If you haven’t seen the movie yet and care about spoilers, now is the time to walk away… but come back and share your thoughts after you’ve seen the movie! ^_

Usually when I see Harry Potter at midnight I try to go see it a second time at a decent hour to give it a fair shot; however given how expensive movie tickets are these days I am certainly not wasting another $10.50 on a movie I know is not worth a second try. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it like I did PoA. It was a good movie. Great? No. Best out of all the movies so far? Hardly! Better than the last movie? Yes, in some aspects.

Prior to seeing the movie I had finished re-reading the book to refresh my memory. As most of you know this is quite a sad story, which is why I haven’t re-read Deathly Hallows since it first came out. Before I glanced at the what-will-be-cut portion of WikiPedia’s page on the film, I was very optimistic about the film; however once I realized some VERY crucial scenes were cut I was already annoyed.

Ever since David Yates became the new director the only thing keeping me going with these films was his ability to do every scene involving Voldemort and his cronies 98-100% faithful to how it is in the book. This film disappoint me in that respect. If anything, this movie was supposed to be about Harry learning more about Voldemort. Instead, it was overshadowed by Ron and Lavender snogging all over the place!

I understand that for the sake of budgeting and time, some scenes have to be cut. What I don’t understand is changing around and adding stuff in the scenes you do include. By now the changing things around is really compromising the integrity of the film therefore leaving a lot of people who haven’t read the book confused. My sister was confused. Joshua was confused. Joshua’s brother was confused. I tried to keep the book out of my mind, and even I got confused!

I expected the first chapter to be cut. The second chapter was included, but it wasn’t the first scene. The Dursely’s being cut I was understanding, but why couldn’t they have Dumbledore picked him up outside of #12 Privet Drive and make some reference to the spell? WTF was with him being picked up at a train station after flirting with some black chick? Kinda reminded me of the train scene in Prince Caspian.

I did like how they touched on the bridge being messed with and showing Harry numb from the events in the previous film. I loved Horace Slughorn and basically every scene involving him was great! Him as a sofa, hah! Now was it just me or was there a lot of emphasis on the pond near the Weasley’s house? Harry apparates via Dumbledore there. The extremely UNNECESSARY and infuriating scene during the Christmas holidays was by the pond. Um, what?

Diagon Alley was great with the Weasley’s shop until they decided to go after Malfoy. There were key things that happened with Malfoy which supported Harry’s theory Malfoy might be a Death Eater. In the movie they cut these small things out so when Harry expresses his thoughts on Malfoy being a Death Eater it sounds like he pulled it out of his ass. And unless you happened to take a really good look at the wanted poster, you’d never know quite who/what Fenir Greyback is.

Luna or Tonks, I honestly don’t think whoever found Harry was that big of a deal. It made no difference. Surely it was cheaper to have Luna find him than Tonks. I was pretty much fine with everything until we started getting into some key scenes.

The whole Ron/Lavender bit was funny at first, but then it just got annoying. As one reviewer put, “It seems that the producers of Harry Potter were aware of the growing popularity of the Twilight phenomenon and wanted to make their own teenage romantic love story as part of the series.” So true! The portrayal of Harry and Ginny’s relationship was extremely disappointing. In the book Ginny didn’t kiss Harry. Harry kissed her upon realizing she won the Quidditch match replacing him as Seeker. Any scene with those two made me want to barf because it was so overdramatic, not to mention didn’t happen like that at all in the book. They didn’t even touch on their Peter Parker/MJ-like break-up.

My biggest heartburn out of the entire film? The lack of memory scenes (which are a HUGE part of the plot and next book) and the insertion of the Death Eaters burning the Weasley home. In no way shape or form did anything remotely close to that occur to the Weasley house in the book. Didn’t happen AT ALL! Why was it in the movie? What point did it serve? None. By only including 2 out of about 6 or so memories did the film makers waste 2hrs explaining one fact: Voldemort split his soul into 7 Horcruxes. And because there is no explanation the audience is only going to be further confused on how Harry goes about finding these Horcruxes.

As acting goes the only characters that did well were Ron, Slughorn, and Draco. Emma Watson makes Hermione into such an overly emotional drama queen; I can’t stand her. The character of Harry is suppose to be modest, not into himself (”But I AM the chosen one!”) as Daniel made him to be. Snape was only good for the Unbreakable Vow scene.

Here’s the thing about the Potter series. Books 3 through 6 give thorough explanation on why Voldemort went after Harry, why his parents die, how Voldemort came to power, and how he can be destroyed. If you didn’t understand what was going on throughout the book, Dumbledore was there at the end to explain everything. They have failed again and again to give the audience that same courtesy in the movies. Even if things like Dumbledore’s funeral, Bill and Fleur’s wedding and such are supposedly going to be in the next one, they’re going to be wasting a lot of time in the 7th film to try and explain what wasn’t included in this to make sense of the last two films.

Bottom line: Cutting scenes to save time/money is one thing, but cutting scenes that are crucial to the plot and explain things is what makes this movie a poor one.