harry potter and the philosopher's stone

This film, emerging four years after the original novel, marked the birth of a new consolatory pop culture myth, to rival Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, and the circumstances of its own arrival became mythic, from Rowling’s own early poverty to the snapping up of film rights. Harry Potter emerged into cinemas as we were still all stunned by 9/11, but yet to see the retaliatory “war on terror”. It’s amazing and poignant to remember the sheer excitement of that HPATPS premiere in November 2001: I myself called it an “old-fashioned pre-September 11 news event”.

The Harry Potter franchise itself is still a colossal commercial entity, an IP Shangri La, although its creator JK Rowling is now at the centre of an acrimonious gender politics debate – undreamed of in 2001 – and the world of children’s and YA fiction, which she almost singlehandedly revived all over the world, is strongly policed on just these issues. Sadly, the actors who played the original Dumbledore, Snape, Uncle Vernon and Mr Ollivander – Richard Harris, Alan Rickman, Richard Griffiths and John Hurt – are no longer with us. Then, on Harrys eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is whisked away by a beetly-eyed giant of a man and enrolled in Hogwarts School of Witchscraft and Wizardry.

Then Harry starts receiving mysterious letters and his life is changed for ever. He lives with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and cousin Dudley, who make him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. T he very first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (or “Sorcerer’s Stone” for its release in the United States, where audiences were assumed to be unfamiliar with this alchemical term) is now re-released after 20 years, into a rather different world. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy.

Harry potter and the philosopher's stone