More thoughts on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2"

On the 11th of August, my grandfather took my brother, one of my cousins, and myself to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. I mentioned in my first post about this that I was completely satisfied with the film: it has been over a week since I thought that way about the movie and wrote it up here, and after some thinking, I still maintain that position, although I do have a couple of quibbles. If you have not seen the film yet and do not want to have it spoilt, I recommend stopping here for now until you have watched it!

The first was the deaths of Fred Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, and Remus Lupin: to me, these deaths, while they all happened in the book, felt like they were "dropped" into the film. One moment, these characters were all alive, and then suddenly they were all dead, with only a minor acknowledgement of their fates. Granted, there was no need to have a bloodbath, and it was good not to see one, but due to the importance of these characters in other films/books, I think they should have received a slightly better send-off that a brief scene of their corpses.

The second was near the end of the film when Harry had the Elder Wand in his possession. In the book he used the Elder Wand to repair his original wand (and thus has his only "official" usage of the wand), whereas in the movie he merely snapped the wand in two instead of using it to make the repair. I suspect that him repairing the old wand and then snapping the Elder Wand would have been too slow a scene for a movie, but even so, it would have been nice for that to have occurred.

Still, these are both minor points, and neither detracts from the overall satisfaction I received from watching the movie: I have far more praise than criticism. On the opposite end of the spectrum, easily the best scenes from the film were those involving Professor Snape regarding his true loyalty, his love for Lily Potter, and caringfor Harry: I felt that the Alan Rickman's performance in those parts, few though they were, was truly excellent, and I thought that the film's portrayal of those areas of the story was as strong as the description in the book, perhaps even more so.

With the very last scene in the film, originally I did have concerns about how the actors would look aged, but I was relieved to see their ageing looked natural, rather than badly done as is often the case. Too many times have I seen actors made-up to look aged, and the ageing makeup either causes them appear too old or fake, but I did not think that in this case.

As I said, I am completely satisfied, and a minor point or two does not negate that. I think all the Harry Potter books have been portrayed well in their respective movies, and I am glad the film series has come to a well-deserved close.