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Pedro Pascal Calls For Boycott of HBO's Upcoming $2 Billion ‘Harry Potter' Series — World of Reel
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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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You don't need to tell me twice. I only have nostalgia for the original Harry Potter movies and games because it has a lot of super popular British actors, and I was about 6-years-old when they came out.
I have no nostalgia for the books, and I have no interest in watching the same story again but HBO-ified.
I'm way ahead of this because I absolutely HATE the originals because of how often they play them on TV. The transphobic writer of the original wanting to do a do-over most likely because the original cast spoke out against her is also real atrocious as well.
I am no literature snob but I thought the first few books were good at the time for YA fiction. I still have the full set on my shelves and would be overjoyed if my kids read any novels, even imperfect ones.
People have nit picked JKs works to death and yes, there are problems. Half the stuff I was reading and watching as a kid was far, far worse. Like I was reading stuff that on reflection was clearly written by very far right authors, pedos etc as well as stuff that went way in other directions. I get why people boycott shit like that but I think its probably good to be exposed to some other points of view, even ones you vehemently reject.
People should be supporting new authors and new stories and stop throwing money at tired old corporate franchises. And that goes for the lazy Disney shit as well and all the Hollywood remakes. Unfortunately we have all been squeezed economically so there is fuck all money left to buy media and we are being squeezed for attention so nobody is taking time to read novels or listen to albums. The culture wars are certainly very significant (as a straight white male I know I have blind spots here), particularly for minorities with a lot at stake. But I feel the real enemy is the death of individual economic freedom and free time. Do we really need another big streaming series that brings nothing new to our lives and exists only to enhance shareholder value?
Not to ruin something you like, but you might enjoy reading the Worst Witch series, which Joanne copied for her early books.
I am an old man so I don't read much kid's/YA fiction and I wasn't ever a huge HP fan. I tried to watch a tv adaption of WW with my daughter and we didn't get past the first episode for some reason. We do like a lot of other witchy fiction though. I am hoping the Witchhat Atelier anime is high quality and doesn't have creepy fan service. That had a really interesting magic system.
JKs works are full of tropes as is most fiction and it clearly isn't great literature but I am not persuaded by accusations of plagiarism. Every Tarantino movie rips off other movies. The Dollars trilogy was clearly a retelling of Kurosawa samurai movies.
I don't want to praise JK given her open hostility to the community here but the cross over appeal of her works was a cultural phenomenal at the time. I understand why many people are motivated to rip her work and legacy to shreds. She has very much earned peoples disrespect. As someone who is not targeted by her hateful views I feel detached enough to reject JK as a person without completely dismissing her works and cultural impact. Yeah, that's some privilege at work but we are who we are. I am never going to have the same awareness or sensitivity about lack of representation, stereotypes etc in her writing.
There's a huge difference between "homage" and "copying." For example, Rowling references many legendary myths, like the Nicholas Flamel and the Philosopher's Stone. That's a reference, and while it's not original, it's not so much stealing as using the existing tapestry.
The problem is not that she used existing concepts and tropes, but that she only used existing concepts and tropes. There literally isn't a single original concept in any of the books, and the source material is usually (but not always) better. It's like somebody made artwork out of clip art and photographs of famous paintings. And that's fine, but it's not creative or even well-crafted.
The dialogue is distractingly bad, the fantasy elements are disjointed and inconsistent, the mysteries are either obviously telegraphed or non-sequitur deus ex magicka that erase all tension or intrigue.
Is an Oreo cookie a good cookie? It's very popular, and many people love them. It's a knock off of Hydrox, of course, but that's not why it's not a good cookie. The cream filling is waxy and cloying, the cookies are cocoa-adjacent and stale, and they are mass produced by a company that is deforesting the planet and relying on child slaves. But they taste good dunked in milk. I like them. And that's OK. Not everything has to be the best possible version of what it could, or shoul, be.
But if the inventor of the Oreo was running around going "I'm the best baker in the world because I came up with the Oreo, and also disabled people should be euthanized," we can say that this hypothetical person sucks at both being a person and at baking cookies. The former is obviously worse than the latter, but then you have defenders saying "yes, OK, this person may not be a good person, but what they created is great." No. What they created is popular but that doesn't make it good.
I'm kind of the opinion that Harry Potter should have just ended with the deathly hallows book and 2 movies.
you drag out and milk an IP for too long and you just become star wars. and that isnt a compliment.
It seems like Rowling has been pushing for the series to be made because she doesn't like the OG movie cast members for calling her out on her bigotry. Anytime Radcliffe or Watson tweet in support of humanity, Rowling gets all twisty-knickered and pouty because people still call them Harry Potter and Hermione.
But making something new comes with the risk of it not working, much easier to just keep milking the same thing infinitely.
But the line must go up!
This sucks. I mean, I read Harry Potter as an adult, and still loved the stories, even if some parts were problematic (Cho Chang? The Irish kid blows stuff up? REALLY?). But I refuse to give that woman any of my money to do more evil with.
OK let me defend Cho Chang specifically. Qiū Cháng is a perfectly valid chinese name. It is pronounced "Cho Chang." Cho would not be standard (pinyin), but Chinese people historically have not always use Pinyin to transliterate their names. (And I assume a wizard might not use muggle pinyin.)
Harry Potter is one of the few IP’s that I 100% pirate guilt-free. In many cases, I use piracy to “try out” things before I buy them. For instance, I have the *arr stack running on my Jellyfin server, but most of the media on it is from my old DVD/Blu-ray collection. I have a few pirated games, but end up buying most of them if I enjoy them.
But not with Harry Potter. That shit gets pirated and stays pirated. I have the e-books and movies torrented, and will never spend a dime on them. I’ll never buy anything with a Hogwarts house on it. I’ll never stream any of the movies on Max. As far as capitalism is concerned, I have a full Harry Potter blackout.
Might be better to just let it go entirely.
don't forget the white washing of lavender brown
What was wrong with cho chang?
it just follows a trend of jkr using really shitty stereotypical names and sometimes just using down right offensive names. the only Asian character is cho chang, the only black character is literally named kingsley shacklebolt, etc. in Hogwarts legacy they named the first trans women in the series sirona ryan.
TBH the magic system seems low-effort too. You need a wand and pseudo-Latin, but neither are strictly necessary?
Jfc those are all so fucking racist holy shit
Dafuq
My brain right now.
The Indian chicks being fucking patels.
IMO she's already rich, and more of your money goes to an evil multi-billion dollar corporation than to her. If you enjoy the world fuck it, enjoy the shows, have, books, etc... There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and we're in dark times. You need to covet the things that bring you joy.
Side note: She plagiarized most of the first book from Anthony Horowitz's "Groomsham Grange". I understand there's a lot of books about magical schools but seriously if you read them back to back it's clear. This isn't important to the conversation other than to supply another reason to hate the bitch.
No ethical consumption means: it's hard to arrange for there to be clear alignment in people to boycott a particular entity, meaning many things that ought to go boycotted don't. Therefore, when such a heinous person as Rowling or Musk arises that we can cohesively land a boycott, we ought to take advantage of it.
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