Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Mum

The series comes to an end. As I said previously it's completely satisfying to me and certainly the most epic of the series. The Battle of Hogwarts is something I wish they could have spent more time in because it was awesome, but I'll take what I can get.

These films are really remarkable, quite a feat of filmmaking. As much as it's all J.K. Rowling's story I give huge credit to Warner Bros. and the producers for sticking to their guns, for meeting Rowling's demands of an all British cast, sticking closely to her work and for keeping the same cast through a decade of storytelling. It's a film series that's grown up along with its viewers. The chances of something like that happening again is very slim.

The biggest problem with this film is it's so full of stuff there's hardly any time for emotional payoffs. First kisses and beloved character's deaths have to be passed over very quickly to keep the story moving.

This time I saw the film with a younger crowd and there are a lot of tough moments in the film. Snapes death is rather brutal but to finally have the payoff to his story is great. The dead Voldemort foetus thing caused a few audible gasps too, which is great. Conversely, moments from McGonagall, Mrs Weasley and Neville got a round of applause even with the smaller crowd I was in today. That's a very rare thing indeed and I think it speaks volumes to how much these films have made their way into peoples lives.

Besides the Battle there are still quite few sequences that stand out. I love that dragon in the bank vault, he has such character compared to the others in the series. Seeing the Chamber of Secrets again was good too, I'm sure it much have been all created digitally this time as they would have no time to reconstruct that massive set for the brief screen time it appears. Actually there were a lot of callbacks to the 2nd film, the Spiders, the Pixies, obviously the fang and the sword are very important.

The music in this instalment is quite different to most everything that came before. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, some of it really works though.

After a whole film away from Hogwarts it was cool to get back (and then see it destroyed). I like the very militant turn the education has taken with Snape in charge. For this first time though I found the courtyard and the bridge to feel like a real place, outside. It feels like hey shot all those scenes outdoors, where normally those were still sets inside. Whatever they did I'd be interested to see, but it works much better for me.

Again this film is graded down to being barely visible, except of course the startling contrast of the Harry in the train station. I still haven't seen the film in 3D and I think I probably won't. My eyesight isn't bad or anything but if you add the tinting of those glasses to this already dark film I think you'll have a hard time discerning much of what's going on. Anyone that's seen it in 3D care to comment?

Last I'd just like to say that the epilogue completely works for me. I do tear up on that last shot, I'm not entirely sure why, but it does feel like the completion of this journey and it also makes it definite. There's not speculation as to what happens after the battle left in the viewers minds. I don't want more stories after that scene, it feels whole. And I think the make-up is astonishing. It's probably easy to pull off a very old exaggerated look but this has to be subtler and you don't want to finish off the series with something ridiculous, it'll taint everything that came before it. A daunting task and one I think they pulled off.

Very satisfying and an incredible achievement.