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livReasons for watching it: Harry Potter has become a huge cultural touchstone, so I sort of want to know how the story goes. But when it came to the books I got bored somewhere in the middle of Goblet of fire and couldn't quite bring myself to plough through the remaining increasingly bloated tomes. And I didn't really want to get a pedantic plot summary from Wikipedia, because that wouldn't give me a clear enough impression of the series. So I said to myself that I'd watch the final episode when it came out on film. Obviously with it being such a huge thing, it was going to be a big-budget film with good actors and good special effects, and since I don't love the books I wouldn't be offended by changes or abridgements.
Circumstances of watching it: My colleague SL suggested a trip to the cinema to see it, so I was happy to go along. It's the kind of thing that likely benefits from the big screen, and for once I get to keep up with the cultural zeitgeist rather than waiting a few years until it comes out on DVD and I get round to watching it.
Verdict: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is generally a romp and I'm glad I managed to catch it.
It certainly made for a decent couple of hours' entertainment. Being the climax of the series it's undoubtedly an exciting story (and I'd picked up enough cues from general culture that I knew what was going on even though I haven't read all the books). The big budget visual effects worked very well (I particularly liked the scenes in Gringotts vaults, and the dragon!) I'm really impressed that they've kept the same three main actors for the whole ten-year series; a lot can happen when child actors go through puberty and it's great that you've got this ongoing depth of characterization rather than swapping them out for actors who might look more like the glossy Hollywood ideal. That said, both Hermione and Harry are too "pretty" for the roles, which was a complaint from the beginning but it's particularly noticeable now that you have mid-20s actors playing 18-year-olds.
The adults are of course superb. Dumbledore and McGonagall aren't quite how I imagined them, but the film versions are still lovely. Rickman is magnificent as Snape, which is no surprise at all but he's still a joy to watch. I also got a lot out of the way Voldemort was done as an antagonist. Yes, he's a total cliche melodramatic villain, but that's a problem with the books as much as anything, and the film made him genuinely creepy and scary. His defeat doesn't involve him being stupid or wasting time by gloating, like a lot of melodrama villains. I also loved the big set-piece scene where the Death Eaters army attacks Hogwarts; it's really visually and emotionally impressive, and in spite of the epic scale it really brings home the emotions of characters watching their beloved school destroyed and many of their friends killed. Neville's moment of triumph was also well handled (the fact you could see it coming from book 1 was again a problem with the books).
I didn't like the epilogue, but then I generally don't like epilogues, and likely a big part of my problem is that I just do not in any way buy Ron/Hermione. (Also it usually takes two red-headed parents to produce true red-head offspring, but you know, that's a minor quibble.) The other aspect of the film that didn't sit well with me was the Draco Malfoy arc. I suppose the truth is that I just like fanfic!Draco much better than canon!Draco. He really could have been a complex character damaged by his upbringing by, effectively, neo-Nazis, but it seems that Rowling panicked so much about fandom seeing complexities that she hadn't intended, that she made him more and more of a cardboard racist bully character as the series went on.
So all in all it's a great piece of storytelling which really uses the capabilities of the medium. The story it's based on undoubtedly has flaws, but I think the film managed to capture the part of the series that really touches something primal.
Circumstances of watching it: My colleague SL suggested a trip to the cinema to see it, so I was happy to go along. It's the kind of thing that likely benefits from the big screen, and for once I get to keep up with the cultural zeitgeist rather than waiting a few years until it comes out on DVD and I get round to watching it.
Verdict: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is generally a romp and I'm glad I managed to catch it.
It certainly made for a decent couple of hours' entertainment. Being the climax of the series it's undoubtedly an exciting story (and I'd picked up enough cues from general culture that I knew what was going on even though I haven't read all the books). The big budget visual effects worked very well (I particularly liked the scenes in Gringotts vaults, and the dragon!) I'm really impressed that they've kept the same three main actors for the whole ten-year series; a lot can happen when child actors go through puberty and it's great that you've got this ongoing depth of characterization rather than swapping them out for actors who might look more like the glossy Hollywood ideal. That said, both Hermione and Harry are too "pretty" for the roles, which was a complaint from the beginning but it's particularly noticeable now that you have mid-20s actors playing 18-year-olds.
The adults are of course superb. Dumbledore and McGonagall aren't quite how I imagined them, but the film versions are still lovely. Rickman is magnificent as Snape, which is no surprise at all but he's still a joy to watch. I also got a lot out of the way Voldemort was done as an antagonist. Yes, he's a total cliche melodramatic villain, but that's a problem with the books as much as anything, and the film made him genuinely creepy and scary. His defeat doesn't involve him being stupid or wasting time by gloating, like a lot of melodrama villains. I also loved the big set-piece scene where the Death Eaters army attacks Hogwarts; it's really visually and emotionally impressive, and in spite of the epic scale it really brings home the emotions of characters watching their beloved school destroyed and many of their friends killed. Neville's moment of triumph was also well handled (the fact you could see it coming from book 1 was again a problem with the books).
I didn't like the epilogue, but then I generally don't like epilogues, and likely a big part of my problem is that I just do not in any way buy Ron/Hermione. (Also it usually takes two red-headed parents to produce true red-head offspring, but you know, that's a minor quibble.) The other aspect of the film that didn't sit well with me was the Draco Malfoy arc. I suppose the truth is that I just like fanfic!Draco much better than canon!Draco. He really could have been a complex character damaged by his upbringing by, effectively, neo-Nazis, but it seems that Rowling panicked so much about fandom seeing complexities that she hadn't intended, that she made him more and more of a cardboard racist bully character as the series went on.
So all in all it's a great piece of storytelling which really uses the capabilities of the medium. The story it's based on undoubtedly has flaws, but I think the film managed to capture the part of the series that really touches something primal.
