Gaping plot holes aside...

Yesterday Jeannette convinced me to attend a screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. And while I am normally disinclined to see popular movies on opening weekend (it will be the movie in a few days, but with a smaller audience) I allowed myself to look forward to the event.

Almost as soon as we arrived at the theatre for the late show it became clear that the movie was incredibly popular. Not only were all kinds of people leaving the theatre with brooms, quite a number of departing movie viewers were also costumed in costumes of varying quality.

Soon after entering the theatre we also noticed that lines were forming and that people weren't being allowed into theatres as early as might normally be the case. We soon learned that the most prominent and longest line was the one that we would have to join. Fortunately, we only had to wait in the line for a few minutes before being allowed to enter the theatre.

And while the line that we had been standing in wasn't particularly long (it wasn't hundreds of people long) it was long enough that by the time we entered the theatre most of the seats in the middle rows of the theatre were taken. We did eventually get fine seats, but they were closer to the back than I had originally expected based on the length of the line.

Almost as soon as the movie began it became clear that this wasn't a movie that was going to recap aspects of previous movies in the series, or even things that had happened in the first part. Viewers were expected to be relatively familiar with the story/franchise. As I am not an obsessive fan of the series I found that this meant it took me a few minutes to get up to speed with what was happening.

And then almost immediately we were exposed to one of the first major plot holes/continuity issues. In a scene they establish that Harry and his friends have a certain wand. In almost the next scene this wand is requested and Harry and his friends seem unable to produce the wand, though no explanation is given for this strange behaviour. Of course, when we came home Jeannette uncovered reasons for this behaviour that were included in the book but that didn't seem to make the movie.

For the next few minutes I was a little rattled by this strange occurrence, which just struck me as odd (as the first wand scene turned out not to be particularly important to the rest of the movie).

As the movie progressed characters were either omitted given minimal screen time. In some instances it seemed as though the filmakers were content to just show that certain characters still existed, even if they weren't given any lines or a reason for being shown.

Of course, another major problem is that a character seen at the beginning of the movie turns up at the end but how she came to be in the new location is not explained or dealt with (though it seems to have made more sense in the book).

Anyway, I am sure that there are a few more issues that particularly detail-oriented fans might have with this movie, but I guess I was just disappointed with the lack of attention payed to the general coherency of the film If we found two disorienting sections I presume that are even more, and two already seems like a high enough number as far as such problems are concerned. And didn't anybody with power who had seen the movie before its release not notice these problems and ask for a new cut of the movie?

I am sure that in many regards this movie will be largely review proof. No matter how bad the reviews it will make money (and based on the numbers available on Wikipedia it seems to have already broken even). Had the success of this movie not been almost guaranteed I wonder if the resulting movie might not have looked a little different and if some of these problematic issues might have been addressed more effectively (or if they might be remedied in an alternate cut to be subsequently released for home video).

Note: I think that I forgot to discuss many of the aspects of the movie that I had intended to, including the overall sense that I got from it. Of course, I am sure that people don't really care what I think about an already successful movie so I am not particularly inclined to go back and revise this to reflect the fuller examination of the topic that I originally intended. Those who are interested in what I have to say on the topic will have to accept this somewhat scatter shot treatment.

Attacked by logic

This evening Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, and I attended a Dal Alumni sponsored advance screening of the latest Harry Potter movie. As the recommended time of arrival was 6:00 I had to head to the theatre directly from school, without getting a chance to eat.

Shortly after we picked up our tickets I expressed an interest in getting a burger a fast food restaurant located next to the movie theatre. Neil was keen on joining me. I guess he was also quite hungry.

Though the line-up was not very long it didn't seem to be moving particularly quickly. After a few moments of observation I figure out the hold-up - the guy in front of us was paying with spare change. Though the guy seemed to have quite a bit of change he hadn't counted it in advance so he didn't know exactly how much he had, which meant a rather belaboured counting process. After an agonizing five minute counting process the guy then had to pick up the extra change that he had dumped on the counter. The only good news is that he didn't have to wait very long for his food to arrive after he had finished paying.

Then, all of a sudden, it was our turn to order.

I quickly placed our order, three of the special promotion spicy burgers, though I requested that two be plain and one have only lettuce and cheese. We were then told that we could not order these burgers without cheese or special sauce.

What? I can't omit the most expensive ingredients from my order?

Eventually they allowed us to hold the sauce on all three burgers and transfer all three pieces cheese to a single burger. When Neil's burger eventually came out they had placed two pieces of cheese on one side of the burger and the third on the other.

As ridiculous as this outcome was, I was quite pleased to have some food before the movie.

The movie, which was pretty much what I would have expected, was fine. That they split the final book in two was definitely a bit of a bummer, though a feature of the movie for which I was at least partly prepared.