Last year, Max, formerly HBO Max, announced a new series: a seven-season adaptation of the Harry Potter books. With “A Game of Thrones,” based upon the book series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” HBO has shown they can adapt books into TV shows well.
But even with a high production value, HBO’s new Harry Potter series faces a dilemma: it isn’t the first screen adaptation JK Rowling’s series has received. The popular book series has already been adapted into a well-received and beloved movie series that concluded over a decade ago.
Likewise, Disney+ premiered a similar series based on the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series earlier this year. Both book series are similar in terms of intended audience, storytelling and content. However, a Percy Jackson series feels much more appropriate. But why?
While the first two Percy Jackson books were adapted into films, they weren’t well received, changing the story and characters in ways that didn’t stand up to the original books. The new Disney+ series brought something new to the Percy Jackson series. With its past well-received movie series, Harry Potter will have a harder time truly bringing anything new to Rowling’s franchise.
Furthermore, the recent announcements bring to light a larger issue within the media industry: the dilemma with remakes.
So what makes a remake worth it or not?
An example is “The Last of Us Part 1” (2022), a remake of “The Last of Us” (2013). The game revolves around Joel and Ellie, an unlikely duo who travel across a post-apocalyptic America and develop a deep connection between the two characters. The 2013 game brought an amazing story, characters and graphics to the video game industry; this is why “The Last of Us Part 1” falls flat, not as a game overall but as a remake.
As a game, it’s great, with refined gameplay and a well-detailed world. But the 2022 version keeps close to the same story and characters (with improvements in performances and facial animations), changing very little to actually improve upon the 2013 version.
With the 2013 video game version of “The Last of Us,” an amazing game that still holds up well in 2023, the new game brings essentially nothing new except updated graphics and gameplay, especially considering the $70 it costs for the base game.
So what makes some remakes worth it? For most remakes, it’s simply the ability to bring something new.
A clear example is another game series that has recently gained remakes: the horror series “Resident Evil.” It began in 1996 with “Resident Evil” and its following mainline seven games have been highly regarded and influential in the video game industry.
With such a long history — including the eight main games that range across several genres from pure horror to action-survival; a large number of spinoff games that explore a wide variety of stories within the “Resident Evil” world; books, comics, TV shows and a six movie series — the “Resident Evil” series has had a lot of ups and downs with quality over the last nearly three decades.
In 2019, the original 1998 “Resident Evil 2” gained a remake. As is tradition with the series, the game features a campy story set within the fictional Raccoon City and follows new RCPD officer Leon Kennedy and a woman looking for her lost brother, Claire Redfield.
Like The Last of Us Part 1, it’s great as a game with good graphics, gameplay, story and overall ambiance as a horror game. But it also succeeds as a remake.
Firstly, plenty of time had passed since the original release over two decades. And with such a time span, the remake offers completely remade gameplay, graphics and maps that are vastly different from the first. The characters are also updated to better fit the current pool of games in the 2010s and 2020s.
It’s able to bring something truly new to both old and new audiences. Since 2019, Resident Evil 3 and 4 have also received remakes, both of which succeeded similarly to the reasons for Resident Evil 2 in 2019.
Now we can look towards the film industry with the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series. As great as the HBO Harry Potter series could be, it has a long road to truly bring anything new to the series to justify its existence. Percy Jackson simply needed to be better than the 2010 and 2013 movies.
The Harry Potter series, as a fantasy story, has an expansive world outside of the main story. But, even in the world of remakes like Harry Potter, Max has a simple solution to tell a new story. To bring something new, HBO Max simply needs to tell one or many of these stories, which the announced series likely isn’t able to bring.
Even with good characters, performances and directing, remakes often fail to actually bring anything new. This doesn’t mean you, as a viewer, can’t or shouldn’t enjoy them; however, it is important to consider the behind-the-scenes of many of the remakes.
