Transcription
I have never seen Harry Potter.
"Are you serious?"
Yeah. In 2026, I somehow made it this far without watching a single movie. And I know how crazy that sounds. For most of my childhood, Harry Potter was everywhere. I've seen both family and friends grow up and bond over it. And I just never sat down and watched it.
So today, I finally decided to change that. I binged the first four Harry Potter movies with two very specific goals in mind. First, I want to understand why this series means so much to so many people. And second, I want to see if the first half of the story is strong enough to make me finish the rest. Because if the first half doesn't hook me, then I'm sure these movies just never will.
So, with that in mind, I hit play on the first movie. Going into the first movie, I was basically blind. The only things I really knew about Harry Potter were Harry himself, the fact that he had two close friends, and that the entire world revolved around magic. That was basically it. I'd played a little bit of the Hogwarts game, but I never finished it, so none of the story really stuck. For all intents and purposes, this was my first real exposure to the series.
But I was excited. This was another one of those franchises I had always been curious about, but just never sat down to experience it. So, I went in with the open mind, ready to finally see what everyone else grew up loving. And almost immediately, the movie surprised me because it doesn't start with magic like I thought it would. It starts with Harry as this shy, bullied kid. He's constantly belittled by his family and treated like he doesn't belong and that caught me completely off guard. I had no idea this was part of his story.
So his family hates him. "But right away it makes you root for him." What surprised me even more was how intentional that choice felt. The movie could have easily opened in the wizard world, but instead it grounds Harry in something familiar. The insecurities, the bullying, the feeling of being unwanted. And the more I thought about it, the more it clicked. Harry is a kid and so was the audience. I think this movie was originally made for. By starting here, the movie meets you at eye level. It taps into that universal childhood feeling, wanting to believe there's a bigger world out there. And for Harry, that escape doesn't just exist in his imagination. It literally comes to find him.
"Sorry about that." Hagrid is this big, lovable guy who immediately feels like relief. He's the first person in Harry's life who doesn't talk down to him. and the first person who tells him the truth, you're not unwanted and you belong somewhere. And once Harry steps into that wizarding world, that feeling carries over instantly. Everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows what he survived. And suddenly Harry isn't invisible anymore. He's special, almost in a chosen one way.
And what I really love in stories, the biggest examples of this being Full Metal and Attack on Titan for me is that you get to learn the world through the characters. Harry doesn't know the rules. He doesn't understand magic. and he barely knows anything about his parents. So when he learns something, we learn it. When something overwhelms him, it overwhelms us. And when something hurts him, we understand why. Ron and Hermione play into that perfectly. Ron comes off unimpressive at first. But he has heart. And more importantly, he's the first real friend Harry's ever had. And I think this movie does a good job in making their friendship not feel forced.
And then there's Hermione. Yeah, I didn't like her at first. She comes off as a know-it-all, someone who clearly looks down on others because she thinks she's smarter than them. But as the movie goes on, that impression starts to change because once the trio forms, something really clever happens. Each one of them brings something essential by the end. Harry's flying ability, Ron's heart, and his ability to play chess and Hermione's intelligence under pressure. None of it feels forced because it was alluded to throughout the movie, and you get that aha feeling once it's paid off.
And then there's Hogwarts itself. This is where the movie completely won me over. The world feels alive, and I think it's because a lot of it isn't explained. What's the difference between the houses? Why does everyone react so strongly to Slytherin? Why are there ghosts everywhere? Why do the stairs move? No, for real, why do they? The magic is also baked into everyday life. Even something like Quidditch ends up being genuinely fun to watch.
The moment Dumbledore shows up, someone I've heard about my entire life, I immediately started comparing him to Gandalf. By the end of the movie, something became clear to me. This movie was more so about the feeling of belonging somewhere rather than magic. Really, watching where Harry starts and seeing every obstacle the trio faces made me realize that no one was perfect and no one was useless. They succeeded because they relied on each other.
That said, the ending is where the movie lost me a bit. The twist with it not actually being Snape, but someone who I barely remembered felt underwhelming. And how much I heard the name Voldemort over the years. His presence here didn't really land.
"I'll be crying if I look like that, too." "Bro, that's messed up what they be doing to y'all."
So, when the credits rolled, I didn't think this was a masterpiece, and I still didn't fully understand the hype, but I did enjoy it. Almost felt like a comfort movie, something you could just put on and enjoy. This movie also gave me a genuine desire to keep going. It felt like the beginning of not just the story, but a world I can grow into and learn more about. And with that feeling still fresh, I went straight into the next movie.
Going into this movie, I wanted two things. I wanted to learn more about the characters, and I wanted to go deeper into this world. And to be fair, I did get that. But I'll be honest, this was the first time I felt a little disconnected. Chamber Secrets just didn't fully work for me. That doesn't mean there wasn't good stuff here, because there was.
What did work for me was Harry's arc. In the first movie, Harry's journey is simple. He's a kid who finally finds a place where he belongs. But Chamber of Secrets flips the idea on its head. Now Harry isn't asking where he belongs. He's asking if he belongs there at all. The moment Harry speaks parcel tongue, something I love that the first movie foreshadowed. Everyone starts looking at him differently. Overnight, people stop seeing him as the boy who lived and start seeing him as someone suspicious, someone potentially dangerous. Hogwarts, the place that once felt safe and magical, suddenly doesn't anymore. There's fear in the hallways and students turn on each other.
I also appreciate what the movie does with Hermione here because the idea of mudbloods introduces discrimination to this world in a way that seems like it matters. Lucius Malfoy is also here. He's pure arrogance and entitlement, walking around like he owns the place. He's so clearly a villain that I kept wondering where his story was heading. And through him, the movie introduces Dobby with his freedom being one of the most satisfying parts in the entire film.
So, the frustrating part isn't that the Chamber of Secrets lacks good ideas. It's that those ideas never fully come together. At least for me, the pacing drags, and because of that, I never felt fully pulled in the way I wanted to be. If I'm being honest, the spider section was probably the most locked in I felt in the entire movie, and not in a good way. Some of the mystery reveals also didn't land for me, especially the Tom Riddle one.
Wow. Wow. By this point, I started getting nervous because Voldemort still didn't feel like the looming presence I'd been promised. A threat I was told to fear, but so far only felt kind of corny. As a whole, this ended up being the most forgettable movie so far. And when it ended, I was still waiting. Waiting for the danger to feel real, waiting for the world to finally bite back. And more than anything, I was hoping the next movie would finally be the one to open that door.
Going into this one, I was honestly a little nervous. The first movie was a solid start, but the second one left me disappointed. On top of that, the main villain in the entire series still hasn't connected with me at all. And most importantly, I still didn't fully understand why people love this franchise as much as they do. At this point, it felt like the series was standing at a crossroads for me. Either this next movie was finally going to show me what makes Harry Potter special, or it was going to confirm that this just wasn't for me. So, I pressed play and went in with an open mind.
Right away, this movie was different. In the first two films, Harry mostly comes off as a shy kid, still trying to understand the world, the rules, and where he fits into all of it. But here, you can see the change immediately. He's older now, 13 to be exact. And if you've ever been a teenager, you know exactly what that means.
"My dad wasn't a drunk." "There you go." "Shut up. Shut up." "All right, he's going to the dark side. All right, we get it. All right, he's definitely a teen. Oh, he don't care no more."
Now, what changed? Yeah, I'd imagine being a teenager with powers would look something like that. There's a lot of foreshadowing happening early on. And this was the first time I felt like the movie actually wanted me to think ahead. When Harry is told not to go looking for Sirius Black, someone who supposedly escaped prison just to kill him. My brain instantly went into theory mode. Why would Harry want to go after someone who's trying to kill him? Could that mean if he found out what he did, would that make him want to go after him?
And even smaller moments started standing out, like the running joke about Hermione seemingly being in places she shouldn't be, or characters reacting to things we haven't seen yet. See, that's got to that's got to play into something like later on in the movie. And the movie doesn't rush to answer any of it. It lets the tension sit.
And what also stood out to me was how much darker everything felt, not just visually, but emotionally as well. There's dementors patrolling the grounds, teachers withholding information, adults clearly knowing more than they're saying, and Harry's actually mad about it. He's honestly way more compelling in this movie than the others. And of course, the dementors. These creatures were honestly the first terrifying antagonist for me. They had this ominous feeling about them, and the fact that they hit Harry harder than anyone else was crazy. The way they affect Harry forced him to relive his parents' death. As a layer of trauma, the series hasn't gone too far into. And the solution is learning how to confront those memories without letting them consume you. That's when I realized this movie was operating on a completely different wavelength than the others.
Which brings me to Lupin. Right away, he feels different from the other teachers. His relationship with Harry doesn't feel like authority the way it usually does in these movies. It honestly feels like Lupin is mentoring him.
As much as I was enjoying the movie, I'll be honest. When we reached the climax, I wasn't convinced it was all going to land. Harry sees a deer and he thinks it's his dad. Buckbeak was executed, which was crazy. Sirius was imprisoned and honestly, I was still confused about certain things. I remember thinking, there's no way this all wraps up cleanly. But then the time travel happened, going back and rewatching everything from a new perspective, the random rock thrown through the window. What her mind thought she saw in the woods, seeing Buckbe escape death, what distracted the werewolf, and finally the truth about who casted the patronis. All of it clicks in real time.
"Is she going to go in the woods? Then her old self is going to see her in the woods. The rocks. Okay, but they they did chop something. I don't know if that's a plot hole or if I'm overthinking that. Oh, okay. Okay, that it was hairy."
Then the entire sequence was so satisfying to watch unfold. The movie trusted the audience to keep up and it rewarded you for paying attention. By the time it ended, this wasn't just my favorite Harry Potter movie so far. It was the first one that made me really start to understand the hype because when it's firing on all cylinders like this, it's smart, emotional, mysterious, and genuinely exciting. And for the first time on this journey, I didn't just want to keep going. I had to. So, I went straight into the next movie.
Going into this movie, I was way more excited and way more locked in than I had been at any point so far. Coming off what I thought was a great movie. I finally had momentum. I finally had trust. But there was still one big question hanging over everything with the villain of the story finally connect with me. Up until now, Voldemort hasn't impressed me at all. And what's crazy is everyone in this movie keeps saying he's one of the strongest and most terrifying characters, but I just haven't felt any of that. So, as excited as I was, I still went in with cautious optimism. No expectations, no hype, just an open mind in the hope that this movie would finally show me what the story had been building toward.
And right away, the movie pulled me in. This movie opens with the Death Eaters, Voldemort, and his servants. Then, the movie introduces the unforgivable curses. And I remember thinking, why introduce them now? What was the story gearing up for? These weren't the type of spells you mess up and laugh about. These are spells designed to hurt, control, and kill. And the fact that the movie stops to explain them as moral lines told me everything about where this story was heading.
And then there's Moody. He instantly became one of the most interesting characters in the movie for me. He doesn't sugarcoat the world for the kids. And honestly, neither does the movie at this point. He was unhinged and definitely different from the other teachers, but he was also subtly helping Harry and so I wanted to know why.
However, that dark tone doesn't stay for too long. Once the tri wizard tournament begins, I honestly forgot about everything else. And I won't lie, it was fun watching it. Each task pushes Harry further out of his comfort zone. And what I like the most about it is that he's not the strongest, smartest, or the most prepared person there. He survives because of heart, because he helps others, because he refuses to leave people behind.
Now, don't get me wrong, I still had issues with this movie, too. For one, Ron felt like a completely different person compared to the first few films. And honestly, he got on my nerves a lot. Also, everybody was calling Harry a cheat because he was chosen. But those same people were cheering when the twins were literally trying to cheat their way into the tournament. Yeah, I didn't understand that.
But once that phase passes, the movie locks back in for me. And of course, the dance, which surprised me more than anything else because it was kind of awkward, but in a funny cute way. And I thought about how earlier I mentioned how these movies meet you at eye level. And I started to realize these kids have come a long way from fighting that one troll in the bathroom. Instead of that, now they're dealing with embarrassment, with crushes, and with identity. I even started noticing small bits of cussing in the last movie and the tiny bit of shift in the humor as well. I can completely understand how someone who grew up with these movies would feel like they grew up alongside these characters. Not just the characters either though, the actors as well. Gradually, movie to movie, you can literally see them growing up and getting better as actors.
And for most of this movie, I was having a really good time. But then everything changes. Cedric's death felt like the death of the innocents in this story because up until that moment, even when things got intense, Harry and everyone else still felt safe in a way, like the magic would protect the story from going too far. But this, I didn't expect this. Once Voldemort came back, everything changed. And all I could think was, what happens now? What does Voldemort even do next?
Now that he's fully back with this inclusion to the story, it feels like the beginning of something bad to come. It feels like a turning point. Like everything before this was the story building up the world, and now it seems like they're going to have to do everything possible to keep it. And so, by the time the credits rolled, I was completely invested. Now I need to see how this all ends because Voldemort is back and I don't know if anyone is safe anymore.