Movie: 20 years of ‘Harry Potter’: When imagination suddenly seemed perfect in the cinema

Every reader knows this – a book or series of books that we know can’t be made into a movie. So many people, so much material, it all goes for the Harry Potter volumes, of which there were only four in 2001. But the hype surrounding the series was huge. This wonderful world invented by Joanne K. Rowling should now appear on your screen.

It was unimaginable in the early 80’s. because with “Harry Potter“Characters not only live lives of their own, but also live their images. And the laws of physics have limited validity only at Hogwarts. Ghosts roam there, stairs move independently, they are basically a large organism and not a background.”

The world of Harry Potter movies was there before the fans

But films like The Matrix and George Lucas’ New Star Wars episodes showed that the technical possibilities offered by computers had an almost revolutionary effect on filmmaking. So director Chris Columbus, who was responsible for the first two films in the Harry Potter series, would have been able to create an image of this magical world that also suffered with millions of fans around the world.

Exactly 20 years ago, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” debuted in London Broadcasting. The premiere was attended by singer Cher, musician Sting, Virgin magnate Richard Branson and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew. This already showed the anticipation with which the event was expected. When Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley got their cinematic faces through Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, the story somehow multiplied, not only after fans young and old from the book and movie series like Harry Potter and Co. in books moved from children to teens, but watched it in The real world when there was news from Radcliffe, Watson and Grint.

The human imagination now sets the limits of what can be represented

When Peter Jackson brought Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings fantasy to cinema shortly after the premiere of the Harry Potter series, it was finally clear that a new era of cinema had begun in which computer-generated imagery was henceforth the human imagination. It was somehow imaginable. Previously, Tolkien’s trilogy defied all attempts to portray material.

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Jackson managed to find suitable landscapes in New Zealand for this remote fantasy world called Middle-earth, but then also used computer technology to create the enchanted places in which Tolkien’s elves lived, for example, in such a way that the interior images from readers were added or even written Appropriately. Middle-earth’s face was down to the last detail, matching the story, and supporting the reader’s intuition with the certainty of the sighted. Then the films inserted huge details into the picture that had no effect during reading, for example when the companions in the first part were passing by the huge statues of two kings in boats. There are a few sentences in the book before it gets exciting again, in the movie a moment when the long periods of time that Tolkien spans with his books become tangible.

And today? If computer-aided movie image rewriting is standard, serial production can also afford it. From the world of Rolling Potter, there is the release of the movie “Fantastic Animal Worlds”, which will run next year. Amazon has big plans for Middle-earth in 2022.