The seventh and final installment of the Harry Potter series finally hit the big screens on November 19, 2010, ready for thousands of eager
fans to attend the midnight showing. The most successful film series of the century started its goodbye with the first part of the two part installment. With much anticipated excitement for fans of all ages, was the movie really everything everyone expected it to be? Well, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was number one at the box office this past weekend for its second weekend after opening. That should be enough to answer that question.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 has been out for just under two weeks now, and its box office numbers continue to be impressive. The film made $50.3 million over the Thanksgiving weekend. Disney’s new film Tangled took second place with $49.1 million. The film made $61 million in opening day box office and made a total of $125.1 million opening weekend. It cast the biggest box-office spell to date domestically over opening weekend, putting it ahead of the series’ best previous debut of $102.7 million for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Part one currently sits at No. 6 on the list of Biggest Opening Weekends at the Box Office. Currently the United States total is $220.4, a total that is steadily rising each day.
The seventh part of the series was labeled as the darkest and least characteristic of the batch of Harry Potter movies. With Hogwarts and a sense of security out of the picture, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are left largely to their own devices, on a mission to locate the remaining Horcruxes to finally defeat Lord Voldemort. More than even the most faithful of the earlier films, this film felt devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible. Various reviews claim that this was something that caused the movie to lag on at times.
In favor of the extensive treatment is the fact that the Deathly Hallows must pull together multiple strands and dozens of characters before the main action and climax can occur in Part 2. Many of the storylines and answers to long asked questions stem back to previous movies. In order to do justice to the climaxes that wait, there is a tall order, an order that would be ridiculous to fill in a single conventional-length film. That seemed to be the most pertinent question surrounding why the final book was divided, especially when the longest volume in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, became the shortest film. Many argue that there certain parts where Harry, Ron, and Hermione were stuck in the wild, not knowing what to do next could have been cut out or abridged.
After seeing the movie, one couldn’t but help notice that it couldn’t help but feel like a prelude. But that’s exactly what it was. However, any true Harry Potter fan and reader of the novels knows that the real action does not pick up until the second part. Viewers knew that there were no extensive battles in this part. Despite this fact, this part was beautifully filmed and emotionally satisfying, especially because there was more development into the Harry/Ron/Hermione relationship. After two and a half hours of movie time, viewers left theaters wanted to see the second part as soon as possible, especially since the movie ended in a perfect place in the storyline. Viewers can rest assured that the next part will be everything the final book proved to be. July 15, 2011 cannot come soon enough.
