And it all comes down to this

Rating: 6/10 (23 July 2011)

Well, after seven movies it all comes down to this. The final Harry Potter movie in which he finally confronts Voldermort in an epic pitched battle. This movie begins where the last movie finished off (which is not surprising since it is part 2) and fortunately it does manage to tie all of the loose ends together. Harry continues his quest to find and destroy the remaining horcrux's to give him an edge over Voldemort.
Once again this film comes across as the old children's novel in which the original children who have read (or watched) the films from the beginning are now teenagers (in a sense Rowlings intended that her readers grow up with Harry Potter). However, while the books and film releases could be staggered, now that they are all released, the joy that the first generation of readers had in growing up with Harry Potter is now lost. But that is beside the point.
The movie does managed to tie up all of the loose ends that were in the first movie, and this is one of the problems with creating a two-part movie: first one must have recently seen the previous movie to follow along the new movie. A lot of sequels tend to be stand alone with only a vague understanding of what happened in the previous movies, however this is not the case here, and moreso with the entire series. Unfortunately there is a lot of reference to what went on before to understand what is happening in this film.
We learn of who Harry's father really is (a Darth Vader moment – well, not quite, but in a sense I'm not surprised). We also learn what is so special about Harry and why he is such a danger to Voldemort. Not quite earthcrushing or revelatory, but still, it does make it a little interesting. However the who main character dies and then comes back to life again is a little thing.
I mention that because of Harry being one of the Horecrux's (and once that Voldemort does not know exists). That means that to defeat Voldemort he must die. A lot a people have jumped up and said 'hey, here is a Christian allegory to Christ's death on the cross. When it because clear to me that this was the case in this film, I considered at it is not an allegory at all. The main reason Harry comes back to life is because, unless we are dealing with tragedy, it is anathema to kill the hero in a modern novel. If Harry was going to die, he couldn't remain dead. It was never going to happen.
As for the Christ allegory, once again it is not really so. Granted Christ's death defeated Satan, but it goes far beyond that. First, Christ's death was as a sin offering, that is, if one sins, then one must die as a penalty for that sin. Because we all sin, then we all must die. However, Christ was without sin, and because of that, he could act as a substitute for those of us who have sinned. Now, the resurrection is two fold: first, it is a demonstration that Christ is indeed God because he had mastery over death, and his resurrection is proof that he has mastery over death. Secondly, it is to demonstrate that he had indeed defeated death, and that death no longer has any power over us. None of these elements (with the exception of needing to die to defeat Voldemort) is the case in Harry Potter.
While Harry Potter may be an enjoyable story, and that it promotes bravery and dedication to what is good and right, let us not try to turn it into something that it is not – Christian Allegory.