A decade long series comes to an end with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, a grand finale of emotions and explosions as the real and reel worlds witness the final face-off between arch-enemies Harry Potter and Voldemort. As Deathly Hallows: Part 1 suggested, director David Yates pulls out all the stops, giving the audience everything they had hoped for from this franchise climax, and even making up for much that many of the previous movies lacked. Amidst the magnitude of the setting and the action that takes place, Yates never loses focus of the emotional core of the plot, doing justice to the many characters that populate its wizarding world.
Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has acquired the Elder Wand, the most powerful magic wand there is, intending to use it to kill his one and only opponent, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), the boy who survived. Harry Potter, with friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), continues his quest to seek out and destroy the remaining horcruxes, magical objects that contain fragments of Voldemort’s soul, intending to reduce his power and render him vulnerable. The two enemies will eventually battle to death at the one place that nurtured them and gave them power: Hogwarts, the final battleground of good vs evil.
Much like the first part, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 starts on an ominous note, this time picking up exactly from where we last saw the characters. The film continues with the final leg of the journey of the lead trio, maintaining subdued colors and frequent close-ups of the main characters to exude the morose outlook the wizarding world faces. Even so, Yates does a perfect balance of emotional involvement and large-scale action sequences. As expected, the movie is a spectacle of special effects and locations, owing to the last feat the lead trio have to perform before the final battle. Raiding an underground vault of Gringotts, the wizarding world’s bank and the resistance at Hogwarts castle are the two major set-pieces of this movie, both accomplished with as much visual splendor as the scenes required and that which modern CGI technology can achieve. The elaborate score adds to the visuals to truly make this last installment as epic as should be.
In their infinite wisdom and greed, the studio and creative behind the movie had decided to split the last book into two movies. Whatever the motive, the decision proved itself in the result: the two parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows combine to do justice to the source material as well as prove to be the best movies of the franchise. David Yates, in his fourth consecutive outing with the series, has finally made a movie that is equally deserving of the accolades that the books have generally received. The revelations and references littered through-out Deathly Hallows: Part 1 which made the movie cryptic for non-followers bear fruit in this movie, mainly to explain the many past events as well as provide closure to numerous sub-plots, primary of which is of Alan Rickman’s Professor Snape. The explanation for his motivations acts as an emotional crescendo, again proving the dexterity of Yates.
For now, this is the final part of the Harry Potter world, with no more movies scheduled. Unfortunately, the series has not much to look back to, with most of the movies being rush-jobs to get through the labyrinth plot of the individual books by directors who were clueless about where the many characters and sub-plots end up, physically and emotionally. Yet, Harry Potter and his friends will be remembered fondly down the decades, owing to this fantastic two-piece finale.
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