Always have to ruin everything

[trinityvixen]

I hope my friends and the internet won't crucify me for saying it, but I didn't really like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Look, I had low expectations. Every Harry Potter movie has been okay. They're not as good as the books ever, and I'm okay with that. The movies did have the potential, however, to do Rowling one better, especially

Comments

[gryphonrose]

I haven't seen Part 2 yet, but I'd have to disagree about the others--I think in most cases the movies were BETTER than the books because they did exactly what you hoped and covered over Rowling's own gaping plot holes. For example, I only recently rewatched Goblet of Fire (which had been one of my least favorite before) and realized just how well they set up the Big Reveal right from the get-go, whereas Rowling herself tried to conceal it until the last possible second in the hopes of appearing clever.

[ivy03]

I thought the movie of five also did a good job of a) lessening just how freaking annoying Umbrage was in print and b) whittling down that enormous Hagrid giants digression that bored me so much.

[gryphonrose]

Agreed. :)

[trinityvixen]

I find every incarnation of Umbridge ENTIRELY ANNOYING, so I disagree that the movie lessened that at all.

[ivy03]

I had such issues with books six and seven, I haven't seen the movies since five. They had pacing problems, which I could see a movie fixing, but they had a lot of other problems, too, that I know the movies won't fix. So I'm not that interested. And I get the feeling that most of the raves I've seen are from people who didn't have as much antipathy to the later books as I did.

[trinityvixen]

Yeah, I didn't like book six at all, and the problems with seven was that it left so many threads hanging or else resolved the story but in a dramatically unsatisfying way. To this day, I can get frothy about the fact that she introduced two enemies, one a werewolf and one with a silver hand who never fought each other. That's bullshit.

[equustel]

I don't expect everyone to appreciate the film as much as I did (after all, most people I run into seem to think Half-Blood Prince is the worst of the series for its sins against the book, while I think it is far and away the most beautiful of the films) but I do think my positive reaction to this last entry was more than just nostalgia and sentiment - though I admit there was a healthy dose of both

[jethrien]

I agree with trinityvixen that this last movie did not seem to have quite the emotive power as the final book. However, I really appreciated the smoothing process. There's a lot of little tweaks I thought worked better than in the book. The bits of foreshadowing about the sword of Griffyndor made Neville's producing it work better. I loved Narcissa getting fed up and yanking both her son and husband completely out of the picture. Breaking the Elder Wand makes more sense than putting it back in the tomb. And I thought Snape's death came across as far more worthy than it did in the book.

[xannoside]

I thought it was soundly "meh". Not awful, not great, but more or less solid.

If it weren't the finale, I wouldn't have minded quite as much.

Also, ticked that they made Neville's moment of awesome, well, decidedly less awesome, IMHO.

[trinityvixen]

If it weren't the finale, I wouldn't have minded quite as much.

That is probably why it feels like such a let down and why it most likely was never going to rise above low expectations. It's one thing to make a series of mostly okay movies, but it's a downer to end on just an okay note.

And you were not the only one bemoaning Neville's moment of awesome being decidedly dialed down.

[shell524]

OMG yes. I was SO LOOKING FORWARD to Neville being totally freakin' awesome, and.... bleh.

[moonlightalice]

HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON FIRE WTF WHY WAS THERE A TEN MINUTE SNAKE HUNT INSTEAD