Personally I loved both the FB movies. You would think there would be a ton of fics featuring Newt, Dumbledore and Grindelwald with the movies but somehow the fandom has completely ignored it. You imagine the AU's you could create with Harry in the Fantastic beasts setup. Newt himself is an interesting character. Grindelwald by this time should have been an extremely famous character considering how charismatic he is. Not to mention the young Dumbledore. Maybe because its the movies. I honestly think JKR should have just written as books first. Even the handsome Redymayne, Farrel, Depp, Law, Ezra Miller haven't stuck the cord with teen audience who get of in it like they did with Rickman, Felton etc

 

Two reasons for me, personally:

1. It's a prequel. I hate prequels.

2. It's not far enough removed from the main cast of HP.

 

You wonder if JKR made the mistake having Newt as the main character? You imagine if it was Harry time travelling and an in place of Newt the response would be probably ten time more. Seems she missed a trick there. Harry in the past would have been blockbuster stuff and revived the fandom. I guess people aren't interested in a new MC when you have been used to Harry all this long. I mean fucking hell the series is titled Harry Potter.

 

I think its largely because it wasn't a series of books. 1 film every 2 years doesn't drive fandom passion the way 1 book every 2 years would. And if they'd really wanted to hype the fandom they could have scheduled the film release to correspond with the released of the next book in the series. So basically year 1 you get book one, year 3 you get book two and film 1 etc.

Also...as much world building as the films have done, they've not engaged people to the same extent as the original books did. I think thats because you can have so many more throw away details that people notice in the book, where they're just part of the scenery in a film and get missed.

And as for your idea of a time travelling HP as the main character instead of Newt. Nope. Thats a terrible, terrible idea. Cursed Child has been mauled in fan circles for the ridiculousness of the time travel plot. No way would it have worked any better for a series of films.

Part of the struggle perhaps has been that its a new main character, and it takes time for people to connect enough with a new main character to want to do fanfiction. If the series had followed young Dumbledore (as an example) then there would have been instant buy in. Hell, same time period you could have set the story in Hogwarts again. Dumbledore as one of the main characters, McGonagall (preferably as a student rather than a teacher) as another, Flitwick as well perhaps, maybe even introduce a young Tom Riddle.

That way you have the familiar setting and the familiar characters to create immediate buy in.

 

I honestly think she should have continued Harry's story somehow and extended it another 7 years. I can't help but think she wasted such a large fandom and ended Harry's story the epilogue. Harry's story shouldn't have finished with with just defeating Voldemort. She could have explored his adult wood. Or a proper prequel with Dumbledore and Grindelwald instead of a tie in was a bad idea.

 

I haven't seen either movie. Fanfic ruined me into not wanting anything to do with a magical super trunk. Plus there's other little stuff I've heard about that's put me off, like fucking with ages like in McGonagall's case just to have a familiar face in the movie with complete disregard to everything we've taken for granted in canon.

 

Exploring his adult wood is a whole other sort of film...more likely to be found on Pornhub than in your local cinema.

I expect that her reason for not doing a sequel series was that she simply saw Harry's plot arc as having finished. And if she looked at him as a character and had no inspiration to write a sequel series, then fair enough.

 

To be fair, based on what I saw the fandom was actually quite enthused about FB after the first one - even people like me, who were sceptical of the whole thing before it was released. The big problem is that CoG was rubbish.

 

I can't be the only one who enjoyed Dumbledore and Grindelwald scenes. That Credence arc is the most irritating thing for me.

 

The Harry Potter films all suck more or less. The only reason they were liked is because they were adaptions of good books.
The FB series have all the faults of the HP films (masses of characters, confusing plots, tonnes of exposition) without a book behind it to clear these things up so you can just enjoy the filmed scenes.

I like FB2 more than I liked 1, because it felt like there was a really good book behind it. I just wish I could have read it.

 

Yup you wonder JKR doesn't want to write more Potter books? Perhaps she isn't confident of repeating her old glory. I don't think the other books she wrote after HP were all that popular.

 

She doesnt really want to I dont think. The epilogue was clearly an attempt to kill that line before WB could convince her to write more. I think she thought that just making the films would be easier.

 

I gave the first FB movie the benefit of the doubt. I didn't expect it to be as good as the main series films, but I was excited to have more content in that world, see it expanded further and enjoy more of that quirky HP style on the big screen.

I left disappointed. The world seemed off, the style they used, reminiscent in my mind to the earlier main series films, doesn't work with a predominantly adult cast or themes, the MACUSA world was not compelling and all the major characters except Newt were utterly uninspiring. The entire Credence arc especially left me totally cold.

I never bothered watching the second. Could be geat for all I know, but if you want to start an entire prequel series for one of the worlds favourite series, using an entirely new cast of characters and in a completely different setting, you need to do way, way better than the first FB movie to get my attention. Especially if there's no book beforehand to act as a teaser and a framework.

Beyond that, I think they made a stylistic mistake in pitching FB as too much a childrens film. It's certainly a bit more 'naive' and light hearted in tone and colour palette than the later HP films, being, as I mentioned before, more similar to that used in HP1 & 2. This is fine to draw in a younger audience, but considering that most who read and loved the original series are now in their 20s or 30s, I found it a little jarring. I could see Disney making that film, or them doing the same characters and plot as an animated movie. I never got that sense with the original HP and it just doesn't seem quite right.

 

And killed the fandom. There has been barely any quality written these days and its shows how the fandom is dying slowly. I will always be bitter she killed the fandom I loved. You only imagine how big the fandom would be if she had continued.

 

Perhaps JKR has run out of creativity. I mean she is 54 after all. Ah well all good things come to an end there were giant flags in the HBP Deathly Hallows itself where she wa sgetting worse as it wasn't as good as the earlier books. Perhaps it would have been best is she had continued with a help of younger ghost writers. Plenty of talented authors in the fandom.

 

She created the fandom that you love, and she didn't kill it. If the fandom were dead, would this forum still be here? Would fics still get written? There wouldn't be a bunch of extremely active subreddits.

Of course its not as busy a fandom as it was at its height. But honestly, 13 years after the final book was published the fandom is still more active than a large number of "current" fandoms.

 

Umm, what? You do realize that HP is, by far, the biggest and one of the most active fandoms out there when it comes to fanfiction, right? Between AO3 and FFN, we're rapidly approaching a million individual stories. I personally haven't even seen signs that it's slowing down all that much compared to how things were seven or eight years ago, much less that it's outright dying.

 

I don't think you have seen the peak of the fandom. It nowhere near used to be and the numbers of quality fics and authors we had. There is barely any quality these days or good authors. Joe6991, Arisone De Blassenvile, BajaB etc. The best author now seems to be Taure who was nowhere near the best authors then in the peak days. Shows how standards and quality has fallen. Its a barren lamd these days with rehashed stuff. Nothing exciting. God I feel old. I don't even remember the last fic I liked. I think it was Resurxit by Master Slytherin. We are seriously missing authors like him nowadays.

 

He's been around for a while mate, don't worry.

 

I honestly don't see much difference. I've been reading HP fanfic since 2006 or so, and while we don't have as many prolific authors who are consistently good these days, there are plenty of well-written stories coming out all the time. Not to mention that the works of those authors you mentioned largely haven't aged well. There are some that are still fantastic, but a lot of them just aren't up to DLP's standards these days.