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So I really loved this installment, I think it was a nice ending to the whole series.

This is the shortest of the HP movies and I think it could have been alot better with an extra 30 minutes.  There are so many things they could have fit in. 

I am just glad that they gave Snape and Neville their moments to shine.

Yeah it felt really, really short over-all but on the whole badly paced.   Some stuff dragged on too long others, like the Mrs. Weasly-Bellatrix duel were far too short.

The movie irritated me once more as it reminded me how shafted Snape was his entire life.  :cry:  The whole audience clapped for Neville, though.

Yeah Neville actually got the 2 biggest reactions in the theater. 

Overall I liked it. I agree with most of the changes, except that random "Lolthrow Slytherin in the dungeonlol YAY LOL!" I was like, um why? Neville was solid, Snape was solid. I agree Molly vs. Bellatrix wasn't given its due. If the audience doesn't cheer at that line, you're doing it wrong. And at least when I saw it, the audience just kinda chuckled. Also, I wanted more giant spiders swarming through the castle. They managed to keep a decent amount of humor through the whole thing, which I think Part 1 lacked. And THANK YOU POTTERPEOPLE for not having Flitwick crash people with cymbals at the final battle.

I thought it was very good on the whole. What I actually liked best was the preparation for the Battle of Hogwarts rather than the thing itself. The scene where Professor McGonagall confesses that she's always wanted to use the stone-summoning spell was really excellent in terms of upping the tension and the emotion.

Any opinions on 3D vs 2D?

Saw it in 2D. Saw no reason to think 3D would be better.

Although 3D was nice, it was a bit dark.   There was nothing soo outstanding that you need to see it in 3D though.

Accidentally saw it in 3D myself.   While it had some nice depth-of-field effects (and the only gimmicky shit was the dragon escape.)  it would have been just as good in 2D.  There were no "truly epic vista" scenes and none of the floating UI stuff that made it cool in Avatar.

After thinking about it a bit (and having watched the movie like 4 times now), she doesen't really tell him to lock them in the dungeon.   She tells him to escort them out of the area, and when he asks where, she suggests the dungeon.  However, If memory serves, isnt the Slytherin common room located down in the dungeon block?  Maybe it was just an offhandedly threatening way to suggest escorting them back to their common room?

I thought the book handled Slytherin House more dramatically and awesomely and made-much-more-sense-ically.

There is absolutely no reason to see this in 3D, it's already dark enough. The trailer for 'Hugo' had better 3D effects in it's 2 minutes than Harry Potter had in the whole movie.

Assuming we're spoiler free by now : the big death/spoiler everyone warns you about is just Dumbledore? I tough one of the 3 friends would die, or maybe Harry's girlfriend.

Just Dumbledore. She kills a lot of people in the 7th but no central characters.

Erm.. depending on who you talk to, I guess.  The big "omg death" spoiler was, imo, always that Remus, Tonks and Fred Weasley (the twin) bite it.  Fred most of all, since he was a major secondary character.

Others say it was that Harry was a Horcrux, but that's always seemed silly to me.  It was painfully obvious that Harry was a Horcrux from the moment they started talking about them, and that he'd have to die for Vold to end. (from the prophecy of Trelawney)

I tried to avoid using the word primary or major, my definition of central character really only extends to Harry/Ron/Hermione since an overwhelmingly large portion of the narrative focuses on them. The fact that they all got through (relatively) unscathed and even Ginny survives so that no couplings were broken at all kind of cheapens the "anyone can die!"

Just got back from seeing this today and it really was a good ending to the series.  Most things have been said already, but I thought the CGI was pretty top notch.  The dragon was pretty excellently and believably done, IMO.  The slight changes that were done to the story weren't hugely significant to the overall storyline.  Would it have been interesting to see more about Dumbledore's life on-screen?  Sure, but ultimately, that wasn't necessary to Harry's story beyond the setup given by Aberforth that Albus wasn't as pure and lily-white as most seemed to think he was.  That hint provided the opening for Snape's memories to show even more how Dumbledore was doing a fair bit of manipulating.

I really enjoyed it and even the "Harry and Tom fall off the wall" scene didn't annoy as much as I thought it would from seeing the trailers.

Speaking of trailers, the ones they showed today were all lame, IMO.  An animated one about Christmas, "War Horse" (which made no freaking sense to me - WWI and a horse coming home on it's own, wut?), and a few others I can't even remember.  Oh, "Dark Knight Rises", which seemed disjointed. 

She killed off Dumbledore and Snape, those were pretty central characters.  Other than that she managed to kill off like 70% of the Order.

Saw it last night finally. Over all good. Thought the ending was anti-climatic and lame.
Didnt like the train scene at the end which screamed "sequel" which the writer swears she is never going to do.
Additionally the make up didnt make Jenny, Ron, Hermione or Harry look old enough.

I thought they looked a little too old, especially Harry. They're just in their thirties. Hermione was just right imo, and Ginny was a total MILF.  :heart:

wat?

The epilogue scene takes place 19 years after the events of the last book, which would make them all around 37 years old by that point, which is I think what Sly is talking about.

It's going for the Black Beauty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beauty) audience which was fairly big in the UK at one time, it even had a TV show in the 70's which was repeated lots.

War Horse was orginally a children's novel by Michael Morpurgo and is about WW1 told from a horse's perspective on both sides of the battlefield. It's basically about the universal horror of war. It was adapted into an award winning stage play in London then went to Broadway where it picked up a handful of Tonys too. No idea what Spielberg's adaptation is going to be like or how faithful to the original story it will be.

Oh that's interesting, still if I remember correctly Black Beauty referenced the Charge of the Light Brigade, and I'm seeing "The Michael Morpurgo book is ‘Black Beauty goes to war" references so hopefully my post wasn't entirely worthless.  I'll watch the film anyway.

Pics ?

One of the horses in Black Beauty lost its master during the Charge. The book was only written 10-11 years after the end of the Crimean War so was obviously influenced. Like War Horse, the book was also told from the horses point of view so yes, there's quite an obvious link. The TV series was definitely aimed fairly and squarely at the Pony Club set though.

I think that's an English thing, working horses weren't that uncommon in Ireland at the time.  I think you are seeing a horse as a status symbol but I know from growing up in the country side that you had a horse while aspiring to own a massey ferguson.

I don't think that's got anything to do with it. My assertion is based on the fact that it is the people I know who love the film were a) all female b) loved riding horses c) aspired to own their own and d) their top 4 favourite films were Black Beauty, National Velvet, International Velvet and The Red Shoes.

Also, not English, not a townie.

 :why_so_serious:  :dead_horse:

Erich Maria Remarque also included a shout out to the pony club in the novel he is best known for.

(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l87avpZsX31qzds5mo1_500.png)

They'd be 37.  Compared to the women I work with who are of an age with me, Hermione looks too young - maybe early 30's.  Ginny looks late 20s'.  Mrs. Malfoy looks the right age, she just has piss poor fashion sense and is dressing & doing her hair like it's 1959.

Gint looks the right age, Harry looks mid 50's in that pic but looked younger in the film - about the right age. Malfoy was shown too quick but based on that pic he looks about right to me.

Yeah Hermion and Ginny (jenny?) were the ones which especially stuck out to me as looking to young.

In that pic Ginny looks about 17, just dressed frumpily.

Fuck me, I'm 37 and if I look as old and haggard as that, you have my permission to take the shot.

 :ye_gods:

Take a pic of yourself right now.  Don't fix your hair or your clothes, just go into a bathroom and take the shot.  Now find a pic of yourself at 17 or 18 and compare.  Our personal mental image of ourselves doesn't usually jive so well with the reality.

You misunderstand.  I'm not comparing 17 to 37, I'm comparing 37 to THAT.

Way too much aging makeup there.  (Of course, if you're sitting there saying 'I'm 37 and I look like that', well, .... Um.  I feel bad for you, Son.)

Harry and Draco look over 50 and Ron looks like he's been ridden hard and put away wet.

Ginny looks exactly the same, so that's fucked up too.

I think those are just terrible pictures to judge by. Everything looked fine watching the movie.

Yeah Draco does actually look fairly older. But Harry looks like they gave him a receding hairline and bigger forehead. Otherwise his face didnt age at all, which just doesnt look right.

Harry's face is giving me a huge Tarantino vibe, just from the grin, big forehead, and arched brows.

Out of interest, do you have kids? Because I probably look as old and haggard as that and I can blame it entirely on the last five years worth of being a parent. Hell, I look backi at pictures from me wedding less than 10 years ago and think "Wow! I used to look young once!"  :awesome_for_real:

Saw this last night.  I have very little to complain about.  I wish the Bellatrix fight would have lasted longer.  I also wish I would have seen pt1 and pt2 together on the same day, maybe with an intermission between.  Other than that, it finished up the series pretty damn well.

The whole series makes me sad in a way, mainly because they did such a great job with it.  Sad to see it go.  It makes me want to write, but I'd just plagiarize at this point. 

Yes, I have a kid.

Closeups show his eyes to be verrrrry wrinkly, which doesn't look right either.

Agreed.  I'm very glad they did the Snape redemption stuff so well.  It did feel a bit draggy at the end, but I know it followed the dragginess of the book.

On the topic of plagarizing, Soln pretty much guessed the ending after seeing Order of the Phoenix (he's only seen the movies, not read the books),  I've had to show my poker face every time it's been brought up since.  So, yeah, it's pretty much formulaic, but she picked the best of the genre to borrow from!