What did you think of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II? * * * SPOILERS INSIDE* * *?

Asked by shrubbery (10326) July 15th, 2011

Here are some responses, including mine, on Part I.

I required a second viewing before I wanted to actually comment on too much because I may or may not have been crying through the majority of the movie on the midnight release here in Australia so thought I better see it again in case I missed or misjudged something.

Also I may come back to add to this because I am currently waiting for a friend who hasn’t seen the books to watch the movie and I’d really like to know what she thinks and how well things seem to be explained to her, because it’s hard to judge how confusing it might be for me who has read the books so many times.

I will try to keep it chronological to the movie, unless I start ranting about something.
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• Shell Cottage. Done quite well. They easily explained that the sword in Bellatrix’s vault was a fake- but the trio are supposed to know this and tell Griphook this, not the other way around. And we are most definitely not supposed to know that it was Snape who put it there, yet. The conversation with Ollivander… Harry seemed really harsh in the way he was talking to an old man who had been tortured. I know Ollivander’s reverence for Lord Voldemort creeps Harry out but he could have been a bit more delicate. I have to wait back from my friend to finish my conclusion on this though because I want to know whether she understood the whole wand allegiance thing without having read the books. Otherwise this was done well, they spent a lot of time here in the books planning and such but it didn’t need to be shown in the movie and it was the write amount of time on screen I thought.

• Hermione!Bellatrix- awesome job by Helena Bonham-Carter, just the little things like touching her hair and her worried frown and yeah just did really well.

• Gringotts- I understand they didn’t need that extra guy who shows up in the book who knows Bellatrix, and I was happy with the cart and the thieves’ downfall waterfall and inside the vault (though the treasure was supposed to burn I can understand why they wouldn’t bother with this) but, (as Mariah added in the other Q I linked to) it was completely and utterly out of character for them to let the goblin die. He was under Harry’s Imperius spell and we all know it kills Harry inside to have people die for him, so it being completely and utterly Harry’s fault that the goblin is burnt to death is absolutely ridiculous. All we get is a “that’s unfortunate” from Ron, which may be fair enough because he has not been brought up to treat all magical creatures equally, but Harry and Hermione at least have always fought for equality so it’s not like they just let him die because he was a goblin. UGH.

• The dragon escape was pretty cool, though I don’t remember reading in the book about half of Diagon Alley, or the rooves at least, being destroyed and I felt a bit of a pang for that, but hey gotta have lots of destruction in the movie and why not.
• Voldemort’s scene showed how absolutely badass and scary he is and showed how up shit creek the Malfoys were and that they knew it. He figured out that they were killing off Horcruxes and I understand why they would make him realise that the other ones (ring and locket) had been destroyed too in a few seconds rather than spending time showing him going back and checking.

• When the trio climb out of the water after jumping off the dragon… okay… so they never really actually explained the taboo thing with speaking Voldemort’s name in the first one, did they? The snatchers found them differently than in the books and yeah, so for someone who hasn’t read the books it would seem completely odd for Harry to be saying “You Know Who” instead of Voldemort when he’s talking about the vision he just had.
• THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK. I said before in the Part I question about how they had hardly used it or talked about it, because maybe they were waiting for the big reveal moment in Part II that it is one of the Hallows. But again I noticed the lack of screen time/mentions. I feel, though again I am waiting on a source for this, that if you hadn’t read the books it would not be immediately obvious that the invisibility cloak that Harry possesses is the exact one of the Three Brother’s story. Yeah. They didn’t even use it to apparate into Hogsmeade. That just seems plain stupid to me.

• Aberforth and Dumbledore. This makes me rather angry. Why even bother introducing the book about Albus by Rita Skeeter in Part I, if they weren’t even going to explain it in Part II? They did not even mention Grindelwald or the duel or what happened in Godric’s hollow or how Dumbledore is flawed and all of this helps Harry come to the realisation of what he has to do, even before he looks into the pensieve with Snape’s memories. I just… ugh. I liked the back-story, but I understand that it was not completely necessary for Harry’s story and the movies, but, as I said, why bother introducing it in the first place then? As far as I recall they didn’t even talk about the duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore so how are those who haven’t read the books supposed to know how Dumbledore became the master of the wand? Tell me if I’m wrong here and they did mention it, but I can’t think of when it would have been. They could have just made them find out another way instead of half-assing Aberforth’s explanation and completely fucking up Dumbledore in Harry’s Kings Cross. It’s times like that when I really resent Michael Gambon for refusing to read the books. In Harry’s King’s Cross it seems like he doesn’t care. He is kind of rude and sarcastic. He is supposed to cry and explain himself and apologise. I understand that if the screenplay/script were different to the book it would not have made a difference to what Michael Gambon says but at least he could have conveyed the emotional aspect of it a bit better? I don’t know.

• Return to Hogwarts. I LOVE NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM. Loved that everyone was there in the room of requirement and stuff, loved the humour in these scenes. But for some reason the music seemed a bit out of place for me. I understand that they wanted to play the special recognisable Hogwarts music for when they come back and that it was a sort of happy occasion to be reunited with everyone but considering the gravity of the situation it just seemed a bit off to me.

• I don’t mind them leaving out the Carrows and the clusterfuck in the Ravenclaw tower that happened in the book. McGonagall defending Harry from Snape was epic and I loved that they made Snape only use defensive spells, he never even tried to attack her back. I wonder if maybe that, and the hint at Snape putting the fake sword in the vault were put in so the people who hadn’t read the books might start postulating at Snape’s intents. FILCH! Hahaha. Definitely needed that humour in there. HOWEVER. I did not like at all, AT ALL, McGonagall telling him to take the Slytherins to the dungeon. This was when they needed to evacuate the underage students and allow the Slytherins to choose their loyalty. One of the main points of the entire series is that there is no black and white- there are millions of shades of grey and people are capable of both good and bad things etc etc. Just because you are in Slytherin does not necessarily mean you side with Voldemort. Look at Regulus etc. So I was disappointed in them making McGonagall say that.

• Helena Ravenclaw. This irked me, there was so much unnecessary time wasting in this scene. If they were going to spend so much time with her DO IT PROPERLY and maybe even tell her story about the Bloody Baron, I really enjoyed that in the book. The dialogue they had was stupid, I thought.

• Chamber of Secrets. VOLDEMORT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL THE HORCRUXES DYING. OTHERWISE HE WOULD HAVE FIGURED IT OUT WHEN HARRY DESTROYED THE DIARY IN BOOK 2 OR WHEN DUMBLEDORE DESTROYED THE RING IN BOOK 6 OR WHEN THEY DESTROYED THE LOCKET ;aksf;kjlsf;ldjksf as you can see this made me very angry. I understand the dramatic effect of having a giant Voldemort face coming towards you (maybe added for the 3D) but at the cost of gaping loopholes in the plot? I don’t think so. The Ron/Hermione kiss was great though, and it was cute that they laughed after, even though I wish Ron had said the house elf thing and Harry had been there to be the awkward third wheel.

• SPEAKING OF ELVES. I wish they had come out for the battle. I’m sure I said it before but I feel like they diminish the seemingly little things for the movies when actually they add up to be the most important things in the books. The equality of magical creatures, it would have been a huge deal for Elves and Wizards to be fighting along side each other, and that was one of the things I felt JK Rowling was really pushing in the books.

• Anyway, moving on to THE ROOM OF REQUIREMENT. I really liked this scene. They pretty much stuck exactly to the book and Tom Felton as Draco was amazing and it showed how the fire got out of control and yeah, good stuff. “THAT’S MY GIRLFRIEND YOU NUMPTY” = many laffs. Afterwards though, it wouldn’t have taken two seconds to say something like “Fiendfyre, it can destroy Horcruxes too” rather than using another Basilisk fang. They really, really overused the fangs. AGAIN. VOLDEMORT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL IT. Just a note here, my first viewing I was annoyed that Harry told Ron and Hermione that he was going to the forest. He wasn’t supposed to because obviously they were going to try to stop him, and to not do so was out of character. HOWEVER. On the second viewing, I noticed that after Harry says that the snake is a Horcrux, they focused on Hermione’s face for a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary, and she pulled a very pained, odd kind of face and first I thought it was just weird but then I read something on tumblr and on the second viewing agreed with that person that maybe for the movie, this was the point in which Hermione, the brightest witch of her age, realised that Harry was a Horcrux and that he would need to die. Thinking about this, I do think it was maybe an insult to her intelligence that JK didn’t let Hermione realise it in the books, and far out when he tells them he’s going and Hermione says “I’ll come with you” BROKE MY HEART. More that it was already shattered at that point.

• I just thought of something that I’m not sure where to put chronologically, but PERCY. WHERE WAS HIS TRIUMPHANT RETURN? (And Neville’s Grandma :P ) But I mean you see him later standing with Mr Weasley but I think his coming through the portrait and everything was so important, and fuck but they downplayed Fred’s death too much, I mean… alskdjfkfds;fdsakl it should have been on screen and he should have been laughing at Percy and… actually, maybe not, I cried enough as it was.

• The battle sequence while the trio were trying to get to the boat shed (since when did Hogwarts have a rowing team? :P ) was effective and heart breaking but I felt like again the music was out of place. It was slow and sad music and I understand the dramatic effect this has like after a bomb goes off everything goes silent and stuff but I don’t know in this instance it just didn’t seem to fit to me.

• SNAPE. SNAPE SNAPE SNAPE. OH ALAN RICKMAN YOU BEAUTIFUL MAN. I heard a rumour that his death was going to be different than in the books, a bigger deal made out of it and I was really looking forward to it. I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. I was actually blown away. The bit about Lily’s eyes, ugghhhhh. Then the flashbacks were just beautiful. Excellently done, emotionally and I think explanation-wise too. But once again need to wait for my non-reader friend for another opinion on that one. But yes. The only thing that would have made this better is that if Dumbledore’s past had been explained more to compliment the whole Snape realising Dumbledore’s “greater good” and “raised for the slaughter” thing.

• Forest. MY CREYS ARE INFINITE. Loved this scene in the book and I think they did well at transferring across. Except that I really feel that they downplayed the whole Hallows thing, through the whole movie actually. Like they had the tale of the three brothers in Part I but as I said before it didn’t seem readily obvious that Harry’s cloak was the cloak and they didn’t explicitly explain about the ring and resurrection stone. I feel that someone who hadn’t read the books might not get this, then again they might not need to get this, I don’t know. I will find out. But yeah, Harry was supposed to be wearing the cloak and holding the stone as he arrives at Voldemort’s clearing, and then the wand gets explained in King’s Cross and in the duel at the end. I loved Narcissa Malfoy’s bit.

• King’s Cross. Loved the visuals, and I was pleasantly (well, sort of, if you get me) surprised that they put the disgusting, bloody Voldemort baby thing in. I wasn’t sure if they would because it would be too graphic but they did and I am glad because it really hits home the emphasis that for all his power Voldemort really is just pathetic because he can’t love. Not enough explanation/emotion from Dumbledore etc, see my point above.

• Okay from this point onwards there’s not much that I’m happy about, to be honest. The weird laugh thing, wtf? THE HUG? WTF. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. I understand it is funny, but I really don’t think humour was required at that point- and for anyone who’s read the books it’s an insult because it is a completely and utterly ridiculous thing for Voldemort to have done. WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE EVER HUG SOMEONE? He knows no affection whatsoever. Even with Bellatrix he treats her like shit really. So yeah. I love the Malfoys just turning and walking away though. I love that Draco is a mummy’s boy, I love Lucius’ last look at the mess he’s left behind but can do nothing about it.

• Neville is supposed to take everyone by surprise and kill Nagini with the sword then and there. OTHERWISE if the snake was still alive while he knew Harry was back alive he would have kept it much closer and protected it, no? Because he knew that Harry knew it was a Horcrux and had to destroy it so Hermione and Ron would have known too and they would have tried to destroy it so if Neville hadn’t just done it quickly then yeah. It wouldn’t have just been strolling around the corridors by itself. They dragged that out so unnecessarily. I’m all for Neville getting his BAMF moment, but they didn’t need all that crap in between.

• ALSO. They didn’t need to drag out Harry/Voldemort’s duel. Actually, not that they didn’t need to, they flat out shouldn’t have. We all know that Harry is not particularly spectacular at magic. Maybe better than Ron, not as good as Hermione and obviously nowhere near as good as the most powerful wizard alive, Voldemort. If it had ever actually been a matter of running around fighting/ casting random spells, obviously Voldemort would have won straight away. Duh. As far as I’m aware Harry hardly mastered casting spells silently, and to be able to defend himself so many times from Voldemort’s spells is out of character. The whole point, each time he’s really come face to face with Voldemort, is to jump out and take him by surprise, and use Expelliarmus (which, if you feel so inclined, can read my rant about in the Part I question). First in the graveyard it was the twin cores thing, then this time it was the Elder wand thing. The stupidness of this fight aggravated me so much. Why the fuck would Voldemort bother kicking and punching Harry (like a muggle?). Why would he give Harry the time to grab his neck and pull him off the edge? Why would he have even let Harry get that close to him? He just wants him dead by now goddammit he doesn’t want to talk or fight. The only reason Harry kept him talking in the duel in the book was because of the wand/spell/connect thing and he had time to. The flying around Hogwarts? Fuck off. Just. Ugh. Harry just needed to surprise Voldemort in the great hall and duel him in front of everybody, while explaining the Elder wand thing, which flies out of voldie’s hand and Harry’s spell reaches him and kills him. And there is a body left. The way it happened in the movie it seemed as though by Neville (finally) killing Nagini, this was what made Voldemort lose his strength and concentration and he fell apart because all of his Horcruxes were gone, NOT because the Elder wand refused to fight against Harry and let Harry’s spell reach him. A;klsjf;lkjsfdlk;adsfjadjkl

• OH BUT MOLLY. MOLLY VS BELLATRIX. Yesssssss. Good.

• Oh and I forgot to say that the first time I watched it I was starting to get worried that Hagrid might not be in it at all ☹ I think maybe we should have gotten to see him fighting with Grawp and Fang at some point.

• Harry was supposed to fix his own broken wand with the Elder wand before he got rid of it. Small part but important.

• Visiting Dumbledore in his office afterwards? Didn’t really miss it but I guess it could have been a way to explain things that they didn’t explain when they should have.

• The Epilogue. Um okay… it was cheesy but pretty cute. The kids were cute. Dan looked great, Malfoy looked how I would have pictured him from JK’s pretty unflattering description (receding hairline :P ), Ron looked fine… Ginny? Ugh I’m sorry but I hate Bonnie Wright as Ginny. She’s awful. And she looked ridiculous with that hair cut and outfit but the exact same face. She looked like a 12 year old dressing up in her mum’s clothes. And Hermione just looked exactly the same pretty much. I wish they had’ve shown Teddy Lupin. The music at the end was the music they played at the end of the first movie and that had me gushing.
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So yeah. Overall I loved it, how could I not? It is Harry Potter, after all. I cried so much. The collar of my t-shirt was soaked through by the end and I was in physical pain with how hard I wanted to cry openly but couldn’t because of how noisy it would be. The silent waterworks were constant from about halfway through until the credits where I then lost control. It really did feel like losing a friend. I think it signifies to a lot of people my age who grew up with the books, about the right ages with the trio as each book came up, the official end to our childhood and now we have to grow up. I just can’t believe there’s not going to be anymore midnight releases or anything. It’s all very surreal.

So feel free to agree, disagree, correct me, attack me, judge me, add to my list, make your own list, just express any kind of feeling towards the movie.

Disclaimer: I’m really, really tired and emotionally drained so if there are spelling and grammar mistakes and stupidly worded sentences and weird word placement I really do apologise.