Those books were great in that they had kids reading for pleasure back around 15-20 years ago. I'm not a fan of magic in movies, because anything can just happen, no matter how crazy, and it's just chalked up to magic.
when you have set rules and laws for how things work within that world (and you explain it well and do so before it's a major plot point), it works fine. suspension of disbelief. harry potter does that pretty well, both in books and in films. matrix (original) is another good example.
for a bad example, the new star wars trilogy is an easy target. force users were established to be trained over long periods before mastering it. in the original trilogy, luke is seen training several times to learn how to control the force and use it to his advantage, and because it wasn't at a young age, he struggles with it throughout the films, losing battles vs those that are stronger and have trained longer than he has.
in the prequels, even if you don't like them, they establish that they should be in training at a very young age for best development.
in the new trilogy, rey just overpowers a strong, life-long trained force user in force mind reading at a whim. she also knows inherently how to use a lightsaber (established in originals and prequels as a weapon for force users only) without ever having held one before, much less learning how to fight with one. and once again, bests an opponent that is well training in the force. not only that, but fin uses the lightsaber, and he isn't even force sensitive. there are a myriad of reason those movies are bad (like bringing dead characters back, lol) but they broke their own rules right out of the gate.
