harry potter; why it can be furthest from the book and STILL succeed

Ladies and gentlemen, women and children, wizards and witches alike, the final moment has arrived. Last night at 12:01 am EST, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 was released in the US, and I was one of the fortunate to have survived the mobs, piles of tissues, popcorn, butterbeer flavored cupcakes, Bertie Botts Beans, and enough soda to put people in diabetic comas. This is going to be as extensive of a review and thoughtful blog as I can manage on 4 hours of sleep, so Potterheads alike, please continue to read.

THE FOLLOWING BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE MOVIE. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO NOT READ THIS POST. LOOK AT YOUR FINGERNAILS INSTEAD.

In all seriousness, the movie left me feeling a little empty. And this isn't because it was the final 'hurrah' so to speak. I found that during the movie, I was so wrapped in it, I barely paid much attention to the forgotten bits that when I left the theater, I was still kind of wondering if I had actually just seen the movie, or if I had fallen asleep waiting for it. But that doesn't mean I didn't like it! Au contraire, I loved it. But I loved it more like you would love a separate item than put the book and movie together as one.

Take Harry and Ginny, for example. Nothing against you Hanny or Girry shippers out there, but I have always been a Harmony shipper (Harry/Hermione) and will continue to remain one until my dying breath. This falls more on J.K's shoulders than the directors of the movie, though. Even in the books the relationship felt forced. Harry and Ginny went from being Stalked and Stalker to Magical Couple That Looks Like A Young Lily and James Potter. I found their 'relationship' to be strained from the get-go. They had so little time in the movies playing cutesy-developing-couple as the books had. Heck, in fact, anyone who WASN'T Ron and Hermione had massive downplayed developing-romance time. If Ron and Hermione's underlying tension hadn't been played into every move they made on screen and in the books, maybe others like Tonks and Lupin would have had more time for explanations.

Speaking of Lupin and Tonks, how about how HEART-WRENCHING it was to see them dead, touching hands? I was already mourning over Fred on the floor and then BAM, here's Lupin and Tonks gone. To a well-read Potterhead, we all thought of Teddy Lupin, the new pretty baby these two just had. To the casual moviegoer though, they get the whopper of information later on, AFTER Lupin is dead and Harry uses the Resurrection Stone to see him, along with his parents and godfather Sirius one more time. I had always wondered why he didn't bring Dumbledore with him using the Stone before death, but figured that one out both later in the book and in the movie.

Dumbledore had been waiting for Harry all along in his pretty-in-white death scene. I will admit I was sitting there gritting my teeth when they never explained Dumbledore and his hellish past, but I guess they decided to drop it since it didn't tie into anything deep in the movies. Was anyone else creeped out by the bloody Voldemort baby thing lying on the floor? A friend of mine said someone compared it to a chicken wing. I'm thinking it needs a little more meat for that.

Freakish chicken-wing-Voldemort aside, we finally got see more than one side to Voldemort. We saw Creepy Smile Voldy, Cackling Like A Crack Den Owner Voldy, and the guy who randomly went, "NEEEE-AHHHHHHHHHH!" while pointing not-his-wand skyward and planning to kill Harry.

And then we get what I thought was the worst part of the whole movie; Harry and Voldemort's fight. In the book, it was epic. Everyone stood watch as Harry was laid dead on the ground, Voldemort did a weird prance and giggled over his win, Neville launched into Kill Bill mode and Harry snuck off under his cloak with everyone going, "HOLY MERLIN'S BEARD. WHERE DID THE CORPSE GO?!" Then the big talk unveiled where Harry declared he knew all about Voldemort after un-cloaking his badass self, and they did another wand connection which backfired on Voldemort and he died. What did we get instead? Harry grabbing Voldemort and flinging himself off a cliff and half-flying, half-disapparating all over Hogwarts, random chasing through the castle, and Voldemort's secret weapon; BANDY SLEEVES.

The whole night wasn't wasted on a decent movie, though. McGonagall opened a can of Mega Whoop Ass like she so deserved to. She was short-changed in her scenes with Harry for the diadem search in Ravenclaw common room, but I wasn't sweating that too much. Not with other characters coming to life.

Neville was one of them. We all knew he was stashing in the Room of Requirement for the majority of the final year, but some of the scenes he had was pure comedic and bravery gold. Killing Nagini, taunting the enemies on the bridge, and his random idea to find Luna and declare himself before he died was fantastic. In one movie HE got more airtime than Harry and Ginny's relationship (I'm still on their coupling case, sorry!).

Of course, we were all waiting for Molly Weasley's, "Not my daughter, you bitch!" moment and were greatly rewarded to see the fire in her eyes.

But the biggest, and I mean biggest, show stealer of them all was Alan Rickman as Snape. When I say this guy had better nab every award he is nominated for (and he better be nominated for everything possible) I mean it. The biggest payoff of the entire series on that premiere was unveiling all of him. We got to see, though his tears, just how much he really loved Lily. Cradling her dead body in his arms, sobbing, I couldn't hold back. If I think about it too long, I'm going to start crying all over again. It was hard enough watching him die in Harry's hands, but then we were subjected to pure torture by his memories. And it was beautiful. If Alan Rickman were to ever read this, I tip my hat to you. No one could have made Snape as memorable as he did.

Now, while I go sob over my lunch break as I recall those scenes, I say this; Harry Potter will never die. And if you chose to read this whole thing against the spoilers before seeing it, now you have to. I compel you. Snape compels you. Harry's aged face, Ron's beer gut, and Draco's receding hairline all compels you to go watch it again and again and again.

If you have seen it, what did you think of it? Was it not close enough to the book, or close enough movie-wise?