Truth be told, this was my actual entry into the Harry Potter Universe before the books. I still remember my cousin getting the movie and playing it for us on her TV and me and my brother watching it in awe as this new and wonderful tale unfolded before us. Anyway almost 20 years later, here I am with a new Festa with a series of posts as the Harry Potter Universe celebrates a milestone of 20 years since the first movie (this one) released! And with that welcome to another edition of The Movie Bucket / The Movie Reel / Sequel Saga!
This is a throwback / review into the first Harry Potter film, but for more posts just check out the main post on The Harry Potter Universe!
Before we start – my favourite tracks from this movi e? They’re Harry’s Wondrous World, The Face of Voldemort and of course the main theme of the series – Hedwig’s theme. You can listen to the entire soundtrack as you read on Spotify by checking out the album – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Title : Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (was released as Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States)
Country of origin : United Kingdom / United States
Language : English
Directed by : Chris Columbus
Screenplay : Steve Kloves
Based on : Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J K Rowling
Produced by : David Heyman
Starring : Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, Ian Hart, John Hurt, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Tom Felton, Devon Murray
Cinematography : John Seale
Music : John Williams
Edited by : Richard Francis-Bruce
Released : 10 November 2001 (UK) , 16 November 2001 (US)
Duration : 152 minutes
Type : Series (Movie 1/8)
Streaming on : Amazon Prime Video
Genre : Fantasy
The book centres around the titular character – Harry Potter who is an orphan and lives with his abusive aunt and uncle and their son – The Dursleys. Harry’s life is all but uneventful other than some “unexplainable” events that occurred. That was until his eleventh birthday when the gamekeeper at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Rubeus Hagrid informs him that he has been admitted into the school for his further education to become a wizard.
But the strangest thing is that it’s not just that Harry was a wizard, unknown to him all these years but he may as well be the most famous wizard in the world. At just 15 months old his parents were killed and he was brought face to face with the deadliest wizard of all time – Lord Voldemort – only to have survived with nothing but a lightning scar on his forehead. Voldemort perished then, and considered to be dead ending the many years of darkness that the living world was going through at the time.
The remainder of the movie detailed around Harry’s (and our) exploration into the world of Wizards, his history, the school and his education – and of course – Voldemort.
If you look at the stats now, you would see that that the movie did incredibly well – and rightfully so. If we compare the series as a whole this may be considered as just the beginning for some but this in my opinion is the most important movie of them all – it laid the foundation for everything that came after it and introduced to many of us the magical world of Harry Potter and wizards.
I was one of those people (as a kid) who went ahead and watched the movie before the book. This continued only for a few movies until I was old enough to figure that out and read the books. The movie has been quite faithful to the book in that sense as well – but more on that on a separate post – check the link at the top!
After I watched the movie I too like many other kids around the world were waving sticks and things around the home pushing all our strength to cast the spell of “Wingardium Leviosa” (just like Hermione explained) to make objects fly around the room. The book and the movie may have the smallest of events in magnitude but we seldom forget how dark and profound its meaning is as well – especially the concept of The Mirror of The Erised. As a kid o understood nothing but as I grew up and watched the film’s it got me thinking more about, and what it’s deeper meaning was, you know? I feel we need to talk more about it on that note as well!
I’m not going to go into talking about the plot that much anyways!
Although the book for this movie came for me after , the casting was important here considering that these actors would go ahead and play the number of sequels that would come along with it as well. On that note, casting, actor performance was everything I loved – aside from some other characters that came along for me the core characters always had this appearance in my mind as I read the books.
And the next and probably even more important part – the set. Be it Privet Drive, the school, Hagrid’s Hut, the grounds, the Quidditch match and everything. The vision and execution must be applauded. Although the movie was released in the early 2000s, the CGI and others are for me still quite good! Of course it would be a stretch saying the set was an exact replica that we may have imagined from the books because it comes down to the most minute details. But I don’t want to be that picky either and would say I really loved it!
Anyways no matter what the critics or reviews have to say for me and many of those people who were young kids – this movie and the entire franchise later on opened up an imaginative new universe that we love, and still love to this day. We didn’t have the internet or anything else but just classrooms, playgrounds and family meet ups where a chunk of our conversation goes on about Harry Potter. On that note this first movie is really special, magical and one my top favourite amongst the series of movies!
Well, what do you think? Do let me know in the comments! For more posts about the book, book versus movie etc. please check out the main post at the top! Thank you for reading!
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