Is Harry Potter the New Star Wars?

The final installment in the Harry Potter series arrived in theaters last Friday to much fanfare. I haven't seen the film. I plan to eventually, but I'm waiting 'til the crowds die down. In the meantime I have casually been reading some of the Harry Potter related reviews, essays, and articles that have been flooding the Internet as of late. One phrase that I have encountered in multiple articles is "Harry Potter is this generation's Star Wars!" This is that type of phrase that journalists love to throw around, so it's no surprise to see it pop up, but it still initially bothered me slightly.

I think the main reason this phrase got under my skin was my own personal associations with both franchises. Based on my date of birth I should be more into levitation spells than Jedi mindtricks, but in reality few things are closer to my heart than the Star Wars saga. Don't get me wrong I like Harry Potter, but it doesn't resonate with me quite as deeply as Star Wars does. When I initially read the Harry Potter/Star Wars comparisons I was bothered because they didn't gel with my own personal worldview. In other words, this isn't how I experienced life so therefore you are wrong.

Once I got past my initial emotional reaction I had to grudgingly admit that there was some validity to the Potter/Wars comparison. Both have orphaned male protagonists (Harry/Luke) who grow up "dreaming of better things". They are rescued by wise mentor figures with cool gray beards (Dumbledore/Obi-Wan), and are swept away from their drab lives and into worlds filled with adventure and conquest. I could go on, but I'm sure you can draw the rest of the comparisons yourself. The point is that the two franchises do share a lot in common in regards to surface plot details.

Beyond the surface I will say that I think the two franchises resonated with audiences for similar reasons. Both Star Wars and Harry Potter feature some amazing caricatures of real world situations and personality types. The Mos Eisley Cantina is a spot-on representation of a real world dive bar, complete with its "we don't serve your kind here" attitude and oddball patrons. Similarly there are many older schools that exude Hogwarts. In this way I think both the Harry Potter and Star Wars movies function in similar ways as they both give the general public a mass of useful references that can be used to enrich conversations. Saying someone has hair like Hermione Granger immediately brings an image to mind that simple description does not. In years to come I will not be surprised if Harry Potter is referenced with the same frequency as Star Wars.

To be fair though, I am generally wary of X is the new Y conversations and while I concede that Harry Potter and Star Wars have similar narratives and similar appeal, the two franchises differ in some pretty big ways. For one, we can't ignore that Harry Potter was initially a book series. This automatically significantly alters the way that current Harry Potter fans will look back on their fandom vs. how older Star Wars fans remember their exposure to the series. The fact that the Harry Potter book series was a triumph in a dying children's book industry will also significantly change the way the series is remembered.

Harry Potter and Star Wars are worth comparing, but ultimately they're different beasts. Though if we absolutely must compare the two I'd like to say for the record that as great as Harry Potter is, it will never have anything on the pure poetry of Luke looking off into the twin sunset of Tatooine in A New Hope. And that's my proudly biased opinion talking.