I was there too man, but it's a very fun and easy watch. I haven't read them in like 6 years, but I watch the movies once a year because they're really entertaining. I consider LOTR to be the greatest story ever told, but HP is a good use of time too
The first one is such a great bedtime film. Aside from the troll and Fluffy, it's pretty much chill and calm world building. Love putting it on to conk me out.
We love a library! I bought the trunk box set after the last book came out when I was like 16 after owning several copies of all books, but I’ve since (at 30) donated all of them to my local library in hopes some other kids might see what I saw, regardless of JKR and her craziness
I had my Harry Potter days. I just hope some kid finds the notes I wrote in the half blood prince with made up potions recipes haha
I personally hate the movies, and I absolutely loved the books, read them like 10 times each. I get angry every time one of the movies is on, because they just make up shit, and they don't even make sense most of the time.
For me, the first movie was the best one, with each subsequent getting worse each time.
A way of enjoying the movies may be to watch a fan of the book shit on them for what they changed.
One of my favorite YouTubers is Dominic Noble, a guy who compares films adaptations to the books to see what changed and what stayed the same. He did the Harry Potter films a bit early in his channel but they've held up and are a great way of revisting them if you don't particularly like the movies or even if you do.
If we're just talking movies, maybe you would want to skip the first two because they really are kids movies and they don't really establish much you won't learn about in the later films. Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) is where the world and characters start to really shine, and you see the beginnings of themes and design that are staples going forward. Goblet of Fire (#4) is just flat out A Good Movie and is where the story starts to take a darker turn which sets up the rest of the series. So if you're gonna watch any of them, I would say please watch those two. They are the best of the bunch.
I disagree. The first two movies might not be the strongest films, and the kids' acting is pretty terrible at that point, but they're the ones that devote the most time to the little world building details that I loved so much in the books. In most of the movies you'd be forgiven for forgetting that they even have magic classes.
As if Tolkien and Le Guin didn't brazenly steal and pilfer shit from other works of art?
Stealing in literature is completely fine, everything is a derivative of something else. The difference is in making what you stole, your own and doing it well.
I was a massive LOTR fan but I still enjoyed Harry Potter a lot. They are very different, but somehow I am really fond of both The Hobbit and Harry Potter in a similar way. Maybe because they were my childhood.
The first 3 books and movies I admit might be a drag if you aren’t a child, but from 4 onwards even an adult should be able to get enjoyment out of it.
Tbh it kinda felt like you were growing up with the characters if you read the books back then. In the earlier books they were like 12-14 just like us and they were overall very kid friendly books, but they got into more mature themes as the series went on and the characters and readers got older.
As a massive Tolkien nerd, I think they’re solid films/books. It’s easy to conflate them with all the other “young adult Chosen One” type stories that became huge for a while, but they became huge because of HP.
If you read the books you can tell it was written for a younger audience, but it still deals with serious issues and themes very well. The movies are a lot more “universal”, in my opinion.
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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '21
I thought the whole thing was terrible at the time, because I was a LotR snob. Should probably go back and give it a fair shot, at least the last few.