Putting that title down makes me feel like someone is messing with me. What a genius concept and ridiculous titles! There is a sequel to the sixth sequel of a series. It finally happened. I stopped reading these books after part IV (which I really enjoyed, but no longer had the energy to read the books when I found out movies were being made). However, even I noticed that something was afoot in these movies. Let’s review how many pages were in each Harry Potter book and compare it to each movie’s duration:
1: 320 152 min 2.10 Pages/Minute
2: 352 161 min 2.18 Pages/Minute
3: 448 141 min 3.17 Pages/Minute
4: 752 157 min 4.78 Pages/Minute
5: 896 138 min 6.49 Pages/Minute
6: 652 153 min 4.26 Pages/Minute
7: 784 276 min 2.84 Pages/Minute
While I enjoyed all eight of these movies, I still feel we got short-changed on the “Harry Potter experience”. If they were going to be so bold as to spend 276 minutes on the last book, then I, and everyone else reading this, should be outraged that they did not do the same for parts 4-6. Part 3 could have gotten away with just being a half an hour longer. Even more to my outrage is the deficiency of part V. To maintain the ratio of the first book, they could have made three movies, but instead made the shortest movie in the series. Can you all imagine it? Harry Potter V: Part III. I salivate at the ridiculousness of it. The games that could have been played. Quick, what’s the ninth movie in the series? …that would be Harry Potter VI: Part I.
That being said, ” Part VII: Part I ” grew to be a little tiring at times. What possibly could have made for entertaining reading as the innermost thoughts of each of the main characters are elaborately spread over many, many pages, falls short at times while watching the movie iteration. There were too many times where very little to nothing was happening. Even continued character development seemed to slow to a crawl. Still the adventuring does pickup, sorcerer battles are fought, quests are undertaken, and bravery is tested. Though, the quests started to become silly as well. I like a quest movie as much (probably more) than the next guy, but to start a quest to find a, b, and c and then to start side quests to find d, e, and f, is, frankly, just lazy writing. That being said things pick up near the end, the story starts moving and the table is neatly set for an epic conclusion.
Is the ending to the series in “Part VII: Part II ” epic? Not really. It’s good. It’s fun. But, it is nothing extraordinary. Some of the characters (good and bad) had disappointing ends to their story, while some of the endings would have been better if their roles hadn’t been so drastically reduced in the previous movies. No, this installment, while still engaging and with moments of excitement and humor, was written by someone tired of the series or who had run out of ideas. This became abundantly clear with the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort, and the last horcrux. The last horcrux was nonsensically not hidden well. If I had been Voldemort I would have possibly valued that piece MUCH MUCH more than he did. The last battle? In such a fantastical world, filled with amazing feats of magic, pitting the two greatest wizards of the land (one for good and one for evil), against each other, the ending could have been so much greater if only the imagination had been bigger. It became a standard ending. The only bad thing about it was that it was not extraordinary. It was okay, but to end a multi-billion dollar franchise with that final battle was a bit of a letdown. Maybe the machine became too big. Maybe there was no way for the final battle to meet expectations. Ah well, still worth seeing, and still worthy of an 8-movie marathon.
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