HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, Part 2... Almost ten years after leaving douchey stepparents behind and arriving at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter has finally met his destiny. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 this past weekend, and it’s interesting to see how this movie series concluded its final chapter. I never read the books, but I watched every single installment in the Harry Potter franchise since 2001...remembering how good Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince and Part 1 of Deathly Hallows were, and how bored and indifferent I was to Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.
My main complaint about Goblet of Fire after watching it in 2005 was how obnoxious the story seemed to get as the tone got darker and darker. I enjoyed the childlike wonder that was conveyed in Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets...but it wasn’t till Lord Voldemort fully returned in Half-Blood Prince that I finally accepted the change in mood for the Harry Potter series. Actually, I think Voldemort returned to full form in Goblet of Fire, but as I said earlier, I didn’t enjoy the film enough to remember that. And Order of the Phoenix was one-long training film...minus the cool montage with the song Eye of the Tiger playing in the background.
So what did I like about Deathly Hallows 2, you ask? (Beware of plot spoilers for the remainder of this review.) It was totally action-packed. Much like the satisfaction of seeing a setting like the Galactic Senate go from being boring in The Phantom Menace to becoming the arena for the awesome lightsaber duel between Yoda and Darth Sidious in Revenge of the Sith, it was refreshing to see casualties and destruction fall upon Hogwarts (and even that stadium where the Quidditch matches were held) in the middle act of Deathly Hallows 2. I was unaware that there was a twist to Professor Snape’s treacherous act of killing Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince, and didn’t actually realize that Voldemort was already dying a slow and agonizing death as Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were destroying Horcruxes one by one in the last couple of films. That just comes to show you how memorable the dialogues in the Potter films were.
After ten years of watching Harry Potter wandering around Hogwarts and the rest of Scotland and England to unravel the mystery of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it was finally good to see the ultimate um, wand battle between Potter and Voldemort outside the ruins of Hogwarts in the movie’s climax. Since I didn’t read any of the books, I had no idea that Potter’s much-talked-about death was only a ploy to weaken Voldemort even further before he was finally defeated. To see Voldemort disintegrate once the final Horcrux was destroyed was almost as epic to see as the Eye of Sauron exploding at the end of Return of the King, right after the One Ring was dropped into Mt. Doom. Harry Potter now joins Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (despite the fact The Hobbit is currently being filmed) as fantasy film series completing their uber-successful run at the cinemas.
If there’s one major nitpick I need to make about Deathly Hallows 2, it’s with the very final scene of the film. Much like the protracted ending for Return of the King, that last moment at the train station felt like it was better off being left on the cutting room floor. Don’t know if this scene was in the book, but the shot of Harry, Ron, Hermione and Co. being all grown up and whatnot looked very cheesy. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson may both be 21-years-old in real life, but they still looked and sounded pretty adolescent in the movie’s epilogue...which was suppose to take place 19 years after the death of Voldemort. Hermione seemed to have the Queen Amidala syndrome from Attack of the Clones (where Natalie Portman’s character was suppose to be 9 years older in Episode 2 but looked like she didn’t age one bit from The Phantom Menace). I guess it would’ve been even lamer if the voices of Radcliffe and Co. were altered to make them sound more mature...which is why director David Yates should’ve left this scene out altogether.
The whole happy ending thing didn’t work in 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (as well as Minority Report and a lot of other recent Spielberg films), and it didn’t work here either. At least for me. Have the Harry Potter movie franchise conclude with that shot of Harry, Hermione and Ron standing atop that damaged bridge outside of Hogwarts...remaining silent as they stare off into the distance and contemplate a future that doesn’t include an evil wizard trying to return from the dead and killing them all. Carry on.
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