"You're a wizard, Harry."
What's developing here, it's clear, is one of the most important franchises in movie history, a series of films that consolidate all of the advances in computer-aided animation, linked to the extraordinary creative work of J. K. Rowling, who has created a mythological world as grand as "Star Wars," but filled with more wit and humanity. Although the young wizard Harry Potter is nominally the hero, the film remembers the golden age of moviemaking, when vivid supporting characters crowded the canvas. The story is about personalities, personal histories and eccentricity, not about a superstar superman crushing the narrative with his egotistical weight.
—Roger Ebert, review of the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets film
...look for comfort in the character who is the true moral center of the Potterverse. It was never Harry, the boy who happened to live, whose luck always holds, whose mistakes are minor. It is Severus Snape, who was made miserable by Harry’s father and took it out on Harry, who loved Harry’s mother and betrayed her friends, who redeemed himself with a morally repugnant act. A bully, a victim, a villain, and a hero: a human.
—Helen Lewis, Why millennial harry potter fans reject J. K. Rowling.
