The New Hogwarts Set: A Faithful Recreation or a Missed Opportunity?

[Dumbledore]

The new Harry Potter series gets fascinating, but not just putting new actors into old costumes and calling it a day.

 

The production has been building an enormous new Hogwarts environment at Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden, where the original Harry Potter films were made. And yes, they've recreated some of the places fans already know incredibly well.

 

 

The Great Hall is one of the big ones.

Which sounds brilliant… until you remember that the original Great Hall was one of the most recognisable sets in modern film history.

So now I'm wondering…

 

Do we actually want them to recreate everything?

Part of me loves the idea.

 

The original films had an incredible visual identity. The Great Hall, the Gryffindor common room, the moving staircases, Hagrid's hut… you could show someone a two second clip and they'd know exactly what they were looking at. But this is supposed to be a new adaptation of the books. That means they have an opportunity to make Hogwarts look different. Not completely different, obviously. We don't need Hogwarts suddenly looking like a modern shopping centre.

 

 

But maybe this version can include details from the books that the films never had time for. The TV format gives them something the original movies didn't have… time. And that's probably the biggest reason I'm interested in this whole project. The books describe Hogwarts as a much bigger, stranger and more complicated place than we actually got to see on screen. There are corridors we never visited. Rooms we never saw. Ghosts who barely appeared. Portraits everywhere. Secret passages. Loads of little details that were either shortened or ignored.

And then there's Peeves.

 

Still waiting for someone to explain why that man was completely missing from eight films. Anyway, I think the new series has a tricky job. It needs to feel familiar enough that we recognise Harry Potter… But different enough that it doesn't just feel like someone has taken the original films, changed the actors and pressed the replay button. Personally, I'd rather they surprise us a little. Keep the things that worked. Fix the things that didn't. And give us the stuff that got left on the cutting room floor.

 

That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

What do you think?

 

Should the new series try to recreate the look of the original films, or would you rather see a completely fresh interpretation of Hogwarts?