The actors who played Snape, Sirius, Lupin, etc were all too old in the movies..

[TheHulksPurplePanties]

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Alan Rickman. But I recently started playing the new Harry Potter "Mystery at Hogwarts" game and I came to the realization (because I OBVIOUSLY don't have better things to think about) that Snape should only be 23/24 in this game. He should have been 31 at the start of the Potter series, but Rickman was in late 50's. I know life was difficult in the Potterverse but come-on, a 31 year old does not look 50.

I'm sure the reasoning was that they wanted bigger names in the movies to get more of a draw, but surely there were actors in their 30's who could have played the roles?

Maybe it depends how she writes him (not that it's going to happen!). Young snape has the potential to be v creepy before he grows out of it... potter, however, will always be arrogant!

potter, however, will always be arrogant

James Potter & Sirius were insufferable. I really didn't like them and could not understand what Lilly saw in them. Lupin was lovely, remained lovely will always be lovely. Snape was creepy in the abused, unloved, lost emo teenager way which appeals to me I'm embarrassed to admit. I've always gone for lost puppies.

Ha! See - THIS is why we need a prequel, Ms Rowling...!

Oh I LOVED arrogant James and Sirius. Exactly my type as a teenager

Ha! See - THIS is why we need a prequel, Ms Rowling...!

We need a retcon! That way we won't know what happened.

I wonder if the casting of Harry's parents etc as slightly older was also to maintain the gap between them and harry as they wouldn't be that much older than him by the last film-so they would seem parental.

I loved Snape so the age thing didn't bother me that much.
Assumed 14 years in Azkaban took a toll on Sirius

Thought Luna very well cast

The films stripped some of the minor characters away to focus on the main 3-Book Ginnie fantastic. Film Ginnie hopeless.

Thought Fleur ad the Beaubaton girls were awful-looked like they were dressed as air hostesses.

One tiny thing that bugged me is that while they used the same conducted on platform 9 3/4 they changed Hermione's parents completely, I much preferred the ones in Chamber of Secrets.

@SapphireSeptember Henry Ian Cusick. You're welcome.

He doesn't look like a Snape in his youth (too thin) but he has really aged well. And he can do the voice. You know the voice I mean!

Look him up as Marcus Kane in teeny dystopian drama The 100. He plays someone everyone thinks is evil, but redeems himself and turns out to be bloody brilliant and completely in love with the main protagonist's mother. Sound familiar?

If there had to be a second Snape - my money's on him.

Sirius should have been played by Rufus Sewell.

Yes, yes , yes!

The more I think about it, they should just clone Alan Rickman and re-film it when he's about 38.....I'll be in my 70's, then and probably more interested in 60 year old Alan Rickman, but hey-ho

Not read the books so was unaware of correct ages but to me the films seem to represent societal stereotypes:
Most of them seem very middle class so Lily and James being such young parents wouldn't fit into that.
Then you have the Weasleys who represent the poor/working class who have loads of kids.
Making them older seems to make them appear more parent like, probably to appeal to the wider audience around the world.

Casting someone who was 20 would've made them look too young so they still would of cast someone 30 to play a 20 year old.

TooExtra I imagined Mrs Hardbroome as well!

How much experience in potions can one possibly have to be made a professor at 21! He wasn't though, was he? We know he was Potions Prof by the time he was in his thirties in the early 90s, but it stands to reason Slug might have retired and passed the baton some time in the 1980s.

Everyone always says that Mr & Mrs Potter Sr were much older when James was born - isn't that just fanwank? Obviously JK had to kill all his magical family off as the story wouldn't have worked otherwise, but I thought that they were much older parents was something we'd decided amongst ourselves.

I'd say the one thing I'd really change in the books is having James and Lily be a bit older when they're killed. It just doesn't really stack up that they left school, got married, got knocked up, had a baby and got murdered all in the space of 3 or 4 years, and still managed to "thrice defy" Voldemort and leave such a legacy. There's no reason they couldn't have had five or six years of hardcore kick-assing before they're killed. I suspect JK just didn't really think about it in much depth when she was devising the timeline, and then was stuck with it.

I think she actually was imagining Snape, Lupin etc. to be in their 40s when she was picturing them, but didn't count backwards and work out that her timeline would make them so young. She often seems to do things like that - like the way she describes Hogwarts you'd think it was teeming with students, but then she puts exactly 10 students in each house for the 1991 school year, implying that's the typical intake. And I know people say it would have been a smaller year group because they were war babies, blahblah, but again that's definitely fanwank. It's quite amusing when you think about it that the magical community would have conceived in such neat little parcels of male and female babies

I think Aidan Turner would have been a good Sirius.

I always think it's quite remarkable how poorly the actors represented the book characters in some parts. I always think some of them would have done much better if they'd read the books - for instance, I always thought Uncle Vernon was so vividly described when he gets angry, purple with rage and roaring his head off, spittle flying and eyes popping, but Richard Griffiths seems to stop at "mild consternation". Might have been a directorial decision of course, but I find things like that really jarring when it's so vivid in the original.

And don't even get me started on Michael Gambon! He really seemed to phone it in, especially before the HBP. I'm pretty sure he got the brief, went "stern old headmaster, got it" and didn't put any more thought than that into the character. Such a pity.

Just leaving this here

@TheHulksPurplePanties Yes, exactly! If I were Lily, I would not have married James! We see she absolutely loathes him in OOTP, yet two years later they're madly in love? He's a horrible bully, and I'd be wondering if he can be so vile in public what on earth would he be like in private? Also, don't get me started on the classim/blood purity thing James and Sirius had going on. I always thought that was nasty, but it's never really talked about. No wonder Severus started hanging out with Death Eaters!

Young Severus needed a bloody good hug and a good meal, I always felt so sorry for him. A counselor would have been useful too, but mental health care in the Wizarding World seems non existent. (Oh, but it's so fantastic and the Muggle world is rubbish! But I wouldn't have been able to listen to my favourite band. I'll stick to the Muggle world thanks!)

@Pringlecat Oh, I know the voice you mean! Oh, that does sound familiar.

LOL QuimReaper, these are my faves.

quimreaper you’re right. He didn’t read the books.

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harry-potter/6216415/Sir-Michael-Gambon-has-never-read-Harry-Potter.html

Wow, everyone who is saying Rufus Sewell should have been Sirius - I have always thought that and actually pictured him as Sirius whilst reading the books (also pictured Geraldine Somerville as Lily so they got that "right" for me!) But I have said it to so many people and never met anyone who agrees so it's good to know I'm not the only one!

SapphireSeptember

I think a brush with Voldemort will do that to a person.

I'm writing now, and have to admit that as much as I LOVE Harry Potter, some of the plot holes have made me really careful with my own work.

I honestly think she just effed up. (As a side note, I think she's annoyingly 'right on' suggesting she wrote Hermione race-neutral. She only mentioned race when it was not white with other characters, and I think she would have been the bigger person to admit that.)

So I have a spreadsheet showing the start ages of characters, their age in each subsequent book, in months for babies, babies aging roughly in line with developmental norms, and their age in pre-book events. And population sizes, education and law structures, and cultural differences... but then I like to nerd out about these things.

We see she absolutely loathes him in OOTP

Oh but she didn't really though, did she, I think that was the whole point.

I used to have that sort of relationship with my first love

TheHulksPurplePanties Those are all hilarious! I take the whole thing WAY too siruisly, but for me that's part of the fun.

Oh, I love the Background Slytherin comics!

We never do find out how exactly Lily and James (and Frank and Alice Longbottom) defied Voldemort three times. That would make an awesome movie (or trilogy) around both couples, with the really sad endings.

I always assume that James was entirely chastened by nearly letting Snape be killed by Lupin-as-a-werewolf and that Dumbledore ripped him a new one, and that was what deflated James' head enough so he stopped being an arrogant prick and Lily started going out with him.