Harry Potter and the 10 Years Later

August 4, 2012 7:05 AM

Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later — episodes 1, 2, 3, and continuing.

A good satiric edge, surprisingly good casting and portrayals, and some interesting (and I think probably correct) projections into the personal problems the Potter characters might run into as they age into their late 20s and early 30s.

posted by WCityMike (92 comments total)

Man, I love those old stoves.
posted by kenko at 7:14 AM on August 4, 2012

In 30 years or so (maybe more) I wouldn't be surprised to see the BBC do a Sherlock-like remake or continuation of the Potter series. These are pretty good though!
posted by codacorolla at 7:31 AM on August 4, 2012

Hogwarts is an elite school for bratty wizards and what not. It makes more sense that Potter ends up at the wizarding world's equivalent of big law or investment banking. I can see him getting so involved in alchemy and time traveling that he messes up the economies of entire universes under the protection of his wizarding cronies.

And surely Draco Malfoy is going to end up as an addict doing interspecies porn.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:32 AM on August 4, 2012 [8 favorites]

Okay, episode 1 is pretty clever and better than I expected. I'll definitely be watching the next two, although not right now. I have a barber appointment to get to.
posted by hippybear at 7:39 AM on August 4, 2012

Lev Grossman's The Magicians (and the sequel) has some great material about how hard it is for wizards to hold down jobs or figure out what they want to do "when they grow up."
posted by rikschell at 7:41 AM on August 4, 2012 [7 favorites]

I'm currently in the process of watching all the Harry Potter movies, and I'll be surprised if anyone survives Hogwarts. There should be a movie called Harry Potter and the Lax Child Endangerment Laws.
posted by Ritchie at 7:44 AM on August 4, 2012 [27 favorites]

also: posted by WitchyMike

Dyslexieponysterical
posted by hippybear at 7:47 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Lev Grossman's The Magicians (and the sequel) has some great material about how hard it is for wizards to hold down jobs or figure out what they want to do "when they grow up"


The answer is lots of drugs and ennui.

Apparently the pilot for the HBO adaptation of The Magicians was hilarious, but it didn't get green lit, I keep trying to find it but no dice.
posted by The Whelk at 7:52 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Whelk, did they get as far as actually filming a pilot? I heard at one point they were pitching the concept to Fox, with toned-down sex and drug use (with the author's blessing). Too bad, because I think a lot of these books (Harry Potter included) would work much better as limited-series TV than as films. Chapters usually work quite well as episodes.
posted by rikschell at 7:59 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm currently in the process of watching all the Harry Potter movies, and I'll be surprised if anyone survives Hogwarts. There should be a movie called Harry Potter and the Lax Child Endangerment Laws.

Someone wrote a list of "unexplained Harry Potter mysteries" - one of which was "Did Hermione's parents realize how frequently and narrowly their daughter escaped death at Hogwarts?"
posted by Egg Shen at 8:00 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hermione's parents have been so brain scrambled they barely know they have a daughter.


I know a script was written for the pilot, that's what I'm trying to find, no idea if they got as far as filming - I thought it was a perfect match, you could wring an entire season out of the first year alone without needing to get into any of the Narinaish bits.
posted by The Whelk at 8:08 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

"Did Hermione's parents realize how frequently and narrowly their daughter escaped death at Hogwarts?"

They were dentists, they were used to children being traumatised, covered in blood etc

The real question is why does Hermione have buck teeth (in the book) if her parents are dentists? (answer, she's still British)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:12 AM on August 4, 2012 [8 favorites]

Don't know anything about Harry Potter but clearly he should dump Ginny in favour of Hermonie immediately
posted by Bwithh at 8:14 AM on August 4, 2012

No, they are best friends , they don't have to be in a relationship.

He should still dump Ginny tho.
posted by The Whelk at 8:19 AM on August 4, 2012

Dump Ginny for Hermione? Are you crazy? whydontwehaveboth.gif!!!!
posted by Xoebe at 8:27 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just let me know when I can move in on Ginny without pissing of the whiny one.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:33 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Very clever, though I do wish people doing YouTube videos would scout locations. It makes sense that this version of Harry would live in a basic, no-frills apartment, but when every set looks like "wherever the actors happen to live," it just makes everything look really low-grade.
posted by xingcat at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ginny in these videos is terrifying. Maybe she could beat some sense into Ron so they should pair up but Harry needs to run for his life in Hermione's direction
posted by Bwithh at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Lighting! People use your lighting, this is okay but it CAN BE BETTER. Spot lamps are like 20 bucks, get them.

Also, microphones, mix your audio well, don't blow them out, don't use the one in the camera unless you've heard the play back 50 times and it sounds GOOD not fine, GOOD.


Those two down and you'll be ahead of 99% of home productions.


(Also seamless is your friend)
posted by The Whelk at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Also based on the actor's appearance I am totally fine with Harry Potter growing up to be Neil Gaiman, apparently.
posted by The Whelk at 8:55 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ginny in these videos is terrifying. Maybe she could beat some sense into Ron so they should pair up

Wait, what?
posted by Mcable at 8:58 AM on August 4, 2012 [8 favorites]

dammit slashfic gets all over everything
posted by The Whelk at 9:04 AM on August 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

I mean surely Harry belongs with Draco, I thought everyone knew this.
posted by elizardbits at 9:06 AM on August 4, 2012 [6 favorites]

Oh god, there's Harmonians here. Run everybody!
posted by kmz at 9:11 AM on August 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Well written but the off-and-on fake accents are killing me; much worse than if they'd just stuck with their real accents, which you'd at least be able to get over after the first couple of minutes.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:21 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Ginny is Ron's sister dude
posted by clockzero at 9:23 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

There are a few flashes where the actress's playing Ginny is trying to channel Amy Pond, it's distracting.
posted by The Whelk at 9:26 AM on August 4, 2012

Why don't the magic / wizard people just use their powers to enslave all humanity?
posted by Bwithh at 9:42 AM on August 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Alan Moore asked that very question....

(In universe answer, normal people have guns and armies and outnumber them in the millions.)
posted by The Whelk at 9:44 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

I like that Ginny has basically turned into her mom, Ron is still a fuckup, and Harry is still cluelessly walking into traps and unable to make the simplest decision without help. Hermione, though, bothers me. I like her explanation that she's trying to make a few mistakes for a change, but the actress is not pulling it off. She has none of Hermione's tenseness, and projects that she just doesn't CARE. But Hermione would care. Even if she were trying to rescue herself (and perhaps Ron) by showing how much she could fuck up, too, she would do it with Hermione-level DEDICATION.
posted by rikschell at 9:49 AM on August 4, 2012 [9 favorites]

She would totally study how to fuck up, take notes on dissolution, read biographies of famous fuck ups, the whole real.
posted by The Whelk at 9:56 AM on August 4, 2012 [18 favorites]

Episode three kicks up the humor and action a little more. But the mic problems, yikes! Of course, the better it gets, the more likely it is to get shut down.
posted by rikschell at 9:59 AM on August 4, 2012

Don't know anything about Harry Potter but clearly he should dump Ginny in favour of Hermonie immediately

TEAM NEVAR FORGET CHO CHANG
posted by psoas at 10:01 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

CHO CHANG GOES BACK IN THE BOX
posted by The Whelk at 10:02 AM on August 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

I hope Luna Lovegood makes an appearance. I was sad she was always such a peripheral character.
posted by rikschell at 10:03 AM on August 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

fearfulsymmetry: "They were dentists"

I always thought that "My parents are dentists" was a polite way for a British person to say that they were an orphan.
posted by schmod at 10:04 AM on August 4, 2012 [14 favorites]

Luna is into shit you can't even dream of. her dungeon has dungeons.
posted by The Whelk at 10:10 AM on August 4, 2012 [5 favorites]

I hope Luna Lovegood makes an appearance. I was sad she was always such a peripheral character.

I always hoped that she would end up with Harry.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 10:22 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I always hoped that she would end up with Harry.

NEVILLUNA 4 LIFE
posted by mightygodking at 10:26 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's a ship and a delicious chocolate spread.
posted by The Whelk at 10:26 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hmmm, how about Draco and Luna ?
posted by Pendragon at 10:35 AM on August 4, 2012

Hermoine & Harry never really made sense to me. Especially in the films: absolutely zero chemistry between the two actors. Harry & Hermoine always made more of a match. Ron just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
posted by Fizz at 10:39 AM on August 4, 2012

If everyone who is not a Weasley were simply issued a Weasley right from the start then we could avoid all this unnecessary drama and suspense.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:43 AM on August 4, 2012 [11 favorites]

I thought the blonde woman in episode three was going to be Luna, to be honest.
posted by codacorolla at 11:05 AM on August 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

These are funny!
Draco as a woman.... lol!
posted by luckynerd at 11:08 AM on August 4, 2012

I'm just surfacing after having watched Goblet of Fire to add that the actor playing older-Hermione simply doesn't have the required eyebrow control. Emma Watson can twitch her eyebrows to virtually any position from her hairline to her nostrils. She has some crazy Bene Gesserit muscle control going on. I'm pretty sure at one point they did a flip.
posted by Ritchie at 11:10 AM on August 4, 2012 [10 favorites]

Hermoine & Harry never really made sense to me. Especially in the films: absolutely zero chemistry between the two actors. Harry & Hermoine always made more of a match

Does the name order matter here, or did you mean Ginny or Ron? Harry and Ginny made sense, sort of; Hermione and Ron, not at all. But then who else? Draco? I read The Mortal Instruments, so no. Neville? No. Luna? No. (Of course, it could have been no one at all.)
posted by jeather at 11:29 AM on August 4, 2012

I dunno, Ginny was right for Harry mainly because she'd always worshiped him. That doesn't seem too healthy. I don't see Hermione and Ron sticking together for long after book 7. Hermione's too ambitious. But maybe she came back around to him when she decided she needed a househusband to facilitate having a family, and they went through so much together as kids, and there was that intense fling at the end of all of it. I could see that. But I don't see her peaking in "high school." Weird that wizards don't seem to have any kind of higher education. Or education in non-magical subjects to speak of at all.
posted by rikschell at 11:36 AM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why Neville wasn't the hero of all these films is beyond me. If I were Hermione, I'd've totally been Team Neville. If I were Neville, however, I'd've gone for Luna. She's awesome, and a lot less intense/control freaky, even if she seems likely to turn into a hoarder.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:44 AM on August 4, 2012 [6 favorites]

Ron just needs to travel the world on his own for a couple years. Maybe he'd get past age 14 that way. You know- like Buffy-era Wesley vs Angel-era Wesley.

I will step away from the computer now before I embarrass myself further.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:46 AM on August 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

Emma Watson can twitch her eyebrows to virtually any position from her hairline to her nostrils.

Actress or Eyebrow?

(Though as someone comments on another 'brows video, at least she moves her face, unlike a lot of actresses.... cough cough Kristen Stewart cough)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:52 AM on August 4, 2012

I'm not complaining about the eyebrows: I'm perfectly happy to watch her eyebrows bounce and swoop to various positions on her face all day long. I'm just surprised no CG is involved.
posted by Ritchie at 12:07 PM on August 4, 2012

I thought JK Rowling was crushing all fan fiction
posted by Flood at 12:07 PM on August 4, 2012

Unfortunately, I'm short on time to watch all of these today- Does Hermione end up writing seven volumes of children's books and change her name to Mary Sue?
posted by jenkinsEar at 12:34 PM on August 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

Someone wrote a list of "unexplained Harry Potter mysteries"

Top of that list should probably be: If you want to protect Hogwarts against the ghost of Voldemort, why do you continue to sponsor a student house dedicated to Evil?
posted by gompa at 1:02 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well that's a half hour I'm not getting back.
posted by scalefree at 1:03 PM on August 4, 2012

Why Neville wasn't the hero of all these films is beyond me.

To be fair, Neville is actually the one the prophesy was about from the very beginning. He IS the hero. It's just that nobody was expecting that, because of all the celebrity attached to Harry.
posted by hippybear at 1:04 PM on August 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Weird that wizards don't seem to have any kind of higher education. Or education in non-magical subjects to speak of at all.
This. A thousand times this.

It has always frustrated me that shit like economics and basic life skills were not included in the Hogwarts curriculum. But I suppose they just didn't plan on these kids living though the full seven years.

Also, one day there will be a kids/young adult series in which the main characters don't end up falling in love and growing up to marry their childhood sweethearts. It just seems like such a backwards and outdated fantasy that who you are in high school is who you will be for the rest of your life. Hell, I won't even Facebook friend some of my childhood sweethearts.
posted by teleri025 at 1:50 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

But I suppose they just didn't plan on these kids living though the full seven years.

You know I just assumed Hogwarts was so dangerous cause they had an unspoken "Darwin awards" thing going on to keep the numbers manageable.
posted by The Whelk at 2:05 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

To be fair, Neville is actually the one the prophesy was about from the very beginning. He IS the hero. It's just that nobody was expecting that, because of all the celebrity attached to Harry.

The prophecy could have applied to two infants, Harry or Neville, because of the specifics regarding the parents of the two. The prophecy stated that the one who would defeat Voldemort would be the child of a couple who has thrice stood against him, etc. By attempting to kill Harry, Voldemort made him the "Chosen One". So, the prophecy was not about Neville, but it could have been.
posted by lopsided at 2:06 PM on August 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

The prophecy stated that the one who would defeat Voldemort would be the child of a couple who has thrice stood against him, etc.

Yes, but Harry didn't defeat Voldemort.
posted by hippybear at 2:12 PM on August 4, 2012

..and had Neville been charge from the start it would've been over in three books.
posted by The Whelk at 2:14 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

...which is why the prophecy works, and was always intended to be the way it turned out.
posted by hippybear at 2:16 PM on August 4, 2012

You people who keep discussing the movies as though they are the be-all, end-all sources of HP plots...

You are aware, right, that there were books before the movies, and that a lot of the gripes you have about characterizations are not present in said book series?

Just... Just wondering, is all...
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 3:07 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why don't the magic / wizard people just use their powers to enslave all humanity?

It is generally inexplicable that the Potterian wizard community has a culture which slavishly copies the Muggles, but in outdated and inferior modes. It appears they are a marginal, dependent society in spite of their virtually unlimited power.

Susanna Clarke (as in many other respects) does a far better job of making magic make sense, with her fairies who are both extremely indolent and, by human standards, insane.
posted by Segundus at 3:15 PM on August 4, 2012

It has always frustrated me that shit like economics and basic life skills were not included in the Hogwarts curriculum

I've never taken an economics course.

Lots of people do just fine without economics courses, or indeed with formal education in any basic life skills.
posted by kenko at 4:19 PM on August 4, 2012

It is generally inexplicable that the Potterian wizard community has a culture which slavishly copies the Muggles, but in outdated and inferior modes. It appears they are a marginal, dependent society in spite of their virtually unlimited power.

That's a bold statement to make. Can you elaborate? JK Rowling herself has explained the idiosyncrasies of wizarding culture as well as why, up until the rise and fall of Voldemort, wizarding folk have not enslaved Muggles or other magical and non-magical creatures.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 4:24 PM on August 4, 2012

re: The magicians spec script

Apparently never filmed, and it was FOX not HBO. Anyways, apparently, 'Metafilter's own' John Scalzi/jscalzi had a copy once.
posted by porpoise at 4:38 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Harry sounds like a British version of Guybrush Threepwood.
posted by littlesq at 4:41 PM on August 4, 2012

"The prophecy stated that the one who would defeat Voldemort would be the child of a couple who has thrice stood against him, etc. By attempting to kill Harry, Voldemort made him the "Chosen One". So, the prophecy was not about Neville, but it could have been."

Didn't Nevilles parents end up in a mental hospital trying to protect him from Voldemort?
posted by littlesq at 4:43 PM on August 4, 2012

Yes, they were tortured to the brink of insanity by the Lestranges and lived out the rest of their lives at St. Mungo's.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 4:48 PM on August 4, 2012

My Potter Gary Stu was an American teacher at Hogwarts who taught a class called "A Swift Punch To The Face" wherein I would teach 5th years to both take and deliver said punches to the face.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:55 PM on August 4, 2012

The writing seems pretty crap, and it also seems as if the creators only had a passing familiarity with the source material. The characterization doesn't really follow well. Why the hell do they have and use cell phones and computers when they have magic? Also did they miss the part where Ginny and Harry had their kid 8 years after the final series of events at the school? So if this is 10 years after, they have a 2 year old.
posted by MrBobaFett at 5:01 PM on August 4, 2012

Neville's parents weren't protecting him from Voldemort, this was after Voldemort's "death".
posted by dumbland at 5:05 PM on August 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

Why the hell do they have and use cell phones and computers when they have magic?

You'd have cell phones because owls are slower than 4G. Presumably a clever wizard would magically enhance their smartphone to get unlimited data or something.

This sort of backwardness almost bugs me about the HP universe. You'd think that, at the very least, newcomers to magic like Potter or Granger would say "Hey, this magic stuff is pretty cool! I'm gonna use it to get all the cable channels!" or "Fuck yeah, I'm totally turning my decrepit old Geo Metro into a solid-gold rocket Veyron!" or "Maybe I can turn this model I built of a VF-1 from Macross into the real thing..."

But nope. They mostly just play chess and quidditch and almost completely ignore the entire culture they're notionally embedded in and so on. Magically enhanced Halo never occurs to them, but foul-tasting jellybeans do.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:00 PM on August 4, 2012 [6 favorites]

Why don't the magic / wizard people just use their powers to enslave all humanity?

Salem was their Waterloo.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:33 PM on August 4, 2012

They were defeated, we won the war.

Promise to love us forever more.

Couldn't escape if they wanted to.

Knowing their fate is to be with you. [us]
posted by hippybear at 6:41 PM on August 4, 2012

I still think it would have been cooler if Harry was never a wizard in the first place, and that Voldemort effectively gave him a fraction of his power and potential. In the end, he would have had to choose between power and Doing the Right Thing, even though it would mean he could no longer work magic. Growing up and learning to find your place in the world and all that.
posted by lumensimus at 6:48 PM on August 4, 2012

I never intended to avoid seeing the Harry Potter movies. It just worked out that way.

Also, Dallas. Never saw any. Now I see that it's been disinterred. Crap. I thought somebody shot J.R.
posted by mule98J at 11:02 PM on August 4, 2012

J.R. was shot in 1980 by his mistress and sister-in-law. He survived, and was on the series until it was taken off the air in 1991. He's back in this new series, too. (He might have also been shot in the series finale, too. Although one of the reunion movies showed J.R. as having shot the mirror he was looking in rather than himself, this new series doesn't take that as canon. The new series opens with J.R. in a nursing home being treated for clinical depression. As far as I know, it doesn't address the gunshot scene at the end of the first series.)
posted by hippybear at 9:34 AM on August 5, 2012

So well done
posted by fightoplankton at 12:05 PM on August 5, 2012

Interesting but not great, want to see where they take it though. At least Hermione has better teeth.
posted by arcticseal at 12:35 PM on August 5, 2012

Aren't the Harry Potter books set in the early 90s? That wouldn't address plot points for this video series, but that could explain why Hogwarts students weren't messing around with smartphones while they were actually attending Hogwarts.
posted by tantivy at 5:32 PM on August 5, 2012

Aren't the Harry Potter books set in the early 90s?

The HP books are set from 1991-1998.
posted by hippybear at 6:13 PM on August 5, 2012

I've made it as far as Half-Blood Prince, and now I'm mostly puzzled by what happened to Hermione's time-rewind necklace thingy because it seems like it would have been useful in EVERY SITUATION EVER.
posted by Ritchie at 6:14 PM on August 5, 2012

now I'm mostly puzzled by what happened to Hermione's time-rewind necklace thingy

When Hermione completed her third year at Hogwarts, her class load dropped from being overloaded to a regular load, and she returned the time turner because she no longer needed it to complete her studies. Apparently the entire supply of time turners owned by the Ministry Of Magic was destroyed in 1996 when the Department of Mysteries was attacked in the battle which is described at the end of Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix.
posted by hippybear at 6:22 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

... she returned the time turner because she no longer needed it to complete her studies.

Of course she did. Because what use is time-travel to someone with an uncluttered schedule? Good call, Hermione.
posted by Ritchie at 9:10 PM on August 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

The implications are, I think, that time turners are carefully guarded by the Ministry, and aren't allowed out that often. So she returned it, but likely because it was required of her.
posted by hippybear at 9:14 PM on August 5, 2012

I've always thought of the "time turners were a plot hole" theory to be a disservice to the books. The idea that you could go back in time -- to do what? Kill Riddle when he was an innocent child? Fix Riddle's broken family? -- to prevent the crimes in the present always seemed to me like the sort of solution you would find in other children's books where good and evil are that simple: kill one person and evil is gone, fix one problem and all the other problems are fixed. Whereas in the books' universe Rowling spent thousands of pages drawing out the actually fairly complex and interesting idea that evil is a product of a million factors, that good and evil aren't binaries or even on a linear continuum, that Fudge and Voldemort are two sides of the same coin, that the ability to love and be empathetic can be a weapon against someone who is infinitely more powerful than you are. Yeah, that's not a novel idea in the world of fiction, but package it up and have millions of kids read it? I'm down for that, man. Anyway, I suppose I'm overanalyzing but I've always thought of the HP universe as a place where if you charge into the past, hoping to change it, all you'll get is a mess -- time travel is dangerous, like Dumbledore warns. When I first read the criticism levied at time turners, I immediately got angry but I couldn't figure out why. I like to think my body had such a visceral reaction because that junk belongs in other books. Time travel doesn't solve anything here; why would it? Fuck that noise.
posted by shadytrees at 9:34 PM on August 6, 2012

also can i just say that being able to talk about time travel in harry potter at 12:30 in the morning is probably why the internet was invented
posted by shadytrees at 9:36 PM on August 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Episodes 4, 5, and 6. (The series will include with a two-part episode 7, just as the movie series did.)
posted by WCityMike at 6:07 AM on August 24, 2012

Episode 7, part 1. I like the dark turn the episodes take, and Episode 6 in particular was brilliant (particularly the ending sequence, which was vaguely Requiem For A Dream-esque? or is that just me?), with very good acting.

I'm eager to see how the series ends; alas, the thread will no longer be open then!
posted by beryllium at 6:15 PM on September 3, 2012