Summary
- Some scenes and creative decisions in the Harry Potter movies have not aged well, such as Snape physically abusing some of the students and the awkward bathing scene with Moaning Myrtle.
- Inconsistencies between the books and movies, like Dumbledore's character change in Goblet of Fire and Harry's incorrect eye color, become more and more noticeable with each subsequent viewing.
- The lack of LGBTQ+ representation and problematic portrayals of certain characters in the movies are missed opportunities for promoting diversity and educating younger audiences.
Based on the best-selling book series of the same name, the Harry Potter movies remain incredibly popular even to this day. There are eight of them in total, each with its own unique quirks and memorable plot points. However, not everything about the Harry Potter movies has aged gracefully, with certain scenes and creative decisions being somewhat problematic by modern standards.
Of course, just as a few bad apples fail to spoil the bunch, many will see these scenes as little more than minor blemishes on an otherwise fantastic franchise. Some of them are actually quite funny due to how random and bizarre they are, yet fans will still be hoping for better when HBO's Harry Potter television series eventually sees the light of day.
1 Snape Getting Physical with Students
There are plenty of dangers hidden away inside the walls of Hogwarts, leading many to question its suitability as an educational facility. Given that most of the students' parents are alumni of the school, they're presumably well aware of these dangers, yet are still willing to entrust the care of their children to Dumbledore and his teaching staff.
One has to wonder though how happy they'd be to learn about teachers manhandling their kids or hitting them with books as Snape, a former Death Eater, does to Harry, Ron, and Hermione in The Goblet of Fire. It's played off for laughs in the movie, but for many, it serves only as a grim reminder of the corporal punishment that was commonplace in many British schools during the sixties and seventies.
2 Dumbledore's Goblet of Fire Freakout
In the book version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore calmly asks Harry whether he put his name in the titular goblet. In the movie, however, he straight up loses his mind and begins shouting at Harry like a madman. The scene really comes out of nowhere and is completely out of keeping with Dumbledore's character and nature.
At the time, it was quite easy to look past this scene as it accounted for such a small proportion of the movie's total runtime. With each subsequent viewing though, it stands out more and more and is an excellent example of how certain aspects of the Harry Potter movies have aged incredibly poorly in the decades since their initial release.
3 Moaning Myrtle's Awkward Bathing Scene
The scene with Dumbledore wasn't the only strange directorial decision in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Far from it, in fact. A little later on in the movie, Harry heads to the prefect's bathroom and decides to take a bath. Not long after disrobing, he's joined by Moaning Myrtle and things quickly begin to get very very weird.
According to series lore, Moaning Myrtle was only 14 when she died, which makes her awkward sexual advances toward Harry incredibly inappropriate. It could be argued that maybe ghosts age after they die (although there's no evidence to suggest this), but if that were the case, a woman in her seventies spying and hitting on a naked teenager is even more gross.
4 Harry Has His Mother's Eyes
As anybody who has read the books will know, Harry is often told that he has his mother's eyes. To be fair, those who've seen the movies will have heard this old chestnut plenty of times as well, only in the movies, it simply isn't true. A young Daniel Radcliffe found colored contact lenses to be far too uncomfortable, resulting in his character having blue eyes instead of Harry's signature green.
Back in the days of standard definition, this is a detail that many will perhaps have overlooked, but when watching the movies back on 4K devices, this glaring inconsistency is difficult to miss. Granted, it doesn't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things (though it does cheapen Snape's emotional death scene somewhat), but it begs the question of why they didn't just remove the line about Harry's eye color from the movies; just as they did so many other book details.
5 The Troll in the Dungeon
Time and technological advancements have not only shone a light on some of the inconsistencies between the Harry Potter books and movies but also the limitations of special effects around the turn of the century. To the credit of all those involved, a lot of the practical effects in the movies still hold up pretty well, as too do certain special effects like the Basilisk in Chamber of Secrets.
However, there are plenty of special effects that have aged poorly in the Harry Potter movies, one such example of which can be found in The Philosopher's Stone. The Troll that Professor Quirrel so famously warns the faculty about looks awful by modern standards and seems more befitting of a low-budget B Movie than a Holywood blockbuster.
6 The Straightwashing of Dumbledore
Throughout the first six Harry Potter books there are no openly gay characters, nor are there any real signs of LGBTQ+ representation. To be fair to J.K. Rowling, in the final book, the author did attempt to make amends for this by revealing that Dumbledore and the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald were once romantically entwined, though this ended up being one of many book storylines that never made it into the movies.
It's unclear why exactly the movies' producers opted to omit Dumbledore's sexuality from The Deathly Hallows, but given how much fluff made it into the two movies, one suspects that it had very little to do with runtime. Either way, to cut such an important plot point seems a little out of touch in this day and age, not to mention a missed opportunity to educate young adults about sexuality.
7 Problematic Portrayals
The Harry Potter books are pretty bad when it comes to diversity and representation, but the movies are arguably even worse. Characters like Seamus Finnigan and Padma Patil can at times come across as racist caricatures of their respective nationalities and ethnicities, while some of the female characters in the movies are also cast in a truly awful light.
A great example of this can be seen with Lavender Brown, who is regularly chastised and berated by other characters for being too girly. Ron treats her like a tool with which to make Hermione jealous and Hermione is constantly talking down to her because Lavender is not as smart as she is. Worse still, the character was played by black actresses in both Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban but was then recast as a young white girl for the movie in which she actually got some real screentime.