End Of An Era:Harry Potter Discusion Thread-Spoilers Likely

[HGervais]

So what did everyone think?

[hoytereden]

I'll be waiting for the initial surge to subside. Medium size town; one multiplex, one (maybe 2) screens showing it=A week or so.

[azul017]

I saw the double feature last Thursday -- Part 1 and Part 2 back-to-back. Every single auditorium at the theater was sold out for Part 2, and the audience reaction was marvelous. They clapped and cheered at the right moments, but the auditorium I was at laughed at the epilogue. (The director should've excised the epilogue entirely, the makeup job on the actors to look 35-40 years old was terrible.)

There was some excited whispers when the teasers for The Dark Knight Rises and Sherlock Holmes 2 came on.

[Dunnyman]

I think they freaking nailed it. 'Nuff said.

[mavrach]

Ok, now that I've seen the whole thing, I feel like I need to go back to the start and rewatch everything. A lot of the movies were frustrating for me because they were slowly paced, while I couldn't wait to find out the next reveal.

The bevy of amazing character actors throughout the series also frustrated me. While the movies took so much time developing the main trio (this is a very good thing BTW), it was a tease in the last few movies to watch David Thewlis and Brendan Gleason scramble onscreen for a few minutes never to be seen again until the next movie. Now I realize that each character got their movie to shine, and never got the spotlight again. Instead they passed the torch onto other characters. So when I see these again I'll know what to expect.

But a lot of the supporting characters never got developed - Tonks, Luna, Prof Trewlawny, and the real Mad Eye Moody (remember in Goblet of Fire he was a duplicate so we only saw the real guy for a minute). And Moody died offscreen??? It always seemed like they'd get their moment later on but that never came. The response I'm going to get here is "you should have read the books" - but these are movies and they should stand alone, so all characters should feel fleshed out. They could have sacrificed some of the incredible screen time given to the main trio to give these characters a little more time.

The theater experience - I had a good group that cheered all through the battles, a lot of energy. But, at that shot of the "childbirth" Voldemort got a girl to yell "eww!"immaturely tone, that got the entire theater laughing at her.

But overall, there is a lot to this series, and I'd go as far as to call it the most well-written blockbuster in a long time. Just compare it to the other movies that are big this summer, or in past summers. If you're looking for deep movies, thorough characters, interesting writing, you usually have to turn to smaller movies that never get their due attention.