Harry Potter and the Dueling Recaps

If the internet was made for something aside from supercuts and animated gifs it was made for condensed versions of otherwise lengthy political speeches, highly abridged editions of multi-season television shows, and very much abbreviated screenings of major motion picture franchises.

In other words, the internet was kinda made for recaps. Every politically relevant event lasting 60 minutes or more and pop culturally relevant entertainment property stretching over a few seasons or a few movie titles is a great target for this particular genre of online ephemera, especially if those properties are in the business of making hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.

With this weekend’s US theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the internet is in no short supply of recaps of the first seven Harry Potter flicks made by prominent online video outlets. And like the great race to the Zero-Minue Abs workout series, one is roughly 60 seconds shorter than the other.

Benny and Rafi of The Fine Bros

. dress up in their best white-collar Harry Potter prep school garb and give you the lowdown on the first seven HP flicks in seven-minutes and 37-seconds by way of a single camera, a single take, more than a few remarks about movies’ questionable plot points (Editor’s Note: That’s so Ravenclaw! LOL!), and lots of lower- and upper-third bugs and animations.

But if the The Fine Bros can recap the Harry Potter movie franchise in seven-and-a-half-minutes, the online video gurus at Slate can do it in six minutes and 16 seconds. Chris Wilson scribed and Andrew Bouve edits and narrates this Cliff’s Notes of the Wizarding World, cut together by way of pithy clips from the films.

So, which Harry Potter recap is better? The short silver-tongued voice over version or the slightly longer talking heads approach with a touch of criticism? My vote is for whichever one this guy likes better.