Harry Potter started its franchise as a young adult fantasy story for younger kids, but that all changed with the release of one book and movie. The first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was about pre-teen students joining Hogwarts to both get their education and learn magic. There was danger, and an evil wizard that the kids had to stop, but it was all mostly harmless children’s fantasy action. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets kept things the same, with the kids one year older, but still mostly involved in some dangerous action that had little in the way of deadly stakes. The movies were close to the same, with family-friendly filmmaker Chris Columbus getting no darker than The Goonies in a magical world. Everything changed after that.
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In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, things grew up fast, with Harry learning the man who was told to have killed his parents had escaped from the wizarding prison, and a plot threatening to destroy the magical world began to unravel. The movie also got very dark, replacing the family-friendly Chris Columbus with future Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, who ensured the franchise was now geared toward a much older audience.
Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban Forced the Audience to Grow Up Fast
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was where the franchise began growing up, and it wasn’t just the movie. Released in 1999, this was the novel that introduced Sirius Black into the Harry Potter universe, and explained Azkaban, a prison where creatures known as Dementors were set to guard prisoners and leave them feeling hopeless with fear. After Sirius escaped, the Dementors went to Hogwarts and began to negatively affect the kids.
The first two books in the series had high stakes, but only in the fact that Harry and his friends had to solve puzzles and get past traps to achieve their goals. They were perfect stories for young readers and were mainly light reading. However, with Sirius possibly being responsible for Harry’s parents’ deaths, it raised the stakes, and when Harry sought vengeance, it took the series to a much darker place.
This also introduced Professor Lupin, a professor who turned out to be a werewolf, and it revealed that Ron Weasley’s rat was actually a Death Eater named Peter Pettigrew. This is where the entire idea of Voldemort returning began, and with the actual threat of death, it raised the stakes to a level where this was no longer reading for young students, but was more of a dark young adult novel for a much older age group.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was even more noticeable for how it changed the movie franchise. Gone was Chris Columbus’s colorful world of wonder, which he painted in the first two movies. This was no longer a place of dreams with some dark secrets underground. Instead, as the Dementors showed up, it became a dark movie, shot in drab tones, and there was clearly death and destruction around every corner. The first two movies were fine for young kids. Things started to grow up in this third movie, and it was very much necessary for parental guidance warnings.
Many fans consider this the best of the Harry Potter movies, and for good reason. It not only shifted the tone to attract more adult audience attention, but Cuarón was the best director to work on any of the Harry Potter releases. The kids were starting to grow up here, and their performances improved as a result. It also had more violence and dread, and the franchise never looked back.
The Harry Potter Franchise Changed After Prisoner of Azkaban for the Better
While Cuarón never returned after this one movie, and no one else matched his brilliance as a visual director, the franchise maintained the adult-oriented fantasy tale that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban displayed. In fact, things got even darker in the fourth movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The arrival of the Dementors and Sirius Black caused the third movie to get dark, but the fourth movie saw a student actually die at the hands of Voldemort’s Death Eaters.
Once Voldemort ordered Peter Pettigrew to murder Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), the series had crossed the line, and there was no turning back. By the final movie in the franchise, everyone from Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape to Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Dobby, and Mad-Eye Moody all died, among others. This went from a kids’ tale of wonder and magic to a movie about an all-out war, with casualties, and children forced to grow up and become soldiers to protect their school.
It all started in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where J.K. Rowling created a darker tale, and then Alfonso Cuarón turned the kids’ movie franchise into one that was just as special for adults. Bringing the darkness and death into the story is what made Harry Potter such a beloved series of books and movies, and it never would have been as great without growing up first.
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