Harry Potter and the deathly hallows

I liked it, and found it easier to follow than the last few films. I still had difficulty understanding the rules of the universe, for example why they could teleport in certain circumstances and not others. I haven’t read the books, though, and imagine those things would be clearer if I had. I just sort of figured going in that there would be elements I would just have to run with even though I didn’t really get them. The pacing didn’t bother me either, which seems to be a common complaint. Looking forward to the finale.

I kinda have to agree, there were some good moments, but overall it was probably the worst HP movie. There was some terrible camerawork that I found distracting.

The next one should be better, they saved all the good bits for it.

I loved it. I am deducting 50 points from all your houses for complaining about it.

Yeah, the whole disapparation thing is the sort of plot device that can really cause a writer problems. In the past the students were simply forbidden from doing it, and you could accept that Hogwarts was a magical enough place to have wards against it. But now that they’re old enough and taking the show on the road, it’s hard to come up with reasons why everyone isn’t teleporting everywhere and even harder to efficiently communicate that to a movie audience.

The biggest example of this was probably when they got caught by the snatchers. All 3 kids had ample time to disapperate instead of running, but they didn’t. Maybe it was because they all needed to touch in order to end up at the same place, and the snatchers had them scattered. But you would have thought they’d have been smart enough to have come up with an emergency rendezvous point ahead of time in case they got separated.

An alternate explanation could be that the snatchers set up wards that prevented them from doing it, but if the director tried to communicate this I missed it. All it would have taken would have been a quick “I can’t disapperate!” from one of the characters and a quick shot of one of the snatchers holding up a wand and smirking.

I’ve only read the first book and go to see these movies for my wife. That being said, it was more interesting than the other movies. The animated segment in the middle looked amazing, I want more of that.

Like the Twilight movies (which I also go to see for my wife), I really hate that there are things that don’t make sense without reading the books. What was that broken piece of glass Harry kept looking at? What is that ghost deer and who put it there? Not a big deal, but why not take 1 minute to explain it?

Why should we be ashamed? You’ve never watched a movie based on other material without reading the material first? Some of use haven’t read the whole series because we were bored to tears halfway through the second book and handed it off to our wife and started to read an excellent John Adams biography instead.

I don’t think the books are that great, and you expect me to read six more of them just to understand the movie? Did you make sure to read every issue of Amazing Spider-Man before seeing those movies?

It’s been a long time since Stephen Fry read it to me, but I seem to recall the book mentioning that disapparating would very quickly draw attention to themselves, and that the spell was easy to detect.

Haters gonna hate.

I should have said, they should be ashamed if they are also complaining about not getting all the answers they demanded - especially since many of those answers (such as who made the deer) are “end of the book/part 2” territory.

I think it managed to accurately capture all the tedium of the “sitting around in the forest” part of the last book.

I just think it was the least good of the Potter movies so far. They stretched it all out so that they could make two movies out of it, and it showed in this film.

One of the things in particular that annoyed me was the part where Ron came back and he told them the story of him sitting in the pub. That was a terrible thing to do in a film. In film, you don’t have a character stand there and describe something, you should be showing the audience instead.

I’ll be there come July for the last installment for sure, but this one just left me slightly disappointed compared to the others.

One thing that did crack me up at the beginning of the film was the tribute to Top Gear, by the destruction of that bane of the British highways, the caravan!

To me, this was a smart choice for the wonderful scene that followed with Harry and Ron:

Ron: When will she stop being mad at me?
Harry: Keep telling her about the little light and your chest and she’ll come round.

I have to agree with Tim on this one, including how legitimate humor continued to cash in on every awkward or silly moment. I especially loved Dobby’s lines.

As someone who’s only read the first four books, I did experience a bit of the “well isn’t that convenient” feeling, without really understanding what was going on behind the scenes, but I did find it more enjoyable than the early Potter films.

The biggest problem I had with it (which overshadowed the shaky camera, not as overused as this comment makes it sound) is the complete lack of dramatic tension in any of the action bits. This is not at all a new problem for the series, but I think it hit its low in this film. The plot & character developments, on the other hand, were pretty enjoyable. I wish there had been more of Snape (I’m still unaware of which side he’s really on), but I gather that we’ll see more of him in Part 2.

And wow was that Beedle the Bard bit great. I might have to pick up a copy of the book if all of the tales are of classic Aesop/Grimm caliber.

For any of you who are curious about the animated sequence, here’s a little piece about the guy who did it, including one of his earlier works. Reminds me a lot of Borderlands. That animated bit was one of my favorite parts of the flick. I wish it were available somewhere online - I was trying to tell my partner about it, but it’s pretty hard to describe.

I agree pretty thoroughly with everything seventimessix said about it. You can’t really call it bad, because the first 30-45 minutes in particular were great, and there were several other good “moments” throughout the book. But the camping in the woods felt like it went on way too long, there was clearly a lot missing from the book to make anything from the last 20 minutes meaningful, and a bunch of what was there was just was too thoroughly predictable - though the last, of course, is probably just because I’m familiar with all the normal fantasy story tropes, and not really a fault of the movie per se.

I don’t know that I’ve have made it 20 or 30 minutes shorter, so much as I’d have replaced 20 or 30 minutes of the middle with 20 or 30 minutes extra from… say, when they get to Lovegood’s house through the end of the movie. Or maybe I’d have used it to have Dobby show up for more than 15 minutes total over the last four or so movies, so that it actually might matter to me as a viewer when he (predictably) kicks it.

it’s a good movies

Hey, isn’t that the guy we were talking about in the Borderlands thread and how he supposedly ripped off the Borderlands intro? (Except he didn’t?)

Looking at that clip on youtube makes no sense until you read the essay length description, which is quite telling IMO. All style no substance.

I’d normally agree except for two things.

  1. Based on past HP movies, we’re just as likely to never get the answers. (Who made the Marauder’s Map?) I’d let this wait for the second half, but the characters in this movie just seemed to shrug and go along with it which doesn’t indicate that it’s important to the director.

  2. One of the mysteries is ‘solved’ within this movie with no explanation at all. “How did they track us to that coffee shop?” “Who knows, but let’s just start calling Voldemort ‘You-Know-Who’ instead and not let the audience in on it.” To the audience, it’s just a loose end that never gets mentioned again.

Didn’t the Weasley’s house burn in the last movie?

So if they magicked it back, why would they have been sad when it burned?

[watching burning house]
<shrug> Oh well, we’ll just magic it back tomorrow.

I thought the camping was much more interesting in this movie than it was in the book. I honestly didn’t remember most of the book going in.

I still wish the whole Harry Potter thing was an elaborate red herring perpetrated by Dumbledore to keep Voldemort from bothering Neville, his real nemesis.

Yeah, but my son said it best - the movies aren’t great if you never read the books, but if you HAVE it’s awesome to see this stuff visualized before you (paraphrasing a little, he’s 10).

Every movie has dropped the ball somewhere, which is maddening because how hard would a single line or two of dialog cost them in terms of filming/time? Not much, I’d assume. Here, I’ll write it right now.

Ron - Harry, as a personal favor to me, don’t say his name any more, okay? Really.

Harry - Okay, Ron, I promise.

That was tough, wow, writing is hard. Seriously writers! Get with it.

Frustrating.

However, it’s still a fun movie if you just know this stuff, but I can imagine how annoying this stuff must be if someone never read the books. Fortunately, most folks that are interested in the movies have read the books, but that’s really no excuse for the filmmakers.