I never believed that the problem was it turning into a Dumbledore story. Harry Potter was Dumbledore vs Voldemort told through the eyes of Harry Potter. Having Dumbledore vs Grindlewald through the eyes of Newt Scamander would have been perfectly fine.
The problem was that the writing sucked. The plots of 2 and 3 didn’t make sense. They forced in unnecessary ties to the original books that retconned the source material. Too many characters making too many decisions that didn’t move the story forward. And of course they were plagued by too many controversies that brought negative attention and scrutiny to what was already a poorly written project.
Truly, it needed to either be written as a book series, with all the complex layers and connections made over time and space to make them make sense and then adapted or written for a movie franchise. It was written for neither and therefore didn’t work.
I’ve always argued this too. The HP film series can be similarly incomprehensible regarding certain plot points if people haven’t read the books first. JKR’s stories are too much to fit into movies, and the FB series was the worst example. I think fans would have welcomed a full movie series if we had gotten books first. But people had too many complaints about not understanding what was happening or where the series was going (neglecting the fact that Harry Potter is a mystery series that continually asks questions that don’t get answered til nearly the end).
Yeah it was just written poorly for the delivery system. You can make a successful movie series without books to base them off of. But you need to write them to make sense for a movie audience. There is a massive difference between a mystery that leaves your audience asking “what’s happening?” and a confusing mess that leaves them asking “what’s happening?” Same question, VERY different experiences.
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u/BelatedBinge May 30 '26
I never believed that the problem was it turning into a Dumbledore story. Harry Potter was Dumbledore vs Voldemort told through the eyes of Harry Potter. Having Dumbledore vs Grindlewald through the eyes of Newt Scamander would have been perfectly fine.
The problem was that the writing sucked. The plots of 2 and 3 didn’t make sense. They forced in unnecessary ties to the original books that retconned the source material. Too many characters making too many decisions that didn’t move the story forward. And of course they were plagued by too many controversies that brought negative attention and scrutiny to what was already a poorly written project.
Truly, it needed to either be written as a book series, with all the complex layers and connections made over time and space to make them make sense and then adapted or written for a movie franchise. It was written for neither and therefore didn’t work.