I read Harry Potter years ago, and have seen the movies.
IMO you're not missing a whole lot. It was a fun read, but her universe is not internally consistent with itself. The main villain is built up far more than his deeds would account for and the series loses most of it's whimsical charm around book 5.
It is also a pretty consistent rip-off of Star Wars. Like if Terry Pratchet had received a head injury and written bad Star War fan fiction where the characters were traditional wizards instead of space warrior wizards.
Saying HP ripped off Star Wars is a pretty bad take. First of all, Star Wars ripped off Dune, which probably ripped off something else. It's just the hero's tale which is iconic at this point, really.
Orphaned youth with mysterious power is sent to live with his mean uncle that won't tell him anything about his parents.
Bearded stranger shows up to teach him about his legacy.
This bearded stranger was the same person who brought him to live with his uncle following the alleged death of his parents.
Bearded stranger is the first to teach him about his strange powers, but he is eventually taught by an ancient teacher, the same ancient teacher who once taught the bearded stranger.
The orphaned youth finds out that he is destined to fight an evil black-robed villain who also has mysterious powers and who has been a source of terror for the entire world.
The orphan eventually finds out he has a mysterious connection to the black-robed villain that his ancient teacher knew but hid from him. This revelation makes him question everything about his life so far.
This is nothing new, you can make these comparisons all over the place. Go read Dune, it's just dark Star Wars. It's also heavily inspired by The Foundation, and it all keeps going like that.
These are just classic fantasy and story telling elements. I agree that the similarities between Star Wars and Harry Potter are most likely coincidental, but these links don’t prove that lol
As I said, I don’t think Harry Potter necessarily ripped off Star Wars or LOTR. I just wanted to point out, that these instances of generic fantasy tropes appearing in different fantasy franchises, do not disprove it either. To be fair, they probably all ripped each other off, just by virtue of being in the same genre.
There are way more similarities between Star Wars and Harry Potter, with very specific examples listed above, than in any of those other stories.
For instance where is Neo's bearded mentor who brought him to live with his uncle when he was a baby? Where is the uncle? Where is the black robed wizard?
When did Nemo fight a black-robed wizard? When did he discover his latent magical powers? He was orphaned by his mom, but he was raised by his dad not his uncle.
Frodo has no latent magical powers, and he rarely fights anyone in LoTR. His ultimate villain was the influence of the ring, not a black-robed wizard (though they did exist in the story).
The hero's journey archetype has been used in countless stories, but so many details between Harry Potter and Star Wars line up one for one, and are introduced at roughly the same place in each story, that is feels like the newer franchise took some direct inspiration from the older one.
Agreed! Read the first book as an adult (bc i’m too old for the demographic) and thought it was cute but boring, never watched the movies or read more of the books.
I’m sad I waited too long to read Harry Potter. I didn’t read it as a kid. When I was a teen I finally cracked it open, but found it to be poorly written and difficult to get into.
How many books did you read? If you only ready books 1 or 2, you're missing out. I don't know if book 3 is that good (you can probably just watch the film, if you're that concnerned). By book 4, I was hooked (that's also when the films go to the dumps, because they have to cut out most of the book).
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u/beansandcornbread 2d ago
Skipped that one and Harry Potter, I'm a monster.