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 the later movies, since they had the chance to go and add things to make up for the fact that she did not do that and got all the way to book six without mentioning horcruxes. I'm sorry they didn't take the chance to improve where they could. Film is an incredibly potent medium for conveying devastating emotion. I didn't really feel anything, about any of the events in the movie. The last Harry Potter book made me cry. This last Harry Potter film made me indifferent.

More than anything, the second movie felt like an unnecessary cash-grab instead of a movie that stood on its own. The first Deathly Hallows installment did have something of a climax and resolution structure and could, as much as any of the other movies in the series, stood on its own at least as well as the rest of them (so long as you assumed something else was coming). This one, in words of moonlightalice felt like just an extended climax, and a very anticlimactic one at that.

I assume that the positive responses I've seen are almost nostalgia/sentiment driven, not that there's anything wrong with that--you are free to enjoy it, and I'm glad some have. I just felt like it was a let down, and I hadn't really built up any hopes on it, so I didn't exactly have high expectations to crash. Unlike, say, the extreme level of hopes I have in Captain America, coming out this week. A preview trailer for The Avengers leaked, and I'm now doubly excited. Stupid hope, why do you have to spring eternal?

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

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.

[equustel.livejournal.com]

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.

I thought it was exceptionally well-acted, well-directed, well-paced, and well-made. It understood the story's themes, and the overall tone was infused with the palpable terror of facing your own death (as contrasted through both Voldemort's and Harry's eyes) that made the end of the book so compelling. All of the actors brought everything they had. The important scenes - like the Prince's Tale and Harry's decision and King's Cross - all stood out, and were beautifully realized IMO.

I wonder if my reaction also had something to do with the fact that I watched Part 1 right before Part 2 in the theater (AMC showed both for an event) - viewed as a single movie the pacing probably feels different, as opposed to coming to Part 2 fresh.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Agreed. :)

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Lots of things were smoothed over by the movies, you're right. I mean, didn't love Half-Blood Prince the movie, but it's miles better than the book. (The less I hear about Harry's "monster," the better.)

But there are half-dropped plots in Rowling's books that the movies could have done one-better without destroying any real outcomes and they didn't. I don't know if it's spoiling to say that the movie doesn't change something, so I won't say what it doesn't change. It just seems to me that it's unfortunate that no one picked up the narrative slack.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Like I said, I haven't seen this one yet. But it's got to be a tough balance, figuring out what to keep and what to change and what to drop. Hard enough when converting a movie to a book, but a huge-ass book to a movie? Worlds harder.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I would agree with you except that I think a lot of the bulk of the series is easily excised without losing either world-building or plot. There's plenty you can cut or gloss over without losing the thread of the plot.

[shell524.livejournal.com]

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

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

There is, and I feel like, in the seven movies I did see, they managed exactly that--well, really in #3-7. Some things are obvious to cut, like Tom Bombadil in LotR. Other details get a lot trickier, esp. if they're deeply interwoven.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I found the film version absurd. It made Umbridge seem petty and cartoonish, instead of seriously, viciously evil.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

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