Time for the March report:

First, book-wise, which I’m sure is the main reason you guys are reading this, I want to report that I worked through the problems with that problematic scene. 

Weirdly, this extended scene doesn’t feel all that different, but it’s shorter now and the people in it act the way people act, which is nice. 

And with that, we segue into a pop cultural topic. 

When my son had just turned ten years old, I decided it was time for him to see Star Wars. I was a little older than him when I saw it in theaters in 1977, but I figured ten was the perfect age to see that movie. 

Anyway, I’ve told this story before, but we were watching the film together and, right in the middle of the climactic dog fight, where the X-wings are flying down the trench trying to explode the Death Star, my own son got up off the couch and walked away. He just wasn’t interested. I watched him sit at his computer and start up Minecraft game while the TV was filling the room with pew pew noises.

Now, there are a lot of platitudes that could be mined from a story like that, and I like to think I’ve typed my share of them into the big empty void of the internet, but I was reminded of the incident once again last Wednesday.

Because here’s the thing: I showed him the Star Wars movie without taking into account that he had already played the Lego Star Wars video game.

Those Lego games take every moment from a film and stretch it until every plot point of the movie needs fifteen minutes of smashing and building things before you can move on to the next. (I exaggerate, maybe, but not by much) The point is, it’s slow as hell, and along with all the other reasons my son would not respond positively to old timey science fiction movies like Star Wars, is the simple fact that he’d already been there and done that, at length.

And the reason all this came up again was because the teaser trailer for the Wizard Boy tv remake dropped. 

Personally, I have no interest in watching the upcoming Wizard Boy tv show. For every pound sterling that goes into that franchise, some portion is diverted into taking rights away from vulnerable populations. I’m not going to put a ha’penny into that. I don’t care if this new show is The Wire for fantasy YA lovers, human rights matter more.

But once people on my Bluesky timeline start talking about how terrible the teaser trailer looks, I absolutely want to see how and why it sucks. 

So I did and it looks slow. Harry deals with bullies in a muggle school. Aunt Petunia giving his hair a hate-trim. Harry and Hagrid sitting on the tube, having a conversation.

It looks like they’re going to show all the usual story beats, but slowed down to fill up a streaming season, and you know they’re not going to take IP this popular and make fewer than ten episodes a season.

So maybe that’s why the teaser–a teaser!–feels so slack. 

I’ve seen people complain about the way it looks, but I like the candlelight aesthetic for Hogwarts. It’s dumb–magic lanterns would make more sense–but it’s pretty.

Still, so much feels recycled from the films. (Confession: I haven’t read the books since Family Reading Time, more than 15 years ago, so the movies are my main reference.) The train scene, the wand shop, even the lettering on the Hogwarts envelope, it’s all stuff we’ve seen before. 

Worse, the tone is reverential when it should be playful and fun. And they’re button-mashing the “You’re secretly the specialest boy ever, Harry!” button when the character’s most endearing trait is his desire to be ordinary. And Hagrid has been reimagined to be smaller than life. 

And let me be honest: I’ve watched worse things. I recently told some friends that last years Red Sonja remake was a scrappy B-movie. I watched the live-action Last Airbender remake. And years ago, when the first D&D movie came out with Jeremy Irons chewing up the scenery, I knew it would be terrible but I put a 20-sider into my pocket as a talisman against high expectations and saw it in a theater.

But I won’t be watching this, not unless Rowling has a sudden realization that she’s become one of the bigots she was trying to lampoon when she wrote the Malfoy family. Or if she predeceases me, I guess. But I don’t wish her harm. I wish her enlightenment. 

However, if there is any force in this universe that will lessen Rowling’s ability to hurt vulnerable people with the power of her overstuffed bank accounts, it won’t be righteousness. It’ll be the perception that her new show is a dull, meandering retread of the same old same old. Which is what it appears to be. 

Back to work for me.

But first, I want to thank everyone who has been chipping in extra to my Patreon since my wife was struck by a car. We are incredibly grateful for your help.

Talk to you guys next month.