So, the trailer for the new Harry Potter series has dropped. And it looks…different.
Which is only to be expected. The director is on record as saying they were going for more realism. That kind of approach would definitely change the look and feel of a lot of things that were more fantasy-oriented in the movies. The director has also said they were going to be more faithful to the books…
…Yeah, he said that. And then one of the writers went on record as saying they hadn’t even read all of them. Although supposedly the books’ author was part of the show’s decision-making process, so maybe that would balance it out…okay, no, we already know that isn’t going to happen with an author who randomly retcons her own characters in interviews.1
The trailer opens on the Dursley house, which appears to be very clean. So far, so good—Petunia is a clean freak, and she’s had her own personal slave-orphan around to help her achieve Peak Suburban Cleanliness for the past 10 years. Our first glimpse of Vernon shows a somewhat overweight man reading a newspaper, he doesn’t look big enough to me but it was also just a glimpse so reserving judgement there. Petunia looks like a stereotypical Karen, and I’m really not liking that haircut. She throws Harry into his cupboard…which is this huge, bright, clean space with all kinds of papers we have to assume are his tacked to the wall. What?
I don’t have much to say about Harry’s school, because municipal buildings from a certain era all kind of look like that, although it did give me minor Tim Burton vibes. But why is Dudley so small? His dad is a big man, he’s supposed to be big for his age, but this kid is barely any bigger than Harry. From other shots where Harry would supposedly be wearing Dudley’s hand-me-downs, we can tell that they’re only about one size apart, clothing-wise. Is it not considered realistic for two similar-age cousins to vary too much in size and development?
And then we have Hagrid, who also continues the trend of not seeming big enough. Take a look at the shot of him leading the First-Years to the castle, he looks like a normal-sized adult, not a half-giant. That said, I love Nick Frost and I was glad to hear he got cast in this series because HBO money is nothing to sneeze at. I was not quite so glad once I heard him speak in the trailer, as he seemed to be missing Hagrid’s distinctive accent. Which is kind of weird considering Nick made an ENTIRE GODAMMNED MOVIE where he played a cop from the fucking Dales.
On to the kids. Harry…looks like Harry, who also looks like Daniel Radcliffe because Daniel also looks like Harry. In my opinion at least a little bit of effort from the makeup and/or effects department could have gone into making him look a bit less like a normal, healthy kid at the beginning of the movie. We’ll drag the costume department on this as well since he’s wearing trendy 90s clothes that look clean, in good condition, and mostly fit him when they’re supposed to be worn-out hand-me-downs from his much larger cousin. Who is now like an inch taller than him, so I guess that change is realistic. Still, I am so far not buying this as a physically neglected child. The fact that they actually filmed at least one of the abuse scenes—and made it even worse, thanks to Petunia threatening Harry with scissors while screeching verbal abuse into his face—just makes some of the other changes more confusing. But, you know, realism, so maybe the director was going for it mostly being emotional/verbal abuse on the elder Dursleys’ parts instead of fairy-tale stepchild abuse that everyone just happened to ignore for ten-plus years.
Ron is a cute little kid whose hair looks to me like it may have come from L’Oreal Feria R68. Lovely color on him, don’t get me wrong, and I suppose it would be easier to keep all the Weasleys matching if you just bought box color by the case.2 We don’t really see enough of him to get anything but Adorable Firstie Ron vibes so far. We also don’t really get enough Hermione to judge either, but the part of her audition they shared online nailed the early book-version of the character, and possibly they’re going to have her be more overly-enthusiastic than supercilious. Her ‘frizzy’ hair looks more like she just hasn’t brushed it very well, which would be realistic for an excitable little bookworm her age.3 We also see Draco exactly once, and he looks like the preppy villain from an 80s teen movie. Again with the hair! Obviously a choice someone made, I just can’t think why—it reminds me of Lockhart’s hair, but maybe it has something to do with how they’re going to portray Lucius later on. Crabbe and Goyle were the same general type as Dudley’s friends from the earlier school scene, I guess casting just went with a ‘generic, not too threatening preteen bully’ template when they were picking kids for those parts. Not sure who the girl with them was supposed to be, maybe Pansy?
McGonagall looks fine, very much cast along book lines the same way Maggie Smith had been. Dumbledore looks like Dumbledore, although we seem to be missing some whimsy—they may have gone with Fantastic Beasts’ Realistic Dumbledore instead of Somewhat Eccentric Dumbledore. Interesting they didn’t cast a Brit in that part, but John Lithgow is awesome and I’m sure he’ll do a great job in the role.4 And then there’s Snape. What the fuck is going on in HBO’s costume department? He’s wearing a knee-length cape that seems to be made out of scale-patterned faux suede or thin pleather over what honest to god looks like a black Members Only jacket. Who came up with this outfit and went ‘yeah, that’s exactly right’?
Snape’s actor is also a little too pretty—seriously, if you’ve seen the guy’s professional headshots, he looks like the grown-up version of the boy-band member that all the teen magazines labeled ‘the pouty one’. When I first heard he was being cast, I wondered what makeup movie magic they were going to work on him to get him closer to the long-nosed, angular-featured Snape aesthetic. As it happens, they don’t appear to have bothered. Trailer Snape looks even younger than the actor’s headshots or his behind-the-scenes interview, and he still looks teen pop-star pouty.
And of course, probably the most jarring thing about the trailer had to be the absence of the iconic John Williams theme…
Okay, okay: The actor playing canonically sallow, pale, greasy-haired Snape also happens to be black. I’m guessing he must have given one hell of an audition when he went for this part, because he absolutely does not look the part. At all. From any angle. The dreads wig they stuck on him makes him look even younger, the way the actor normally wears his hair would have worked better—I mean, this is a man who works in the magical apothecary equivalent of a steamy kitchen all day every day, if they wanted realism then shorter hair would have been the way to go.
Obviously, there is a LOT of commentary about the series’ decision to race-swap Snape. A lot of people are saying it doesn’t make sense, and pointing out that some lines and scenes are going to hit very differently with a black actor in this role—with special mention being given to that pensieve flashback where James Potter & Friends basically strung the guy up with magic in front of a bunch of other students.5 Many, many people also seem quite put out that Adam Driver wasn’t cast as Snape.
I get where that last group is coming from, Adam Driver definitely has the right look, but they’re assuming he was available. Or that he was even interested, because those would have been some huge fucking shoes to fill and a potentially years-long commitment to make as well. Counter-arguments that he wasn’t chosen because he’s not British make less than no sense, considering that John Lithgow is an American from New York.
As to the why, there’s no denying that all sorts of stuff from the source material is going to look so very racist with Snape as a black man, and people keep asking why the showrunners didn’t think of that before making this casting choice. But the way I see it, they did think of all that and their choice was intentional—we’re talking about a director who doesn’t respect the genre and writers who don’t respect the source material,6 to them this whole thing is just a set of building blocks they can rearrange (or repaint?) to tell the story they way they personally want to see it.7 Not to mention, you get big brownie points for ‘bold choices’ and ‘tackling important themes’ at the Emmys, so I’m sure someone had awards season in the back of their mind. This is a cash- and clout-grab with a dash of the new Hollywood easy button: If audiences don’t like what you make, you can just dismiss their opinions by saying they’re all bigoted haters.8
To wrap this up, the new Harry Potter series is what it is: someone else’s retelling of a familiar, beloved story. We’re missing the theme, we’re missing some of the magic, half the cast weirdly looks just like the cast from the movies and the other half…doesn’t. We can’t deny that we’re all missing Alan and Maggie and Robbie. We also know that modern trailers can be ridiculously unrepresentative, so there is that. Am I going to watch the new series? No, but I wasn’t planning to before the trailer came out. Should you watch it? If you want to, go for it—enjoy! If not, then don’t. Just because someone holds up a scoop of something brown and says it’s a new version of chocolate ice cream doesn’t mean that you as a chocolate ice cream-lover have to eat any of it. You are absolutely entitled to run back to Fortescue’s and grab more of the ice cream you already know and love instead, and nobody should tell you any differently.
- I’m not including her declaring Dumbledore to be gay in this—I think she already knew Dumbledore was Gay for Gridewald™, it just never came up in the books she’d already written. Because most all authors know things about their characters that don’t make it into their books.
- Yes, I know they don’t do it this way, but maybe they should? Feria is so much gentler on hair than salon color. Also, Molly was looking a little brassy, likely a toner issue.
- Hermione’s casting choice is also somewhat in line with an earlier author-retcon of her character.
- Yes, I also am hoping that this beloved 80-year-old actor has 7 more years in him, and preferably more than that.
- If you did not understand this reference, see: Lynching, American South
- And who apparently know dick-all about the nasty mess that is, or at least used to be, class politics in Britain. I don’t know what that might have morphed into in the 21st century, though.
- So basically, they’re getting $$$ from the studio and a pat on the head from the retconning author to create Harry Potter fanfiction for HBO.
- The old easy-button back in the day was directors saying the great unwashed viewing masses were too uncultured to understand ART. Or they just didn’t say anything at all because bad attention is still attention. That said, nobody should be sending an actor death threats for taking a part—some people need to go touch some fucking grass and maybe get trampled by a cow while they’re at it or something.
