I am glad to know I was not the only one. I am also pretty sure the characters believed there were 7 even if they didn’t know the nature of the ones they haven’t found yet.
They’re assuming three horcruxes, plus Voldemort himself. Adds up to four pieces left.
yep, that would be bill. he is a curse cracker for gringotts in egypt during ps, cos, and poa. bill and fleur meet in gof. by hbp they are engaged and fleur and bill are working at gringotts england branch.
That’s an interesting way to put it, but I get what you mean. I was thinking that the humor in this film is very character-based, is well-integrated into the story, and used effectively to help the mood and flow of the film. What you don’t get here, in contrast to the previous films, is a lot of whimsy for the sake of whimsy. In that sense, the funny parts feel much more organic. At the same time, like the book, this is easily the most serious of them all as well.
I liked the movie a lot. It was well-acted, well-paced, and fairly compelling. My wife said that she was too aware of the filmmaking and it took her out of the story at times. While I didn’t disagree, it didn’t really bother me as much.
What was perhaps inevitable by splitting the book into two films is that you’re left with a movie with no climax. They did choose a good stopping point and finished with a pretty exciting escape scene, but still. All I wanted after it was over was to keep watching the rest of it.
No complaints here about the book-to-movie transition. A film can get bogged down by being too faithful to a book (see Sorcerer’s Stone, for example), but most of the Potter films have handled the balancing act quite nicely IMO.
Technically it wasn’t a dungeon but a cellar whose main use was for storage. Lucius Malfoy is the wizarding world equivalent of a multi-billionaire, which is why it’s probably not drearier.
I can see why it would appear this way to somebody who hasn’t read the books. He hasn’t been in a movie in years- not since Chamber of Secrets- but he was in several of the books. He had a pretty important subplot that was not included in the movie version of Goblet of Fire, and he was featured in the books Order of the Phoenix and Half Blood Prince as well. Kreacher is also a much more major character- he’s actually responsible for the Death Eaters attack on the Ministry and he and Dobby hate each other. He had a particularly important sideplot with the locket:
Book spoilers that weren’t included in the movie:
House elves are required to obey any order they are given without regard to personal wishes. The way R. A. Black stole the locket that Dumbeldore was fatally injured in the attempt to steal was by having Kreacher drink the poison. Being an elf it didn’t kill him, though it did make him extremely sick.
Kreacher’s relationship with Harry is similar to Dobby’s relationship when he was owned by the Malfoys: there’s near open hatred of the employer but still 100% obligation to do as told, but at the same time they can be very sly. Just as Dobby made off to warn Harry Potter (because he hadn’t been explicitly told not to) Kreacher, when told to go away, went to the Death Eaters to inform on the Order of the Phoenix and was responsible for their attack on the Ministry where Sirius was killed.
In the book Kreacher does a 180 degree turnaround when Harry, almost offhandedly, gives him the locket that belonged to Regulus. After that Kreacher becomes the world’s greatest and most cheerful house elf.
House elves magic is completely different from wizarding magic. Among other things they can apparate and disapparate in far more places than wizards including places like Hogwarts that have been hexxed to prevent apparation. Even Dumbledore had to use his phoenix to disapparate from Hogwarts when he was arrested, but Dobby could do it anytime he wished and this was used as a plot point several times.
Sampiro:
No, he didn’t disapparate at all - he stunned the Aurors and Ministry personnel and left through the door.
Thanks a ton for the stuff in the spoilers, Sampiro; that really helps a bunch, without being any more spoiler-y outside the subject at hand.
In the end, I suppose my biggest point is that this one doesn’t work nearly as well as a movie as 3-6, where they had less time but did a better job of making sure that everything that they did include was generally consistent within what we’ve been shown in the movies. I really liked how they handled this for Bill and Fleur’s introduction at the beginning: really just a sentence or so each, and we had enough to know who they were and why there was a big wedding happening. I just feel like all of the motivations and reasoning seemed to fray at the seams for the last 30 minutes or so, and the Dobby thing capped it off. It’s clearly something really important from the book, but with the corner they had backed themselves into by not having him appear for four movies, I’m not sure that it really could have worked out any better than it did.
Definitely. I’ve already posted about how it was set up before Belatrix’s scene in three earlier scenes within movie 7. Scrimegour and the will. Exposition between the kids. The sword itself in the Forest of Dean.
I turned to my kid and whispered, “That’s just like *my *handbag.”
I think even the most diehard HP fan would agree that the parts where Harry, Hermione, and sometimes Ron druggggggggggggggggggg on more than any other parts of any other book. The movie blessedly cut down a bit believe it or not; that part alone could easily have gone three hours if not cut. It’s one of the only parts of a Harry Potter novel I’ve ever skipped ahead through.
A bit off topic, but I’ve never thought much about trailer/mobile home parks in the U.K. but there was one in this movie (one that had apparently been set upon since some were burned). Are they very common? And what are they called, assuming it’s not trailer parks?
That was the trailer/camping area from the Wizard Cup at the beginning of the Goblet of Fire. The camp was set upon by Death Eaters and it looks like most of the campers were just abandoned.
Ah, thanks.
Very close, except:
Kreacher drank the potion when Voldemort made him do so when he put the locket there in the first place. He was being dragged down by the Inferi and would have drowned except that he was ordered by Regulus to return home when Voldemort was finished with him, and so he Disapparated and was safe. When Regulus returned to the grotto with Kreacher to exchange the real locket with a replica, Regulus drank the potion himself and ordered Kreacher to return to the Black home with the locket and not to tell what happened to Regulus. He also ordered Kreacher to destroy the locket, but not having Griffindor’s sword or a basilisk fang, Kreacher was unable to do so.
A pleasure!
Oh, and I just came back from seeing the movie with friends, and I loved it. The kids have grown tremendously as actors, and the scenery was fantastic. I cringed when Harry stripped down to jump in that frozen pond – brrr. The scenes with Bathilda Bagshot were beyond creepy. Loved Fred and George’s reaction as soon as the Polyjuice Potion took effect (in unison: “We’re identical!”), which I had also enjoyed in the book.
The next movie is going to be unbelievably actioned-packed. I can be understanding of artistic changes, but I will be hideously disappointed if they change the final scene between Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange at all; I’ve been looking forward to seeing that on film since I read the words.
Saw the movie on Friday and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Perhaps my opinion will change later but I left the theater feeling like it was the best movie of the lot so far. I pretty thrilled with it. There were some obvious flaws, but those flaws were minor and tolerable compare to some of the stuff that bugged me in previous movies.
I’m a mild fan of the books. I liked them all and read them promptly when the last 4 were released (I didn’t read the first 3 until the first movie was due out) but I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise and I really haven’t reread any of the books so many of the details are lost on me still.
Hands down, the best part of this movie was the telling of the Story of the Deathly Hallows. That animation was simply fantastic and was a great contrast to the rest of the movie. That it had somehow left my memory from reading the book 3 years ago made the reveal all the more impactful. So cool.
Having read the thread I find it odd that the parts that bugged me were the parts that most other people seem to have liked. The introduction of Bill was really clumsy I thought. That Harry wouldn’t even know who he was defied logic, and just because he didn’t appear in the other movies is no reason to make him a stranger to the characters. A simple “Hi Bill!” would have good enough, the forced handshake was awkward to me.
The importance of the mirror fragment needed a refresher I thought. It wasn’t well introduced in the movie, and that he was fiddling with it often made it even more confusing. I feel like the director could have given Harry a dream sequence of him being gifted the mirror or something at the open of the film to fill that gap and reinforce the Sirius stuff.
I liked the multiple Harrys part and the fleeing from the Dursley’s scenes a lot. The stress and pervasive suspicion around the Order was well done.
I love Bill Nighy as Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister of Magic. Just perfect, I only wish the part could have somehow been bigger.
I hated the casting for Xenophilius Lovegood. The guy was all wrong, I’m not really familiar with the actor but he could not have been more ill-fit for the role as described in the book. Also, he’s not nearly kooky enough to fit with the way Luna acts and how she discussed him in the movies. A complete disaster all the way around. The most unfortunate part is that it damaged the story for me, in the scene at his home the trio assume his shifty and distracted behavior is just par for the course with the Lovegoods. That he’s so bizarre and nervous just needs par for the course with his publications and his weird daughter. In the movie however he just seemed guilty from the get-go. A major problem.
Also, the movie did a really poor job of justifying why Mundungus is even around. The book isn’t particularly good at it either, but in the movie it was a giant red flag. All subtlety was lost and no one seemed more out of place than him at the opening chase. It would have been helpful to at least have a couple characters debate him or something at some point to clarify it. As it looked in the movie, it was “why the hell is this shady stranger here on such an important secret mission?”
I didn’t mind the wandering around the wilderness scenes. They were a little dull and a little too reminiscent of Sam and Frodo, but that’s nothing new and it’s consistent with the book. It worked better in the book simply because a big part of the drama of the story is that these 3 teenagers are completely lost and alone and rudderless with such a huge task. That dynamic is magnified in the endless pages of frustration and boredom in the book. It works, it’s not a exciting read but I think it pays dividends for the overall tone. In the movies it could have served the same purpose but I think the script did a poor job of describing that emotion and tone. It was an effective way of creating stress and divisiveness between the threesome, but it was resolved a little too painlessly for me. All in all, the only purpose that served in the movie was to pay-off the Horcrux scene which was admittedly awesome.
Also, I was too struggling to understand the bookkeeping with the Horcruxes. Ron says 3 remaining but does so in a offhanded way during transit. Considering how central they are to the final 2 movies I think it would have been acceptable to have the characters sit down and have a more concise and specific discussion on the topic. Really, spelling that out with no ambiguity and hammering home the point that 2 Horcruxes were destroyed in previous movies and what the kids suspected the others might be and how many would have been a worthwhile exposition. I know too much exposition can be clumsy story telling but I’ll give you pass on a 2 part movie based on a 800 page book concluding a decade long series spanning 8 films. Take the lead from Lord of the Rings, Gandalf doesn’t mince words explaining the Ring and that it needs to be destroyed in Mt. Doom and it sets up the following 3 books/movies nicely. This movie needed a scene like that to set the stakes and make sure the viewer understands the purpose of all the following scenes.
Another important aspect that needed a little extra exposition were the scenes with Bellatrix and the Sword. Where was the sword before and when did Dumbledore use it and lose it? Let Scrimgeour explain all of that. Perhaps it’s somewhat a flaw with the previous movie in that Dumbledore needed to explain more to Harry, I forget, but considering how much the sword matters explaining it in more detail and then maybe having Bellatrix tell Voldemort or Snape where the sword was might have cleared up some of the confusion.
IIRC from the speculation preceding the release of Book 7, they don’t know for sure whether there are six or seven horcruxes. The characters are assuming six, but there was fan speculation over whether HWMNBN accidentally created a seventh the night he killed the Potters and whether Harry himself is a horcrux.
Again, I have to stick up for the “camping” sequence – these three kids are alone, they have a desperately important job to do and they hardly know how to begin, they have no one to ask for help and they and their loved ones are in danger all the time. And this evil bleeping locket is making them crazy. Wow. Something is going to happen at any moment and then they start fighting amongst themselves! When they finally pull their raid on the MoM and poor Mrs. Cattermole treats Ron as if he really is Mr. Cattermole, he gets a chance to see up close and personal how frightening it would be to be a Muggle-born. This isn’t a game, kids.
I thought it was very well done. After our recent “talking in the movies” thread, I was happy to see that the audience I saw it with didn’t make a peep throughout the entire movie (except for laughter when appropriate). We had a trailer for something that looked like a Western with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford (!) and then spaceships showed up and the title reveal was (I swear) Cowboys and Aliens. The audience laughed loudly and heartily at that one.
Au contraire, my dear chap. The Aurors chasing him thought had had gone out through the door. He disappeared with Fawkes. I am 99% sure on this (will check when I get home.)
He was able to disapparate from Hogwarts in the movie (HBP) and when questioned by Harry he said “well, being me has its privileges”.
Don’t remember how it occurred in the book.
Sorry if I’m repeating things that have already been said, I haven’t read every post in detail yet, just skimmed through the thread. I didn’t want to read the thread beforehand because I just saw the movie yesterday. And I have some things I am eager to say! I’ll go back and re-read later, I promise.
One thing I thought that you would not understand without reading the books, even if you had seen and remembered all the movies: the mirror fragment that Harry Potter is looking into. I remember Sirius giving him the mirror in the Order of the Phoenix movie, but isn’t that the last mention of the mirror in the movies? Or does the mirror appear again at the end of the Order of the Phoenix movie?
Question: when Harry Potter is attacked by Nagini in Bathilda Bagshot’s house in Godric’s Hollow, the setting changes briefly from a dilapited shabby room to a well-lit nursery, and then back. Is this Harry having a flashback to his childhood, or was he knocked through a wall into the house next door? I am assuming the former.
I agree that anyone not familiar with the books, and having only seen the movies on their release, and not since, will not get all the minor plot points. But then not everybody will go over the story in their minds after the movie ends to figure out exactly why everything happened the way it did, e.g. why did Dobby appear all of a sudden in their cellar prison.
I’m going to be extremely upset if I don’t get to see Minerva McGonnagall
lead the desks in a charge on the Death Eaters
It’s never specifically mentioned in the books, but Rowling has said that Molly’s brothers were killed by Death Eaters. That explains much of her loyalties (that and decency of course) and makes her role in the Battle for Hogwarts even more satisfying (and sad).
I wondered about that also, and I assume the former. Though it is odd that a dilapidated house would share a wall with one so well kept and obviously Muggle judging by the electricity and chain store furniture.