My thoughts on Deathly Hallows Part 2, let me show you them.
I’ve never expected much from the Harry Potter film franchise. It has nice visual effects, a fair few national treasures crapping around and having fun, but the way it’s adapted, for me at least, has always been really awkward. I put this down to the fact that the movies came out almost alongside the books, when I really think it would have been more reasonable to make the first movie maybe around the time the fourth or fifth book was coming out. This was one of the few positives of the Twilight franchise - the first movie came out in the same year the last book was published. While the Harry Potter books were published over a much longer time period (though relatively not that long, as the four Twilight books were published over a 5 year span versus the Harry Potter books, which took about 10 years in total) the movie franchise still should have started a good couple years later than it did. But we’ve got to get those toys out on the market, don’t we?
My basic opinion: it had some good points, but overall I think it was fundamentally terrible as a movie.
1. This was not a movie. There. Now that I’ve summed up my biggest problem, I can post this, right? Well, no. I have to explain myself. I suppose it’s the very nature of this film, being the second part of a two-part movie, that it starts in medias res. Sure, there’s a brief, ominous recap, but then we’re going back into the cottage and DOMHNALL GLEESON MARRY ME and we’re talking to Olivander and then we’re talking to Griphook and on and on. Basically, the movie was missing a beginning. If they wanted the effect of opening a book in the middle and reading until the end, they got it.
Personally, I think that this is completely unacceptable and lazy. If you’re going to make a book into two movies, make it into two movies and one movie with a bit of quickly edited dross you could have thrown together in Windows Movie Maker. This is not television, and these movies were not released within a week of each other. Given the time and money sunk into this franchise, couldn’t they have been a little creative with the beginning? Maybe made a dream sequence? A conversation? Maybe one of those cool little scenes the books had before they got to Harry bogging around 4 Privet Drive? Maybe they could have done what they cut out of the sixth and written a scene with the Prime Minister?
Or hell, they could have made one 276 minute movie and done intermissions. I don’t know.
Now I’m going to get to the part where I feel a little like I’m patronizing people who haven’t read the books. Honestly, this was a little bit like watching the David Lynch Dune movie for me, only I had actually read the source material. Scenes basically followed one another, but I felt at many points that if I hadn’t read DH twice, I would have officially lost track once they got to Hogsmeade. Indeed, I did lose track once or twice during the Battle of Hogwarts, if only in a “Wait, what part are we on?” sort of way. This is where the film suffers most from the scenes cut out of its predecessors, because it’s so utterly disjointed and hurried. To its credit, this movie does feel like it’s a war, because we’re running around and it’s not entirely clear what’s happening but lots of things are exploding. Unfortunately it does not feel like a story.
For the record I did talk to Moorish, who has not read DH and has only seen the first part, and she confirmed my suspicions and indeed, it is a confusing movie even if one knows the basic plot.
Admittedly it does try. We get Harry pretty much taking on the role of the narrator in the Helena Ravenclaw scene (and kudos to her actress, she was a much more awesome character than I imagined when I read the books) and then doing a bunch of the reveals, and I remember at least one in which he gives it directly to camera. This is incredibly cheap and whoever decided it should happen should be bitchslapped like Lucius.
In conclusion, a movie usually consists of more than a number of scenes of stuff happening strung together.
2. Oh, Dan. I don’t blame the casting director for this. The first two books were pretty lighthearted and thereby required a Harry who could do comedy. DH part 2 was probably the darkest film in the entire franchise. Aside from a few comedic bits thrown in at random points, it was unremittingly dark. Like space. I will say this of Daniel Radcliffe - he is a talented comedic actor. Note that I said comedic. Boy does not have much range. He delivered every line longer than four words in the style of someone who has been thrown in front of the camera last minute and is reading off a cue card. And sometimes he yelled.
Oh, and Harry’s greatest nemesis is apparently large piles of things which he has to climb up on to get other things. I know this was in the book, but I found it funny.
3. You implied what? So in the books, there’s this scene right before the Battle of Hogwarts where basically all the students who want to go fight go fight. Basically, the only students who don’t volunteer are the entirety of Slytherin house (though some come back in the end apparently) and all the students who are under 17, except for Colin Creevy and maybe a few others. Honestly, this was the most striking bit of Fridge Logic (or Brilliance in my case) in the whole series. It says a hell of a lot about magical society that basically a bunch of kids are allowed and want to fight a bunch of Dark wizards and indeed die fighting said wizards. I found the whole concept to be wonderfully visceral and a really interesting bit of world-building.
In the film, McGonagall says (I’m paraphrasing) “Slytherin house go down to the dungeons, the rest of you stay.” It struck me that the implication of this is that she let the younger kids stay too, because there were younger kids in that scene. Basically, the only kids she’s going to effectively save from the Death Eaters are the Slytherins, since she ordered them all out. This is not so much visceral as it is an indication that someone, somewhere, was sloppy and made a stupid error.
4. Stop, just stop. (Spoilers) Yeah, there were a few things that were really, really, terrifically, overdone in this movie. The first was Snape seeing Lily’s body at Godric’s Hollow. Alan Rickman does a great job in this movie, mostly because he’s fantastic, but we did not need to see him cry and have a Big No over Lily. Seriously, he goes into the house, walks up the stairs, has a moment where he’s clinging to the wall to keep from falling over, and then we get him wailing and weeping and…that should not have been the funniest part of the movie. They could have stopped it when he was clinging to the wall and we would have understood it clearly. This was one of the few parts of the movie that was well-told, and then it was ruined.
I have a confession to make: I cried reading the scene where Harry is in the Forbidden Forest and is talking to his dead parents and Remus and Sirius. Scenes like that just get me, okay? In the movie, the scene was handled well for the first few minutes. And then it went on. And on. By the time it ended, I was relieved because I was so bored.
In other news, there are two scenes from the end of DH which are very popular. One is when Neville cuts off Nagini’s head after delivering an epic fuck you to Voldemort. The other is when Molly Weasley kicks the shit out of Bellatrix Lestrange and yells “Not my daughter you bitch!” Let me tell you how these scenes were handled in the movie and how they lost the emotional impact they had in the books.
1. Neville does indeed deliver a fuck you to Voldemort, and he does cut off Nagini’s head. However, these two scenes are about fifteen minutes apart, and while he does save Ron and Hermione, he does so at the cost of delivering a double helping of kicking ass and taking names in a scene which was fine the way it was in the books. And I mean, we see Ron and Hermione being chased by Nagini and I do think that, no matter what happened in the books, it would have made more sense for them to have killed her. Here it just looks random.
2. This scene happens, and basically it plays out as us seeing Bellatrix throwing some curses at Ginny, who is fighting. I think Bellatrix might have cackled at some point, but otherwise…well, Molly comes out from behind here, where she has been standing for a bit, yells “Not my daughter you bitch!” and literally blows Bellatrix to smithereens. Admittedly, I like that aspect, but the thing was that it looked like Ginny was holding her own before Molly came in. I’ll blame this on editing, but it was totally tangential to the movie.
I guess my problem was that it was literal fanservice. Which was all this movie was. And that is sad.
5. Miscellaneous bibble time (More spoilers). Rupert Grint gets so, so many kudos for his scene with Fred. It might have been about ten seconds long, but he nailed it so hard that I was about ready to cry with him. Jim Broadbent, despite his limited screentime, also made me smile every time he appeared. …I liked Perrier’s Bounty, okay? Thank god the epilogue couldn’t be bothered to get new actors to play Harry and the gang. Apparently you don’t need that much age makeup to make someone look almost twenty years older. I’m not going to complain that the Dumbledore subplot was basically alluded to and never really resolved, and that Dumbledore comes off looking like a total bastard. I’m unhappy about it, but why should I complain about the Harry Potter movies cutting things out of the books?
Wow, I didn’t realize I had that much bile to spit about this movie. Have a nice night, all.
My basic opinion: it had some good points, but overall I think it was fundamentally terrible as a movie.
1. This was not a movie. There. Now that I’ve summed up my biggest problem, I can post this, right? Well, no. I have to explain myself. I suppose it’s the very nature of this film, being the second part of a two-part movie, that it starts in medias res. Sure, there’s a brief, ominous recap, but then we’re going back into the cottage and DOMHNALL GLEESON MARRY ME and we’re talking to Olivander and then we’re talking to Griphook and on and on. Basically, the movie was missing a beginning. If they wanted the effect of opening a book in the middle and reading until the end, they got it.
Personally, I think that this is completely unacceptable and lazy. If you’re going to make a book into two movies, make it into two movies and one movie with a bit of quickly edited dross you could have thrown together in Windows Movie Maker. This is not television, and these movies were not released within a week of each other. Given the time and money sunk into this franchise, couldn’t they have been a little creative with the beginning? Maybe made a dream sequence? A conversation? Maybe one of those cool little scenes the books had before they got to Harry bogging around 4 Privet Drive? Maybe they could have done what they cut out of the sixth and written a scene with the Prime Minister?
Or hell, they could have made one 276 minute movie and done intermissions. I don’t know.
Now I’m going to get to the part where I feel a little like I’m patronizing people who haven’t read the books. Honestly, this was a little bit like watching the David Lynch Dune movie for me, only I had actually read the source material. Scenes basically followed one another, but I felt at many points that if I hadn’t read DH twice, I would have officially lost track once they got to Hogsmeade. Indeed, I did lose track once or twice during the Battle of Hogwarts, if only in a “Wait, what part are we on?” sort of way. This is where the film suffers most from the scenes cut out of its predecessors, because it’s so utterly disjointed and hurried. To its credit, this movie does feel like it’s a war, because we’re running around and it’s not entirely clear what’s happening but lots of things are exploding. Unfortunately it does not feel like a story.
For the record I did talk to Moorish, who has not read DH and has only seen the first part, and she confirmed my suspicions and indeed, it is a confusing movie even if one knows the basic plot.
Admittedly it does try. We get Harry pretty much taking on the role of the narrator in the Helena Ravenclaw scene (and kudos to her actress, she was a much more awesome character than I imagined when I read the books) and then doing a bunch of the reveals, and I remember at least one in which he gives it directly to camera. This is incredibly cheap and whoever decided it should happen should be bitchslapped like Lucius.
In conclusion, a movie usually consists of more than a number of scenes of stuff happening strung together.
2. Oh, Dan. I don’t blame the casting director for this. The first two books were pretty lighthearted and thereby required a Harry who could do comedy. DH part 2 was probably the darkest film in the entire franchise. Aside from a few comedic bits thrown in at random points, it was unremittingly dark. Like space. I will say this of Daniel Radcliffe - he is a talented comedic actor. Note that I said comedic. Boy does not have much range. He delivered every line longer than four words in the style of someone who has been thrown in front of the camera last minute and is reading off a cue card. And sometimes he yelled.
Oh, and Harry’s greatest nemesis is apparently large piles of things which he has to climb up on to get other things. I know this was in the book, but I found it funny.
3. You implied what? So in the books, there’s this scene right before the Battle of Hogwarts where basically all the students who want to go fight go fight. Basically, the only students who don’t volunteer are the entirety of Slytherin house (though some come back in the end apparently) and all the students who are under 17, except for Colin Creevy and maybe a few others. Honestly, this was the most striking bit of Fridge Logic (or Brilliance in my case) in the whole series. It says a hell of a lot about magical society that basically a bunch of kids are allowed and want to fight a bunch of Dark wizards and indeed die fighting said wizards. I found the whole concept to be wonderfully visceral and a really interesting bit of world-building.
In the film, McGonagall says (I’m paraphrasing) “Slytherin house go down to the dungeons, the rest of you stay.” It struck me that the implication of this is that she let the younger kids stay too, because there were younger kids in that scene. Basically, the only kids she’s going to effectively save from the Death Eaters are the Slytherins, since she ordered them all out. This is not so much visceral as it is an indication that someone, somewhere, was sloppy and made a stupid error.
4. Stop, just stop. (Spoilers) Yeah, there were a few things that were really, really, terrifically, overdone in this movie. The first was Snape seeing Lily’s body at Godric’s Hollow. Alan Rickman does a great job in this movie, mostly because he’s fantastic, but we did not need to see him cry and have a Big No over Lily. Seriously, he goes into the house, walks up the stairs, has a moment where he’s clinging to the wall to keep from falling over, and then we get him wailing and weeping and…that should not have been the funniest part of the movie. They could have stopped it when he was clinging to the wall and we would have understood it clearly. This was one of the few parts of the movie that was well-told, and then it was ruined.
I have a confession to make: I cried reading the scene where Harry is in the Forbidden Forest and is talking to his dead parents and Remus and Sirius. Scenes like that just get me, okay? In the movie, the scene was handled well for the first few minutes. And then it went on. And on. By the time it ended, I was relieved because I was so bored.
In other news, there are two scenes from the end of DH which are very popular. One is when Neville cuts off Nagini’s head after delivering an epic fuck you to Voldemort. The other is when Molly Weasley kicks the shit out of Bellatrix Lestrange and yells “Not my daughter you bitch!” Let me tell you how these scenes were handled in the movie and how they lost the emotional impact they had in the books.
1. Neville does indeed deliver a fuck you to Voldemort, and he does cut off Nagini’s head. However, these two scenes are about fifteen minutes apart, and while he does save Ron and Hermione, he does so at the cost of delivering a double helping of kicking ass and taking names in a scene which was fine the way it was in the books. And I mean, we see Ron and Hermione being chased by Nagini and I do think that, no matter what happened in the books, it would have made more sense for them to have killed her. Here it just looks random.
2. This scene happens, and basically it plays out as us seeing Bellatrix throwing some curses at Ginny, who is fighting. I think Bellatrix might have cackled at some point, but otherwise…well, Molly comes out from behind here, where she has been standing for a bit, yells “Not my daughter you bitch!” and literally blows Bellatrix to smithereens. Admittedly, I like that aspect, but the thing was that it looked like Ginny was holding her own before Molly came in. I’ll blame this on editing, but it was totally tangential to the movie.
I guess my problem was that it was literal fanservice. Which was all this movie was. And that is sad.
5. Miscellaneous bibble time (More spoilers). Rupert Grint gets so, so many kudos for his scene with Fred. It might have been about ten seconds long, but he nailed it so hard that I was about ready to cry with him. Jim Broadbent, despite his limited screentime, also made me smile every time he appeared. …I liked Perrier’s Bounty, okay? Thank god the epilogue couldn’t be bothered to get new actors to play Harry and the gang. Apparently you don’t need that much age makeup to make someone look almost twenty years older. I’m not going to complain that the Dumbledore subplot was basically alluded to and never really resolved, and that Dumbledore comes off looking like a total bastard. I’m unhappy about it, but why should I complain about the Harry Potter movies cutting things out of the books?
Wow, I didn’t realize I had that much bile to spit about this movie. Have a nice night, all.