It’s Christmas eve day here, so I’ll go easy one you while you finish that last minute gift wrapping.

I’ve now read the first two Harry Potter books and seen all the movies. (I planned on reading all the books but that is allegedly a Christmas present and it’s not Christmas yet as of this writing. Let’s see if I made Santa’s good list.)

Without a doubt my favorite Harry Potter movie is the first one.

That’s favourite, to you non U.S. Americans.

(Since the movies seem to follow the books closely enough, I think I’ll go ahead and get on record and say the first Harry Potter book will remain my favorite, too.

Each successive movie is called “dark.”

They’re dark.

They get darker.

And really, The first movie was about a little orphan boy who gets put with his horrible uncle and is eventually able to escape to a wonderful paradise that is the wizarding school.

Then the happy little boy grows up and his adventures are much more dramatic than they are fun. The first movie was fun. If you watch the very last one, Deathly Hallows part two, and then immediately watch Sorcerer’s Stone after it, you will be amazed at the differences. Sure, the teenager is suddenly 11 years old, but there are other big, big, BIG differences.

The themes are sadder.

The actual colors of the later movies are much darker.

Again, non-USers: colours

The first movie is happy and bright and colorful and very sunny. I don’t know if the sun shines at all in the later movies.

Those last two or three may have been shot at midnight for all I know.

So, for my money, the first movie and maybe the first two are the best. Definitely the first one is THE best. After that one, I wanted to see what happened to the characters, but I didn’t enjoy the rest of the movies anywhere near as much as the first one.

Part of that has to do with the fact that the first one was original and the second and subsequent ones just not be anywhere near as original.

And part of it is, the first one was a lot more fun.

Imagine building a series.

The challenge of making each book as good as, as original as, as entertaining as, the first.

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday and she asked if I was going to make any of my books into series. In fact, she kind of assumed each title was a series, because the books she loves are a series. (There’s potential gold in those series hills, too. I’ll have to think about that in 2017. I prided myself on being original and, like John Belushi, never doing a sequel. But there is good money in building a fan base and developing a series for them – as long as the quality maintains consistent. So we’ll have to see. Lots try to make a good series; few succeed.)

But back to HP.

That’s Harry Potter, to you non Potterites.