In an attempt at quality control and because I am much too scholarly to blog during finals I was never able to finish my BEDA, then I did not feel like blogging during much of the summer; I've mentioned before that I'm still trying to decide if a blog is a good idea. Excuses aside I went to see the final Harry Potter movie last week and, like every other fan, I feel the need to express my thoughts about it. Obviously this contains spoilers.
Overall I thought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 was one of the better movies. I believe that having David Yates direct the final four installments of the series was for the best, continuing the ambiance and tone between movies allowed them to have a feeling of continuity that the changing directors in the first movies was not providing. For me, without this, I'm sure the disconnect would have bought down the entire series (even though I did not like Order of the Phoenix I can admit that it was ascetically consistent with Yates' better Potter films).
I always thought that Fred Weasley's death was the worst of the slaughter house that is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but until I saw the movie a large part of me assumed that was because of the shock I felt. I remember reading it and halfway down the page thinking, 'wait, did she just kill Fred' and then going back and rereading his death over and over to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. In the movie, when Ron was crying over Fred's body, I almost teared up (which is the equivalent of crying for anyone else since the only movie I've ever cried in was Air Bud).
In the novels it seemed to me as if Malfoy had a genuine struggle between good and evil, which I felt was expressed brilliantly by Tom Felton in Half Blood Prince. However, in Deathly Hallows Part 2 I didn't feel sympathy for Malfoy's struggle, it seemed more as if he had weak character. It wasn't as if he was trying to make the personal decision between being a good or bad person.This caused me to rethink the character entirely. The part when Voldemort asks the Hogwarts students and the Order to join the Death Eaters because he believes he has won the battle and Draco joins to be with his parents is the only moment when I thought perhaps he was trying to be good and just was not strong enough. Until this moment I had seen Draco in the books and movies as someone who was a strong person deciding between good and evil, not a weak person who wanted to (or was considering) being good.
Otherwise I thought Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman continued to be insanely fierce, Matthew Lewis looked fantastic and I thought the Neville and Luna story line was cute however non-canon it may be. The moment when Neville says, "You haven't seen Luna have you? I'm mad for her. I think it's about time I told her, since we'll probably both be dead by dawn" was a great add on to Neville kick-assness. I'd always felt that the movies robbed Professor McGonagall of most of the funny or quirky lines she had in the books so I was glad that she had some great moments in this movie. And finally, Filch is hilarious and I feel VERY bad that he had to clean up that giant mess.
