Spoiler alert...Below are a some thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One, as well as the series as a whole. So head to the theater to watch the movie, pour yourself a tall butter beer, then read what I have to say.
Thursday night, or early Friday morning, I made my way to the midnight showing of the most recent installment of the Harry Potter saga. But you've never once mentioned Harry Potter to me before, my seven readers might be thinking to themselves. That is true. I have never read a single one of the books, and I had only seen parts of the first movie some four or five years ago, but with the opportunity to experience one of my favorite things, I had to go for it.
The aforementioned favorite thing is watching long run stories in short periods of time. I've done it time and time again with television series. Whether it was catching up on numerous seasons of Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, etc., I've always enjoyed the challenge. The Kid has done it with movies before as well, as I took down all six Star Wars in a week, and pummeled through the long Lord of the Rings series within a couple of days.
This time around I had to take in the previous six Harry Potters before heading out to the theater to catch number seven on Thursday at midnight. With classes, work, volunteering for more work, and my job reviewing tv eps on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, I thought it might be impossible. Oh yeah, and I had to borrow the movies themselves, which threw a chink in the chain when the Half Blood Prince box ended up with no disc in it. To make a longer story still long, I started Friday night with the Sorcerer's Stone and finished Half Blood Prince by Thursday morning and was ready to take in the first part of the final installment.
Before getting into my slightly negative review of last night's Deathly Hallows Part One, I want to go over what I have loved about the entire series as a whole, so as to not get murdered by the four readers I have that are huge HP fans.
There is definitely a reason why the books and movies are so popular. This is great story telling at its finest. The plots have all been engaging and original, the characters are all very intriguing, with some easy to hate and others easy to love, and it really just does one of the best jobs I've seen at creating such a ridiculous fictional world that feels absolutely real while watching it.
Some would argue that the best tv comes when a series can tell a great serialized story, while making each individual episode as entertaining (and self-contained) as possible. The same can be said of a film saga. The long-running story of Harry Potter has been absolutely fantastic, but I've been more impressed with how each book installment tells its own story within the story. Each one has seemed to wrap up so nicely, yet lead itself perfectly into what may come next.
And that's exactly my major problem with Deathly Hallows Part One. It left me feeling completely "hehhh?" I mean, rightfully so. It was half of a story after all. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was meant to be read (or watched) all together. Splitting it up like this, and making me wait months until seeing the second half of the story, was a bad move.
What would have been better? Putting them together as one movie, of course. Too long? I agree, so cut out a lot of it like you apparently did for all of the other movies. Now I know the die hard book readers will probably disagree with me, because they're so happy that this one has stayed true to the original story, but there were many parts of Deathly Hallows Part One that were much more unnecessary than in the other films. It was slow and tended to drag at times.
Unless Part Two is an action-packed two and a half hours of greatness, I would have rather they cut about an hour out of each and make one three hour film. I could definitely find an hour out of Part One to cut, and the story wouldn't lose that much at all. But if the goal was to stay as close to the book as possible on the last go around, and appease its most loyal of fans, apparently it did that.
And now to some rankings...
Movies
1. Goblet of Fire
2. Half-Blood Prince
3. Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Order of the Phoenix
5. Sorcerer's Stone
6. Chamber of Secrets
7. Deathly Hallows Part One
Characters
1. Dobby the House Elf
2. Draco Malfoy
3. Fred and George Weasley
4. Albus Dumbledore
5. Luna Lovegood
6. Ron Weasley
7. Lord Voldamort
8. Hermione Granger
9. Severus Snape
10. Rubeus Hagrid
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