Normally, I would say that most books should be made into TV shows, if not just plain old miniseries.

Read the novel Jurassic Park, and you see just how much of a pale imitation the film is. Heck, read both Michael Critchon novels, you can see just how much story was jammed into the books, only to be cut up and sprinkled over so many films. It’s why miniseries were so big in the 80s—take a James Clavell novel, and it takes ten hours to tell the tale. I’ll still take Richard Chamberlain as Jason Bourne over Matt Damon any day of the week, even if the man was too old for the part.

What prompted this discussion?

You may have heard that the Harry Potter book series is being turned into an HBO TV show. It’s going to be one of those articles. If you want to look over the trailer, go ahead. But I’m not going to post it here. It doesn’t need the views, and Upstream will not be responsible for giving it even one click if we can avoid it.

Let’s look into why this HBO series is going to be a bit of an issue.

Modern Film Making

You thought that headline was going to be about “Modern Audiences” didn’t you? Heh. Maybe later.

I saw parts of the trailer side by side with clips from the original movies. The new trailers were so dark, so dim, so poorly lit, so Zach Snyder filtered, when I saw the clips from the original films, I felt like I was flash-banged with color and light.

But this? Who turned off the lights? Were they running on emergency backup generators at the time? What the Hell? This is as bad as Hollywood thinking “medieval” meant “colorless.” I’ve seen rooms lit by candlelight with better visibility.

I’m almost afraid to ask who directed this. But then I realized it doesn’t matter, because I rarely see color in a movie anymore. Sure, John Wick liked neon. Nobody 2 was a comedy that was pretty well lit. But so many people are using filters in sepia, gray, and dark blue that I feel like I need NVGs just to see what’s going on in the movie. Don’t even ask me what happened in The Batman, I couldn’t see anything. I gave up on Dune because if I wanted to watch black and white films, I’ve got The Thin Man. Watch Lawrence of Arabia, and realize that “desert filming” doesn’t mean that you have to film in sepia.

Technocolor technology exists, people. It’s older than my parents.

Clearly, the Harry Potter HBO show is going to suffer from Game of Thrones-itis, which has infected all of fantasy these days.1 Ooh, everything is so dark! Literally gray and black! So grim and gritty!

First of all, as Peter David pointed out, “grim and gritty” was a tagline coined for Adam West’s Batman. It was supposed to be absurd, not a suggestion for cinematography.

Second, these are kids books being adapted to film. We don’t need a grim and gritty kids book. Hell, I started having problems with some of the original films when they decided to turn off all the lights for the better part of the film.2 Someone please bring back Christopher Columbus.

There’s another issue of modern Hollywood that I haven’t seen anyone discuss. They keep hiring nobodies to write the adaptation.

Let’s looked at these writers.

Francesca Gardiner has few credits. The most notable of which include Killing Eve (lesbian espionage, oh joy), His Dark Materials (anti-Narnia agit-prop), and Man in the High Castle (alt-history with even more Nazis).

Laura Neal … are you kidding me? Some of this is stuff is literal, actual pornography with a bit of plot sprinkled around it. I thought I was joking about the Game of Thrones effect.

Martha Hillier has written some Viking stuff … some mystery stuff. Nothing really offputting.

Not one of these writers has a substantial CV. Of the three writers, one of them barely has a dozen credits. What the Hell? Modern media really does mean “hire nobodies to write your scripts.”

The Casting

The HBO show will, of course, suffer severely from a lack of casting.

The original films had Shakespearean actors.

• Maggie Smith played Desdemona opposite Olivier’s Othello. She was Miss Jean Brody
• Michael Gambon was from the Royal Shakespeare Company
• Kenneth Branagh (most of his entire career is Shakespeare)
• Emma Thompson.
• Alan Rickman was in multiple productions. (I have a DVD of him playing Tybalt. It’s odd to see him that young.)
• Ralph Fiennes
• Jim Broadbent
• Helena Bonham Carter
• Timothy Spall (Yes, the pet rat is a RSC veteran.)
• Imelda Staunton (Umbridge).
• Richard Harris had stage experience going back decades, probably with his drinking partners, Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton.
• Zoe Wanamaker practically grew up in the rebuilt Globe Theater, and she was wasted on a throwaway cameo.
• Robbie Coltrane played Falstaff.
• Gary Oldman is a damned chameleon.

All of these people were veterans of the stage and screen. Some of them for decades. Most of these people had star power all their own that you could draw an audience just for them. Even Bill Nighy has star power, and he was practically wasted in the Potter franchise.

Those are just the people I can think of off the top of my head.

This Harry Potter … doesn’t have that.

Seriously, the biggest name here—if you’ll pardon the expression—is Warwick Davis, resuming his role as the music professor.

Now, there is, of course, Jonathan Lithgow as Dumbledore. His biggest role is … as a lizard person in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Can Lithgow even do a British accent?

Also, since Dumbledore having a sexuality was practically a RetCon after the books were published, will he be playing Dumbledore as “super gay” now? Sadly, despite the phrasing, that is a serious question.

The above photo is a promotion still I got from IMDB, of Lithgow as Dumbledore.

Not to be picky, but why does his beard look like it’s AI? And why does the background look like it’s CGI? The set is sort of bending behind him, like it’s about to fold in half. Did they not have the budget to build sets? Are we playing Resident Evil on the original Playstation?

So, no, I don’t have much hopes for this cast. They’re going to be compared to the original cast, and they will come out unfavorably in that equation. It looks like the production has hired a bunch of character actors. Which is great. I like character actors. They can, you know, act. Just look at David Suchet, if you can find him before he disappears into the character.

But none of these actors have high caliber star power. None of them are draws in and of themselves. If you’re going to try to sell an audience on a product they already have at home, you need to draw them in with something that will assure them that this product is at least as good as what they already have. “It’ll be just like what you enjoy, only way more of it.”

This cast does not convince me that an HBO Max subscription is worth it.

I’m not sure the production values help much either.

Am I the only one who’s wondering why the beards area all wrong?

I’ll at least give them this, the Weasleys are all redheads. This crew hasn’t signed on to the Ginger Genocide. I guess that’s a plus.

What’s that? I hear you ask. I’m missing someone?