The movie version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone debuted during the holiday season in 2001. It kicked off a decade-long obsession in the movie-going public. Fueled by fans of the books, the Harry Potter films are the highest grossing film franchise in movie history. The first film was the highest grossing movie of the entire franchise, until now. And for good reason. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is the spectacular ending every fan hoped it would be.
The main reason to go see a Harry Potter movie is for the visuals. Only a very small percentage of fans haven’t read the books, most of them many times over. We all know how the story begins and ends. What we want is to see it come to life. Obligatory spoiler alert: the good guys win. And by good guys, I mean Harry, Ron and Hermione figure out the riddles of Voldemort’s horcruxes, destroy them one by one, and in an epic struggle, Harry defeats his nemesis, freeing the world from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
“Epic” is truly the right word. The producers of the films broke the final movie up into two parts, and split them at exactly the right point. In the book, the action really takes off with the death of the beloved house elf Dobby, one of the final scenes of the Deathly Hallows Part 1. The movies are no different. And that is where the visual majesty of the cinema shines.
Rowling’s description of destruction of Gringott’s, the wizard bank in Diagon Alley, is wonderful. On screen, it is spectacular. In the books, the Battle of Hogwarts was a bit of a let down. A lot of action happens “off screen”, because the books are written from Harry’s viewpoint. Two characters, both fan favorites, die in the battle together, and the only description we get is a single line. The movie can and does fill in some of the holes, and the liberties taken with the story (no movie ever faithfully reproduces the source material perfectly) all work. But most importantly, on the big screen we finally see just how huge, how dangerous and how epic the battle really was.
The first book was released in 1997, the first movie four years later. Both halves of the franchise took ten years to finish. We may never see another series of books or movies like them again. If Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 does in fact represent the end of an era, it was a worthy one.