My girlfriend is insisting that we see HP in roughly 5 hours when I was originally supposed to be out of town. Unfortunately, my only experience with the franchise is reading the first two books many years ago; long enough that I can barely remember any plot details, let alone things like character attributes and magical “jargon”.
So I am hopeful that you guys will be to help me develop just enough of a basic understanding of the story so that I won’t be completely lost. Specifically, I would like to know:
Backstory - only major elements that are needed to understand this installment.
Characters - again, only the main ones are fine, but I probably will have to have some understanding of their personality/motivations.
Universe rules/terms - whatever is needed.
I could try and look though wikipedia for all this, but the last thing I want to do right now is spend an hour or more trying to comprehend the whole series, most of which I assume will be irrelevant. Plus, wiki plot summaries are good for telling what happened, and terrible for explaining why.
Mapping to LOTR will be easiest for you. If you don’t know LOTR, then tough ;).
The One Ring = Horcrux, but there’s more than one
Frodo = Harry Potter
Sauron = Voldemort
Sam = Hermione (hey why not?)
ignore the redhead, he’s not really important
There’s some kind of weird connection between Harry and evil Voldemort, which is making it very difficult for Volde to kill Harry, even though he’s the most powerful dark wizard ever.
Voldemort split up his soul and stored it in a number of Horcruxes, he did this to ensure his immortality. Harry is trying to destroy them, and Voldemort.
Harry was helped in the past by Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts school, and wizard even more powerful than Voldemort. Dumbledore is dead, killed by Professor Snape, who he trusted completely, but is a Voldemort follower.
Any other thoughts? I have a sneaking suspicion that just knowing that Harry = good and Voldemort = bad is not gonna cut it for a useful understanding of what’s going on.
Thanks for the mention of the horcrux thing though. That ought to help.
Yes, Horcruxes are the most important thing. There are six, and Harry and his sidekicks Ron (comical) and Hermione (brainy) are trying to destroy them. By the time this last movie starts, they have destroyed three, with three plus Voldemort himself to go. Also important, only certain things can destroy horcruxes, like the sword of Gryffindor or basilisk venom.
Throw the Deathly Hallows into the mix: Legendary objects which, if acquired, make one the master of death. 1) Invisibility cloak–Harry already has. 2) Resurrection stone, enables the holder to bring loved ones back from the dead–was, last we know of, in the possession of Albus Dumbledore (mentor who’s dead now) 3) Elder wand, most powerful wand ever–was also in the possession of Dumbledore, but Voldie stole it from his tomb at the end of the last movie. The Elder Wand is by far the most important to the plot.
Um…that’s basically what you need to know for this movie. There are so many secondary characters that it would be hard to list them all. Most important IMHO:
Draco Malfoy: schoolmate and rival of Harry. Follows Voldemort but his heart’s not in it. Loves and is loved by his parents.
Neville Longbottom: Schoolmate of Harry. Bit of a bumbler but brave as a lion.
Ginny Weasley: Ron’s sister and Harry’s love.
Weasley family: You’ll know them by the red hair. Harry’s adoptive family.
Can’t believe I almost forgot
Severus Snape: Teacher at Hogwarts who hates Harry and is loathed in return. Killed Dumbledore at the end of the next-to-last book, has been a spy for Voldemort all these years. Alan Rickman. One of the best characters ever.
Because he survived Voldemort’s attack as an infant, Harry is widely believed (in the wizard world) to be the only possible “good” counter to the irredeemable evil of Voldemort. A prophesy supports that only one may survive. In other words, if Voldemort wins, the world is in for a dark future. If Harry lives, well . . . the opposite. And a showdown is inevitable.
People have chosen sides, although some hover in between. Harry struggles with the burden of lives (and deaths) placed on him and always being one or two steps behind the opposition.
Also, wands and their owners are important so pay attention to who is in control of which wand.
Or maybe not. I think we are supposed to be uncertain, at this point, where Snape’s real loyalties lie. Certainly he has done many things that indicate he is a bad guy, loyal to Voldemort (including actually killing Dumbledore), but there are also subtle signs pointing the other way, and we know that Dumbledore, who never seemed to be wrong about anything else, trusted him implicitly right to the end. (On the other hand again, in Deathly Hallows we do learn that Dumbledore himself was not quite as infallible as Harry had once taken him to be).
I know that when I got to the end of the penultimate book, Half Blood Prince, where the killing of Dumbledore occurs, I was by no means convinced that Snape was as evil as he had been made to appear, and I know I was far from alone in that. I think uncertainty about Snape’s real intent and motivation is one the key sources of dramatic tension in Deathly Hallows (and, indeed, the series as a whole), and it is not resolved until very near the end. Is Snape a double agent, a triple agent, or what? If you go in assuming that we know for sure that Snape is straightforwardly evil, as PeskiPiksi asserts, I think you will be missing something.
Thank you for posting this question, and for the answers. I am in the same predicament; this saves me just in time for the movie tomorrow. And the kitteh thing was hilarious.
Well, it didn’t go as bad as it might have, as following what’s happening in the story itself is no problem. Plus, it did look phenomenal.
On the other hand, I felt that I had little appreciation for anything that happened and most of the time it just seemed like events were unfolding one after the other with zero logical connection between them. It seemed like there was barely any actual conflict, though I’m sure it was much more apparent to the average fan. The Snape “reveal”, especially, was mostly lost on me.
Overall, I’d describe it as… a bunch of stuff happens, and Voldemort dies.
Which is how I figured it would look if you didn’t see all the movies or read all the books. If you did, you already know the whole backstory on everyone and why the payoffs are happening. Otherwise, it’s just payoffs with not buildup.
And the kitteh thing was hilarious.