Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts

Hello!

Sorry this is late! The wi-fi at the Centre has been having one of its tantrums, but it's back online again (see what I did there?). Anyway, this post is about yesterday. I think I'll do another one about what happened today (Bath! Stourhead Gardens! Stonehenge!), but I'll probably write it tomorrow because of homework. Anyway, this is my rundown of the HP Studio tours. An alternate title for this post is "A Rant on Commercialism," but I'll get to that later. Prepare yourself for a little bit of crazy, though.

I should probably preface this by letting you know that I have very strong feelings and opinions about Harry Potter. I absolutely love the books. Like so many other kids in my generation, they formed a large part of my childhood. The books are not only fun and engrossing reads, but they have a strong morality and an appreciation for goodness, loyalty, bravery, and, above all, love that is heartening and inspirational. These books and the characters in them will always hold a place in my heart.

So, yes, I love Harry Potter. And I didn’t not love the studio tour. In fact, there were lots of things that I really, really liked about it. I mean, the movies have never really been my favorite things. Don’t get me wrong, they’re actually quite good, but they’re not the books. I understand that they have to cut stuff out to make them fit into movies, and I think they do the best they can, but I feel like a lot of the complexity of the story and characters is lost on the screen version, and you know how I love complexity.  I do still enjoy watching them, but I’ve never really been a fanatic for them. I read the books over and over, but there are several of the movies that I’ve only seen once. That said, I did really, really like seeing the sets, props, and costumes from the movies. There were a lot of details that I got to see that you never see on camera, and it was really cool to see the care and love that went into everything.

I started the day in full-on excited fangirl mode. It was just fun to be there with other people who love Harry Potter and just to be doing something so completely nerdy and fun. The tour starts with a little introductory movie, but on the wall on the side of the line where you wait to go in to the movie they had this bad boy:

Harry's actual cupboard under the stairs! It's so little and adorable and depressing! It definitely got me in the right mood to start the tour. Then, there was this fun movie about how Harry Potter had sort of caught the world's imagination, and how it unites us all or something. Then, we entered the Great Hall. It was really quite cool, but smaller than I'd thought it would be. It was interesting to see the costumes they had there, too. I took lots of pictures, but I'll just post some of my favorites:
Here's Harry's first set of Hogwarts robes:

And here's Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Snape:

There was a section with wigs, which I thought was really interesting. You know that people like Hagrid and Lucius Malfoy are wearing wigs, but they also had wigs for Hermione, Ron, and Draco, which I wasn't really expecting since I'd assumed they were just using their real hair.

Then we got into some of the sets. Here's the Gryffindor boys' dormitory (Neville's bed is in the foreground):

 And here's Ron's headless body standing in the Gryffindor common room. I really want to go back and watch the movies now, because I feel like this isn't how I remember these rooms. Maybe part of it is that I'm never too concentrated on the background when I watch the movies, but I think another part of it is that I have mental pictures of the rooms that are a bit stronger than the movie versions. It'll be really interesting to watch the movies again, though. The funny thing is that all the sets are smaller than you'd expect.

And here's me with the costumes that our trio wore in the final battle at Hogwarts:

The costume that surprised me the most was this one of Voldemort's:

It's like a light lime green color. What? The card says it's from the Half-Blood Prince which, granted, I've only seen once, but I think I would have remembered this costume if I'd seen it. It just seems a little fruity for the Dark Lord. I guess maybe it shows up differently on camera or something. It just made me laugh.
Here's Dolores Umbridge's Ministry of Magic office, which I sort of loved. She's such an awful, awful person, which is what makes her such a great character. She's the reason why the fifth book is so great.

Here are some of her costumes. I really liked the details. The brooch on the one on the left is a cat, which you'd probably never pick up onscreen. I love stuff like that.

Then we went outside. Here's me on the Knight bus, which was pretty cool:

And here's Number Four Privet Drive, which is an actual house-sized house:

My favorite part of the tour—probably everyone’s favorite part—was the Hogwarts castle scale model at the end. It was huge—much bigger than I was expecting. And it was so beautifully detailed. It just looked absolutely real, like you could just walk down and go inside and start your magical education.  And believe me, I wanted to.

It was just absolutely incredible.

Then, at the end of the tour, there’s this quote on the wall from J. K. Rowling: “Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home." Beautiful.

And then… the gift shop.
(This is the rant bit. You can skip this paragraph if you want to)

This is what left a sour taste in my mouth. It just felt like hypocrisy. There you have that beautiful quote from J.K. and now you’re trying to fleece us for all we’re worth. Everything in the gift shop cost about twice as much as the highest price I’d be willing to pay for it. It just felt so wrong to me. The people who are coming to the studio tour and want to buy the merchandise are the people who’ve purchased and loved the books and movies. These are the people who have made the people of the Harry Potter franchise very wealthy, so it seems like the movie people could stand to give back a little. It just felt wrong of them to try to take advantage of people’s HP love like that. Don’t tell us that we’re all one big happy Potter family and then try to rob us. I get that it’s a movie franchise and it has to be commercialized because that’s what movie franchises are for, but I felt like it could have been done in a less tasteless way. In all fairness, much of the merchandise was very well made (except for some designs on t-shirts and sweatshirts and things that were very tacky) and I had to keep telling myself no on lots of things. I would happily have purchased plenty of things if the prices had been the least bit reasonable, but it just felt like they were money-grubbing to me. It felt like a desecration of art. I guess it’s just using economic principles to charge more since the people who love Harry Potter the most are usually willing to pay more, but it just gave a bad taste to the whole experience. I'm not saying that I think there shouldn't have been a shop or that the movie people aren't entitled to make a profit off of their work. I think there is a balance that can be struck between commercialization and respect for art. This gift shop, however, just hurt my soul. It’s very similar to how I felt about Harry Potter World in Orlando, except I disliked that much more (I won’t get into that here).

Maybe I’m just a crazy cheapskate. Everyone else absolutely loved it, and I definitely loved the tour part of it, and I’m glad I went. The detail and craftsmanship on the sets, props, and costumes were beautiful and I really enjoyed seeing them. However, my deep and abiding love for Harry Potter also gives me very strong opinions about Harry Potter and I don’t like to feel like I’m being taken advantage of, especially by something that I love and something that claims to love me as a fan (see the above Rowling quote). I guess that’s just a problem with the entire movie industry in general, I just don’t care about most other franchises the way I care about HP.

Anyway, that’s my take on the Harry Potter Studio Tours. If you get the chance, I would definitely go. Maybe the parts that bothered me won’t bother you, and even if they do, there’s enough good for the experience to be worth it.

Thanks for reading and putting up with my craziness. If the internet doesn't go down, I'll tell you about Stonehenge and stuff tomorrow!