About the Film...
No, I'm not going to review the film here. In any event if I did so, I would I. have to watch it, which I don't want to, because the novels stopped being any good after number five, and II. because even then I'd only be able to give you a half job.
Which is entirely my point.
When first I learnt that Harry Potter VII was due to be cut into two parts for its inevitable cinematic adaptation, the squee-ing of fanboys to me sounded as the flogging of one million dead horses. Excuses such as "it's so epic it needs two parts" ran off me like water off a Thestral's back.
NEWSFLASH - there is no reason why Harry Potter VII needs to be cut into two pieces. Unless J. K. Rowling has spent all her lucre from novel sales on cocaine, strippers, gambling, and wasted the rest (probably by bathing in it or donating it to the Labour Party), and needs to prop up her pension fund - or, more likely, some chappie at Warner Bros's pension fund.
When films are cut into two parts they inevitably become otiose and turgid and sprawling, often as a sign that the creative force behind it has lots its head up its arse. I draw to your attention the Matrix sequels, which should have been one film and edited more heavily, and Kill Bill, which, while good, should also have been cut up. Similarly, Planet Terror and Death Proof were released separately in Europe but in the US they were edited more and released as one feature, which was indomitably better. More to the point, they forced the punters to pay twice over to see it in its entirety. I fear that Harry Potter VII will be no exception.
But it gets worse.
In the novels, HP6 and HP7 were effectively two halves of the same story, however, had they been truncated they probably would have put off the buyers by being too brobdignageous. This is common practice with long novel serieses, because the big ending needs a whole precursor instalment to set up - and the precursor instalment are usually the weakest parts of the series. I draw to your attention Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's "Death Gate" series. This went on for seven volumes, and volume six, "Into the Labyrinth" basically was there to set up "The Seventh Gate." Right down to the (SPOILERS) pusillanimous and clumsy Alfred Montbank revealing that he is only the most powerful (well, second most powerful... okay, third most powerful - Samah did sunder the entire world with help, and Zifnab might beg to differ also, being the closest thing the series gets to a god) Sartan mage ever to live, and Haplo, the anti anti hero, being killed (in the flesh, anyhow). Similarly, in Stephen King's "The Dark Tower," volume six (SPOILERS) pretty much involves Susannah parking her rig in the Dixie Pig in the year of '99 and Roland and Eddie surviving the ambush in the year of '77 just so the plot of volume seven makes sense. Neither of these penultimate instalments are all that good and both seem unfinished. Then there's Harry Turtledove's 11-novel "Southern Victory" series, which has an entire volume of padding as its penultimate number just so the jarringness of (SPOILERS) the Confederates at the gates of Pittsburgh at the start followed by big ones being dropped on Charleston and Newport News isn't so great.
Harry Potter VI is no exception.
So when you pay your several pounds to go and see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One, you are, in effect, seeing the middle part of the ending volume. The fact that its running time is 2 hours and 30 minutes implies that there is insufficient use of the red pencil that has been exerted, as the entire of the film of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would therefore run for five hours (I speculate).
Now I hardly have a short attention span; I sat through three and a half arse-numbing hours of Return of the King. But therein lies the difference. Lord of the Rings, in film, was pretty much debrided as much as it could be without causing the Tolkien fanboys to go all Uruk Hai on the producers' arses. I don't see how it could be slashed even further. Harry Potter VII does not have all that much in it comparatively. The fact that they made the adaptation of the seventh Harry Potter novel five hours long in total implies that they padded it for no good reason. Which they probably did - Order of the Phoenix was a longer novel in which more happened and was fit relatively intact into one film. Which in turn implies they wanted an excuse to chop it in two. Which in turn implies they were just interested in milking the punters.
Then again, I also noticed after book five that J. K. Rowling's writing style took a nose dive as if she wasn't really bothered any more. She could have called it "Harry Potter and the Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom" and people would have bought it. So I suppose in many ways it's been about gouging the public since 2003. But then again maybe I'm just cynical.
And that is why I will not be watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts 1 or 2.
(Node 16 of my 30 IRON NODES.)