Let's get a few things out of the way - there is some serious ret-conning of the Harry Potter movies right now. The amount of people criticizing the show as a "why is this needed, we have the movies?" is one of the craziest things I've heard. The movies are not at all unimpeachable - they were good, they were at times excellent, but there were also serious flaws with a lot of them - mostly centering around how much of the books they cut out. This is a chance to right that wrong - and I'll get to that more later. But really, the amount of love people are praising on the movies when I lived through it - they were merely good (some great).
That leads to this other weird point about people getting annoyed new Harry, Ron, Hermione and others look so different to Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson (and on and on and on). Yes they look different, but it seems many people are forgetting that the show is an adaptation of the books, not of the movies. There is no "this is what Harry looks the like" other than the illustrations in the books, which don't exactly look like Daniel Radcliffe. Yes - when we see Harry, that's who we see - and same for the others, but it's been 25 years since the first movies - we can re-see these people again.
There are a few critiques that are fair, however. Firstly, casting a black Englishman as Snape. Now, this isn't a race thing, in a sense I was always hoping they cast Idris Elba as James Bond. But as many have rightly noted, there are parts of Snape's backstory, including the bullying and names from James and others, that do play very differently if he is to be Black. We're many seasons and years away from all of that (basically the sixth book) but it will be interesting to see if there is any adjustment to the story on the part of the show.
Another is the longstanding critique of TV in general these days, that somehow releasing one season a year is just not possible. HBO head Casey Bloys said this, that it is basically impossible. Game of Thrones, which easily was as sprawling as Harry Potter, somehow did it, but now it is impossible. It can't be, especially given the fact the kids will age far beyond school age. We just witnessed this with Stranger Things, and even if I found the furor at the kids ages a bit overstated, it's not like we should just plan for that to happen like we seemingly are here.
Then there's what is more of a minor critique, and one that may end up unfounded, but it seems each season will be a book. Not a surprise. But let's remember the first three books were ~300 pages, and then each after that was anywhere from 600-900. Yes, there was no need for Order of the Phoenix to be as long as it was, but there also wasn't 600 pages of bloat. The middle books, or really all books post the first three, are brilliant because of how encompassing they are, and while I look forward to seeing the books be adapted with far more run time to play with, I do wonder how they can get eight or ten hours out of The Sorcerer's Stone while only get ten hours out of the Goblet of Fire. Maybe I'm wrong, and those seasons will be longer, but I still think it would've made sense to combine the first two books into mini half seasons.
Anyway, here's though why I'm excited, and it is precisely because we get eight to ten hours to tell these stories. I'm an unabashed Harry Potter fan (the books especially). I loved them, I devoured them, I loved them as much as always when I reread them a few years back. Why did I love them? Yes, the final quarter of each book was brilliant and taut and tense, and yes the slow reveal of Snape's true allegiance, the Horcruxes, all of it was brilliant. But you know what else was brilliant? SPEW, and the elf stories, and Harry's underground DADA classes, and school classes and so much more. Those little moments of that world of Hogwarts was incredible. Yes, we can ding JK Rowling on the names of characters and some blind spots (and God knows a lot of what she's said and done these past ten years), but that world was rich and deep, and I want to see that on screen.
The movies were fairly well made and hit all the right notes in their back halves (stretching the back quarter of a book into way more of the movie plot than needed...) but I want to see the larger elements that they skipped over. And despite the greyed out visuals and the casting of Snape, I have faith that we will. I have faith that we will get the Harry Potter adaptation in depth and meaning and poignancy that we all deserved. The books came out, or more pointedly, the books were adapted too quickly - before prestige TV took off. If we waited another decade, they may have been a TV show right off the bat, but we will get that chance now, and even despite all the noise and arguments and takes, we'll get something special. I'm sure of it.
