Harry Potter final battle against the forces of evil.
And so it ends. Looking back to the rest of the series this is certainly a remarkable achievement. Eight movies, a decade, without a significant drop in quality, we can even say that as the series progressed they got better.
This is certainly the case with this one. After the first movies with journeymen directors coming one after the other they got in what is arguably a continuous production mode, practically one extremely long movie. It’s significant that they are keeping the same guy, David Yates, at the helm of the last four movies, they want to reward continuity and I can’t blame them. Why reinvent the wheel every time when they already have a bunch of guys who knows what they are doing?
Is also remarkable how the original three child actors blossomed in three fairly good professionals without giving us the terrible stint of rehabs that made Lindsay Lohan and her friends so famous. I start to wonder that maybe Hollywood is not that bad and that the fault lies in some studios. It is fascinating to note that most of the child actor turned drug abuser sex addict seems to come from Disney…
Anyway lets go back to the movie.
Of course there is the half a movie problem. This is part two of a story, we jump straight in the action and so it can be fairly difficult to follow, all the explanation was in part one! Add to it that this is the last part of a long and fairly complicated saga with references to many different past movies and the poor spectator is often left scratching his head.
The tone is also strange. With all the buildup confined to the other movie here we practically start the final battle after a mere twenty minutes and do it for a couple of hours. Because of this we practically have no character development and character moments at all, everybody is too busy shooting things.
On the other side having what is practically one long fight scene got his perks. The action is relentless, carefully staged with state of the art CGI. The battle of Hogwarts clearly benefits from more breathing space and gives a palpable crescendo in the movie.
Filming clear battle scenes remain an elusive art and so is often not very easy to understand to understand what is going on but we can’t dismiss the pure adrenalinic power of those scenes.
Another positive aspect of such a long series is the inherent pathos that it gives to his ending. This is not monster of the week territory; this is Voldemort the guy whose name was ushered in whispered tones since the very beginning. Then of course Voldemort is played by Ralph Fiennes, a very good actor who really seems to come into its own when playing villains. Purely by his acting wits he manages to make an extremely cheesy villain work.
The plot comes straight from the book and is a really satisfying resolution to this long saga. The main plotline like in most of the other books is basically a well oiled mystery with a lot of stuff to find and things to guess. As far as character stuff I’m still not convinced by the various revelations near the ending. Is the kind of stuff that kinda makes sense when you are watching it but after a mere five minutes you realize it really doesn’t. But this isn’t really that important, Harry Potter in the end succeeds at what is really important for a popcorn movie, entertain us.
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