Every Harry Potter movie, ranked by A.V. Club review

Warner Bros. took no chances bringing the first of the Potter books to multiplexes. The adaptation that launched the series is the very definition of a safe play, designed to give people what they wanted—which to say, what they already read and loved. Sorcerer’s Stone stays slavishly true to the events of the novel and stages them with a kind of sub-Spielbergian twinkle; The A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias would later describe it as a “pop-up novelization.” His full review of the hugely successful first film was similarly withering:Harry Potter begins to lose its grip during an expensive-looking “Quidditch” match, a game that’s like a cross between Rollerball and the pod race in The Phantom Menace, but is about as exciting as watching someone else play a video game. At 152 minutes, the film tries to squeeze in as much of the Rowling tome as possible, but the length grows more oppressive just as it should be gaining momentum for the finale. More Potter movies are in the pipeline, but the franchise seems exhausted halfway through the first. And for a second opinion pretty similar to the first—and issued years later—read .

In a decision likely made out of both necessity (because of the length of the novel) and greed, Warner Bros. opted to divide Rowling’s final Potter novel into two movies. That left a penultimate film that sometimes feels like very expensive wheel spinning—a downbeat hangout movie, trudging through soap operatic character work and exposition before the fireworks factory offered by the rousing final movie. Deathly Hallows: Part 1 has its fans—it’s a sleeper favorite among those who appreciate its melancholic detours and eccentric touches (like a Nick Cave waltz and an animated flashback). AVC critic Tasha Robinson is not among their ranks:A long middle sequence of wandering (and grim, gloomy posing) is set against glorious, Lord Of The Rings-like natural backdrops, which unfortunately just heighten the stiffness. The pacing is endlessly aggravating: It’s just as well [director David] Yates didn’t attempt to cram the final book’s action into an eviscerated single film, and it’s admirable how he attempts to stretch out, to patiently build a mood and let audiences feel the characters’ directionless anxiety. But the result is a herky-jerky movie that alternates glacial brooding with unwieldy chunks of exposition and frenzied, rushed battles.

The Order Of The Phoenix is notable mostly for who’s standing behind the camera, not what happens in front of it: This was the first film of the series directed by David Yates, who would go on to make every installment afterwards, as well as the two Fantastic Beasts spinoff films. Narratively, it’s very much a transitional installment, bridging the tragedies of book four and book six with a… not terribly memorable story. That was the perspective, anyway, of Scott Tobias’ review of Phoenix, the first Harry Potter movie eligible for a letter grade from us. Of course, it got a very A.V. Club B-:Save for the thrilling opening sequence, there’s not much to remember about the film beyond Staunton (Vera Drake), who masks her bottomless malevolence behind a pasted-on patrician smile. During this transitional stage, Dumbledore’s Army and the Order Of The Phoenix prepare for bigger fights ahead—and presumably, more exciting movies, too..

While most of the Potter adaptations range from fairly faithful to rather exhausting in their fidelity, the fourth movie represents a rare case of the franchise making big cuts: In order to pack all the pertinent narrative of Rowling’s 700-page novel into a single movie, a whole lot of extraneous subplots had to go. It’s a choice Warner would probably make differently today, especially if it knew the money it’d later rake in by bifurcating Deathly Hallows. Nonetheless, as Tasha Robinson points out in her review, the choice lends Goblet Of Fire a breathless pace that’s hard to resist, even if it means sacrificing some of the world-building charms for once.With its slam-bang-whoosh-giggle-gasp mentality, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire could be a halfway decent thrill ride for newbies to the series. But its less-explanation, more-momentum mentality is really aimed squarely at the fans, who’d likely rather see more well-timed business from their favorite characters than a pile of dreary exposition and reminders about the story to date. For all its length, Goblet Of Fire speeds past all too quickly. But the real accomplishment may be that for all its brevity, it still feels like it tells the important parts of Rowling’s story.. And side note: This is Noel Murray’s favorite entry in the series, as named in his .

Yates’ second Potter film is one of the franchise’s most darkly confident and mature in theme, even before its grand downer of a climax. While there are arguably better films in the series (see the next two slides), this might be the one that best balances the magic of Rowling’s world with the hormonal moodiness and melodrama that would define later installments. Tasha Robinson mostly agreed in her positive review:It takes a significant amount of investment in the Harry Potter world to make Half-Blood Prince relevant, let alone sensible; the film makes no concession to newbies, and thankfully spends virtually no time reiterating points already covered in previous installments. But those already involved will find that the series has matured much as the books did. This is the darkest, saddest, most sophisticated Harry Potter film yet..

It’s hard to understate what a breath of fresh air—what a dose of real movie magic—The Prisoner Of Azkaban felt like when it hit theaters in the summer of 2004. Grabbing the reins of the franchise after the commercially successful but largely regrettable Chris Columbus entries, director Alfonso Cuarón reinvented the world of Hogwarts for the screen by investing in both the blooming adolescent spirit of the place and the danger of the forces swirling around it. (He also added some nifty time travel to the mix, though that’s obviously straight out of the Rowling source material.) The result courses with a style that Scott Tobias describes as “simultaneously darker and more whimsical than the previous films.” Today, it’s often still cited as the best film of the series, though Tobias’ unranked review is measured enough that we can’t quite put it at the top of this particular, site-aggregated ranking.From the start, The Prisoner Of Azkaban taps into the neato fantasies that have inspired the Potter cult, but it never overemphasizes them, and it relegates many bits of magic to background noise. For the first time, the non-converted may actually see what all the fuss is about..