MRHP Meet-up and ‘Deathly Hallows’ viewing!

Hello all! Yesterday was the amazing Mark Reads Harry Potter meet-up here in San Francisco and it was spectacular! Not only was it super fun, but a lot more people attended than I expected. I believe the final count was somewhere between 25-30 people. WE DOMINATED ROWS FIVE, SIX, AND SEVEN. YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!

If you came and took photos, please post them in the comments!!!

It was actually the second time I saw Deathly Hallows, since I saw it at midnight in the East Bay, but it was nice to get a second dose of the movie to help solidify my feelings about it.

I put up my review on my new site (OMG GUYS WE ARE MOVING) already, so you can check that out, but I thought I’d include some new thoughts I had about the movie here on Buzznet to celebrate the meet-up and the end of our wonderful reign here on the site. (The actual last post won’t be until tomorrow.)

First of all, I still like the movie, but a second viewing (and some enlightening conversation with fans and friends) helped point out some serious flaws in the screenwriting that I am coming to find a bit impossible to ignore.

I think the spectacle of the movie and seeing so many scenes re-created for the screen was overwhelming at first and I don’t believe I really watched the movie with a critical eye. Which is understandable; I had never been to a midnight showing for a Harry Potter film and it was a sensory overload.

Anyway, I’d give the film a B-. I think it still above average for a film and definitely better than, say, Half-Blood Prince. But I found the pacing and the tone to be distracting. It took my friend reminding me how harrowing Deathly Hallows was to read for me to realize that most of the humor in this movie was misplaced, unnecessary, and unwanted, aside from Fred and George. Who were, by the way, brilliant.

It felt like Kloves and Yates didn’t really understand how stressful this book is, feeling the need to punctuate their own lack of urgency with slapstick jokes or visual cues for us to laugh.

I still don’t like parts of the Harry/Hermione relationship, though I’m now OK with the second half of the dance. But it’s still very uncomfortable to watch those first moments when Harry offers his hand to Hermione. In the books, Harry is characterized as uncomfortable with offering affection to those he knows needs it, especially Hermione. So it was just a strange, distracting moment.

I was also able to pick up on a few more things missing and unexplained. How come Harry doesn’t know what the other Horcruxes are at this point? And since movie-Harry doesn’t know, how are they going to reveal it?

Why did Grindelwald give up Dumbledore?

I’m still mad about Lupin. :/

Wormtail being hit with that spell is AWFUL. So is he still alive?

Dobby will wash away with a high tide or a good rain. Someone in the theater pointed that out as soon as the movie was over.

Anyway, I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade if you enjoyed it because I don’t think it’s bad and I enjoyed it for the most part as well. But this is what I do: I YELL AT THE THINGS I LOVE.

PLEASE TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS. I’ll make the final announcement about permanently moving to my new site, so let’s go out with a bang in the comments!