Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011) – So I’ve had a mixed reaction to the Harry Potter series as a whole. I liked the first four films (especially Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire) but after that they felt a little… I don’t know, off. They were going for a sort of darkness that I appreciate but I feel like they didn’t quite hit the mark. Getting more mature is a good thing but the self-seriousness of it all seems to weight it down a little much for my tastes. Where’s the sense of fun that was in the previous movies? I never read the books so I can’t really speak to the faithfulness to the source material, but just as a movie-goer I feel like the franchise moved away somewhat from what attracted me to the series in the first place.
This movie is crushed a bit under the weight of expectation. Starting with Order of the Phoenix, the movies started feeling more like they were building to something and less like complete films by themselves. At the end of Half-Blood Prince, shit hit the fan and it looked like the big climactic battle would begin. Then of course we got Deathly Hallows Part 1, which is literally half a story with no real resolution. So now here we are, Deathly Hallows Part 2. The big climactic battle. Surely this will be the storm of awesomeness promised by the previous seven films, right? Well…
It doesn’t suck. I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t like the movie. I did (despite those god damn spiders coming back in the big battle at Hogwarts). There was a lot of great action (spiders notwithstanding) and I liked the way Voldemort was defeated (and don’t say “spoiler” because you knew Harry was going to win). All in all… I just wanted more. When these films started I was still in high school. That was a long time ago. There has been a lot of build-up for this and I’m not sure it met the expectation. Also SPOILER: the ending features Harry, Hermoine, Draco, Ginny, & Ron digitally aged to play 40-something adults. Except they look EXACTLY the same, just with crow’s feet. It’s a horrible effect and I just wanted to point that out. END SPOILER. Speaking of effects, the 3D seems unnecessary at most points in this film. I’m on record as not being anti-3D, but so many movies just waste the potential of the technology. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 isn’t what I hoped it would be, but it is still entertaining and if you’re this far into the series you should see how it ends.
Persistence of Vision 
So there was a comment to this post, very anti-Potter. While by no means do I want to stifle dissent (and I will agree certain aspects of Potter are pretty lame, such as his tendency to stumble ass-backwards into the solutions to his problems), the comment seemed rather troll-y so I don’t think I’m going to approve it (the fact that from somewhat going by Anonymous doesn’t really help refute the troll argument). If you hate something I like, or like something I hate, feel free to disagree. Just be civil.