HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1 Post-Release

Damn.

I'm gonna have different groups of friends wanting to go see this opening weekend...

Sounds like a faithful adaptation of the book!

This really seems to underline the idea that this could have easily been one film.

Exactly. Hopefully, HALLOWS PART 2 will redeem it, just as the second half of the book does.

Sounds like my fears where well founded. If I want to spend an hour in the Forrest of Dean I'll drive there, it's right on my door step, I don't want to sit through other people doing it.

Yep. Sounds EXACTLY like the book. For good and ill.

Not that any of this stops me from being jazzed to see this, mind you.

Yeah, especially the use of Nighy. They handle the character the same way in the book "Oh, he's dead but didn't give you up, Harry".

Look forward to seeing the tale of the three brothers now.

I seem to remember Scrimgeour's two minutes being pretty amazing, with Harry just rapid firing snark at him the whole time. I'm okay with that.

Speaking of that scene, am I crazy in remembering there being a scene where Ginny essentially offers herself to Harry in her bedroom before going down to the party? Were they ballsy enough to keep that?

The thing about the camping scenes in the book is that they're absolutely essential to the story. Despite often being unfairly criticized, that stuff is needed to make Harry's journey seem real, scary and dangerous. It's the darkest period because Harry and the gang literally have no idea what to do next and they're splitting at the seams and falling apart. They're on the run for their lives, the bad guys are winning, they're supposed to fix it and they have no idea how. If you didn't have that stuff, the whole series would be the story of three unbeatable teenage wizards.

If that's not how it comes across in the film, that's a huge problem...and I can imagine it being a huge problem, mostly because you don't have the second half to pay it off.

The scenes themselves may be essential, but not the lengths to which they go on.

Totally disagree. If we didn't feel how long they were there it wouldn't have the same impact. If Rowling summed it up quickly, it wouldn't have the same effect. We needed to have the same doubts as the kids do. So she made us wait and wonder.

Also, the writing that section is very good. I was never board just because there wasn't dragons or magic happening. The character work is perfect, the dialogue on the money and the hopelessness they feel rather chilling.

Ever since Tolkien, fantasy has had an obsession with making us feel EVERY. SINGLE. STEP. of a character's epic journey. Whereas every other genre has learned the value of compression.

Somehow, I don't think the only way to make the reader feel the impact of a long and arduous journey is to make the section of the book that describes it long and arduous to read.

It was long, no doubt, but it wasn't "arduous to read" and none of the books follows the heroes journey for every step. But this was an important step and so the book spent a lot of time on it. It's obviously important because the movie spent a lot of time on it as well. It remains to be seen if the movie deals with it well in adaptation, but the filmmakers aren't dumb. They obviously included it for a reason.

Rowling's style is nothing like Tolkien, so your comparison is DOA. And please, by all means, tell me how you would have changed that section of the book, or "compressed" it. I'm really curious to come up with your incredible solution.

You guys sound like you have absolutely no patience for storytelling. You're also making it sound like it went on for hundreds of pages, which is simply untrue.

My daughters call the 7th book "Harry Potter and the Extended Camping Trip." I'm disappointed that the movie repeats the missteps of the books.

Count me as one of those who understands what happens during the camping era is important, but thinks the pacing and duration are way off. (Re: the book, I mean. And since I've not seen the film, I'll get the hell out of the thread.)

I just realized that the title of the thread needs to be corrected. Deadly Hallows? More like Deadly Pacing! Ho ho ho.

In terms of fantasy stories taking place over extended periods of time, I remember finding out that the trek in The Fellowship of the Ring took place over 40 days or something. Based on the movie alone, I thought it was a journey of a few days!

There's no argument in here. You're just saying "it is because it is!" The camping/tromping around England stuff (which sure FELT like it lasted hundreds of pages) is important because Rowling says it's important.

You're in a pretty small minority in thinking the Extended Camping Trip is a worthwhile part of the book, dude. Even some of the most hardcore HP fans I've talked to think Rowling really got off the track there.

Well, for starters, I wouldn't have moved the action of the final book away from Hogwarts, which is a huge part of the appeal of the series. And I wouldn't have made it into a "plot coupon" story, which is a boring fantasy cliche and which moves the focus of the story far away from the characters and onto boring "video game" narrative stuff.

I honestly think the final book is flawed at a fundamental level, and I'm not a huge fan of HP in the first place, so it's hard to come up with a quick fix. But I find it hard to believe Rowling couldn't have hit the crucial plot points with a story that kept things at Hogwarts and didn't move most of the supporting cast offstage for 90% of the book.

I was just over at the Onion AV Club, where they're reviewing the Buffy episodes one by one, and I was just remarking that that show started to suffer in later seasons because they dropped the business of everyday life, specifically going to school, which provided the backdrop of the story and kept everything grounded and relatable. Instead the characters, when they weren't engaging in demon fights and saving he world, tended to sit around whining instead of living their lives. The final Harry Potter book suffers from the same problem. It'd be one thing if the pace was so breakneck that they couldn't spare a moment to go to school, but the characters spend a year wandering around the countryside, often with no idea what to do next. Even with the boring "gotta catch all the horcruxes" story, why couldn't they have kept the characters at Hogwarts in between encounters?

Also, not to go too far off the rails, but this is a pet peeve of mine. Of course Rowling owes a huge debt to Tolkien. He introduced a lot of bad habits into the fantasy genre which are most definitely in evidence in the Harry Potter books. Him and George Lucas, who was himself influenced by Tolkien.

Seriously, try to track down some fantasy novels from before Tolkien came along. It was a far, far more diverse and vibrant genre before LOTR, in my opinion.

I almost couldn't read the rest of your main point since it started with this statement and I'm having difficult taking anything else you say seriously because of it, but I'll do my best.

Yes, the last book breaks the mold, but again, it fits the story. It's about becoming an adult. What's the perfect symbol for that then leaving school behind? It's about learning outside of school, learning things on your own, depending on your friends and family to help you become a grown-up. Besides Hogwarts literally being corrupted, I don't know what a stronger metaphor you'd need to get that. But maybe it's not sophisticated enough for you. Not like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I suppose.

Much like the "pages and pages of camping," not having the final at Hogwarts is absolutely essential and I can't understand how anyone could see it differently. It's fitting that the battle takes place at Hogwarts because that's what everyone is fighting for. It's a symbol of these young men and wives futures and everything that could represent. But like everything else, Harry has to feel like he's at risk of losing it. Above that, he rejects it because it's become something he can't believe in anymore. That shows incredible growth and maturity in the character, themes and the writing.

I suppose you could come back and tell me that I'm just "insisting that it's so" and that I "don't have an argument." But it's right up there, and if you act like I'm stomping my feet and insisting that "Rowling says its important, therefore it is," you'll continue to come off like a condescending jackass on the internet. So feel free, but don't expect me to take your "it's boring" augment seriously either, especially when you freely admit to not having an idea of how to improve it while simultaneously dissing the entire series.

I don't know. I didn't have a problem with the camping stuff. It's not as if it were pages and pages of Ron, Harry and Hermoine roasting marshmallows and telling stories. It doesn't even feel like that. A lot happens in that section. Their friendships are tested. They feel hopeless. And there are lots of huge reveals. Anyone with the lack of insight to just brush it off as "Harry Potter and the Infinite Camping" would be the type of person to suffer a serious lack of imagination.

As for your boring Horcrux complaint: originally, I thought that was the biggest weakness in the series. But then I realized how effortlessly Rowling had worked them into the stories. When people complain that they popped up at the end and felt clumsy, that drives me crazy. The Horcrux's were present in book 1. Book 2 ends with the destruction of one of them. It can't get any better set up then that. If it doesn't work for you as literature, fine. But again I ask...what else were you looking for? You clearly don't even like the series that much, so I don't know what to tell you.

Click on style above, chief.

Genre and style: two different words with very different meanings. Outside of the fantasy element, Rowling and Tolkien couldn't be further from each other, and the Potter series owes as much to the New Testament as it does the Lord of the Rings. Seriously.

I'd say good post Parker, but that's just a shamefully low blow. Tsk tsk.

I like Buffy; but to dismiss the Potter series while admitting to be a fan of this show in the same breath doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

I enjoyed each and every HP film to varying degrees, some greatly, but by now I feel like the whole series could have been done as a trilogy or less. Faithful adaptations be damned, if each book was the same combination of life-among-the-muggles, Voldemort rises, new bad guy introduced, new good guy introduced, Harry becomes even more singular, exalted, and special, quidditch match, showdown with Voldemort and pyrrhic victory for Potter then a condensing would have been in order.

I honestly can't remember what happened in which movie, where one ends and another begins, and have no desire to rewatch to clear up any confusion. These movies are like the Chinese food of Summer blockbusters.

um... NO

sounds pretty faithful to the book actually. I just reread it not to long ago, and those camping scenes just dragged and dragged.

I may actually hold off on seeing this untill Part II comes out, and see if a theater will be playing them back to back.

I haven't liked a Potter film since Azkaban. Can't see this one changing that pattern.

Sorry if I'm being condescending. I really, strongly disagree with what you're saying, and I'm arguing strongly. No rancor intended. Not even a Rancor.

I think that when a series has been about the characters attending a seven-year school, and the series is structured in seven books, having the last book drop the school thing entirely, particularly Harry's graduation, is a weird choice. Rowling honestly seems to be encouraging kids to drop out of school (remember the Weasley twins?), which is...well, I don't know what to make of it, though I'll admit it's surprising. The trouble is, that's the series' conceit. I mean, there's all this stuff about battling evil and so on, but the series is *about* going to school. Dropping that for the final book isn't necessarily an invalid choice, but what she replaces it with is...characters tromping through the countryside. I don't see what that has to do with growing up and becoming an adult. It seems more like Rowling slipped more into cliched Fantasy Quest mode, and more, it's a pretty boring Fantasy Quest even by Fantasy Quest standards. That's why I brought up Tolkien, who literally devotes pages to characters walking through hills and forests.

Again, it's not like I'm the only one complaining about this. Lots and lots of people were disappointed with the final book for this reason, and now that's apparently a problem with the movie as well.

The two do similar things. I think Buffy is immensely more successful at having the characters grow and change and enter adulthood. And I think, for all its flaws, it's a far, far more sophisticated story than Harry Potter. I don't think it's at all strange that I like one a lot better than the other. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

I hate to be that guy - but isn't there a pre-release thread for discussions like this?

Well, we are talking about a(n apparent) flaw in the movie. But yeah, OK, sorry. I'm bored.

Thing is, I'm actually enjoying the discussion, it just seems to be about the book more than the film is all.

Eh, none of us can comment properly on the movie for a few days yet anyway.

Except for Tati.


The bastard.

Mandatory UK education ends at 16, much like O.W.L.s in the POTTER universe. Fred, George, and the gang in part 7 don't "drop out of school", they quit their chosen higher education. I'm pretty sure that, in the book, it's even noted that wizards can choose to leave Hogwarts rather than do their N.E.W.T.s.

And Prankster, it's a pretty shallow reading to suggest that the books are all about "going to school".

There is a thread for discussing the how the final book failed (I know, I created it) but I will say this; A better author could have conveyed the hoplessness of the situation without a hundred plus pages of the Forrest of Dean camping trip.

Fuck yourself.

That was uncalled for. I was trying to steer this coversation to an approprate thread rather than clog up a post release thread with coversations about the book.

For the most part, when Tolkien wrote his story, they weren't "bad habits" - what he was doing, for the modern reading audience, was fresh and new. I don't hold the LotR books as perfect or sacred, but their missteps are few and far between. What's happened since, which has been touched on here, is that fantasy writers (and publishers) have used LotR as a nigh-unchangeable template, which has led to stagnation and lifelessness in the genre.

And I think Rowling's debt is as much to folktales and other British children's lit as much as to Tolkien. IMNSHO, his influence is once or twice removed. And while the HP and LotR books may share the same overall genre, her actual writing style is really nothing like Tolkien's.

I'd agree with that excpet she doesn't think so...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4732385.stm

A lot of what becoming an adult entails is putting what you learned in school into practice, and discovering for yourself what works, what doesn't, and what was total bullshit. Which is entirely what that final book is about.

Rowling can think anything she wants, but I agree with Pratchett.

However, I don't think the books really take on some of the modern, expected tropes until later in the series. One of the things I dislike about the books is how hodgepodge and nebulous the magic "system" in the books is. And I think that's directly related to Rowling not really caring about it, but using it as a means to tell a story about going to school, growing up, and dealing with all those things entail. The magic was nearly a Macguffin, a means to move the plot along as well as interest young readers. It's only as the series goes on that she shows any real interest in explaining or exploring how magic works in the Potterverse...and even then, for me, it comes across as rather desultory rather than inspired or consistent.

Is there a reason you need to be such a prick? Is this how you react in your everyday life if people disagree with you? Some posters here disagree with your feelings on the extended camping trip in Deathly Hollows. Get the fuck over it. Alot of people feel that way. Just because you think they are wrong doesn't give you the right to act like a smug, condescending dick.

Just a quick questions, Tati: Does Dolores Umbridge make an appearance? That whole sequence is really the only thing I'm excited about for this particular movie.

So, the big theater here has three digital projection showings of this at midnight on thursday/friday. Someone explain to me if this is better than the normal projection, or not.

I can't explain the science, but digital projections look AMAZING. Just genuinely stunning.

The only difference is presentation. Digital projection done right is crisp, clear, colorful, and rocksteady.

It's basically a theatrically projected Blu Ray. And yes, they look gorgeous.

Umbridge is absolutely in the movie. Spotted her in a clip released online.

I wanted to ask Tati if the Hermione/Bellatrix torture scene is really as horrific as people are making it out to be, because in clips I've seen of Hermione immediately post-torture, she doesn't look to be as messed up as I'd envisioned.

Except twice the resolution of blu-ray, I think. 4K projectors now. I think when Attack of the Clones came out, it was still around 2K. I remember being able to see pixels. That bugged me.