The Specialists

When my daughter was very young, I made the questionable parenting choice to take her to a midnight screening of Ang Lee’s The Hulk. (I’m not sure which was more questionable, the lateness of the hour or the lameness of the movie.) We had a great time and it was the beginning of a tradition of midnight screenings of genre event films. But I’m not as young as I was then, and these things take their toll on a middle-aged schlub like me. Therefore, I’m not going to have a lot to say this morning about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2, which I saw just a few short hours ago.

I love the Harry Potter books, having fallen in love with them accidentally while reading to my daughter. They are an amazingly satisfying read for adults as well as kids. I’ve been less impressed with the movies, though I generally like them. As the books got progressively longer and more complex, the movies were confined to their 2-and-a-half hour running time, so that they started to seem like Cliffs Notes versions of the books, only touching on the most important plot points. So even though Warner Brothers’ decision to split the final book into two movies was almost certainly intended only to squeeze more money out of their most lucrative franchise, I think it resulted in better movies too. If they had tried to cram the entire book into a single movie, it would have barely resembled the source.

As an adaptation, Deathly Hallows part 2 was pretty good. It portrayed the most memorable moments from the book as well as can be expected. As the climax of an epic eight-part film series, it also serves quite well. The final struggle is desperate and the cost is high. Every success is hard earned, and every loss is acutely felt.

There are also a few flashbacks to the earliest movies, and it’s amazing to compare the young adult actors to their pre-teen selves. I think watching these kids grow up — not just the three principals, but their whole Hogwarts class — is one of the joys of the series. Who could have expected that chubby little Neville would grow up the way he has?

We ended up seeing the 3D version of the movie, and while the extra dimension doesn’t add much to the overall experience, neither did it detract from it. After hearing of the horrible post-production 3d conversions of Clash of the Titans or The Last Airbender, I was afraid that the effect would be distractingly bad. But I’d say that this film proves that these conversions can work if sufficient time and money are devoted to them.

I don’t really have any serious complaints about the movie, except that it’s not the book, which of course applies to the whole series, and increasingly so to each film. I know that some fans of the book simply can’t stand the movies, and I can understand why. But if you like these movies, I think you’ll be quite satisfied with the final installment.

Shawn (follow me on Twitter!)