Potter and Me

When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone hit cinemas across the world, I was six years old. Now as the final film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two gets ever closer to release, I am approaching my sixteenth birthday and will in fact be spending it at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. I have seen every single Harry Potter film at the cinema and in four different countries. Philosopher’s Stone I saw in Holland, Chamber of Secrets I saw in England, Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of fire in Holland, Order of the Phoenix in Canada and Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows: Part One in Switzerland. In the ten years in which the Harry Potter series has been a firm fixture in the movie going calendar it has had a tremendous impact on the film industry. While it may be missed by studio heads due to the billions of dollars it has made in worldwide ticket sales, it will truly be missed by the people who invested in the story of a boy wizard and his journey from the boy living in the cupboard under the stairs to the man who is the only one able to face down true evil. The end of the Harry Potter series comes at a time when I am enjoying my last summer before I start my final two years of school education and where the world will start to become a much bigger and scarier place with much more pressure and demands than before, in short I must soon become a man and due to the immense presence that this series has had in my life, its conclusion is further restating the fact for me anyway that childhood is over. 

There are two memories I have of going to see The Philosopher’s Stone, it was the first time when I went into a cinema and it was light and when I came out it was dark. I also remember thinking to myself at the time that the film did not feel that long. Seeing Chamber of Secrets is something that I cannot remember as vividly as seeing Philosopher’s Stone but I do remember seeing the spider scene on the big screen. Azkaban is a film that I again remember seeing on the big screen and is in fact my favourite of the books. Seeing Goblet of Fire is where my next earliest Harry Potter film viewing memory is at its most vivid. I remember the cinema being completely sold out; In fact I seem to have a memory of people sitting on the floor of the cinema just so they could see the film. At that point in my life I had never seen a cinema so packed and an audience so enthusiastic. 

The film releases of Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince were around the time when I was becoming more and more of a film fan and as I had read all the books, less and less interested in Harry Potter. My particular disappointment with Half Blood Prince lead me to a stage where I was not greatly anticipating the release of Deathly Hallows: Part One, the way I anticipated the earlier films as a child. However going into Deathly Hallows: Part One with a group of friends, finding my seat, an odd sense of anticipation struck me and I found myself viewing a film which actually worked its way into my top ten for the year. 

The release of Deathly Hallows: Part Two should be the end of this entire journey. Whether the film can live up to expectations remains to be seen but one thing is for sure, the journey of this series has been intensely personal for thousands if not millions of people. I am not crying while I type this, I did not cry reading the final book and I expect no tears when the final credits roll on Deathly Hallows: Part Two. Yet even as somebody who has become less of a Potter fan as I grow older I can still recognize and appreciate the impact that this film series has had not just on a pop culture level but also on my early film going experiences. Like them or hate them the Harry Potter films have always been “event” cinema. I have memories attached to this series and it has served as a backdrop as I made my own journey from boyhood to manhood. The Harry Potter series has been there for as long as I can remember (In fact the first book was published just before I was two years old) and while this film marks a significant end point for the immediate future, the Harry Potter series will never die for the reasons I stated above. A generation has grown up with this tale, with the seven books, the eight films, the countless merchandise, the games, the theme parks and the story at the core of it, the characters are so relatable that this is a book and film series that will stand the test of time. For my generation and for those who also face testing new times once the summer ends, Harry Potter has been the saga of our childhood and while all the posters are proclaiming “It all ends” the legacy of this series, is in fact only just beginning. 

By Movie Parliament Prime Minister
Michael Dalton