The kid and I recently read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Hmmm ... I don't know what to say. I guess I can say that my daughter liked it better than I did. Initially it was wonderful to see favorite characters again — Harry, Ron, Hermione especially. There are even appearances by some folks you might not expect. I won't spoil it. But ... I just didn't buy it. This was not who I imagined Harry, Ron, Hermione to be as adults. There are so many problems.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child read more like fan fiction than Rowling. And it isn't exactly a "new Rowling," as advertised. It is the script of the play written by Jack Thorne, based on an original new story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. The project has Rowling's blessing, so I guess I will have to go with that. But I never thought I'd read something more disappointing about Harry than Rowling's own lame epilogue in The Deathly Hallows. Oh well. She did actually she did write the screenplay for the upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. So, Potter fans, not all hope is lost.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 is just that — the second part of a movie that we all saw last November. It isn't intended to stand on its own, and it couldn't. It won't when devotees buy the 2-part DVDs in time for Christmas. The movie starts off, practically in the middle of a conversation, and goes full speed ahead, towards Harry's destiny and Voldemort's, with bodies piling to the right and left. Many are heralding this film as the best of the series, but I can't do that, until I see it, back-to-back with its other half. As far as a coda to characters that I have enjoyed, even loved at times, it was very satisfying.
Harry, Hermione, & Ron
Part 2 can be unrelenting (and it is no more so than the book it's based upon, the weakest of Rowling's series). But it is also rewarding, with many, many nods to the previous films. J.K. Rowling created a wonderful world, with such fun details and endearing characters that many have grown to love. Her only weakness has been an inability to to not try to pack it all in — endless explanations for how and why things in the wizarding world are the way they are.
What has always been great about the films, even the weaker entries, are how screenwriter Steve Kloves has been able to condense Rowling's labyrinthian plotting and concentrated on the characters. Directors like David Yates have been able to visually tell the audience something that Rowling would have felt forced to use many, many words to do and a wimpy editor would have been afraid to cut. For example, the epilogue in The Deathly Hallows book was excruciating, as Rowling just couldn't let go of control of her characters and felt forced to explain, down to jobs held and ridiculously obvious middle names chosen for their progeny, precisely what happened to Harry, Ron & Hermione in the future. God forbid she let her young fans come up with futures for Harry and his friends from their own imaginations. But that horrible postscript, when it is depicted in the movie, with hardly any dialogue except a few words from Harry to his son is something else entirely. It allows the audience to enjoy seeing Platform 9 3/4 once again and to see that Harry has truly gotten past his pain and has become a caring, loving, parent. It doesn't even mention what he's doing for a living. Bravo, Yates & Co.
Neville!
There are so many other little moments such as these in the movie, little goodbyes and thank yous, that provide brief respites from the Battle of Hogwarts, which takes up most of the the second half of the film. Some come directly from Rowling's text, some are nice little visual additions — Harry runs across Cornish pixies in the Room of Requirement, Snape has Harry use the Pensieve one last time. There are lots of faces we are happy to see again — John Hurt as Ollivander, Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid. We also get to see favorite characters who have passed on, like Gary Oldman as Sirius Black.
The Deathly Hallows is a movie for fans of the Potter-verse. They will be happy, as things have been done right. I suppose that a fan of action movies might enjoy the battle scenes, but they wouldn't get most of the little moments that make it such a treat for the initiated — Neville (Matthew Lewis) and the sorting hat, the search for horcruxes, the breaking into and escape from Gringott's. It was great to see the three kids together again, if bittersweet, for the last time — Emma Watson as Hermione, Rupert Grint as Ron, and Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. The trio are together for most of the film, until Harry's stand-off with Ralph Fienne's Voldemort, but the movie belongs to Radcliffe. He is front and center, in almost every scene, at high pitch, trying to do what is right for his friends, for his world. As much as Voldemort is his ultimate adversary, and is magnificently villainous, it is true hero Harry, becoming a man, that is the focus of the film.
The fantabulously misunderstood Snape
The other stand-out is Alan Rickman, as Professor Snape. Snape was always one of my favorite characters in the book. Although I never believed him to be a "bad guy," Rowling wisely created a very conflicted person, who no matter what he did, was always involved in a struggle with right and wrong. Rickman, apart from having one of the most mellifluous deliveries out there, was able to convey the complexity of Snape throughout all the films. Snape has been seen mostly through young Harry's eyes, who could never see his mean teacher as a man with deep secrets and feelings. In Part 2 Snape finally shares himself with Harry and the results are as emotional as you would expect.
Even with a life and death battle raging around him, Harry is smart enough to put aside past prejudicial feelings and listen to what Snape has to tell him. When Harry lifts his face from the Pensieve, Radcliffe's expression tells it all — how it feels to realize that he has been so wrong about someone, how his feelings of dislike have been misplaced. And how he may have put his trust and his love in another and been wrong, or at least not completely right, about them as well. That is the moment when Harry grows up. And Snape gets him there. There are a lot of sad moments after that scene in the story and the film — the Harry Potter series has been about death and loss from the very beginning — and there are many more deaths to come, possibly even his own, before Harry can move on, but Harry's learning Snape's story is the emotional turning point.
Harry sees clearly, maybe for the first time
As Harry heads off to his duel-to-the death with Voldemort, he is for the first time ever going with his eyes open, with all the information that the secretive Dumbledore never dared share with him. When he meets the shades of his mother and father and godfather in the Forbidden Forest, he is a man. His mind, too, is open, and now he can fully open his heart. Harry Potter may have originally been aimed at children, but Rowling and her fans quickly turned it into something much more. Coming-of-age stories are always more appreciated by those who have been through childhood themselves. Many of Harry's fans, like the film franchise's young actors, have grown up together. But in watching the films now, it is Harry's journey of knowledge that resonates, which is why I wasn't upset to see him in that last scene, on Platform 9 3/4. Life keeps moving, and so has Harry.
Now that I've got that out of my system ... I've been thinking about this film, a lot more than I thought about the bloated mess of a book that it is based on. It's impossible to not have all the things that bothered me about the book come rushing back. I love Harry Potter the character. The first book was wonderful. The following books in the series got progressively less good. They got longer and longer. And longer. The phenomenon was so out of control that apparently no one was brave enough suggest to J.K. Rowling that she should cut some things out, or to edit them. By the time we reached the last book, Rowling's meandering prose got the best of her and the rest of us.
... Rowling stated that she could not change the ending even if she wanted. "These books have been plotted for such a long time, and for six books now, that they're all leading a certain direction. So, I really can't." She also commented that the final volume related closely to the previous book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, "almost as though they are two halves of the same novel." She has said that the last chapter of the book was written "in something like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the series.—Wikipedia
Weak, weak, weak excuses and reasoning.
It seems mean to slam the books when I love the world and characters she created, but I can't help but tell it like I see it. Because the films by their very nature have to be shorter—it's not possible to fit in all of Rowling's wizarding world's details and eccentricities—I have always thought that they were more enjoyable than the books. True, some wonderful and creative details get lost, but so many other things that Rowling went on and on about—house elf rights, a few too many quidditch matches, the brutal deaths of major characters which became less shocking and more de rigeur as the series went on—are not missed by their omission.
I liked David Yates's Half-Blood Prince, and I'm sure he could have pulled off one (long) movie for Deathly Hallows, but
J. K. Rowling served as executive producer on Philosopher's Stone and was later appointed producer on the two-part Deathly Hallows, along side David Heyman and David Barron.—Wikipedia
It's hard to know whether the decision to make two films was driven by the desire to make more money or Rowling's creative involvement. But my guess is that the latter tipped the scales. "Less is more" is definitely not one of her mantras. I don't mind that there will be another film. I love these characters and these actors. But part of me wonders and wishes for the film that might have been if someone could have really chopped up the seventh book. Oh well, leave that to some YouTube auteur.
This movie is different from any of the other Harry Potter films, indeed any other film these days in that it reminded me a bit of the old Flash Gordon serials my dad liked to watch on T.V., but without the "story so far" intro. Deathly Hallows starts off with a bang and ends with a flash, with no explanations, or exposition, just go, go, go. I was fine with that, but it was clearly a film for the initiated. If this was someone's first Harry Potter film, they wouldn't have a clue what was happening or who was who. If they hadn't read the book or seen the last movie in a while, they might have trouble catching up. Even for someone like myself who has read all the books and seen the movies I felt a bit at sea sometimes, especially when scenes depicting Harry's mental connection to Voldemort tried to advance the story. Rapidly. Of course the break-neck pace was again trying to fit all of Rowling's plot points in. It could not have been an easy job at all to attempt adapting such a tome.
Yates & Co. were able to escape the tyranny of Rowling's narrative in the visuals. Deathly Hallows may be the best-looking Harry Potter film so far, and not just because its leading trio have grown up so gracefully (but they have.) The attention to detail in costumes and set design was wonderful. Maybe making two movies gave the filmmakers the extra incentive or money to really make things look right. Or maybe the state-of-the-art has just gotten that much better. Or maybe, knowing that this is it, they pulled out all the stops. One of my favorite sets was Grimmauld Place, which Harry inherited from his godfather Sirius Black. The peeling paint, the furniture, the bedrooms, had all the quirky atmosphere of Rowlng at her most descriptive. The special effects—the dis-asparating, the Death Eaters and especially the two house elves, Dobby and Kreacher, were amazing. I saw Deathly Hallows in IMAX and the settings and scenery added to the experience in a way that I don't remember from other Potter films, except maybe some exterior shots in Alfonso Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban.
There were other moments in the film that added a depth that was never there in the source. An opening scene of Hermione erasing her parents' memory of her existence for their protection was truly moving. And a later scene when she hesitates to use the same spell on a Death Eater who has tried to kill the three young wizards is doubly touching—emotions an actor is able to convey that tons of words by Rowling never could. Another nice scene occurs between Harry and Hermione while they are "camping" in the woods. This was a particularly long, and let's face it—boring, section of the book. The film jettisons a lot of the endless bickering and hand-wringing and adds a scene where Harry asks Hermione to dance. It's a wonderful moment. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have always had crazy chemistry and this scene pays tribute to that, while also suggesting that Rupert Grint's Ron's jealous fears may not have been completely unfounded. It's actually very nice to see a bit of a love triangle, not just for prurient reasons, but because it would be more true to the situation, more true to their age.
Along the same lines is the ever-present theme of adolescence, in whose depiction Rowling has been purposeful in acknowledging her characters' sexualities and not leaving Harry, as she put it, "stuck in a state of permanent pre-pubescence."—Wikipedia
What a load of codswallop, as they might say in Hogsmeade. I'm not sure why Rowling always shied away from any realistic depiction of romance in the series. Any crush or other romantic scenes (and there weren't many) were always clumsy and wordy. I didn't really want to read about teen sex at Hogwarts, but the complete absence of it was strange. The movies have been much better at keeping it real in this regard.
Another weakness of the seventh book for me was that such a big deal was made of the horcruxes in the sixth book, Half-Blood Prince. Everyone was speculating about them while waiting for the final book to come out. When Deathly Hallows was finally published the horcruxes seemed to take a back seat to even more magical toys—the Hallows. More new stuff? Rowling just couldn't help herself from cramming everything in. Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1 keeps its focus on the horcruxes, only introducing the Hallows near the film's end, which works quite well as a lead-in to Pt. 2. By this summer when we are ready for the series' conclusion, maybe the Hallows won't seem like such an afterthought.
The strongest scenes in the movie were when Harry and his pals were plopped in London and had to function without the familiar Hogwarts, parents, or friends to help them and frame their magical practice. A fight scene in a cafe was great. Not so great, as I mentioned before, was the camping trip. But the film gave it its best shot by making that middle section go by faster, adding the aforementioned pas-de-deux, and also especially a scene where a "charmed" Hermione is almost discovered by Death Eaters—delightfully creepy.
I did really like Deathly Hallows. It's more of a horror/action-adventure than any of the other Harry Potter films, but there were also moments when I laughed out loud. I cried at the same point in the film as I did in the book—when one beloved character died—possibly the most poignant and least gratuitous death in the entire series. But I can't shake the feeling that I walked into the middle of a story and didn't get to hear the punchline. It holds up as a piece of the puzzle, but could it hold up as a stand-alone film? Will it ever have to?
was wonderful. The following books in the series got progressively less good. They got longer and longer. And longer. The phenomenon was so out of control that apparently no one was brave enough suggest to J.K. Rowling that she should cut some things out, or to edit them. By the time we reached the 
, Rowling's meandering prose got the best of her and the rest of us.
serials my dad liked to watch on T.V., but without the "story so far" intro. Deathly Hallows starts off with a bang and ends with a flash, with no explanations, or exposition, just go, go, go. I was fine with that, but it was clearly a film for the initiated. If this was someone's first Harry Potter film, they wouldn't have a clue what was happening or who was who. If they hadn't read the book or seen the last movie in a while, they might have trouble catching up. Even for someone like myself who has read all the books and seen the movies I felt a bit at sea sometimes, especially when scenes depicting Harry's mental connection to Voldemort tried to advance the story. Rapidly. Of course the break-neck pace was again trying to fit all of Rowling's plot points in. It could not have been an easy job at all to attempt 
