from a film only fan of the Harry Potter series I enjoyed it quite a bit. The white scene was a little strange, probably one of the few times in the series i'd like to get a little more info from the book. Overall very enjoyable. I especially loved the use of color in this film and how they were able to really show the swings in mood based on that. Especially early scenes at Hogwarts when Harry returns you can see the shift from blues/grays to vibrant colors from the earlier films, and then back again when things turn bad. Also enjoyed the long shots during the battle scenes. These really help maintain the scope of the battle and show how large it truely was.

7/18/2011 8:23:21 AM

from what i recall you don't miss a whole lot NOT knowing whats in the book. Its been awhile since I've read it, but this film was the most true to the book i feel. namely cause they had 4+ hours for the whole thing

7/18/2011 8:38:41 AM

Must admit I was not wildly impressed. The whole film was litterally dark (almost too much so, to the point where anyone wearing black standing in a shadow just disappeared) I know this was probably intentional, but I'm pretty sure we all understood this was a darkest hour kind of movie.

Overall it just seemed a little anti-climatic to me for some reason...but I was never a HUGE fand of this series to begin with

7/18/2011 10:51:18 AM

The theater you visited might be to blame for that, Exiled: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/05/the_dying_of_the_light.html

7/18/2011 10:52:29 AM

I, too, thought it was a little anti-climactic.

7/18/2011 11:29:11 AM

I saw it in IMAX 3D on Saturday, and not only was it the first 3D movie I've seen, it was the second IMAX movie and, well, obviously, the first IMAX 3D. The 3D was very, very noticeable, and I actually didn't mind it. It didn't seem necessary at all, but that's pretty nature to the format. There were no issues with the screen being too dark, but this might be the difference between an IMAX 3D showing and a standard 3D screen.

I loved the movie itself. The pensieve scenes (the "memory well" for those of you who didn't know it was calle da pensieve) were incredibly well done, and definitely tugged at the heart-strings. The final battle could have been better. I don't like that Harry is the only one to fight Voldemort--and it's not just because it's different from the book that I don't like it, it just doesn't mess with the rest of the films. Also, they don't really show enough of the one-on-one battles going on. Even one of the biggest ones, Bellatrix and Mrs. Weasley, is just thrown out there suddenly and then swept by.

Overall it was a great film and I felt I had my money's worth. I'll probably see it in 2D on a cheaper screen soon and see how it compares.

7/18/2011 1:49:39 PM

tilt up shot from voldemort dissolving into ash/paper and rack focus to hogwarts castle with intense flare was purdy

7/18/2011 2:06:26 PM

^^^^

Quote :

"Ty Burr in the Boston Globe reports that some 3D projectors, particularly those made by Sony, produce "gloomy, underlit" images of 2D films. His article must have hit a nerve; and I've seen it posted and referred to all over the web. The newspaper found dark images on eight of the 19 screens at the high-end AMC Loews Boston Common on Tremont Street."

That's the theater I saw the movie at last night (3D Imax), and although it was darker than I would have liked it wasn't too distracting from the movie itself.

7/18/2011 9:55:40 PM

SPOILERS
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I enjoyed it and it's definitely my favorite of all the films. I do agree that the last 20 minutes or so could've been better. There should've been a lot more celebration when Voldemort died. They just wandered off by themselves and didn't even tell anyone. It would've been nice if Harry would've told Voldemort how Snape was really working for Dumbledore. Better than watching that flying through the air sequence. Otherwise i thought it hit all the right notes with the deaths of Fred, Remus, and Tonks, the Bellatrix/Weasley face-off, Neville's big moment, etc.
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END SPOILERS

7/20/2011 12:12:00 PM

spoilers, I guess.
































^The "celebration" is them kind of calming down and being merry as they mourn their losses. Dancing and jumping in the air surrounded by piles of your dead peers would have been pretty tactless.

7/20/2011 2:56:02 PM

Quote :

"from what i recall you don't miss a whole lot NOT knowing whats in the book. Its been awhile since I've read it, but this film was the most true to the book i feel. namely cause they had 4+ hours for the whole thing"

No. You miss tons, especially in movies 3-6. Movies 1&2 you could watch and know everything in the book.

7/20/2011 4:16:15 PM

^I think that comment was based on just this movie, not the others.

Quote :

"Otherwise i thought it hit all the right notes with the deaths of Fred, Remus, and Tonks, the Bellatrix/Weasley face-off, Neville's big moment, etc."

I disagree. The Mamma Weasley victory was rushed, and why does Bellatrix get the same death effect (black ash) that Voldemort and Nagini had?

7/20/2011 5:15:53 PM

I don't think Bellatrix was ash, more like quickly evaporating liquid

They didn't do a good job making Hermione look older

[Edited on July 20, 2011 at 10:10 PM. Reason : ]

7/20/2011 10:10:04 PM

^haha, speaking of looking older...Ginny looked absolutely HORRIBLE as an older woman. Such an elegant young actress, and somehow they made her look like poo

7/20/2011 10:33:55 PM

not reading a single post for fear of spoilers, but going to see this tomorrow!!!
piddlebug=excited!!!!

7/20/2011 10:48:17 PM

Quote :

"They didn't do a good job making Hermione look older"

i thought all of them still looked <20y in the end scenes

7/20/2011 11:46:27 PM

it looked like a high school theatre group in a scene portraying old people. That being said, Emma looked the way she probably will in 10-15 years and I thought it was funny the way the accented Rupert's beer gut.

7/21/2011 7:48:24 AM

I think they over-did it on the aging, but I've had that as a pet peeve throughout the series (why did Harry's parents look old as shit, they died when they were ~21??). They're going to be 36 in the finale, not 56, they're still plenty young.

7/21/2011 7:57:01 AM

What's scary about the aging is that they shot it the first time and it apparently looked worse so they re-shot it, haha.

7/21/2011 8:14:43 AM

Quote :

"No. You miss tons, especially in movies 3-6. Movies 1&2 you could watch and know everything in the book."

my comment was specifically addressing the "white scene" actually, from the comment directly above mine

7/21/2011 8:34:34 AM

who's is the better resurrection? Harry Potter or Jesus?

7/21/2011 8:56:36 AM

Quote :

"The "celebration" is them kind of calming down and being merry as they mourn their losses. Dancing and jumping in the air surrounded by piles of your dead peers would have been pretty tactless."

Eh, they celebrated in the books. I remember people cheering when Bellatrix and Voldemort went down.

Quote :

"The Mamma Weasley victory was rushed, and why does Bellatrix get the same death effect (black ash) that Voldemort and Nagini had?"

I don't get why any of them had that effect. It was nice visually and can be justified with the not-having-a-soul thing, but no one even witnessed Voldemort's death and there wasn't a body. That was one of many things I nitpicked about the movie.

7/21/2011 9:13:07 AM

I saw it last night and LOVED it! I felt a little bit of sadness that the movie series came to an end. Even though I grew up with this book series in my late teens to twenties, it does feel like there is no more room to be a kid because it has ended.

My two complaints: when he was in King's Cross, he def looked like he was in front of a green screen. The whole movie was full of these amazing effects and then they goof up the look of one of my favorite scenes in the books. Oh well.

Also, when it is 19 years later and they are at platform 9 3/4, it was stupid how they made the cast look "older."

I do have to say the fledgling of Voldemort at King's Crossing was exactly how I pictured it when I read the book.

So when they are in Gringotts vault getting that cup (which is another favorite scene while reading the books), wasn't the multiplying treasure suppose to be really hot to the touch? I liked the scene in the movie but I couldn't remember.

7/21/2011 9:34:17 AM

^Yes, hot enough it burned through their clothing/shoes and gave them blisters to hold it.

7/21/2011 9:45:33 AM

Better than the last one, hardly the best in the series, most of it was good, the end was underwhelming. Overall a solid A- movie.

[Edited on July 21, 2011 at 6:43 PM. Reason : .]

7/21/2011 6:33:42 PM

my girlfriend cried when he did yet had a stone to bring his ass back to life, i dont get it

7/22/2011 1:18:48 PM

Just occurred to me that they didn't explain why Harry could come back.

Quote :

"Due to Voldemort's use of Harry's blood in the process of creating himself a new body in 1995 in the graveyard of Little Hangleton, Harry survived the Killing Curse from Voldemort, although he was briefly knocked unconscious."

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Hogwarts

7/22/2011 2:51:46 PM

^ I think in the movie they wanted you to just figure it was because the Elder wand belonged to Harry so it wouldn't kill him.

7/22/2011 2:56:59 PM

^^^the stone didn't bring him back to life, that's not what it does. he drops it before finding voldemort in the woods so there's no reason to think that even if you didn't read the book

7/23/2011 1:09:26 AM

punchy, I'm glad you mentioned the cups. I hated that they cut the hotness out... then still kept Hermione giving Ron and Harry the special healing shiz.

7/23/2011 2:01:38 AM

^^^ That would be a hell of a leap imo Particularly because A) the ownership thing wasn't explained until later, B) There was never any mention of someone not being able to be killed by wand that truly belonged to them or anything of that nature, and C) because he definitely seemed to die or be on the verge of dying. I mean he went to this all white place (the standard for people dying in film.. at least enough to trigger that thought in the avg. moviegoer) and Dumbledore explained it as if he were in some in-between state of life and death.

Looking at the wikipedia page for the deathly hallows book... that scene is where Dumbledore explains the bit about Voldermort using Harry's blood and how that protected him. I don't recall that in the movie at all.

i discussed the "how did he come back thing" with the people i saw it with and none of us could quite understand how he came back --- none of us read the books but we've seen all the movies.

It was a leap to say it was the stone since he had dropped it before finding Voldemort. It was a HUGE plot hole for the movie goers imo.

7/23/2011 1:58:38 PM

Saw it last night...was pleased with it, although it wasn't my favorite of the series (never read the books). I may have enjoyed it better if the restaurant beside the theater was having a beach music concert that could be heard all throughout the movies except for the especially loud scenes. Every serious scene was partly ruined because of the uptempo/upbeat beach music playing outside. I'd probably enjoy this movie more if I watched Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 back-to-back instead of several months apart.

As others have said, the last 15-20 minutes weren't great but overall I enjoyed the movie.

[Edited on July 23, 2011 at 3:23 PM. Reason : ]

7/23/2011 3:13:21 PM

Quote :

"then still kept Hermione giving Ron and Harry the special healing shiz."

They only put it on their hands which I assumed was from holding onto the dragon's scales for hours.

We saw it last night and I really liked it. It didn't stick with me as much as I thought it would nor was I really upset that the series was over but maybe it was because I was content. I believe it followed the book almost to a T and the parts they cut out or changed I could see why they needed to do it. I definitely agree that it wasn't the best in the series or movies but it was executed well. I think my favorite must've been Order of the Phoenix.

I definitely want to see it again but will wait until we buy it on dvd.

7/24/2011 8:29:23 AM

I don't get why Snape's memories included watching Lily talk to Harry right before she died. Was he down the hallway or something? Doesn't make sense.

7/24/2011 9:05:32 PM

hermione cleavage

7/25/2011 8:09:09 AM

I think it was pretty retarded they had molly weasley kill bellatrix. I was hoping they would change the entire story from the book and have neville kill bellatrix. seems like such a waste.

also, it sucks they kept the stupid ending (best friends getting married, how convenient) intact, but hey at least they stayed loyal to the book.

7/25/2011 11:06:53 AM

[Edited on July 27, 2011 at 8:58 AM. Reason : .]

7/27/2011 8:45:27 AM

*******QUESTION/SPOILER******













Haven't read any of the books...so this will probably answer this. But it's about the horcruxes.

A couple movies ago (can't remember which one it was...maybe HBP??), Harry looked into one of the old professor's memories and saw Tom Riddle asking about 7 horcruxes. From then on, I thought it was apparent that there were 7 and that Harry, Ron, and Hermione talked about finding the 7 horcruxes.

However, in the final, they only mentioned 6: the book, the ring, the locket, the tiara, the chalice/cup, and the snake. It wasn't until he looks into Snape's memory that he knew (for sure at least, he "suspected" it earlier I guess) that he was an actual horcrux. Before that...did they just forget how to count?? Because they kept saying, "we only need to find/destroy one more!" I kept thinking, "but don't they need two more to hit 7??" Or did they only think there were 6 horcruxes and that Voldemort himself was the 7th??`I feel like I'm missing something really simple here.













*******END SPOILER*********

7/28/2011 10:00:10 AM

the 7th piece was the one residing in his own body(Voldemort).

Quote :

"Voldemort's creation of Horcruxes is central to the later storyline of the Harry Potter novels. As the number seven is a powerful number in magic, Voldemort intended to split his soul into that many pieces, with six Horcruxes and the last reposing within his body. When Voldemort attacked the Potter family, he had been intending to make his sixth and final Horcrux with the death of "The Chosen One". Despite his defeat, he actually succeeded in doing so; when his body was destroyed by the rebounded Killing Curse, a piece of his soul was spelled off and attached itself to the only living thing remaining in the room—Harry Potter—effectively making him the sixth Horcrux. Voldemort, unaware of this, "completed" his collection of Horcruxes by turning his snake Nagini into one, thus fragmenting his soul into a total of eight (counting the one residing in his own body), not seven, pieces. Complicating things even further, no more than six Horcruxes (including Harry) ever existed at any one time in the series: by the time Nagini had been made a Horcrux, one of the Horcruxes—Tom Riddle's Diary—had already been destroyed."

[Edited on July 28, 2011 at 10:17 AM. Reason : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_objects_in_Harry_Potter]

7/28/2011 10:13:51 AM

That makes sense. So I'm guessing Harry, Ron, and Hermione all thought Voldemort was the 7th horcrux. They didn't know the complexities, but I guess it didn't matter.

7/28/2011 11:04:01 AM

There's eight:

-The diary.
-The ring.
-The chalice.
-The tiara.
-The locket.
-The snake.
-Harry.
-Voldemort himself.

What's confusing is that they count the remaining piece of soul within Voldemort, but that's not really a horocrux, so that was odd.

And yeah that whole quoted block is correct and interesting, because I never thought about the diary being destroyed before nagini was made a horocrux.

7/28/2011 7:09:34 PM

^not a horocrux, but a piece of soul. Also, Voldemort never meant to create a horocrux with Harry, so in his mind, his soul was split into 7 pieces.

7/28/2011 11:20:05 PM

Quote :

"^not a horocrux, but a piece of soul."

Ommmm...but that's exactly what a horcrux is....


My problem with the whole thing was that all three (harry, ron, and hermione) were all like, "SEVEN, SEVEN, SEVEN!1!!!!1111!!!!"

And they already knew that Tom Riddle's diary (one), the ring (two), and the locket (three) were horcruxes. Then it was the chalice/cup (four) and the tiara (five)...and then Harry *saw that it was the snake (six). And they were all like, "FUCK YEAH, NOW WE CAN KILL VOLDEMORT AFTER WE DESTROY THE SEVEN HORCRUXES!!!"

I guess I'm nitpicking...but the only explanation would be if they mentioned Voldemort as being the Seventh horcrux. But they never did. I was like..."the fuckers can cast spells all they want, but they can't count for shit."

I accept the explanations...but it doesn't excuse their "miscounting" in the movie. Fuck...I guess I should just read the books.

7/29/2011 2:53:04 AM

^The horcrux is the object that holds the piece of soul if I understand it correctly.

7/29/2011 6:21:08 PM

Yeah, that's right, the horcrux is the dark magical object that holds the piece of soul.

7/29/2011 6:29:44 PM

So Voldemort himself is not a horcrux, just the last remaining piece of soul.

7/30/2011 2:18:39 AM

1 piece of soul in Voldy + 6 horcruxes = splitting ones soul into 7 pieces

Harry and co. heard Riddle say he would split his soul into 7 pieces, not make 7 horcruxes. However, he accidentally made a seventh horcrux out of Harry, bringing the total soul piece count to 8.

7/30/2011 8:26:43 AM

^ I get that. And maybe I'm getting this wrong, but I just thought I remembered them saying "7 horcruxes" in the movie...several times. If they had said, "6 horcruxes and his soul", then it would have been fine.

7/30/2011 8:46:39 AM

I think you are mistaken in that. I'm sure that between the writers, grips, catering folks, director, cast, etc, someone would have noticed the mistake if Harry and co were incorrectly enumerating the horcruxes.

[Edited on July 30, 2011 at 9:09 AM. Reason : In fact I don't think anyone ever mentioned the total # of horcruxes in the movie.]

7/30/2011 9:08:28 AM

After they destroyed the first two, there was a big gap in time. Why didn't Voldemort just say " fuck it, I'll make two (or ten) more?"

7/30/2011 9:51:25 AM