Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

The other day I went to see this movie and I thought I would share my thoughts on it with you. Firstly, before seeing it you should ask yourself- “have I read this book or the previous book?” or “have I seen the previous movie?”. Because if you don’t know what happened before this movie starts you won’t be able to follow any of it. As it was, it had been a while since this reviewer saw the last film and even longer since he read the book, so some of the action had me struggling to remember what was going on. Anyway, at the beginning of the movie we find that Harry has been tasked with an important mission: he has to find and destroy seven “horcruxes” (parts of a soul) so that he can end the evil wizard Voldemort’s rain of terror once and for all. Two “horcruxes” have already been destroyed and the final horcrux is of course Voldemort himself.

So Harry has his work cut out for him, trying to find the horcruxes and trying to avoid being caught by Voldemorts “death eaters” at the same time.
Voldemort himself also has a problem of sorts. His wand is made from the same materials as Harry’s wand which means he can’t use it to kill Harry.

The movie is quite faithful to the book, however, there were a couple of extra scenes that were added that weren’t necessary in my opinion. For example, take the dance scene between Harry & Hermione. What was the point of it? Isn’t Harry supposed to like Ginny? There is another scene in a forest where Hermione almost gets caught by “snatchers” which also could have been cut in my opinion. As it is, I had the feeling that the movie was too long (it goes for almost 2 ½ hours).

Of course, the problem with adapting 400 pages of a book (I checked the book to see how many pages made it to the movie- which leaves roughly 200 pages for part 2 to cover) is that you can’t cover everything in the movie. However all of the highlights are covered- even though people may be left scratching their heads as to the importance of the “Deathly Hallows” at the end (minor spoiler- people who have seen the other movies may realise that Harry already possesses one of the “Deathly Hallows”).

Don’t get me wrong though, the movie is good and if you’ve read the books it’s great seeing the story come to life. It’s just a pity that we have to wait another seven months to see the ending! If I were forced to give it a rating, I’d give it 3 ½ stars out of five- it just lacks the great ending that the other movies had.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1