My very brief review is that it was awesome and I want to watch it again :)
I know that while I was watching the movie there were things that I wanted to blog about. Of course, by the time the movie had finished I had no idea what they were, and sleeping on it has made my recall worse, not better, so I will probably have more to say another time, but for now here are some thoughts I had on the movie.
Warning: Spoilers for book and movie abound.
I'm glad they showed Dobby's gravestone at the start of the movie; I've always thought it was sweet and missed it at the end of the last movie.
I loved the early shot of Snape overlooking the Hogwarts students marching. The marching shows really nicely in a short shot how much Hogwarts has changed, and Snape's expression is perfectly unreadable, so you have no idea if he approves of it or not.
My favourite part of comedic acting was Helena Bonham Carter as Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix. It was perfectly off, and showed how much of Bellatrix's character is provided by the acting even with the eccentric hair/makeup/costume.
I didn't really understand why they revealed that Snape was responsible for switching the real sword of Gryffindor with the fake. Did they feel the need to include more hints that it was Snape that gave them the sword? For non-readers I think it would have just seemed weird if they hadn't already figured it out (and if they had figured it out, they didn't need it spelled out for them). I don't know why they didn't do it like in the book, where Snape clearly had the sword at the start of Book 7.
The whole Gringotts sequence was pretty awesome. Particularly liked Bogrod.
I loved the early shot of Snape overlooking the Hogwarts students marching. The marching shows really nicely in a short shot how much Hogwarts has changed, and Snape's expression is perfectly unreadable, so you have no idea if he approves of it or not.
My favourite part of comedic acting was Helena Bonham Carter as Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix. It was perfectly off, and showed how much of Bellatrix's character is provided by the acting even with the eccentric hair/makeup/costume.
I didn't really understand why they revealed that Snape was responsible for switching the real sword of Gryffindor with the fake. Did they feel the need to include more hints that it was Snape that gave them the sword? For non-readers I think it would have just seemed weird if they hadn't already figured it out (and if they had figured it out, they didn't need it spelled out for them). I don't know why they didn't do it like in the book, where Snape clearly had the sword at the start of Book 7.
The whole Gringotts sequence was pretty awesome. Particularly liked Bogrod.
I still don't really understand how the mirror is supposed to work in movie canon. It just sort of showed up in Deathly Hallows Part 1 and I assumed we were supposed to assume that the backstory in the books had happened. But in this movie it seemed like the shard that Harry had was broken off the main mirror, rather than being part of a second mirror - in which case I don't know what the explanation is supposed to be. Did I miss something somewhere?
I was a bit disappointed not to get more about Dumbledore's history. The whole thing with Aberforth and Ariana wouldn't have made any sense to non-readers.
I was a bit disappointed not to get more about Dumbledore's history. The whole thing with Aberforth and Ariana wouldn't have made any sense to non-readers.
Presumably Bill and Fleur know about the entrance to Hogwarts through the Hog's Head, since they end up at Hogwarts, and they send Luna through before Harry gets there. So why didn't they tell Harry about it? I know that Harry didn't find out they needed to go to Hogwarts until after they left Shell Cottage, but surely it would have been a simple piece of information to pass on. I can't remember if this is handled better in the book.
McGonagall and Neville were both awesome. And Filch was very funny. I was a little bit confused about Cho Chang - why was she shown as being a Hogwarts student when she is a year older than Harry? I suppose in the movies her age is never specified, so perhaps in movie canon she is supposed to be in Harry's year. The Carrows appeared surprisingly little in the movie (although I was kind of glad about it, because I was never that fond of the Carrows and can never remember their first names).
Having just watched the previous movies, I noticed that what Ron says in parseltongue to open the chamber of secrets is longer than what Harry said to open it in the second movie. Is the idea supposed to be that he just repeats all of the parseltongue words he's heard Harry say until he gets the right ones? Just seemed a little odd to me.
McGonagall and Neville were both awesome. And Filch was very funny. I was a little bit confused about Cho Chang - why was she shown as being a Hogwarts student when she is a year older than Harry? I suppose in the movies her age is never specified, so perhaps in movie canon she is supposed to be in Harry's year. The Carrows appeared surprisingly little in the movie (although I was kind of glad about it, because I was never that fond of the Carrows and can never remember their first names).
Having just watched the previous movies, I noticed that what Ron says in parseltongue to open the chamber of secrets is longer than what Harry said to open it in the second movie. Is the idea supposed to be that he just repeats all of the parseltongue words he's heard Harry say until he gets the right ones? Just seemed a little odd to me.
I loved Snape's death. I don't remember it being so poignant in the books - not sure if it's a difference between the book and the script, or the difference between a book and a movie, or Alan Rickman's awesome acting, or just because I knew what was going to be revealed in Snape's memories (although I don't think it was the last one, because when I read the book the first time I'd already figured out the gist of Snape's memories - about 5 minutes before I otherwise would have lost my faith in Snape and thrown the book across the room). The whole 'You have your mother's eyes' line, which grated on me every time it was said in the previous movies, was so beautiful as Snape's last words, I almost forgive the filmmakers for making it a recurring line.
The pensieve segment was the one I was most looking forward to in this movie. My main complaints were (a) after the hat-trick of Snape's death, Lupin/Tonks's death, and this, I was too busy crying to really appreciate it and (b) it wasn't nearly long enough (I could have watched 130 minutes of pensieve scenes, but I suspect the majority of the audience wouldn't have appreciated it). But overall I think it was handled really well and I wasn't disappointed. When the DVD comes out I might have to watch this part a few dozen times.
I would have liked to have seen more of Petunia in the flashbacks, especially the part where she writes to Dumbledore asking to be accepted into Hogwarts, but I guess you can't have everything.
I thought it was a bit strange that they cast young Sirius for the flashback when all he did was sit there in the sorting hat scene. Did he even have any lines? Maybe more was shot but didn't make the final cut (gives me hope for more pensieve scenes in the deleted scenes on the DVD).
I thought it was interesting that they showed Snape at Godric's Hollow, since the whole question of whether Snape was at Godric's Hollow was the subject of lots of fan speculation but was never really resolved in the books (I realise that the speculation was more about him being there at the actual time of Lily's death, but still...).
I wish there had been more of Snape's reaction to Dumbledore's admission that he always intended for Harry to die. For me this was a huge twist in the book because it wasn't one that was foreshadowed by earlier events (Snape/Lily, Dumbledore asking Snape to kill him, etc. were all 'revelations' that were hinted at earlier). In the movie, Snape didn't even really object to the idea of killing Harry. I felt like he needed to be really pissed off at Dumbledore on behalf of the audience.
I also thought there should have been more of Harry's reaction to the pensieve revelations. Clearly Harry didn't figure out the hints earlier in the story, so all of this should have been big news to him. But there was pretty much nothing.
I liked the scene in which Harry and Hermione admit that they've known for a while that Harry is a horcrux, without coming straight out and saying it. I don't remember if that scene was in the book; if not then it was a nice addition.
I'm still confused about how Harry and co. were calculating the number of horcruxes remaining to destroy. I realise that Harry was an unexpected extra for everyone, but they talk as if Ravenclaw's diadem was the last one, when clearly Nagini is needed to make up the number that they knew from Slughorn's memory that Voldemort was going to create. I remember being confused about this in the book too, although I'm not sure if my point of confusion is the same or if there was a different counting problem in the book.
When I saw the resurrection scene I thought that they had changed the actress playing Lily, which seemed a little disappointing. But when I checked on IMDB I discovered that it is the same actress. Then I realised that it's just the result of the actress being 10 years older than when the flashback scenes were filmed (though I would have thought they could have put more effort into at least making her hair the same colour).
I didn't like the King's Cross scene in the book, and while I think it was handled a little better in the movie, it still didn't work for me. I think my main problem was that the concept of people hanging out in some kind of limbo after they died had never been introduced earlier in the series, so bringing it in at the climax felt like a cop-out. The actual King's Cross setting seemed a bit odd to me too, as did the fragment of Voldemort under the bench. If I'm being completely honest I would have preferred Harry to just die, but I know that would have pissed of lots of people so I understand why J.K. Rowling didn't do it. But couldn't Voldemort's attack just have destroyed the Horcrux, not Harry, without the whole train station in your mind bit?
I wasn't a big fan of the epilogue in the book and I liked it even less in the movie. It felt to me like the kind of thing that should have been an extra on Rowling's website or something, not part of the main story. I think it spoilt the pacing of the end of the movie, and I don't think the story would have lost anything by ending the movie a couple of minutes earlier.
I saw screencaps of the aging in the epilogue ages ago and thought they'd done a good job, but it didn't work as well for me in the movie itself. I'm not sure why - perhaps it was the voices, or having watched the same actors play the younger characters for the previous couple of hours, but it just seemed fake.
I was a bit disappointed not to see Teddy Lupin in the epilogue. He was mentioned in Deathly Hallows Part 1 and again in Part 2, but it was never followed up on, and I think it could have been done relatively easily.
The pensieve segment was the one I was most looking forward to in this movie. My main complaints were (a) after the hat-trick of Snape's death, Lupin/Tonks's death, and this, I was too busy crying to really appreciate it and (b) it wasn't nearly long enough (I could have watched 130 minutes of pensieve scenes, but I suspect the majority of the audience wouldn't have appreciated it). But overall I think it was handled really well and I wasn't disappointed. When the DVD comes out I might have to watch this part a few dozen times.
I would have liked to have seen more of Petunia in the flashbacks, especially the part where she writes to Dumbledore asking to be accepted into Hogwarts, but I guess you can't have everything.
I thought it was a bit strange that they cast young Sirius for the flashback when all he did was sit there in the sorting hat scene. Did he even have any lines? Maybe more was shot but didn't make the final cut (gives me hope for more pensieve scenes in the deleted scenes on the DVD).
I thought it was interesting that they showed Snape at Godric's Hollow, since the whole question of whether Snape was at Godric's Hollow was the subject of lots of fan speculation but was never really resolved in the books (I realise that the speculation was more about him being there at the actual time of Lily's death, but still...).
I wish there had been more of Snape's reaction to Dumbledore's admission that he always intended for Harry to die. For me this was a huge twist in the book because it wasn't one that was foreshadowed by earlier events (Snape/Lily, Dumbledore asking Snape to kill him, etc. were all 'revelations' that were hinted at earlier). In the movie, Snape didn't even really object to the idea of killing Harry. I felt like he needed to be really pissed off at Dumbledore on behalf of the audience.
I also thought there should have been more of Harry's reaction to the pensieve revelations. Clearly Harry didn't figure out the hints earlier in the story, so all of this should have been big news to him. But there was pretty much nothing.
I liked the scene in which Harry and Hermione admit that they've known for a while that Harry is a horcrux, without coming straight out and saying it. I don't remember if that scene was in the book; if not then it was a nice addition.
I'm still confused about how Harry and co. were calculating the number of horcruxes remaining to destroy. I realise that Harry was an unexpected extra for everyone, but they talk as if Ravenclaw's diadem was the last one, when clearly Nagini is needed to make up the number that they knew from Slughorn's memory that Voldemort was going to create. I remember being confused about this in the book too, although I'm not sure if my point of confusion is the same or if there was a different counting problem in the book.
When I saw the resurrection scene I thought that they had changed the actress playing Lily, which seemed a little disappointing. But when I checked on IMDB I discovered that it is the same actress. Then I realised that it's just the result of the actress being 10 years older than when the flashback scenes were filmed (though I would have thought they could have put more effort into at least making her hair the same colour).
I didn't like the King's Cross scene in the book, and while I think it was handled a little better in the movie, it still didn't work for me. I think my main problem was that the concept of people hanging out in some kind of limbo after they died had never been introduced earlier in the series, so bringing it in at the climax felt like a cop-out. The actual King's Cross setting seemed a bit odd to me too, as did the fragment of Voldemort under the bench. If I'm being completely honest I would have preferred Harry to just die, but I know that would have pissed of lots of people so I understand why J.K. Rowling didn't do it. But couldn't Voldemort's attack just have destroyed the Horcrux, not Harry, without the whole train station in your mind bit?
I wasn't a big fan of the epilogue in the book and I liked it even less in the movie. It felt to me like the kind of thing that should have been an extra on Rowling's website or something, not part of the main story. I think it spoilt the pacing of the end of the movie, and I don't think the story would have lost anything by ending the movie a couple of minutes earlier.
I saw screencaps of the aging in the epilogue ages ago and thought they'd done a good job, but it didn't work as well for me in the movie itself. I'm not sure why - perhaps it was the voices, or having watched the same actors play the younger characters for the previous couple of hours, but it just seemed fake.
I was a bit disappointed not to see Teddy Lupin in the epilogue. He was mentioned in Deathly Hallows Part 1 and again in Part 2, but it was never followed up on, and I think it could have been done relatively easily.
One obscure thing that still puzzles me is a vague memory that J.K. Rowling said in an interview years ago that there was something in the third movie that unintentionally foreshadowed something in Book 7, but I still for the life of me can't figure out what it would be.
That's everything that comes to mind for now. Going to the midnight screening was lots of fun and now I just need to wait for an opportunity to go and see it again :)
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