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| Deathly Hallows Pt 2 Movie Review |
If you were born the year that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s
Stone premiered, you are now ten years old.
If you were seven years old when the movie premiered, you probably
graduate from high school this year.
If you gave yourself a dollar once a day starting with the day
that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered, you would
now have $3,529 (which is not as much as I thought it would be
when I came up with this.)
If you really wanted to play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C#
minor, as referred to as Quasi una fantasia, but more popularly
known as the Moonlight Sonata, once a month since the first movie
premiered, just for the heck of it, you would have played this 117
times.
As for myself?
I was in my first semester of college when the first movie
premiered. Now, I just finished my sixth year of teaching.
There have been so many things I’ve loved along the way, and
certainly many things I loathed about the movie’s adaptation. To
quote myself from my stupendous review of Deathly Hallows Part I,
“It is that love/hate relationship with the movies that led to the
coining of the term loave (a combination, for those of you that
don’t remember from my last review, of the word love and loathe).”
Once again, Deathly Hallows Part II gets a lot of credit for
following the right order of the book. In essence, the movie was
only broken up into the Gringott’s break-in and the Hogwarts
battle, so it would be difficult to mess up the order at all. At
first glance, it seems as though it is a perfect adaptation of the
novel. It really only has one more flaw. There are so many minor
details wrong throughout the movie, if you organized them into a
list, you wouldn’t think the movie followed the book at all.
Let’s break it down, shall we?
While I rank these complaints as top five, my actual list could go
on for another ten years.
The cups in the Gringott’s vault multiply but don’t burn, making
it very easy to climb the pile to grab the horcrux.
They had previously omitted Pettigrew’s death from Deathly Hallows
Part I, and made no effort to revisit his storyline in this movie,
so in essence he disappeared.
There is no mention of Lupin and Tonks having a baby, Harry
becoming the baby’s godfather, or Lupin at all.
The Grey Lady tells Harry exactly where to find the diadem, which
made sense considering they cut out Harry placing the Half-Blood
Prince book under the diadem in the sixth movie.
They cut out all mention of there being a portrait of Dumbledore
in Snape’s office.
Harry speaks to Ron and Hermione before heading to the forest to
meet his fate.
Neville doesn’t kill the snake right away after pulling the Sword
of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat. Instead, Ron and Hermione
run around the castle chasing the thing for what seems like hours
before Neville finally comes along to fulfill his destiny.
Harry doesn’t throw the Invisibility Cloak over himself when he is
in Hagrid’s arms faking his death. Instead, he jumps up at an
inopportune time and runs away like a small puppy.
Draco and his family walk away from the castle calmly before
Voldemort is even defeated, with no sense of urgency whatsoever.
While I loaved all eight of these movies, I have grouped the
movies into two categories:
Movies in which I leaned towards Loathe:
Prisoner of Azkaban
Order of the Phoenix
Half-Blood Prince
Movies in which I leaned towards Love:
Sorcerer’s Stone
Chamber of Secrets
Goblet of Fire
Deathly Hallows Part I
So where am I placing our final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows Part II?
Drum roll please...
I actually am leaning towards love!! That makes the official score
5-3, meaning that while we’ve had our share of stress along the
way, ultimately the series wins out in the end.
And so, we have reached our conclusion.
No more plans for books and movies in the near future, but one can
always hope. For now, we can only look back at an epic decade of
movies, fourteen years of magnificence in total. A lot may have
changed in that time, but one thing is certain. We were given the
chance to witness it first-hand.
Stone premiered, you are now ten years old.
If you were seven years old when the movie premiered, you probably
graduate from high school this year.
If you gave yourself a dollar once a day starting with the day
that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered, you would
now have $3,529 (which is not as much as I thought it would be
when I came up with this.)
If you really wanted to play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C#
minor, as referred to as Quasi una fantasia, but more popularly
known as the Moonlight Sonata, once a month since the first movie
premiered, just for the heck of it, you would have played this 117
times.
As for myself?
I was in my first semester of college when the first movie
premiered. Now, I just finished my sixth year of teaching.
There have been so many things I’ve loved along the way, and
certainly many things I loathed about the movie’s adaptation. To
quote myself from my stupendous review of Deathly Hallows Part I,
“It is that love/hate relationship with the movies that led to the
coining of the term loave (a combination, for those of you that
don’t remember from my last review, of the word love and loathe).”
Once again, Deathly Hallows Part II gets a lot of credit for
following the right order of the book. In essence, the movie was
only broken up into the Gringott’s break-in and the Hogwarts
battle, so it would be difficult to mess up the order at all. At
first glance, it seems as though it is a perfect adaptation of the
novel. It really only has one more flaw. There are so many minor
details wrong throughout the movie, if you organized them into a
list, you wouldn’t think the movie followed the book at all.
Let’s break it down, shall we?
- 5 Things I LOATHED
- The Battle Begins...NOW!
- This complaint actually stems from the producers making
this film into two movies. In the book, the battle begins
as a chaotic culmination of Harry’s quest to destroy
horcruxes. In the movie, the battle was virtually the
entire storyline. Therefore, it needed a beginning,
middle, and end.
- Shortly after Harry first arrives at Hogwarts through the
passage behind Arianna’s portrait, Snape summons the
student body into the Great Hall in organized rows and
lines. He is questioning the students over the rumors of
the Chosen One’s return when Harry emerges valiantly from
the crowd and confronts Snape about Dumbledore’s death.
- McGonagall then takes over, battling Snape and the Carrow
siblings until they are driven from the Great Hall.
- Then in a very organized manner, members of the Order and
select faculty place protective charms around the castle
while the Death Eaters gather outside in a nice little
crowd waiting to attack.
The director might as well have had the actors look into
the screen and say, “The Battle Begins...NOW!”
- 2. As a result...
- As a result of the omitted chaos, they in turn had to cut
out one of my favorite scenes. I absolutely adore when
Harry hexes Carrow from beneath the Invisibility Cloak
just because he spit at Professor McGonagall. By making
Harry’s entrance so structured and official, they
therefore had to omit Harry’s surprise entrance.
I will say this — they wrote a great part for McGonagall
for the final film. It redeems them for all the times she
had about one line to say per hour.
- 3. Dumbledore’s Backstory
- Wait...what backstory?
I guess I should have seen this one coming. There was
little mention of Dumbledore’s backstory in Deathly
Hallows Part I. They showed Harry reading the opposing
articles written by Doge and Skeeter, but the audience
doesn’t hear a word of it.
Part of me hoped they were saving the big reveal for
Harry’s scenes with Aberforth in Hogsmeade, but that just
wasn’t the case. Harry let us know that Aberforth was
Albus’s brother, while Hermione pointed out that Arianna
was their sister. That was it. No mention of Dumbledore’s
parents. No mention of Arianna’s accident. No mention of
the friendship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
In a movie with the words Deathly Hallows in the title,
there was no mention of their chase for the Deathly
Hallows.
- 4. The Chamber of Secrets
- Yes, the book does describe Ron and Hermione bravely
entering the Chamber of Secrets to collect basilisk fangs
to destroy the horcruxes.
But they don’t show it.
Then we get to use our imagination. We can imagine that
Ron struggled to open the chamber door by doing his best
Parseltongue impression. By showing us, it just makes me
criticize the movie makers for making it look so easier.
Plus, they moved Ron and Hermione’s kiss into the Chamber
of Secrets, making this epic scene something it just
wasn’t in the book.
(Interesting Info: both Emma Watson and Rupert Grint
separately described filming this scene as an “absolutely
horrible” experience.)
- 5. The Final Confrontation...alone
- Harry and Voldemort have their epic battle, but not in the
Great Hall. They battle over every inch of the castle
except the Great Hall.
First they run through the castle...then they run up the
clock tower…then Harry rocks some quotes that have
absolutely nothing to do with the book or the storyline
for that matter…then Harry grabs Voldemort and throws him
off the castle, where they zip around and around and then
up and down and then back and forth before finally landing
in the courtyard outside the door leading to the Great
Hall.
...and they do it all alone. No one watches Harry defeat
Voldemort. No one gets to see the Elder Wand pledge
allegiance to Draco’s conquered wand.
While I rank these complaints as top five, my actual list could go
on for another ten years.
The cups in the Gringott’s vault multiply but don’t burn, making
it very easy to climb the pile to grab the horcrux.
They had previously omitted Pettigrew’s death from Deathly Hallows
Part I, and made no effort to revisit his storyline in this movie,
so in essence he disappeared.
There is no mention of Lupin and Tonks having a baby, Harry
becoming the baby’s godfather, or Lupin at all.
The Grey Lady tells Harry exactly where to find the diadem, which
made sense considering they cut out Harry placing the Half-Blood
Prince book under the diadem in the sixth movie.
They cut out all mention of there being a portrait of Dumbledore
in Snape’s office.
Harry speaks to Ron and Hermione before heading to the forest to
meet his fate.
Neville doesn’t kill the snake right away after pulling the Sword
of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat. Instead, Ron and Hermione
run around the castle chasing the thing for what seems like hours
before Neville finally comes along to fulfill his destiny.
Harry doesn’t throw the Invisibility Cloak over himself when he is
in Hagrid’s arms faking his death. Instead, he jumps up at an
inopportune time and runs away like a small puppy.
Draco and his family walk away from the castle calmly before
Voldemort is even defeated, with no sense of urgency whatsoever.
- 5 Things I LOVED
- 1. The walk down the hallway of Gringotts, and most of the
- Gringott’s scene
- I had heard that Helena Bonham Carter loved her chance to
play Hermione, referring to the scene in which Hermione
becomes Bellatrix with the help of Polyjuice Potion. I
will definitely give her credit — she did a fantastic job
in this scene.
I love how silent it is when Ron, Harry, Hermione, and
Griphook walk up to the front desk at Gringott’s. There
was hardly any background music...hardly any noise at all.
Not only did this create a terrific tension-filled scene,
it also made it that much more powerful when the dragon
smashed through the wall.
- The scene in Gringott’s was virtually the only scene in
Deathly Hallows Part II that did not take place at
Hogwarts and was not part of the ultimate battle. Luckily,
it was done well so we weren't yawning, moaning, and
clawing our eyes out to get to the good stuff.
- 2. Hermione
- A lot of the Harry Potter actors were asked what character
they would like to play if they were given the chance to
start over.
Every actor, male or female, said Hermione.
There’s no doubt that this series is about Harry Potter.
It’s even named after him. Hermione, however, is no doubt
the second most important character to the storyline.
A lot of this love is attributed to the book, but I have
to give the movies credit. Choosing Emma Watson to portray
Hermione was one of the best casting decisions they ever
made. She can now look back on the series and be
ridiculously proud of herself and the work she did.
- 3. Neville again
- Once again, Neville and the actor who played him rocked it
out in this movie.
- There were a few hints that led me to believe that Neville
was not going to kill the snake in the film. Harry warns
Ron and Hermione about the snake, not Neville. Later on,
Neville pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the hat, but
does not kill the snake right away. Instead, it was Ron
and Hermione who chased after it.
I told my crowd that if my theory was correct, I was
walking out of the theater then and there.
Luckily, that was not the case. While it didn’t happen at
the moment I’d hoped, Neville courageously killed Nagini
with the Sword of Gryffindor, just as his character was
destined to do.
- 4. The Prince’s Tale
- SNAPE
- Stories recently emerged that Alan Rickman, the actor who
plays Snape, knew about Snape’s love for Lily early on
into the filming of the series, despite the fact that the
seventh book hadn’t been published yet.
J.K. was quoted as saying, “He needed to understand, I
think, and does completely understand and did completely
understand where this bitterness towards this boy, whose
living proof of Lily’s preference for another man, came
from.”
Hat’s off to you, Alan Rickman. You truly did my favorite
character justice. The movie also gets a lot of credit
here for their interpretation of The Prince’s Tale.
- 5. The Epilogue
- (Interesting Info: The actress playing Draco’s wife is Tom
Felton’s real life girlfriend).
I’m not sure I would call this scene perfect. I spent so
much time trying to decide if they had done a good job
with the animation and graphics that I almost forgot to
enjoy it.
Then the greatest thing happened.
The movie ended with the same music that the very first
movie did.
It took no more than the first three notes to give me
chills. I’m pretty sure my mouth was wide open, but if it
was I didn’t notice. That’s when it really hits.
This was the end...
While I loaved all eight of these movies, I have grouped the
movies into two categories:
Movies in which I leaned towards Loathe:
Prisoner of Azkaban
Order of the Phoenix
Half-Blood Prince
Movies in which I leaned towards Love:
Sorcerer’s Stone
Chamber of Secrets
Goblet of Fire
Deathly Hallows Part I
So where am I placing our final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows Part II?
Drum roll please...
I actually am leaning towards love!! That makes the official score
5-3, meaning that while we’ve had our share of stress along the
way, ultimately the series wins out in the end.
And so, we have reached our conclusion.
No more plans for books and movies in the near future, but one can
always hope. For now, we can only look back at an epic decade of
movies, fourteen years of magnificence in total. A lot may have
changed in that time, but one thing is certain. We were given the
chance to witness it first-hand.
| by the REAL Ginny Weasley |
| Copyright © 2007 | www.booksandwands.com | All Rights Reserved Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Scholastic and Warner Brothers Entertainment. No copyright infringement intended of any and all source material. No profits were made from this site. |