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Why it’s hard to get excited for ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’

Kelly Lawler
USA TODAY
'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne

I’m getting a copy of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script-book at 12:01 a.m. on July 31. But I’m not overly excited about it.

Let me preface this by saying I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books, like so many people my age. I went to the midnight releases and read The Deathly Hallows in nine hours, pausing only to mourn the loss of Fred Weasley.

And while I looked at every release of a new Potter book as the best day (and let’s be real, long night of reading while everyone else in my house slept) of the year, it doesn’t feel quite the same. The magic, so to speak, just isn’t there this time around.

Between the backlash to J.K. Rowling’s continued fiddling with the Potter universe, the fact that it's a play script and not a novel , and the anxiety that Cursed Child may not live up to the rest of the series, the atmosphere around the release is a little gray.

It’s simply not a new Harry Potter 'book'

Noma Dumezweni plays Hermione in the staged production of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.'

When I get Cursed Child it will be in a bound form, sure, but reading a play is not the same as reading a novel. Plays are meant to have actors and costumes and lighting and music to help tell the story. A script is not the whole thing. Sure, we all read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet in high school, but your English teacher probably showed you one or two movie adaptations to help hammer the lesson home.

It's likely that Rowling's script will be very engaging. But the oddity of reading a script over a book underlines that I (and so many others) will never get to see the critically acclaimed production fully staged.

Review: 'Cursed Child' has that Harry Potter magic

It’s too soon to tap into nostalgia

This movie was only five years ago.

One would think that more of Harry would be just the right recipe to attract all those millennials who grew up with the series. The problem is he hasn’t been gone long enough for us to miss him.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow - Part 2 came out in 2011. The book came out in 2007. And while that may seem like a long time to wait for a sequel(we got the last book in the Game of Thrones series in 2011), Cursed Child feels more akin to a “legacyquel,” in which a franchise passes the torch onto a new generation (see Star Wars: The Force Awakens). It’s hard for the audience to pass Potter on to the next generation, too, when the core fans probably haven’t started families of their own yet.

Post-Deathly Hallows content has varied in quality

J.K. Rowling

Since 2007 Rowling has released canonical stories and information from the Harry Potter universe, on her Pottermore website but also casually in interviews or even on Twitter. . We've learned Dumbledore is gay. Ron and Hermione shouldn’t have ended up together. There's an American wizarding school.

Some of these snapshots have been welcome and exciting, while others have seemed like too much or in poor taste. An article in which Rowling mixed the magic of her series with Native American religion drew backlash from that community and others. The reveal that Americans call muggles “no-majs” was mocked online.

It’s hard not to be nervous that Cursed Child could fall into the same traps. It’s hard not to think there’s already too much Potter out there,to wonder if the story should continue at all. But, at the end of the day, that’s not our decision.

George Lucas saw fan disillusionment with theStar Warsprequels. The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchmen caused dismay and anger from readers who saw a very different side of hero Atticus Finch. But those Star Wars prequels earned more than $1 billion at the box office, and Go Set A Watchman hit the top of the best-seller lists.

And so while that pure, joyous excitement that drove me to stand in line at bookstores for hours on end, dressed in my best Hermione gear, eludes me this time around, I do have hope. Because while perhaps this isn’t the way I pictured meeting Harry, Ron and Hermione again, it is always nice to see an old friend. And who knows? Maybe the magic will spark once I actually crack open the book. Magic is funny that way.

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