Every Version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Alfonso Cuaron took over from Chris Columbus and made a film that feels nothing like the first two, in the best possible way. The Hogwarts in Prisoner of Azkaban is a real, weather-beaten place: students wear street clothes under their robes, trees sway in real wind, and the Dementors move with an unhurried, genuinely horrible logic. John Williams, scoring his third Potter film, produced his most interesting work for the series. The time-loop finale is one of the few Hollywood studio films to trust its teenage audience completely. Every subsequent Potter film was measured against this one and, with a single exception, fell short.

Stephen Fry's narration of the UK audiobooks is a genuine performance, not a reading. By the third book he has found a distinct voice for every major character, and his Hagrid and Snape are arguably more vivid than the film versions. The audiobook format also rewards the time-loop structure: hearing the same scene twice, narrated at the same pitch and pace, makes the mechanics of the Time-Turner feel earned rather than convenient. For anyone who grew up with these books but has not revisited them as an adult, the Fry recordings are the best re-entry point in the catalog.

The film tie-in game (EA Games, 2004) is competent by the standards of licensed movie games, which is not high praise. It follows the film's plot mechanically, strips out the ambiguity and mood that make the story work, and replaces the time-loop with a linear stealth sequence. LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 covers the same ground with far more wit and none of the padding. Unless you have strong nostalgia for early-2000s EA Harry Potter games, this one has not aged well.