Hubby and I thought the movie was excellent: the most powerful HP movie so far. There were some shortcuts taken, but they weren’t offensive to me in view of turning these massive books into a standard movie length.
And I agree that Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore finally became a real Dumbledore before the end.
I thought there was another actress signed up to play Narcissa, though?
“Hubby and I thought the movie was excellent: the most powerful HP movie so far. There were some shortcuts taken, but they weren’t offensive to me in view of turning these massive books into a standard movie length.
And I agree that Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore finally became a real Dumbledore before the end...”
I also thought it was the best Harry Potter movie so far. It seemed to me that it took more liberties at deviating from the book than the other movies, but not in a bad way; in fact I liked it better than the book.
Regarding Dumbledore, Michael Gambon has not been nearly as good of a Dumbledore as Richard Harris...until this movie. I had always felt a little sorry for Michael Gambon having to follow up on the excellent Richard Harris, it wasn’t Gambon’s fault that Harris was so much better. In this movie, for the first time, I thought, wow, I really like this Dumbledore as much as the first one.
SPOILER ALERT:
I enjoyed the movie. The omissions and changes that irritate me are the ones that change important sub plots.
There was supposed to be a wizard battle in Hogwarts, between the dark wizards and Dumbledore’s Amry, summoned by Harry with the coin, though only a handful show up (Luna, Ginnie, Neville, Ron, Hermione, I think). It’s a bummer we didn’t see that.
We also completed missed that there is a new Minister of Magic, and that Harry is already on-the-outs with he new minister.
Most importantly, plotwise, to me, on the omission of #12 Grimwald (and “Creature”) belonging to Harry. This affects the main plot line of the horcruxes, the fake locket, the real locket and R.A.B.
My “guess” is that the funeral for Dumbledore will happend at the beginning of the next movie.
Oh, yeah... It’s be hard to start #7 where it normally would, at the Burrough during Bill and Fleur’s wedding, on account of they blew up the Burrough and have completely skipped Bill and Fleur altogether so far.
It doesn’t make sense for the powerful protections around the burrough to fail because of the fall of the Ministry, if it never really had any protection at all.
Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the movie.
I am also very academically interested in what completely fabricated non-Rowling story inventions they will have to concoct in order to repair the violated plotlines. Arguably, the only one that -must- be repaired is #12 Grimwald and Creature. However, the transition to the fall of the Minsitry will have to be changed a bit.
I enjoyed the movie very much.
It’s a problem. If one has read the books, as I have, you notice so much that’s been changed or left out ... maybe your favorite scenes.
But if you haven’t, I just wonder if some things would make sense. Maybe they do.
Condensing a 600 plus page book into a 2 1/2 hour movie is an incredible task. On the whole, they did well.