A Bittersweet Goodbye

Rating: 7/10 (29 April 2012)

This is it, the end of an era. The last Harry Potter movie, and Harry's last stand against Voldemort. So is the last film a triumphant end or disappointment for the world's most famous wizard?
Voldemort has the elder wand. Harry, Hermione, and Ron nearly escaped the Death Eaters with Luna, Mr. Olivander (John Hurt) and Griphook (Warwick Davis) the goblin with the help of Dobby—who sadly did not survive. After finding out information from Mr. Olivander and Griphook, Harry, Ron and Hermione go to Gringotts Bank with Hermione disguised as Bellatrix. They are convinced Bellatrix has at least one horcrux in her vault. After successfully getting the Hufflepuff cup from the vault Harry gets intense visions of Voldemort's reaction, and information that another horcrux is in Hogwarts. Despite fearing Snape in the headmaster's position, the three heroes apparate into Hogsmeade. When alarms go off from their arrival, they are sheltered by Dumbledore's disgruntled brother Aberforth (Ciaran Hinds) in his bar. While Aberforth grumpily tells them they are doomed, a very battered Neville arrives though a secret passageway to bring them to the castle. Once inside Hogwarts the war between good and evil begins. Snape and other Death Eaters are driven out, while Harry, the Order and Hogwarts' staff and students do their best to protect the school. Harry, Ron and Hermione must then fight the Death Eaters, find and destroy the remaining horcruxes, while Harry learns the truth about Snape, himself, and battles Voldemort for the last time.
This movie suffered a lot, I mean A LOT from the failures of the sixth film. So much information about the horcruxes and a few other subjects had been omitted that any viewer who has not read the books (or even not read them recently) will no doubt be confused. You can even tell how they cut out an enormous amount of info by the very long FAQ on this movie about "how the book is different". The pacing for this film was very rushed, which made some of the missing information even more confusing. This isn't the best of them all as it is hailed. I think people just call it that because they expected and wanted this to be the best. It really glosses over the deaths of all the characters, with maybe one getting more than a few seconds of "mourning". And it must be said that the make-up for the epilogue was so laughably pathetic that it's hard to watch. Really, the people that did the make-up for goblins, Mad-Eye and other fantastic creatures couldn't age the characters 20 years? They might as well have just gotten older actors that looked like them than give this poor excuse of make-up. Harry and Ron were somewhat passable, but they did nothing to age Ginny and Hermione except give them more "adult" hairstyles and dress! That being said, this is still a good movie, and a fairly good finale to Harry Potter. The fight/action scenes were very exciting. The magnitude of the Death Eater army was very well depicted. I must say that Snape's memories were fantastic, especially since I was worried about them butchering or ruining this aspect of the series. It was very meaningful to the series, and satisfying to those who read this part in the book. I'm really tearing this movie apart here, but I should add again that it IS a good movie. I wasn't disappointed in the movie as a whole, but I was disappointed in some aspects. I loved the Gringotts scenes and flashbacks. The best part was definitely from the Snape's memory until the end, as the pace also slowed down a bit for the viewers to absorb what was going on. This is a decent finale to the Harry Potter phenomena, and a difficult goodbye to the billions of fans all over the world.