The New Harry Potter

The story of a young Wizard captured the imagination of the entire world. It also captured something else. Lots and lots of money. The Harry Potter films can all be seen on the list of 50 top grossing films of all time. A theme park attraction exists in Florida with another to soon be built in California. Multiple games, toys, candies and clothes all bear images from the books and films. And thus Hollywood has been on a never-ending quest to find the next such film franchise that will perform as magically as the boy wizard.

The simplest way to find the next Harry Potter it seems is to find something exactly like Harry Potter. Since the first Potter film hit the screens we have seen adaptations of several properties that have a similar formula to Harry. A young boy with magical abilities who is ignorant of the magical world he belongs in until a stranger reveals his true nature and the evil that he is destined to fight and destroy. Sound familiar? Probably because you’ve seen or heard of multiple different films that are that exact premise.

The biggest telltale sign of a potential Harry Potter heir is when the film ends there is a complete ambiguity if the threat was defeated. More than likely they will even tease the threat as still out there, leaving the idea of a potential sequel all but inevitable. This has been true of a couple Harry Potter clones such as Eragon, The Last Airbender, and The Golden Compass. Each of them ended with a hint that a new threat was on the horizon for the protagonist.

I know this particular storytelling trope was around long before Harry Potter, but it seems like the idea of a character destined to defeat evil more and more follows the Harry Potter formula. Much like the film Star Wars perfectly captured Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey, Harry Potter perfectly exemplifies the Destiny Child (no, not the pop group). An example of this in a film that is coming out soon is The Mortal Instruments, which stars Lily Collins in the role of Teenager Destined to Save the World.

The film franchise that seems to be trying to ape the Potter franchise the most is Percy Jackson. Years after the first film came out and we are finally getting a sequel. A sequel that may just add even more similarities between the two franchises. For example Harry attended a magical school while Percy Jackson attends a camp for demigods. Like Harry, Percy has two companions with him on his journeys, a boy and a girl. There are also little similarities like site gags. In this upcoming film there is a wacky taxicab, which greatly resembles the Night Bus that was featured in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Percy even has a rival student to contend with much like Harry had to constantly deal with Draco Malfoy.

What I think many of these film studios fail to understand is that what captured people’s attention so much about Harry Potter is that it was a completely original world that audiences had never seen before. There have always been fantasy stories, but the adventures of a boy wizard and the world he inhabited had a charm unique to itself. What studios should be doing is not trying to find something in a similar mold of what worked before, but a whole new property that is also unique and charming.