I worked at Warner Bros. throughout the original run of Harry Potter movies. In case that sounds exciting, I assure you it wasn’t; it was an extremely minor role in a vast corporation, that involved selling t-shirts, iPhone cases, and battery-powered toy wands online. But it was very easy for us all — a bunch of grown adults just working our jobs — to get swept up in the genuine cultural phenomenon that Harry Potter was at the time.
So I may not have the same emotional attachment to Potter as someone who grew up with it. But I do feel it’s a pity that something that delighted a whole generation has since been forever spoiled by creator J.K. Rowling leaning in hard on her bizarre transphobic fixation — indeed, torching her entire legacy. To a lesser extent, the goodwill that the Harry Potter books and films earned has been further curdled by the dreadful, tedious, pointless Fantastic Beast prequels. And it certainly doesn’t help that the franchise has been burdened with Ezra Miller and Johnny Depp, two other figures busy publicly torching their own reputations.
David Yates’ The Secrets of Dumbledore may be the worst of the bunch. Since all the Dumblesnore, Dumblebore, and Dumbledamn jokes have been made already, all I can add is that it’s joyless and almost unwatchable. I defy anyone over the age of eight to explain the extensive wizard lore to me, or feign any interest in it. The plot seems vaguely inspired by recent anti-democratic movements worldwide, but it’s difficult to parse the moral of the story: is Rowling’s ideal world democratic or authoritarian? Everything certainly seems to revolve around an elite minority born into power.
And why does every actor perform as if they’re heavily drugged on NyQuil? I blame uninspiring material, and poor direction.
Genuine props to Katherine Waterston for gracefully sidestepping this fiasco, on principle against Rowling’s bigotry, while retaining prominent billing.
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