The awkward, middle years.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"Worst Hogwarts castle ever, IMO."

Really? Worse even than 4867?

@LuvsLEGO_Cool_J:
If you mean the first year of no yellow minifigs in licensed sets, then yes. It's the same year they changed brown and the greys.

I think early sets were designed as play sets, sort of toy-ified versions. Today Lego clearly puts effort to make the architecture look (at least feel) accurate.

@Lego_lord:
These days, a lot of the set designers probably played with sets like this as kids, but they also grew up with an internet full of AFOLs posting photos of their MOCs. By the time they got hired, they were well aware that there were more possibilities in the brick than had been seen on store shelves.

Dementors whistling their happy little tunes.

@NotProfessorWhymzi said:
"of all the things you could have named your castle, why "Hogwarts?" it's gotta be one of those design-by-committee things where that one guy who always shows up drunk to meetings but will never be fired because he's the third cousin of some mid-level executive suggested it and that's what they went with because it was all they had and you never anger the nepo baby."

Given the castle is something like 1000 years old, it predates the language of English as you or I would recognise it (especially as the castle is in Scotland) so its original name might have been “heogwrats” or some other ancient gibberish that simply got Anglicised later down the line. I know JK drew from older languages for a lot of her characters, might hold true for the school too

I really like this one. It has lots of things going for it and most of the parts are very useful. It might not be the most impressive "castle" out there (it's clearly meant to mostly represent the clock tower section), but it's far from bad.

Tick tock tick tock! This movie is all about Time and Depression, packaged for moody thirteen year olds with burgeoning crushes on one or more teenage witches or wizards.

So here’s the answer to all that wailing and gnashing of teeth when the more recent sets changed roof colour - simply use both grey and sand green at the same time.

@iwybs said:
"Tick tock tick tock! This movie is all about Time and Depression, packaged for moody thirteen year olds with burgeoning crushes on one or more teenage witches or wizards."

It's also the best movie in the series by far.

I guess I'm not having a popular opinion today, but this one ROCKS!

The architecture looks more coherent than on any previous version of hogwarts (the front looks closed off!), the details are actually quite accurate for what was common with licensed themes at the time (that smaller roof on the left side is also in the movie), it depicts all the importat sections of hogwarts from the movie and you even have brick-built roofs this time. What's not to love?

The (printed!) clock has an interesting motor mechanism that can be wound up and released. With a second lever you can toggle whether the gate is raised or released as it spins. Combined with the huge exclusive Belville doors you can recreate the castle locking down against Sirius Black.

There's a divinations classroom, another generic classroom with hidden skeleton, a Gryffondor common room tower with slashed portrait, mostrous book of monsters, fold-out semicircular room dorm bedroon... a good looking gate.

And the minifigs! Exclusive pink Dumbledore, exclusive until a few years ago Tralawny, the excellent dementors. The main trio and Malfoy have their old 2001 style faces, but when they were updated the next year they didn't look any better. Minifig design was in a huge experimental period, so consistency here was nice actually.

I'm biased because I'm fortunate to own it, but this is far from the worst hogwarts castle unless you think this set is meant to depict the entire thing. Because it isn't.

I always displayed this right next to the first Hogwarts. They make a gigantic and grand pair together. Even the new and old gray only stand out when viewing them up close as their colors are otherwise consistent, even having a darker ground floor.

It's a shame that this one and the other 3rd film sets have become so ludicrously expensive on the aftermarket.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"Worst Hogwarts castle ever, IMO."

For me the best.

IMO the best Hogwarts.

@Binnekamp said:
"I guess I'm not having a popular opinion today, but this one ROCKS!

The architecture looks more coherent than on any previous version of hogwarts (the front looks closed off!), the details are actually quite accurate for what was common with licensed themes at the time (that smaller roof on the left side is also in the movie), it depicts all the importat sections of hogwarts from the movie and you even have brick-built roofs this time. What's not to love?

The (printed!) clock has an interesting motor mechanism that can be wound up and released. With a second lever you can toggle whether the gate is raised or released as it spins. Combined with the huge exclusive Belville doors you can recreate the castle locking down against Sirius Black.

There's a divinations classroom, another generic classroom with hidden skeleton, a Gryffondor common room tower with slashed portrait, mostrous book of monsters, fold-out semicircular room dorm bedroon... a good looking gate.

And the minifigs! Exclusive pink Dumbledore, exclusive until a few years ago Tralawny, the excellent dementors. The main trio and Malfoy have their old 2001 style faces, but when they were updated the next year they didn't look any better. Minifig design was in a huge experimental period, so consistency here was nice actually.

I'm biased because I'm fortunate to own it, but this is far from the worst hogwarts castle unless you think this set is meant to depict the entire thing. Because it isn't.

I always displayed this right next to the first Hogwarts. They make a gigantic and grand pair together. Even the new and old gray only stand out when viewing them up close as their colors are otherwise consistent, even having a darker ground floor.

It's a shame that this one and the other 3rd film sets have become so ludicrously expensive on the aftermarket."

I agree. The architecture in later versions is definitely better with newer pieces and techniques.

However, the engineering that went into this set for the clock, swinging pendulum, and gate is crazy good, and there are few sets that have tried anything close to the fun features in this set.