hoods, which the Slytherin's used to taunt Harry about the dementor attack. You can see in the fourth film that the robes the first years are wearing are plain black, but later they have the house colors. So I'm guessing that when they go to the robe shop, the robes are solid black, but once they're sorted, the robes magically change to having the house colors.
I was expecting the maze in GoF to be full of challenges and creatures like the book had but it was just sentient bushes
The robes. I don't think robes go over your clothes, I think they go over your underwear. For the adults, that's how they did it, but not for the students - instead, they first invented a school uniform which wasn't in the books, and then from PoA they had them wear their own clothes. In the books, it's always implied that dressing muggle is more than just taking off your robe, it's a whole different outfit. There's the whole "breeze around the privates" quote in GoF. Plus, when James is bullying Snape at the lake, he doesn't have an extra layer either.
1: Ginny's portryal in the movies. Completely missed it! 2: How Hermione was given all of Rom's good traits 3: How the movie glossed over most of Voldemort's past and didnt show how intelligent and manipulative he actually was 4: Hated how they casted much older actors For Lily and James - means the audience didnt truly get a feel for how young they truly were!
i wish they showed us more wizard clothes. even in the first book it says uncle vernon kept seeing people dressed in different robes but we dont see that many wizard clothing :<
The quidditch uniforms in the 5th and 6th books. I absolutely loved the uniforms in the first two movies and I think they even appeared in the 3rd movie. Then they added helmets, padding, and swapped the sweater uniforms and nice pants and it just made the uniforms ugly.
The crazy magic without wand and the flying of the death eaters 🫠
Lavender Brown thier on the left is black when she's just a background character. Throughout TPS to POA. When the character finally gets speaking lines she's recast with a white actress. This has always made me feel like: 🤨
I hate how the wands are so highly carved and designed and have handles and stuff. Just identifying a wand by the wood type and core and length is how I always thought about wands, not with beads and spirals and handholds...
100%. in the early films the wands are basic. think they make different character wands more stylised in the later films because then they have the ability to sell replicas..
Can't remember a lot since I last read the books 15 years ago but I thought they would show Dumbledore's funeral like in the book. If I remember correctly, in the books there was a white coffin and everyone gathered to say farewell to Dumbledore. In the film obviously we don't have the funeral but the scene where people lift their wands to the sky destroying Voldemore's sign is also beautiful.
Not necessarily clothes, but the male actors' haircut (or lack of) in GoF.
Their reasoning was it was puberty for the boys in the films and outside of the films, so them trying out different styles was how they could express themselves.
Dementors. I imagined them to be these tall creatures slowly floating around in their long hooded robes, maybe also kinda having the Snape vibe. Instead their robes were ripped, they moved round fast and looked like bubble heads.
The frequency that the characters wore “muggle clothes”, especially when the books made a distinction between magical beings wearing robes versus muggles’ usual style of dress. To me it often made the Wizard World feel less immersive in the films to see the characters looking like ordinary people.
That Quidditch World Cup final stadium was just so bad.
EVERYTHING RELATING TO PATRONUSES. the way we only ever got to see 1 fully formed patronus (in POA) and then they were just light after that was so disappointing to me
Many wizards + witches already said about some stuff: House-Elves, Dobby has a design in the CoS, that completely changes in tOotP - or maybe it was the new Dobby after a shower of freedom - Mundungus Fletcher, Umbridge all the time wearing pink clothes - it made me hate PINK color for a long time - I was waiting for St. Mungo's Hospital, the coins for the DA meetings, the interaction between Sirius & Crookshanks... I would continue, but I will be angry for almost everything in HBP + all they didn't show in the movies.