Just like last year, twin film openings make for a one-two holiday punch, both new installments in series, Harry Potter this month, Lord of the Rings the next. The Tolkien films were shot simultaneously and the trilogy should be finished and released on schedule a year hence. Potter II began production as Potter I opened last November. Number Three doesn't shoot until next Spring, with four more in the pipeline after that — maybe: author J. K. Rowling is one reason for the slowdown. She needs more time to finish writing Book Five, and she certainly should be allowed to have it. Provoking wonder is tough enough; having to provoke it on deadline would seem positively wonder-killing.

It should go without saying, in fact, that if wonder could be formulized efficiently, it would cease to be so wonder-ful. For awe depends not merely upon novelty and surprise, but mystery: and the creation of awe can be just as mysterious. It does seem safe to suggest that the concoction involves some lucky proportioning of two oppositely-charged ingredients: the Familiar and the Other. This is certainly a primary contrast of the Potter books — the Ordinary world, occupied by non-magical Muggles, set against the extra-ordinary world hidden under Muggles' noses: a world accessible only to those who have eyes to see.

For those with such eyes, Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone was certainly wondrous. In this first story and the film made from it, young Harry is spirited away from a mundane existence with his nasty step-family and deposited into a decidedly un-Mugglish identity and community: Harry is a wizard, inheritor of a special destiny, and the world turns out to be a much more magical place than life with the Dursleys would lead one to believe. The child's reaction to these revelations is, understandably, childlike wonder. English sage Samuel Johnson called wonder "the effect of novelty upon ignorance." To Chesterton, this was a "Divine Ignorance", one of bliss.

Which brings us back (once again) to the Problem of Sequels, and how it bears especially on stories whose power comes from What We Don't Know. For whatever else might have happened to Harry Potter in his debut adventure, at least some of his Divine Ignorance has been tempered by experience. What was at first Other has begun to be assimilated, even if just a little, by the Familiar.

And we all know what too much familiarity breeds: not just contempt, but Muggles.

It is true that the Familiar has its own pleasures, among these friendship, with its special virtues — such as loyalty — and the all-important notion of Home. How delightful it was, then, in this sequel, Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, to be reunited with old friends, and revisit so many familiar haunts (literally in this case). Each new re-introduction — of Harry's best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, that first sight of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — kindle warm feelings of belonging and purpose. Like Harry, though, I think the quicker we get shed of Muggles the better, and re-visiting the Dursleys in a too-long opening scene was something I could have done without.

But — alas! — breaking away from the Familiar and arriving at the Other becomes even more difficult when the Other has become Familiar, and in ways we are much less anxious to divest ourselves of. That is to say, what was simple and direct the first time around necessarily becomes in sequels more complex. Not only has the tug-of-war of opposing tendencies become harder to manage, but now the Law of Diminishing Returns is clearly in effect. The longer you hang around, say, caretaker Mr. Filch, the more you realize he's not nearly as dangerous as he looks: and this is something of a loss in the net total of ooky-spookiness which brought us to Hogwarts in the first place.

Luckily, J. K. Rowling seems to be far from hitting the bottom of her imaginative barrel. Among the new wonders this time around are "Howlers," delightful (for all but the recipient) screaming letters from parents who can so lecture their children long-distance. We're also treated to some new angles on Hogwarts, physically and temporally, as we explore new places like the greenhouse, or get a glimpse of the school back in time. (A flashback sequence recalls classic Universal horror films: the old, dark Hogwarts looks truly stunning in black and white.) There's a new teacher at the school, Gilderoy Lockhart, played with theatrical-pomposity by Kenneth Branaugh (though I would have preferred more daring casting, say Rowan Atkinson). We also learn new things about other familiar characters, meeting school bully Draco Malfoy's father, Lucious, the most convincing evil wizard we've met so far in the series, and clearly the original block of his young chip. A visit to Ron's red-haired family at home is an even greater pleasure: Mr. Weasley's hobby is Muggles and he displays a Trekkie-level appreciation for ordinary mortals.

Despite, however, all this going where we've not yet gone, one senses another Trekkish parallel which at times threatens to neutralize the alienness of the landscape: the need to round up all our old familiar faces and give them adequate screen time (already at a premium, given all the obligatory stops in quest of fidelity to the original novel) means we rarely get to enjoy the strange and the new as much as we'd like. Instead, we end up having to pay respects in awkward ways when we'd prefer either to move along or putter about elsewhere. Thus, Harry II seems, paradoxically, neither as snappily-directed but every bit as over-rushed as Harry I. It's also a bit darker, which will make it for some, a tad less wondrous.

Of course, wonder isn't the only flavor available at the cinematic snack bar: many find dread every bit as tasty. And when you can't get dread, there's always suspense. Mark this year's Potter, then, as suspense dipped in dread, and swirled throughout with fresh teenage angst.

The dialectic of sequels, the tension between Familiar and Other, corresponds to another well-known metaphysical opposition, that of Knowledge and Innocence. This becomes particularly fascinating in the context of Harry Potter, which, as a series, is, in fact, a coming-of-age story. The challenge of healthy transitioning from child to adult would seem to involve gaining knowledge, and thereby power, yet retaining innocence: for power can corrupt, both in terms of one's capacity for wonder, and morally speaking.

The urgency of this particular Or-Else factor is brought home to movie viewers in a way the books alone never could: for the actors playing the lead characters are clearly aging, the boys' voices had begun to crack and change before they'd finished shooting the first film; in the second film, Harry and his classmates are clearly less cute First Year innocents than typical adolescents: bearing in their being all the baggage we know is carried along this difficult change of life.

Stories of sorcerer's apprentices are about learning to use power (namely the power of adulthood) responsibly, which includes a sense of moral responsibility. The same story can be told in other ways. The adolescent who became Spiderman also has to cope with sudden changes in his body, amazing new powers, an inflated range of choices, and much higher stakes. "With great power comes great responsibility," says Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, voicing the message of all coming-of-age stories, including that story of a sorceror's apprentice named Harry Potter.

Let's face it — for a young boy, going from playing with toy cars, where you have to supply your own sound effect, to driving a real car that actually goes Brrrrrrrrrrrrrm! when you jam the pedal to the metal is nearly as momentous as being transformed into a superhero or learning that you're a wizard. Of course, Ron Weasley's beater of a car also flies, and has a mind of its own (literally again) but all this only serves as metaphorical expression of how even an adolescent Muggle boy feels behind the wheel. The fact is that Poor Ron serves as a metaphorical vehicle for conveying all the awkwardnesses of that age: his wand is broken, his spells backfire, his owl is clumsy, he's petrified of any spider — let alone the sort of spiders one finds in Potterville — and he's increasingly nervous around girls, even Hermione. (There's also a marvelously disgusting sequence wherein Ron accidently hexes himself with slugs, a sort of visual equivalent of Bertie Botts' earwax-flavored jelly bean.)

Harry is a much more serious boy, too much so I'd argue, but then he's had a much more difficult upbringing. His parents were murdered when he was a baby, he was raised by dysfunctional and abusive Muggles, then had his world turned upsidedown again at puberty, thrust into sudden power and prominence. I found myself missing the year-younger Harry, for what a difference that particular year makes in the life of a boy — but no more no doubt than Harry himself, whose childhood, if not blissful, was less dangerous. Still, one wishes the boy would occasionally lighten up and enjoy the moment.

That goes for the filmmakers, too. One complaint I had about the last film has not been fixed with this one: we rarely get to dwell (or dwell as long as I wished) on magical vistas or characters we care about, catching our breath and imbibing the magical atmosphere for which plot should be means, not end. Frank Capra, who knew a thing or two about wonder, once wrote about the importance of a director just letting the camera play upon the faces of his characters — when they weren't noticing, as it were: when they were between What Happened Last and What Happens Next, a glorious "waste" of screen time that the Potter films don't seem to be able to afford. This is too bad, for obsessive utility is a Muggle virtue. Those fast glimpses of Hogwarts at Christmastime both reassured me that Rowling and the filmmakers know what real magic is, but are sometimes too busy making it to notice.

Then again, this kind of close-analysis risks making a similar Muggle mistake, since the points we reduce to analytical language are only half (if that) of what is being communicated to us as we engage with a myth. But at that risk of erring on the side of Knowledge against Innocence, let's sketch the broad outlines of this episode of Harry Potter's ongoing education to understand how it fits into the larger picture.

This story finds Harry haunted (literally again; myth is in the business of literalizing the figurative) by a memory of his nemesis, Voldemort: a haunting that ultimately ends in the revealing of dark secrets. The darkest secret of which Harry most wishes he might remain innocent is that he and his arch-enemy aren't as different from one another as he'd like to think. The personal connection between Harry Potter and the evil wizard most other magical people refer to as "You Know Who" goes beyond the rather primary fact that Voldemort murdered Harry's parents. It even goes beyond the fact that Harry as a baby actually defeated Voldemort in ways nobody understands. The personal connection between Harry and the Evil One is right there on Harry's forehead, that lightning-shaped scar, which signals both his specialness and his special burden: the touch of You Know Who bequeathed to Harry Potter certain of Voldemort's traits — the ability to talk to snakes along with Who Knows What Else. Just like Luke Skywalker, another sorcerer's apprentice, Harry Potter has a dark father, who speaks to our hero from inside his own blood, an ever-present pressure to choose evil.

And here is the most scary magical power of all: the power of choice.

One person who follows in his father's footsteps is Draco Malfoy. With archetypal clarity, Malfoy cheats and bullies his way to feeling superior to everyone else, the ultimate diabolical triumph of the Familiar over the Other. He has no real friends, only toadies, whom he tyrannizes and belittles and uses for his own ends. It's no surprise, then, that Malfoy takes up the long-discredited cause of Voldemort when he was a student at Hogwarts, of purging the school of all but "pure" wizards, eliminating the half-breeds whose parent or parents are Muggles, a racist assault on "mudbloods".

Harry, on the other hand, continues to use his precious power of choice against his own interests, but in favor of the Other. There is a conscious contrast in this film of those who are willing to sacrifice self and those who refuse because they are too much in love with themselves — notably Malfoy and Gilderoy Lockhart, a fraudulent and fame-hungry teacher of Defense of the Dark Arts who has no defenses to offer. Despite its slower and darker story, the film picks up at the climax as Harry's identification with classical images of Christ figures shows the moral center of this series is dead-on, faithfully offering up mythic furnishings no moral imagination can do without. The monomyth is in play, the hero of a thousand faces this time out is Harry Potter, and he continues to learn Hogwart's most important lesson: that the evil power which must first be defeated is not in the Other, but within oneself. That Mr. Lockhart can be cured of his vanity only by forgetting himself demonstrates that ignorance can be Divine, and why self-centered Muggles know so little about wonder.

Before the happy ending, when students were one by one being picked off (not killed, but entranced), I wondered if anyone else felt a bit of eerie resonance with the only-recently captured Beltway sniper. That is the kind of real world we live in, the kind we can't protect our children from, the one in which they need more than anything proper instruction in Defense Against the Dark Arts. One of the darkest arts is the wicked enchantment that makes one feel that evil is arbitrary and all-powerful. Such a spell can only be broken by the revelation of moral order in the universe, something, like languages, which is learned quickest by the youngest, and then only through imaginative experiences, stories of heros defeating dragons.

The next Potter book will be released before we have another film. Rowling has said she's going to do seven, like the Narnia series, which she admires. But while C. S. Lewis's stories were set in a single magic land, they ranged much more broadly in space and time, and used more than one cast of characters. Whether Rowling can beat back creeping Mugglefication and keep things Other by sticking so close to old familiar Hogwarts remains to be seen. And even if all the books are written, and turned into films, it looks more and more likely that different actors will end up in the key roles. Certainly the late Richard Harris will be replaced by a new Dumbledore. But the kids also seem to be growing faster in fact than in fiction. My hunch is that the movie series will survive such changes, and hopefully it will help loosen things up so that fidelity to the books is no longer so overvalued. Two Potter films is enough for Chris Columbus, who has handed the series on to Alfonso Cuaron, director of racy arthouse hit, Y Tu Mama Tambian, but also the stunningly-beautiful 1995 family film, The Little Princess, where he evidenced brilliant instincts for cinematic adaptation of a literary work. (Another director I'd like to see have a crack at Harry Potter is Spy Kids' Robert Rodriguez.)