Similarly marginalized in recent years, Maggie Smith‘s wonderful Minerva McGonagall reasserts herself for this last campaign, helping to create a shield around Hogwarts that will at least temporarily delay Voldemort’s army, which has converged on a cliff overlooking the school. STORY: AMC Announces ‘Harry Potter’ Four-Night Premiere Event Among the many who have been recently little seen, the one who most surprisingly rises to the occasion is the largely forgotten Neville Longbottom ( Matthew Lewis), whereas Harry’s girlfriend Ginny ( Bonnie Wright) offers entirely expected solidarity. Still, apart from a few isolated effects that look phonier thanks to the extra dimension, the 3D works pretty well for the many spectacular visual effects as well as with the greater sense of depth with which Yates stages many of his scenes here.Īs Harry and his friends converge on Hogwarts - now run by Snape like a gloomy fascist camp and guarded by hovering Death Eaters - an admirably sober, melancholy mood cloaks the proceedings Aberforth Dumbledore ( Ciaran Hinds) details unsavory aspects of his family’s early history and portents of what’s to come reverberate as Harry and Voldemort increasingly share what’s in their minds, while Harry’s welcoming committee at school resembles a stalwart bunch of loyal soldiers gathered for a none-too-promising last stand. Those with a purist streak will probably wish Warners had left well enough alone and not adopted the fad purely for the extra dollars, as if it needed them. This sequence also calls attention to the fact that, after an aborted effort on the previous installment, this is the first Harry Potter film to be released in 3D. The subsequent break-in involves a wonderful charade in which Hermione disguises herself as Bellatrix (some amusing work from Helena Bonham Carter here) but also a roller-coaster ride that feels like a prototype for a theme-park attraction. STORY: ‘Harry Potter’ Stars Wouldn’t Return if Franchise Went On logo appears onscreen, Harry, Ron and Hermione at the outset are still in the wilderness, commanded to find and destroy four remaining Horcruxes (all of which contain fractions of the Dark Lord’s soul) and obliged to make a deal with disagreeable goblin Griphook ( Warwick Davis) to gain access to Bellatrix Lestrange’s bank vault, where one Horcrux might be hidden. With Voldemort wielding the coveted Elder Wand with blinding power even before the Warner Bros. Of course, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is all about the final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, the ultimate showdown between good and evil, the climax the entire series has built toward from the beginning. Simply put, it’s clear the filmmakers felt the responsibility to do this job right, and that they have. Tricky in that so many characters, including quite a few from the past, needed to be shuffled into the dramatic deck without sacrificing forward momentum, this final chapter suggests an even greater-than-usual attention to narrative balance and refinement. STORY: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’ Named Most Anticipated Film of 2011īut perhaps the key player all along has been screenwriter Steve Kloves, who made what must have been a vexing decision to put a promising directorial career on hold for more than a decade to write all but one of the Potter episodes (though confessing exhaustion and the need of a break, he later expressed regret over not adapting The Order of the Phoenix). Initially working in what seemed too straightforward and briskly efficient a manner, Yates has finally come into his own in this last installment, orchestrating a massive chessboard of events with impressive finesse and a stronger sense of dramatic composition than he has previously displayed. With a parade of wonderful British actors filling exceedingly vivid parts, casting has been the series’ most consistently strong suit throughout remarkably, only one major actor, Richard Harris, died over the course of the decade, and he was undisruptively replaced by Michael Gambon (though regret still lingers that Peter O’Toole wasn’t cast as Dumbledore in the first place was it thought he wouldn’t survive this long?).Īfter Chris Columbus launched the franchise capably but with less than dazzling flair, producer David Heyman smartly chose Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell to stage the next two –the best of the series artistically - then settled on TV director David Yates for the long march to the end. When some quick shots at the end remind how incredibly young Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watsonwere when this all started, one marvels that they’ve all grown up to be as physically plausible for the roles and sufficiently talented as they have. It has been an extraordinary run, really, marked by careful planning as well as very good luck.
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