Oh man...I guess I need to talk about this.
I recently finished reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I have some thoughts.
1. WHY IT'S OKAY THAT THIS IS GARBAGE
I have no one to blame but myself.
This is not a novel. It's a play, and plays are...different.
Okay, plays are weird and dumb.
No, see, plays are weird and dumb and that's totally fine. I don't know why that is. I don't know when we all collectively decided that if a group of people were going to get together on a soundstage and film themselves pretending to be other people then we were going to demand some semblance of professionalism and coherence, but if they did it right in front us while we all sat there and watched, fuck it, do whatever the hell you want, we're just happy to be here.
Theater people convinced themselves that a Broadway Spider-Man musical scored by Bono and the goddamn Edge was a really, really, really good idea, even as people were literally falling from the ceiling. "No, it's fine, it's the theater, this is normal."
Theater is different and as such, it should be judged by different standards. Different, weird, weird standards.
So Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play. And I have a feeling, that if I saw this play, I would enjoy it. Even having read the script, I think this has the makings of an enjoyably kinetic stage show.
I bet this is a good play.
Sadly, you can no longer pay money to see this.
2. THAT SAID, THIS IS STILL TOTAL GARBAGE
You cannot, however, read a play. You can only read a script for a play. And a script for a play cannot quite capture the spectacle of the finished product. It is, after all, only words on a page.
And the words in this book are often very, very dumb indeed.
The trouble, I suppose, is that this "book" never should have been released. Of course idiots like me wanted to read it. Of course there were literal truck loads of money to be made and, I presume, deposited into J.K. Rowling's Scrooge McDuck-style money vault.
Still, at the end of the day, this is a play and that's how it should be enjoyed. Calling it the "Eighth Story" and putting it out like a new Harry Potter book means this work needs to be critiqued not only as a play, but as a "story." There are no actors here with me in my apartment. And although I am prone to generating theatrical amounts of smoke whenever I make dinner, this is not a theater. So I read this book and I found much of it lacking. But first...
3. MALFOY IS BAE
I want to start though with what I like about this story, which begins and ends with all things Malfoy. Draco Malfoy is the most sympathetic and relatable character in the story. His son Scorpius is the most enjoyable new character in the story. If this book were titled Harry Potter and the Way Better Father than Harry Potter I would have bought two copies (just kidding, I already have two copies. My mom accidentally sent me hers. I'm probably on a list somewhere now.)
4. Professional Fan Fiction
This story reminded me of two things. First, it reminded me quite a bit of The Force Awakens, a movie I mostly enjoyed. Not that the plots are anything alike, mind you. The similarity is in the overuse of the familiar in order to ease us into something new. In other words, this was Harry Potter essentially eating itself.
If you haven't read the book (and I'm not sure why you're reading this if you haven't - even I'm a bit dubious as to its ultimate value to society) there are a lot of callbacks to previous Harry Potter books, in particular The Goblet of Fire. In fact, we actively re-live multiple scenes from previous stories.
I don't mind mining past events occasionally if it advances the plot, but in The Cursed Child the past is the plot. There is nearly nothing "new" here. Almost everything is recycled and reused from previous adventures. That's why it feels so much like fan fiction to me. If you're not familiar with fan fiction, it's when fans take their favorite characters and settings and create new stories - except those stories are rarely new, and are usually just jumbled re-imaginations of stories that have already been told. (Casual aside - the most well-known and successful fan fiction of all-time is actually 50 Shades of Grey, which began as Twilight fan fiction. The more you know...)
By calling this "the eighth story" the writers and publishers have created an expectation that this was something new. But it isn't. And while that's bad enough, a large part of my frustration comes down to what they choose to recycle, specifically...
5. Nobody gives a shit about Cedric Goddamn Diggory
Yes, the plot of the "new" Harry Potter book revolves around Mailbox-Head Diggory. Without getting too far in depth, everything happens because Amos Diggory wants his dead son back...20-plus years after the fact. And how does he propose to make that happen?
6. Fuck Time-Turners
Ultimately, I think the reason why I'm not able to enjoy Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is because I can't just let lazy time travel stories alone. I recently re-watched Back to the Future and...yeesh, that movie's kinda dumb. I realize that opinion invalidates every other opinion I've ever had, but that's probably for the best.
Anyway, I don't want to get into a lengthy beat-by-beat breakdown of why the time travel in this story is hellaciously stupid, so hopefully it is enough to say that at one point two children get stuck in the past. The fate of the world more or less rests on their shoulders. And Harry Potter, who is living in the present says, "It's up to our sons now - they're the only ones who can save us." Ignoring the fact that WHATEVER IT IS THEY DID OR DID NOT DO TO SAVE YOU HAS ALREADY HAPPENED. SO IF THE WORLD IS NOT RUINED, ONE MAY SUPPOSE THAT THINGS IN THE PAST TURNED OUT JUST FINE.
I don't know, man. I think if this was not presented as quite such an important "thing" I wouldn't be nearly so disillusioned. Because again, I'm sure this is a lovely play. But as a story - and more specifically as a Harry Potter story - it just didn't work for me.
On the bright side, however, Fat Ron is still fat. Some dreams never die.