Spoiler Alert

If you haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and want to be surprised, stop reading this post!

 

 

 

 

 

I’m serious! :)

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, well, let’s start with the epic feel of this movie. I was impressed with the grand scale of it, how it felt more like a war movie than “just” a Harry Potter movie. I loved the look of everything, even though watching Hogwarts get blown up made my heart clench up. I loved the suspense and heightened tension throughout. Of course, the movie only takes place in less than 2 days’ time, so it felt a little short. But it was intense for that time period.

I still got goosebumps in the theatre when Harry confronted Snape in the great hall – “Tell them how you looked him in the eye, a man who trusted you, and killed him!”  Anytime I saw that part in the previews, I’d get goosebumps, and still in the actual movie, same thing. It was a good moment. And gosh, Alan Rickman’s performance was perfection.

Speaking of Alan Rickman, wasn’t his death scene so jarring? I knew he was attacked by Nagini from reading the books, and though you didn’t see the actual attack, you could hear it and feel it more than I expected to. It was pretty graphic and I felt sorry for him. And then the moment he said, “You have your mother’s eyes” I was a goner. Of course, I had been crying long before that, but that scene really took me in.

But none so much than when he held Lily’s body after she was killed. Utterly heartbreaking. The love that he had for Lily was so palpable and showed such a human side of him. It just reiterated why Snape is my favorite character (from the 6th book on, of course).

What else was heartbreaking, you ask? :) Well, watching the Weasley family grieve over Fred was terrible. It was a little shorter of a scene than I thought it would be, but I suppose there was a lot to fit in. And when Lupin and Tonks were laid out with their hands almost touching? Awful.

I think everyone’s acting was just taken up a notch in this film and I really loved watching it. I did notice something, though. There seems to be an interesting parallel between the Peverell brothers and Harry, Snape and Voldemort, have you noticed it?

The brother with the Elder wand – died because of his quest for power. Voldemort died the same way.

The brother with the Resurrection Stone -- died because he couldn’t let go of a love that passed away. Snape died the same way.

And the brother with the Invisibility Cloak -- greeted Death as an old friend, choosing his time to die. Harry died the same way.

I thought that was quite interesting and wondered if it was on purpose. Of course, I’m 99.9% sure that it was, because of JK’s style, but ya never know.

There were a couple of things that bugged me in the movie. The first being that Hermione and Ron were both trying to kill Nagini towards the end. The whole time I just kept thinking, “They better not take that kill away from Neville, it’s his triumphant moment of the whole end scene!” I was really glad that they kept Neville killing the snake, but was a big perturbed that they changed the location and timing of it. I wish he had done so at the big ‘confrontation’ point when everyone thought Harry was dead. Ah well.

The other thing that REALLY bugged me was when Harry was leaving towards the Forbidden Forest and found Ron and Hermione on the way there. In the books, he was actually under the Invisibility Cloak and didn’t let anyone know that he was going to give himself up to Voldemort. In the movie, Ron & Hermione saw him going, and ‘tried’ to stop him, but finally just let him go. That’s absurd – they wouldn’t have let him go off by himself to the forest if they had known he was headed there.

And what makes me mad is that they did that in the Half-Blood Prince too! In the books, when Dumbledore died, Harry was stunned, under the Invisibility Cloak, so that he couldn’t move, let alone do anything to stop Snape from killing Dumbledore. Because you know he would have tried had he not been rendered immobile. However, in the movies, he just stood there like nothing was happening. Sure, Snape told him to be quiet, but there’s no way that Harry would have stood by while Snape killed Dumbledore, not making a sound, under his own volition. No way.

All in all, I was really excited the whole time – loved everything about it, and of course, I wished there were more.