Illustrative

Rating: 6/10 (21 July 2011)

There's this superstition about Star Trek movies that all the even numbered ones are good and all the odd numbered ones are bad. By the Harry Potter movie adaptation reckoning, it seems to be just the opposite: the odd numbered movies were spiffy and the even numbered movies were dull. However, the fact that the first adaptation didn't work out too well off-sets that and splitting "7" into "7.1" and "7.2" seemed to create a curious result: that of the fact that 7.1 was almost spot-on and 7.2 almost completely (save a few good moments) dropped the ball.
David Yates has been one of the best Harry Potter directors (probably why the longest running) because of his closer attention to the characters and mood than just reciting plot points (Columbus and Newell) and focusing on the magic (Cuaron). Here it doesn't work. Previously, David Yates went the daring route of allowing the camping scenes to draw out the way they work in the book, focusing on the character's loss of direction and even boredom in a high stress environment as tension is building. This approach is unpopular in filmmaking because audiences don't like watching characters be impatient and bored--it makes them impatient and bored as well, and 7.1 had its critics for that. It seemed with all the careful mood-building Yates was doing, 7.2 was going to be the release we were all looking for in an ending: the tension explodes and the threads close.
...and though 7.2 certainly had its action, Yates managed to make the movie both slow... and rushed. For once his devoted focus to Harry Potter's mental working doesn't work out, because while we're sitting with Radcliffe in a room somewhere as he decides what to do next, information is getting straight skipped over in the Battle of Hogwarts going on outside. People've not read the book seem to all be reacting with confusion and require too much explanation from the audiences that have read the book as to what's going on. Deaths happen off-screen and are only mentioned in single lines of dialog, despite being important to both plot and often audience. The Snape's Story flashback scene is cut near to a third of the detail, but the limbo scene seemed protracted for no reason at all. The Battle of Hogwarts covers a good 80% of the playlength of the movie, but the actual action of that battle is regulated transition scenes where the characters have to run through it to get somewhere else--AND is shown more as crowded hallways with extras running wildly instead of showing the important elements of the battle regarding which characters end up fighting whom.
It's difficult because the movie stretches at over two hours in length and should not be much longer. But Yates seems to have forgotten Griffith-old well-established cross-cutting. Compare to Star Wars Episode 6. Star Wars balances three entire battles with their respective character beats while Harry Potter 7.2 cannot even balance one battle with Harry's personal discoveries. Star Wars Episode 6 may have annoyed fans with cutesy teddy bears but Harry Potter 7.2 annoys them major plot points being dismissed entirely. All one needed was some cross-cutting between, say, the Room of Requirement and the people in the entrance way of Hogwarts, but instead of showing WHY Mrs. Weasley was so protective of her daughter to inspire what was supposed to be an epic line, the camera lingers longer on stone soldiers fighting giants.
The split-up of book seven was intended to fit the amount of information in that book into a longer play-length, as well as increase the amount of tickets sold, but it feels like 7.1 was the movie that Yates wanted to make, and 7.2 was just him trying to shove some denouement in around studio-requested 3D shots. There is a lot of room for improvement but there isn't a whole heck of a lot that can be done now. So now its time to sum up the series.
Whereas its taken as a general rule that the books are better than the movie, a good adaptation can stand on its own and deliver the story to a new audience. Lord of the Rings is a good example of this, creating a pretty consistent movie narrative that most audiences can keep up with and enjoy despite deviations from the books. Harry Potter from the get-go was too focused on enfranchisement that it took quite a few entries before it gained its legs--and by then it may have been too late. Its later movies got a handle on how to actually adapt the books, but all told I'm not sure these movies suffice for non-book readers. They work better as visual counterpart than narratives of their own, and now that the event-ness of them is over and we can all stop dressing up to go to the theatre, I think it's safe to mark them down as mostly illustration.
--PolarisDiB