Giving The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 its due

I read recently that the famous movie website Rotten Tomatoes has rated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, the "best reviewed" film of 2011.

That means that Part 2 was rated by professional film reviewers more positively than any other film last year.

I have to admit it: I find that amazing. Surprising. Disturbing. And perhaps a bit eye-opening, to be honest.

As anyone who has been reading this blog will know, I was not positively disposed to Part 2, which I thought butchered J.K.'s subtle and elegant final novel for the sake of filmic flashiness.

So why do all of these professional reviewers seem to like it so much?

It's possible that the reviewers like it because it is a good movie. Maybe even a great movie. Divorced from its source material, it probably stands very strongly on its own merits. It's exciting, well-written, and well-filmed. The acting is good, the story is strong and the technical work on it is exceptional.

I guess I can see all that. But it's difficult for me because, in my opinion, it could have been SO MUCH BETTER. Had they stuck more closely to J.K.'s plot, themes and character development, then added the same high level of technical, acting and writing work, they could have had a masterpiece.

Yes, I'm biased. Yes, I feel a huge amount of loyalty to Rowling's original novel (more, I fear, than even J.K. herself seemed to feel). And yes, I am completely incapable of seeing the film for what it is.

So I'll give them their props. Congrats to David Yates and Steven Kloves and all of the cast and crew on making an exceptional film. The accolades appear to be well-deserved.

Now, how long do we have to wait until someone is allowed to try again?

Part 2 still makes me angry, even after the fifth viewing

I can't watch The Deathly Hallows, Part 2, without getting angry. The filmmakers did such a good job with Part 1, I can't figure out how they could make such a mess of J.K.'s spectacular, dramatic, yet subtle ending.

I know I've complained about it before but I simply cannot believe that Steven Kloves et al would turn the final battle into such a farce, such a mano-a-mano battle between Harry and Voldemort, such an over-long, over-blown, comic-strip encounter. All subtlety is lost. All poetry. All class. All gone.

I'm finding myself getting wound up again. I have to stop writing.

For now...

The Weasley Homestead

I'm trying to figure out what screen-writer Steven Kloves and director David Yates have against the Weasley homestead, commonly known as "The Burrow".

First, in a completely invented scene in the film version of The Half-Blood Prince, they have Bellatrix and her pals burn the place down. If that's not bad enough, in the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, they have several characters (like Mad-Eye Moody) call the place "The Burrows", plural.

In an interesting contradiction, some characters call it by its singular name and others by its new plural name, both in the film and in the special features that come with the Blu-Ray version of the movie.

Strange. J.K. refers to it, consistently and without exception, as "The Burrow" across all six books in which it is mentioned (I don't find any mention of the Weasley home, at least not be name, in The Philosopher's Stone). Why change it in the film?

Oh, which reminds me, from what I understand, the first novel in the series is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in just about every English-speaking country in the world except the United States: so why do the British producers refer to it constantly as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the American title) in the Blu-Ray extras?

By the way, I recently picked up the French version of the first novel and I think the direct translation of the French title is Harry Potter at the School for Magic. Neat.