magic man

i'm not taking too many days off this summer. but the one day i did request off, wayyy back in may, was the july 15th. i drove home two hours to harrisburg to be with my potter people for the final edition of a saga that hugely influenced all our childhoods. and probably our adulthoods too. let's not kid ourselves - hp will always live on in our hearts.

so i get to harrisburg, have a minor freak-out nerd breakdown because i can't find my gryffindor robes, decide to buy a blonde wig and be luna instead, back up all my hp goodies, set up in the parking lot, nom on butterbeer cupcakes and cockroach clusters and treacle tarts and butterbeer, hang around with fellow potter enthusiasts in costume, attempt to sneak a friend without a ticket into the theater with the ol' get-on-my-shoulders-and-we'll-say-it's-a-hagrid-costume-trick, get into the theater while boldly carrying in a boombox, blast harry and the potters in the theater pre-film, walk around and look at people's costumes, finally see the movie, have a sparkler tribute to the series and all the brave wizards and witches who lost their lives in the battle against the dark lord, go to the diner and talk about it for another hour and a half, and then finally crash in the wee hours of the morning.

i love me a midnight premiere. i love the hp 3D glasses. i love hp fan culture. the theater we were in had 8 screens showing the movie at midnight and it completely sold out- that's over 2,000 tickets. boo ya.

the movie itself was kind of disappointing. i know i shouldn't compare the books and the movies, but they just royally screwed up this part of the saga. not in the parts they left out/added (they there were some serious wtf parts - neville's cheesey cheeseball speech before voldemort, anyone?) but in the tone. it was all wrong. the book is somber and serious - the fate of the wizarding world rests in these moments. but that same heaviness wasn't there in the movie- they made it an action movie, complete with action movie conventions. neville taunting a crowd of death eaters, only to turn tail later, mcgonagall's 'always wanted to do that' line, hp stepping out in wizarding robes among the ranks. there were so many bits that turned it into a typical action movie. so many parts that people laughed at. that didn't jive with me. wasn't a fan.

and the quick list of other weird things that happened?
- ginny and harry's half lip kiss. what in the h was that?
- the whole goofy epilogue. was was tolerable cheesiness in the book that gave readers a sense of closure just looked dumb on the screen. ginny's mom ass was too much.
- harry and voldemort's face melding flying fight
- voldemort being portrayed as a senile old man
- the strange gollum fetus in the white room
- how insanely fast the whole thing was. i would have gladly sat through another hour if they would have just slowed things down
- totally skipping dumbledore's back story
- going so quickly through snape's story that one of my friends who hadn't read the books left with the impression that snape was actually harry's father.
- totally rushing through the deaths of major characters/not giving them enough weight
- locking all the slytherins in the basement. wtf was that? when are they letting them out again?

so that's my beef. and despite all of it, i still like the movie. it's harry potter! it's automatically awesome! and the overall experience was amazing. magical, if you will.

what did you think of the last movie installment of hp? didja cry? didja laugh? if you didn't read the books, did you have any clue was was going on?