Wednesday 3 August 2016

Harry Potter & The Cursed Child: J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany & Jack Thorne | Discussion | Faith

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on July 30, 2016.


It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places. 


- Goodreads Synopsis





This WILL contain SPOILERS!
Before you go any further with the post, I would like to direct you to my spoiler-free review of this book/script if you haven't read that already. (link is in the beginning of tis post) This post will contain many, many spoilers considering this is a discussion and not a review.

I have many thoughts about this book. Before I picked this up, I was super excited that we were getting an eighth story. Like many other Potter fans, I have always wanted to know what happens to the kids of our favourite characters. This thought has been in my mind for years, I even wrote a script (ironically) that was about the eighth Harry Potter story when I was eleven. *Takes a deep breath* Harry Potter & The Cursed Child reminded me of my own script. That's not a good thing. It's not because they were similar, it is because they are both read like fan-fiction.

I mentioned this in my review, and basically I was just wondering about how much of this story was from J.K. Rowling. A lot of us know that it is not written by her but by Jack Throne who is the playwright. I believe this story was a collaboration (so they claim) between the three of them and that resulted in this play. Right of the bat, you can tell that this wasn't written by J.K. Rowling because it was no where near as good or as magical as the original series. Now this is just a script, I'm going to try not to focus on the characterization that much because I haven't seen this live however, my main focus will most certainly be on the storyline.

Let's start off with the plot twist. Voldemort has a kid, a daughter who is named Delphi. Apparently, Bellatrix and Lord Voldemort decided to abandon their evil plans for a little bit to conceive a child. I can confirm that this was amongst those fan-fictions and theories because I used to read a lot of HP fan-fiction. However, for them to have a baby together just seems very out of context. Bellatrix always had this weird fascination with Voldemort, and was one of his most loyal followers. However, Voldemort is the antagonist, he is very evil--there is no question. He kills anybody who get's in his way and anything that doesn't agree with him. So why would he tolerate a baby, let alone conceive one? In my eyes, a baby is a pretty big obstacle so I would imagine that he would've just killed the baby---maybe even Bellatrix. He killed Cedric Diggory because "he was a spare" and he had no use for him. It is even said in the books that Voldemort is not capable of love--and that he does not understand it. HE KILLED HIS FAMILY and then used his father's bones to bring himself back from his weird fetus form. So why would he take the time to have a baby? For all he knew, he was gonna live forever with all of his horcruxes, there was no need for an heir.

This whole story felt like it was just recycling the original Harry Potter series, and revamped it in a stupid way. Time travel is a storyline that was not only played out in Prisoner of Azkaban but in various other stories. Scorpius and Albus develop this "amazing" plan to save Cedric Diggory. I feel like it should be common knowledge that you shouldn't play with time, especially when all of the time turners were destroyed all those years ago. Like come on? Was that hint not big enough for them?

I highly suggest that you go and check this review out...


Due to this unreasonable time travel it causes a butterfly effect or ripple in the timeline which I hated. It was interesting to see how everything was affected, but I dropped everything when "Voldemort Day" was a thing.

The characters in this script are not the same characters in the books. Obviously I know that it takes place nineteen years later, and people change but it's different when a character is the complete opposite of who they were. People do not just disappear like that, yes they change but they grow and they learn. These characters did not really reflect anything that the characters were in the past. Maybe Draco and maybe Ginny but that's it.

There were certain things that Harry said that I found to be out of character. It's one of those things where the phrase is strange but the motive is right. Harry is a very feisty character and often blurts things out without thinking.

Something the bothered me about this script was Voldemort. Honestly, I was kind of upset when he was being hinted at being a threat again because we've already gone down this road. I honestly just wanted something new and fresh, but they literally just had us revisit old books with a little bit of new content. A huge part of my enjoyment for this script went down because we barely got anything with the new characters. They were literally just placed in the previous books.

There were old characters that were shown, however there were also characters that were lost. I am very sad that Teddy Lupin was not shown in the play whatsoever, it's really sad how he wasn't even mentioned. We never even got to see Hugo who is the second Granger-Weasley child. We actually got to see Snape again and that was interesting. Some of his dialogue was a little not Snape like but I will pass over that just because of his presence in this play.

An interesting thing that happened in this play is that Albus was sorted into Slytherin. He befriends Scorpius who is also a Slytherin. I will say that it is great that there are two good-hearted Slytherin's in this play. Honestly, the Albus I imagined was always in Gryffindor. Part of me kind of wishes that he wasn't sorted into Slytherin, not because it's a bad house but it would've been interesting to have a Gryffindor and a Slytherin become best friends. Part of me is kind of thinking that Albus was only sorted into Slytherin to make him more unlike his father.

I really loved Scorpius as a character. He is honestly what I imagined Albus to be, and I imagined Albus to be Scorpius but that was obviously not the case. I really didn't like how toxic Harry and Albus's relationship was. It just seemed like they didn't love each other, because I don't know if it was just me but it seemed like they had a great relationship in the epilogue of Deathly Hallows.

Also can we talk about the fact that Hermione just hid the time turner in her library? Yes it was somewhat protected, but two teenage boys along with Voldemort's daughter managed to get it. The protection for this "oh so important" object was so not protective and is very unlike Hermione to leave something so open. The Hermione I know would still have those riddles but the time turner wouldn't be there. It probably would be locked 100 feet underground, behind dozens of safes and then guarded by Grope.

Overall, I still refuse to connect this with the books. I am still very interested in seeing the actual live production of this script. I feel like I will enjoy it but I'll probably still hate the storyline because it's not something I can picture happening in this world.


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