While the boy who lived and the world around him has undergone considerable adversity as time has gone by, some of the elements responsible were present long before the moment they started causing problems.
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald had... mixed reception to say the least, even among fans of the Harry Potter franchise. Perhaps the most consistent complaint about it though was that it had too many major characters, and as a result they all fought for screen time. Of course, the Harry Potter books were famous for large casts, and most people praised the series for it. And most fans complained when most of these became no more than extras in film adaptations out of practicality. However, by the time of the Fantastic Beasts films, J. K. Rowling wasn't writing books that other people made into screenplays — she was writing the screenplays herself. It worked out alright in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but in The Crimes of Grindelwald, her typical writing style leaked through. Unfortunately, while having intricate plots with many characters over multiple instalments frequently makes for a great piece of literature, it doesn't necessarily translate well to the silver screen. Where a reader can make note and commit certain details in a book to memory before reading on and flip backward when a big reveal comes up, this just isn't possible in a movie. What was more, the protagonist of the books was Harry Potter, who is both the main character throughout and inextricably tied up in the main narrative, helping focus the story and corral the large cast. The protagonist of Fantastic Beasts, on the other hand, is Newt Scamander, who has far less of a reason to be part of the narrative (even he himself acknowledges he doesn't want to get involved) and therefore ends up coming across as a random aside or a bystander rather than a main character, leaving the rest of the story with nothing to revolve around.
- The series' modern fandom often laments the rather clumsy handling of minority themes and characters: an Asian woman being an evil snake servant, Leta's Tragic Mulatto connotations, a Jewish witch joining the wizarding world's equivalent of the Nazis, the heavy colonialist subtext and Sadly Mythtaken elements of Rowling's handling of First Nations wizards, Albus and Scorpius's apparent queerbaiting, the refusal to show Dumbledore and Grindelwald in a romantic context, and so on. This was quite present in the original text; the books have at most seven or eight explicitly nonwhite named characters in a cast of hundreds, none of whom play a major role, and one entirely offscreen gay relationship that explicitly ended badly. Similarly, Rowling's handling of themes like racial diversity, acceptance of people infected with HIV/AIDS, and activism influenced by White Man's Burden attitudes were badly flawed in a number of respects. One could even find jokes about national stereotypes: a Running Gag was the Irish Seamus Finnegan accidentally causing explosions, while the spinoff book Quidditch Through the Ages derived some humor from stereotypes of Americans and Japanese people. These elements just weren't as big of a concern in 1997-2007, the timeframe of the series' original run, much less by kids and teens who either missed the subtext or were merely amazed at being introduced to such themes at all. However, they became far more noticeable in followups due to the changing cultural landscape, the initial audience having grown up and become much more conscious of those themes, and new readers having been raised in an environment where such consciousness was par for the course—Rowling is a proud Blair-era neoliberal, and those views informed a lot of her work, even as they fell heavily out of favor with the young left-leaning audience she aimed her books at. Her increasingly-outspoken neoliberal, and later gender-critical, views on social media didn't help matters, as they drew further attention to these themes and made them come across as hypocritical or disingenuous.note Rowling's decision to personally write the Fantastic Beasts screenplays only made her problematic beliefs more apparent compared to previous Harry Potter movies, which were written primarily by Steve Kloves who omitted the more controversial aspects like the House Elf liberation subplot.
- Rowling was always fairly active in the online fandom, and fond of using Word of God to convey points, whether it was answering one-off questions or dropping fairly important details. After the books ended, Rowling continued to make use of Word of God, to increasingly poor reception. It was one thing to discuss the series while it was ongoing, and another to effectively try to retroactively and concretely canonize elements where there were previously implications at most. It didn't help that many of Rowling's Word of God statements were disliked, due to either pushing for unpopular things (Ship Sinking or nonsensical plot points) or claiming the existence of elements that sounded interesting but were barely present in the actual story.
- In 2016, Rowling gave the locations of seven Wizarding Schools worldwide, with Asia, Africa, and North and South America each only getting one named per continent, and the latter three being explicitly noted to serve as schools for their entire respective continents. This created a considerable backlash from the non-British fandom because it threw the sovereignty of non-British magical nations and how many wizards existed outside Rowling's home country of the United Kingdom into question because the British Isles had one school all to itself, along with many discussions of the Fridge Logic and Unfortunate Implications involved. In Goblet of Fire, released sixteen years prior, some fans raised an eyebrow over the magical students of continental Europe being crammed into just two schools (possibly raised to three, with mentions of a Russian school), but it was largely accepted as continental Europe doesn't have as much landmass as Africa, Asia, and the American continents do note , not to mention how Europe doesn't suffer from the same ugly history of people downplaying its size, cultural/ethnic diversity, and population that Africa and Asia have been saddled with for countless years. It also wasn't helped by the fact that Rowling very clearly hadn't done much research into the countries involvednote , which furthered the impression that Rowling was being insensitive at best.
- A major complaint people have about the franchise's magical system is all the logical plot holes within it and the lack of consistent detail in general. To name a few examples, Time-Turners (which were only used in Prisoner of Azkaban to resolve a pretty minor conflict), Voldemort's curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching position, the "protections" of the Mirror of Erised being laughably inadequate, and how wizards, in general, are totally ignorant about Muggle technology note despite how knowing about it would help them blend in with Muggles and keep the International Statute of Secrecy in place. Details that didn't quite add up were easily hand-waved when Harry Potter started out since nobody knew how the Wizarding World's magic worked yet. When the series was about a wacky magic school where anything could happen, things like an overachieving student using time travel to take more classes or a money system based on prime numbers could be passed off as jokes, not serious elements of the lore. However, as the series continued and the series's tone trended darker, the problems became more clear—it's harder to sell a "gritty war" narrative when the world this war occupied was previously established as silly and nonsensical.
- One of the most common critiques of Crimes of Grindelwald was that it made wizarding society Unintentionally Unsympathetic, by way of an entirely literal Inferred Holocaust that made wizards come across as valuing The Masquerade over the lives of innocent Muggles. But this policy was evident throughout the books: Muggle characters are few and far between and framed as hapless at best and despicable at worst, and even positive appraisals of them by good-aligned wizards tend to have a condescending tone. What's more, the reason wizards maintain secrecy is given no more explanation than a Hand Wave by Hagrid that Muggles would want wizards to solve all their problems—something that is callous and self-centred even on its face. The thing was, the books avoided these implications by just not focusing on the Muggle world for the most part. The main conflict is wizards versus wizards, and the Muggle world is just something in the background; the story almost never discusses actual real-world conflicts or issues that wizards could potentially resolve, and the Muggle world itself seems to be doing alright (the only threat discussed is caused by evil wizards), which made it forgivable that the good guys, and wizards as a whole, care more about wizard problems than Muggle problems. But when Crimes of Grindelwald showcased that World War II and the Holocaust did indeed happen in-universe, it drew attention to the idea that wizards had allowed the deaths of millions to occur seemingly for little reason beyond their own comfort. Grindelwald's proclamation of taking over the Muggle world to prevent them was intended to cast him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but it worked too well: evil or not, he was seemingly the only character to treat the atrocities of the 20th century as worth trying to stop, and the fact that they seemingly occurred anyway leaves a lot of blood on the hands of those who defeated him.
- One of the main reasons the epilogue was largely ignored or disliked in the fandom (well, aside from Ship Sinking) was the apparent lack of growth in wizarding society: the Statute of Secrecy is still law, house-elves are still enslaved, the tribalistic Hogwarts House system is still in place, wizards still live in Medieval Stasis, etc.—and yet the last words of the series end up being "All was well." This also ties into complaints of even the good wizards keeping themselves separate from muggles, as it seemed to put forth an idea that the status quo is inherently good, and those who try to change the system are inherently bad, even though the status quo of wizarding society is at the very least seriously flawed. This ideal popped up to lesser degrees in the earlier books (for instance, the Ministry interfering in Hogwarts during the fifth book is treated as inherently terrible when they honestly had legitimate reasons to do so since a student was murdered over the course of a school sanctioned activity close to the end of the previous book, and Hermione's crusade to free house-elves is treated as pointless rabble-rousing rooted in ignorance), but it wasn't as explicit, and the fact that the series continually associated authority with elitist, racist purebloods implied a revolutionary subtext that made a lot of people wonder how those problems would be fixed. When the series seemed to conclude that the system was just fine and simply replacing the aforementioned bigoted purebloods with good guys would make it perfect, many saw it as a Clueless Aesop.
- The last book, Deathly Hallows, is often criticized for telling the whole story from Harry's point of viewnote , which resulted in two potentially interesting plotlines (Voldemort and his minions finally taking over Wizarding Britain and Neville starting a resistance movement from within Hogwarts) being relegated to the background while readers were forced to stick with Harry's plotline involving an extremely lengthy camping trip in the countryside while he, Hermione and Ron try to figure out how to destroy the Slytherin Locket. The thing is, every book is told largely if not entirely from Harry's POV. Back then it wasn't a problem because not only was the plot tightly focused on Harry, but since the story was mostly confined to a single location (Hogwarts) we could still see the subplots Harry wasn't directly involved with. Deathly Hallows, however, spread its concurrent plotlines over different locations, and since Harry can't be in multiple places at once, the readers miss out on learning firsthand about any plot developments that he isn't around to immediately be involved with.
- A common critique of the Fantastic Beasts series is that the films look rather dull, with muted colour palettes, an emphasis on Unnaturally Blue Lighting, and characters in shabby, conservative outfits. This was true of the original films from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onwards, which also solidified David Yates as the main director of the series. General agreement is that Yates's direction worked fine in the Potter films that he was directing, because they were a deliberate Darker and Edgier shift away from the earlier films and worked with the gloomy atmosphere of much of those novels. Fantastic Beasts, meanwhile, kept up the look but lacked as much of a reason for it (especially since much of those films are meant to be a rousing adventure narrative), creating films that looked oppressive, unfriendly, and dated. Rather than being a shift, it seems to be just what the wizarding world looks like, which was all the more problematic in a series that was largely justifying its existence by adhering to the "Wizarding World" aesthetic.
- The movie adaptations are often accused of painting Ron in a less flattering light than how he was shown in the books, often seemingly to make Hermione look better. While this could be seen as early as the first movie with the Devil's Snare scene,note it was considered mostly acceptable since Ron still got his moments to shine with his defeat of the mountain troll and him figuring out how to win the Wizard Chess challenge, and it can be explained that it was to balance out cutting Hermione's solo feat during the challenges (solving the potions riddle) because of time restraints. However, later movies would continue and even exacerbate the trend, frequently omitting Ron's standout moments or handing them off to other characters (frequently Hermione) while making him seem like whiny and cowardly extra baggage. Not helping matters was the way later movies gave Ron some dickish moments and tendencies that weren't in the booksnote as well as exaggerating some of the ones he did have in the books or changing the context around them, often with the effect of making them look worse.
- Some have criticized the later books for being too long, with the last four all being over 600 pages. However, the first book, even at a mere 223 pages, was considered long for a children's book when it was released, which is one reason it was rejected by eight publishers before Bloomsbury accepted. But when the first book was finally published, the story was good enough on its own merits to be a smash success despite its long length, with the novelty of a children's chapter book that took on a truly novel-like format as opposed to the more 'kid pulp' format taken by other children's chapter books of the time like Animorphs and Goosebumps also helping. However, the first book's success emboldened Rowling to make the following books even longer, with the fifth being a whopping 766 pages, at which point people started to take notice and wonder just how necessary it was for the books to have such massive lengths in order to tell the series' story.
