“It was important that Quidditch felt dangerous, that it felt fast, and that — for lack of a better word — it felt cool,” Columbus said. “You wanted every kid who saw the movie to say, ‘That would be my favorite sport, if I could play any sport.’ My dream would be to get the feeling we get at the Warner Bros. theme ride we have at Universal Studios, where you’re actually on a broomstick with Harry. I would’ve loved to have been able to do that in the year 2000.”

The NFL turned out to be the perfect comparison, as “Sorcerer’s Stone” depicts Quidditch as a brutal, violent game where everyone involved should probably be wearing a helmet. The sound and sight of kids getting hit by bludgers invokes the same sympathetic wincing as when a football player gets tackled a little too hard. “My sound designer Martin Cantwell thought it was a great idea to record his voice for the Bludger,” said the film’s supervising sound editor, Eddy Joseph, “That weird little nasty sound — the thought of it like the Tasmanian Devil — was him.”

Although the special effects in the first film don’t quite hold up to scrutiny, that first game stills maintains a strong enough sense of wonder to be a fun watch today. Like the NFL, the rules of Quidditch are long and complicated, borderline nonsensical to a newbie’s eyes, but its twist and turns still make for an exciting watch. It wasn’t easy to bring this new sport to life on screen, but Columbus and the rest of his team somehow pulled it off.