Obvious spoilers for those that haven’t yet seen the latest movie.
We’re not all too proud to pretend we are too cool for Harry Potter are we? Good. We could talk about the carbon tax, but that’s kind of boring.
On Friday I caught the final Potter flick in glorious 2d. Overall I thought it was a pretty solid conclusion to a great movie series.
What I liked, as with the final book was the revelation about the true motivations of Severus Snape. One of the ongoing mysteries of the series was where did his true allegiances lie and just like in the book the final reveal was both touching and sad. Alan Rickman as Snape has to be one of the all time great casting decisions in movie history, it’s hard to think of any other actor that was just made to play a particular character.
What I didn’t like so much was that after years of buildup and wanting to see the magical world outside of Hogwarts was pretty unimpressive. Finally, the majority of the story wasnt set in a boarding school but instead they spend most of their time camping in the woods. Not very magical. Where was the rest of the world in the conflict? The entire magical world seemed to consist of a boarding school and a street in London.
But still I enjoyed the movie much like I enjoyed the rest of the series, and despite their shortcomings the films probably turned out better than what they were originally going to be. Steven Spielberg was originally set to direct, and well, it would have been different.
“I did think it would be worthwhile for Steven Spielberg to direct,” Horn said. “We offered it to him. But one of the notions of Dreamworks’ and Steven’s was, ‘Let’s combine a couple of the books, let’s make it animated,’ and that was because of the [visual effects and] Pixar had demonstrated that animated movies could be extremely successful. Because of the wizardry involved, they were very effects-laden. So I don’t blame them. But I did not want to combine the movies, and I wanted it to be live action.”
So basically the Harry Potter movies would have looked like that weird Tintin preview.
Plus, he wanted to Americanise the very British characters. Steven even wanted Haley Joel Osment to play Harry. Thankfully JK Rowling wouldn’t sign over the movie rights unless all the actors were either British or Irish.
So, thoughts on the final film. Which was your favourite film in the series? Did you prefer the books or the movies? Favourite character? Have at it.
