Boring, Ridiculous, Devoid of Tension

Rating: 1/10 (30 August 2011)

The final nail is hammered into the coffin of Harry Potter as the series dies in a stupid action-fest. I'm going to list three reasons I dislike this movie and the direction the Harry Potter films have taken, and then I'll let you all lynch me.
1. Tone
Tone is important to a movie. You can make it dark, or light-hearted, or funny, or scary, but if you mix it up too much you'll end up with a film that's hard to take seriously. Harry Potter started off as a charming phenomenon for kids - the peril was mild, we were constantly meeting magical new people and creatures and it was all great. Then we come to this movie, and by now I've got no idea what the tone is meant to be. It's certainly not a light-hearted movie for kids any more. It's not really an adult film either. You've got something close to horror in one scene, and then you've got comedy, and then romance, and it's hard to tell when you're meant to be excited or laughing or scared. The constant humour and the earlier films have established this universe as a very light-hearted one, and so when we're introduced to Voldemort and his big, evil taking-over-the-world plan, there's not really much of a sense of danger. People try to tell me that the series has grown and matured as its audience has grown and matured. Now, I started reading the books when I was very young, so I'm part of that audience. I'd rather appreciate it if people stopped feeding me that crap - you pick a tone and you stick with it, or I won't be able to take anything seriously.
2. No Tension
You can spend as much as you want on amazing visuals and complex action sequences, but they won't be exciting unless you make the audience care. I have to be worried about whether the protagonists will succeed, and the obstacles need to be hard to overcome. In the earlier films, they had interesting obstacles: look at the first film, where they had to get past a series of tests to get to the philosopher's stone. Then in the second, they hatched a plan to transform into other people in order to sneak around. It was tense; they could get caught.
The new films may have cool visual effects, but they're unimaginative. The phrase "deus ex machina" sums up a lot of this movie. For example, they enter the bank. Holy crap, a giant dragon! How will they overcome this?! Oh, don't worry, this goblin guy is just going to ring a bell. Yeah, keep ringing... There we go, problem solved. Wow, how exciting! Now, let's get the thing we came in to get which the audience doesn't care about... Oh no, the room's filling up with gold, but I'll just keep going and... Yeah, there we go, got the thing. Now, let's leave. Oh, no! The place is collapsing! How will we get out?! Oh, a massive flying dragon we can ride on. That's convenient. Off we go!
It just felt like a series of things which happened. Every obstacle had some immediate and convenient resolution. Even when Harry died we all knew that he'd just somehow come back to life. It just sucks out all the tension.
3. Harry Potter is Ruined
Like I was saying earlier, remember how Harry Potter used to be a charming adventure for kids? By the end of this series, that's all gone. They don't spend much time in the magical castle, they spend it in the dull English countryside. Every book used to be a fun adventure at Hogwarts, which was full of mystery as well as familiar, enjoyable people and settings. Now our lovable fictional universe is the setting for some uninteresting conflict which we don't really care about. JK Rowling wants to make a load of points about modern issues and politics. In the end, these turn out to be very shallow, broad, and uninteresting. Here's a hint: your books got popular because we wanted to read about Harry's magical adventures, not the Ministry of Magic getting taken over by Nazis. Oh, no, wait, it's a serious series for adults now, no more childish fun to be had here.
Anyone who watched George Lucas ruin the Star Wars franchise with the prequel films will see that mirrored here: iconic, wonderful, interesting things from the earlier films are shoved into the film in excess. George Lucas had a billion lightsabre duels. In Harry Potter we've got a massive fight with wands. It looks amazing; bolts of red and green stuff flying all over the place, people getting knocked down, things exploding... But that's not the point of wands. Think back to the duel between Harry and Malfoy in the Chamber of Secrets. That looked rubbish. It was small. But it was far more exciting and gripping than hundreds of wands discharging all over the room like they're laser guns. Likewise, remember the duel between Harry and Voldemort at the end of the fourth film. Different coloured streaks of magic stuff came out of the end of each wand and the only real action was in Harry's face going grrrrhnnngrrrr... But that was great - it was the first proper face-off between Harry and his mortal enemy; it was a clash of good and evil, an exciting showdown with the villain. Now all that's been ruined.
There are many more things I could list. The fanboys will hate me in any case. But this simply wasn't a good film, and the magic of Harry Potter is long gone.