@filmfann, the mirror wasn’t explained in the first half of the book, I’m hoping it will be in the second part of the movie.
I just wrote a huge long rant about this movie and free_fallin has read it and sent me this question so I’m gonna paste it in here for you guys. It’s long, so I’m sorry :P
I have mixed feelings. I love it, how can I not? But mostly I was disappointed. I’d managed to re-read the entire series before I saw the movie, so it was fresh in my mind. I think my following points would have stood out to me even if I hadn’t. To me it seemed that some of the plot points and details, though small, were the most important to JK Rowling. That’s what I took out of the books anyway. And those were the ones, the small but most important ones, that they left out. But it’s not all bad, there are a couple of positive points in here too!
1) Hermione wiping her parents memory. This one gets a big tick. I loved it. I almost cried and it was like the first 2 minutes. We never got to see Hermione’s house in the book, but got to see all of the other two’s. I thought it was only fair and very well done.
2) The seven Potters. While this scene was awesome in itself visually, even the usual greats (the twins, Moody) seemed awkward and all lines seemed very forced, especially the timing of them.
3) Hedwig. The fact that she was flying and it happened so quickly just made it too confusing and took a little while to grasp what had happened. I’ll admit, as I was reading the book I did wonder why he didn’t let her out of her cage, so when he let her fly out of Number 4 I nodded, but the fact that she was the “giveaway” of which one was Harry, not the signature “Expelliarmus” which they seem to have thrown out the window (I’ll talk more about this later), was disappointing. That and the fact that we don’t get the gut wrenching emotion when Harry has to blow up the sidecar of the motorbike with Hedwig in it.
4) Bill. I’m sorry but no. Just no. That passing mark of “present from a werewolf by name of Greyback” or something just made me so angry that he wasn’t in the 6th one and that’s how they made up for it. Fleur was awkward. I wonder how they’re going to be in Part II. Oh and Charlie. Come on! I know he isn’t really a vital character in terms of the movies, but he was obviously going to be at his brother’s wedding, so why not just get a random red head to say “Hi, I’m Charlie.”
5) Kreacher. They were supposed to be nice to him. Why else would he have gone to all the effort to bring Mundungus back for them? Ok, so he has to take Harry’s orders regardless… but I mean this was one of the small in terms of the whole story but very important points I’m talking about. Treat everyone as equal, love everyone, don’t fall into the “Magic is Might” and “Pureblood all the way” traps. They are supposed to finally listen to Hermione and treat him nice dammit. And he is supposed to bring them onion soup. And the explanation of Regulus? Too short. Way too short. Another one of those important points that I thought Rowling was pushing throughout the entire series is that there is no black and white, there is not just good and evil. Just because you’re a death eater you are not evil. Voldemort may be all evil, but only because he has never known love. Regulus was a death eater, and didn’t want to be anymore. I love this back story. Sure they explained it enough for the purpose of the movie, but definitely did not do it enough justice, and I thought that if you hadn’t read the book you’d still be quite confused.
6) The break in of the Ministry of Magic. I did enjoy this sequence a lot, actually. Loved Ron, especially. And those adult actors did so well at being Dan, Rupert and Emma. It was great. The only thing that annoyed me was that Harry didn’t take Moody’s eye. That was why everyone was supposed to know they were in the Ministry, and it was just a way of showing that Harry wanted to show proper respect for Moody’s death, even if it compromised his disguise, and that, to me, was important.
7) Godric’s Hollow. Ok, let me just say that I understand completely why not making Hermione and Harry drink polyjuice potion would work way better for the film, cause they wanted to show Harry crying at his parents graves, Hermione comforting him, not two random people, whereas in the book you can imagine this yourself. I get that. But it just seemed to completely go against the whole “hiding from Voldemort” thing they’d been working on the whole time. What was the point of moving the tent every single day and all those charms if they were just going to apparate into the middle of Godric’s Hollow as themselves? Turns out Voldemort was waiting for them anyway, but they weren’t to know that. Whatever. Not such a biggie. I just wish the entire scene had’ve been scarier. I still get chills reading the book, even though I know what’s coming. AND! Voldemort was supposed to appear after Nagini had come out of Bathilda. That would have made it scarier. Actually, it might not have:
8) Voldemort. It didn’t even seem like Ralph Fiennes. What the hell happened? He seemed meek and weak and blurgh. Not at all his usual bone chilling Voldemort.
9) The Dance. I loved it! In my opinion Dan Rad is actually a good actor (wait, hear me out) when he’s not trying to be serious. He is great in interviews, as in really funny, and he was awesome after taking Felix Felicius in HBP. But he is shit as serious Harry. So the dance with Hermione was great cause he got to be himself- a funny dork. And it showed how close they are and how much they love each other, but in a brother and sister way. Which leads me on to…
10) Ron’s return. I liked it, indeed I did. But it could have been better :P The bit with the doe and the sword was good (afterwords they didn’t focus on the doe enough though) and all that, but so much more needed to be said as and after the horcrux was destroyed. Especially Harry saying “She’s like my sister” about Hermione, to me that was what made everything alright for Ron, the most important line of the Ron/Hermione love story. The bit about the Deluminator and the light was so so cute. I loved that. But Harry and Ron talking afterwards? In the movie Ron says something about Dumbledore knowing he’d want to come back, but he is supposed to say Dumbledore knew I’d leave and Harry is supposed to say no, he knew you’d come back. A small, but important difference to me, because at that moment Ron knows Harry has completely forgiven him.
11) The Lovegood’s. Xenophilius was great, their house was great. The fact that they didn’t see the Quibbler didn’t matter, you got the picture. But not seeing Luna’s room? With their faces on the roof and the “friends” thing? Big disappointment. That really should have been in there. That and the fact that Harry was supposed to show his face to the death eaters before they apparated the hell out of there. They did that so that Xenophilius didn’t get punished for calling the death eaters, and Luna wouldn’t get hurt. What, do movie Harry, Hermione and Ron just not care about Luna at all? Do they not care that she might be killed because of that? It’s another time, like in the Ministry, where they are prepared to risk everything for someone they care about. Seems stupid to leave that out.
12) The Tale of the Three Brothers. Amaaaaaazing. Ugh. So so so good, loved it, even if it was a bit random.
13) The Snatcher Chase. I was looking forward to this when I had read that they’d added it. I thought that was going to be when the book was split, so I assumed that would be the cliffhanger ending, and the chase would make it more exciting, rather than the Snatchers just popping up and tangling them in the tent. And the trailer made it look awesome. Buuuut… Harry had just been given a new wand, Ron and Hermione have their own…. why did they start running straight away? They didn’t start shooting spells for ages! It reminds me of “I don’t have any fire!” “ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?”.
14) Malfoy Manor. I looooved the Malfoys here. They were great. You could really see the family dynamic, the fear of Voldemort, and the wish for old ways. The knowledge that they’d got themselves in way too far. Hermione was great. Mostly the scene was true to the book, however the whole thing with the sword and Bellatrix was not explained very well at all. There was not enough “You don’t know how much danger we are in, don’t call Voldemort” etc etc. Not nearly enough of her talking about the sword in her vault. And there was no interaction with Griphook in the dungeon, no asking him to tell Bellatrix that the sword was a fake. It seems to me that it would be more effort to explain this later than it would have been then. And also, if Bellatrix doesn’t know it was a fake she might tell Voldemort that the sword has been stolen and he might work out that something is up.
15) The Elder Wand and Expelliarmus. Like I said before, to me the fact that Harry used Expelliarmus and the deatheaters knew it was him was important. Lupin having a go at him for using Expelliarmus was important. Harry arguing that it was Expelliarmus that saved him in the graveyard was important. Why? Personally I think that JK has focused on this spell so much because it means that Harry refused to attempt to kill anyone, even Voldemort. And that is why he is better than Voldemort and the deatheaters. He will not kill, and often he doesn’t even want to hurt anyone unless he has to, hence using Expelliarmus as often as he can instead of curses. I think that also, in terms of the Elder Wand, it would seem strange if you used any old spell against your opponent in a duel and instantly became master of the Elder Wand because that would defeat the purpose of being an invincible wand. Maybe you can become master of it if you Expelliarmus it out of the previous master’s hands because nobody thinks it’s a particularly useful spell but really it shows that the wizard is superior because he would rather disarm than hurt, and so he should win the duel. I’m not sure, that’s just what I’ve thought about recently, taking into account the things JK Rowling has repeated in the books.
ANYWAY, this comment is actually for both the book and the movie, because in the book Harry just took the wands from Draco’s hand and in the movie I think he stupefied him. The fact that Harry didn’t Expelliarmus Draco was aggravating, because this means that any old spell or just taking the wand makes you master, again, defeating the idea of the wand being invincible, and doesn’t fit in with JK’s previous insistance of Expelliarmus. Even during the duel with Voldemort Harry asked “Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed?” which is a boo boo on JK’s part because he never actually Disarmed Draco… unless you count snatching as Disarming… But hey, I also just had a thought, maybe Hermione is right after all. Maybe it’s just the belief that you have won the wand that makes you the master and the wizard makes the wand, not the other way around. Hmmm…
16) Wormtail. Another important point of the series to me is mercy. Harry showed Wormtail mercy, and so Wormtail shows Harry mercy, and that split second is all it takes for the silver hand to turn on Wormtail and kill him. This shows that Voldemort does not “get” mercy.
17) Dobby. Oh Dobby. He was great, his little speech about being a free elf was moving, and I would have cried, really I would have… except he didn’t look like Dobby at all. He didn’t look the same. The animation had changed somewhere. Also, although I checked and it is the same voice actor, he sounded way way different. I had a hard time feeling sad because of how different he was to the Dobby I remembered from the second movie. Also- the digging of the grave. Harry was supposed to literally dig, with a shovel, a rectangle grave in the earth in Bill and Fleur’s backyard. Not a frigging hole in the sand. He is supposed to work at it for hours with the shovel, and put a sort of headstone on. He just quickly dug a shallow hole in the sand on top of a dune and pushed the sand back over. How frigging long do you think that’s going to last huh? The sand will be blown away and you’re gonna see dead Dobby again pretty soon as he becomes exposed to the sea air and decomposes. Yuck. Not a very dignified burial, and it doesn’t leave an opportunity for Griphook to admire Harry for being “a very strange wizard”, which influences Griphook to agree to help them at Gringotts.
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