Also known as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two.
Isn’t he though? I love how the chubby kid in the dorky sweaters grew up to be awesome. Missed the ‘I’ll join you when hell freezes over’ line though. Also missed the death of poor old Fred, it was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. Actually, the whole thing felt a bit like they’d hacked it up, cut out a lot– you don’t even see Hagrid until he’s tied up by the Death Eaters. And they gave somewhat too much screentime to Helena Ravenclaw, instead. Ain’t that always the way?
Man, I remember being like twelve when the first HP film came out, these bloody things have been with me for a huge part of my life. I still have a poster for Philosopher’s Stone hanging up in my old room, Hogwarts and Harry and Hagrid look so childlike and serene. And now the whole castle’s gone boom. Huh…this is why I love that they left in the epilogue, because then you’re reassured that things have gone back to being childlike and serene again. Not sure that Dan, Rupert, Emma and Bonnie looked old enough to be parents to kids of that age, though. Still.
Did Neville/Luna happen? My god, Neville/Luna happened! (Which is fine by me.) And Tonks got no lines while Lupin got maybe three. It was terribly sad seeing them lying dead with their hands touching, though. And I did come close to tears at the Reserrection Stone scene, even though then we got Lupin mentioning the son that regular audiences will have no idea he had because the film cut that bit out.
When Harry goes to his death, he hugs Hermione but just nods at Ron. Are they too manly to hug or something? Ron’s shout of ‘He beat you!’ to Voldemort was, surprise, cut out. Ron really comes off worst of the trio in these films, wah. At least he still gets the odd good moment.
Loved pretty much everything with the Malfoys. Also noticed something I never noticed in the books before: Harry’s saving Draco’s life when he had every reason not to is what indirectly saves him, because Narcissa only spares Harry when she knows that Draco’s alive. I liked that Draco showed up in the epilogue. Maybe he turned out sort of okay after all.
I hate the demonisation of Slytherin in the books, hate it even more in the films. At least we got Slughorn (the One Good Slytherin, tm) played by Jim Broadbent, who is great even if he has maybe one line in the whole film.
I’m never going to like Snape, but I loved the whole Pensive scene, loved it. Loved that it used flashbacks from all the previous films. Tiny wee trio! And I liked the scene of Snape crying over Lily’s body as baby!Harry looked on, even if it was for very good reasons not in the book.
Plus we never got Snape saying he’d sacrifice James and Harry to save Lily. What a bastard. (One day I’ll actually write down some coherent thoughts on him, but I think my dislike of Snape stems from his cruel ‘I see no difference’ comment to Hermione back in POA. I hated him then, and everything after that- prejudice, murder, mass murder- was just the icing on the rotten cake.)
King’s Cross was cool. Except Dumbledore’s become Dumbledore the White!
And that is all I have to say about that, for now at least.