Harry Potter and the Death of the Supporting Actor
Why character actors are vanishing from franchises
Two weeks ago, all eight Harry Potter movies were added to UK Netflix. Like many, I’ve been plodding my way through the nearly 20 hours of screen time.
The franchise, 22 years on from its first instalment, sits in a cultural limbo.
To many Zoomers, the series has a millennial stench, the youthful folly of a generation slipping, unprepared, into adulthood.
Devotees of the books – which I haven’t read - will always preach their superiority, but the films are never disowned, merely separated. The movies are too earnest to be considered camp – a la Tokyo Drift – yet too mass-produced to be critically revered.
Instead, most seem to agree that the films operate best as light nostalgia, comfort watching befitting their migration from boxsets to the Netflix Top Picks.
This is what I expected when my flatmate began watching Philosophers Stone one slow evening, background noise as I haggled win bonuses with my Football Manager regens.
Yet, half an hour later my laptop was shut. I had, unintentionally, been absorbed by the wonderful world of sweary gingers and unsupervised adolescent rail travel.
Comfort watching, no doubt. But the Harry Potter films are something which has become far rarer: a franchise with a soul.
Since the box-office-shattering success of Avengers in 2012, major studios have been racing to the bottom. The film, and Marvel’s resultant “cinematic universe”, created a new type of franchise. Instead of linear instalments, films became co-dependent, with intersecting characters and plots, teasers and threads all pointing to the inevitable ensemble epic.
The result? Some of the most soulless filmmaking you will ever see.
Paint-by-numbers feeder films – think Captain Marvel – were used to introduce and stockpile characters for incoherent CGI battles, the Disney overlords confident that audiences would show up. You wouldn’t want to miss an Easter egg now, would you?
It was, as Martin Scorsese wrote, the degradation of cinema to content.
Not all were terrible. Black Panther was decent, if slightly overshadowed by its justified cultural impact; Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron-Man 3 offered glimpses of personality. But since 2012, Marvel’s output comprised largely of bland, regurgitated tosh, which flattened the $10 million movie, turned Taika Waititi into an arsehole, and killed the movie star.
This is before you get to the countless copycat studios scrounging around for their own extended universes, most with little success. So, having become accustomed to Marvel malaise, being in the company of Harry et al was an unexpected treat.
There are many reasons the Harry Potter franchise is better than more recent offerings.
Paint-by-numbers feeder films – think Captain Marvel – were used to introduce and stockpile characters for incoherent CGI battles, the Disney overlords confident that audiences would show up. You wouldn’t want to miss an Easter egg now, would you?
For one, they look better. In the first four instalments, there is no videogame cutscene CGI, washing everything in the dullest of greys. There are beautiful sets and locations, with visual effects either used subtly or when necessary. The latter movies are drabber, as the series drifted from misty-eyed adventure to fashionable grit, but the world at least has a sense of being lived-in.
Yet, the real treat in the Harry Potter series is the plethora of sensational actors inhabiting every nook of the films. David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham-Carter, Richard Lewis, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Kenneth Branagh …
It is a remarkable cast, many of whom have tread the boards in Stratford or wandered through a Mike Leigh film. And they are crucial.
In this ludicrous world, where wands come with holsters, and one’s worldview is dictated by a talking hat, character actors anchor the viewer, making the stakes believable, and the consequences real. Ultimately, they make the movies good, and they make them fun.
There are fantastic performances dotted across the eight films. Thewlis plays a comforting and noble Remus Lupin. Gleeson is an acerbic and volatile Mad Eye. Fiennes offers one of the most underrated and menacing villainous turns in recent memory. Staunton is magnificently detestable as Dolores Umbridge.
They, and many others, offer wonderfully full characters in their rationed screen time, the attention always reverting back to the three protagonists. This is the joy of a supporting role, where an actor is free to make bold and strange choices, unburdened by the lead’s required likability.
It’s a tactic used by two other brilliant recent franchises.
In the Hunger Games, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour-Hoffman and the effervescent Stanley Tucci flank another adolescent cast. In the Bourne series, arguably the best scenes occur in vague government offices as Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, David Straitharn and Joan Allen hunt the ever-elusive Jason B.
Without the depth and detail of these performances, these franchises would be flat, the secondary characters reduced to supplying exposition. They add the reality that the films then heighten.
However, this trend is dying.
In this ludicrous world, where wands come with holsters, and one’s worldview is dictated by a talking hat, character actors anchor the viewer, making the stakes believable, and the consequences real. Ultimately, they make the movies good, and they make them fun.
Superhero films are filled with A-listers, some of whom – Jeremy Renner, I promise - are wonderful actors. But, in these overcrowded instalments, there is rarely room to flex their chops.
Their role is to provide a recognisable face, some chiselled cheekbones for the movie poster whilst the intellectual property is prioritised. Why put effort into writing a character with thoughts and motivation when you can just pluck a new cape from the comics? Novelty over quality, repeat.
Anthony Mackie self-referentially said it best, “Anthony Mackie isn’t a movie star. The Flacon is a movie star.”
So, the supporting actor is thriving in television, surviving in auteur cinema, but it is virtually extinct in the franchise, where it is just as important.
Thankfully, after the aptly titled Endgame, it appears the bubble has burst. Over saturation has given way to box office apathy, with Disney furiously pleading their goose to lay a few more golden eggs.
Chances are, it won’t. So why not try the old formula again? A bankable star, a good script, some practical stunts, and a few scenes where Bradley Whitford and Michael Stuhlbarg shout at each other.
Until then, I’ll just have to rewatch Harry Potter.