Before Twilight and The Hunger Games did it, the Harry Potter series set the trend for finishing a series with a two film adaptation of the final chapter. David Yates, now firmly ensconced at the helm for the remainder of the series had the unenviable task of bringing Warner Bros’ cash cow franchise to an end, in an entry originally intended for a single theatrical release. Greg D. Smith discusses whether he could he justice to the final entry in one of the most successful children’s book series of all time?

As Voldemort grows in strength and his followers take over the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts in the wake of Dumbledore’s death, Harry and his two closest friends must embark on their most dangerous, vital and confusing quest yet, as they seek the remaining Horcruxes to destroy them and render Voldemort mortal. But locating these fell magical artefacts is only half the struggle – after all, how does one destroy a Horcrux?

In hindsight, it seems an odd choice to have split this final book into two movies. The final book in the Harry Potter series had been published by the time the film adaptation of Half-Blood Prince was released in theatres, so narratively there was no chance of stretching out a cliffhanger ending like Marvel’s recent Infinity War for a year. Nor was it a question of length – while Deathly Hallows is one of the longer Harry Potter novels at 607 pages, it’s dwarfed by Order of the Phoenix’s 766 pages, and comes in as equal length to Half-Blood Prince and lagging slightly behind Goblet of Fire’s 636. Ultimately, it seems almost as if either Yates and his team were slightly spooked at the prospect of finishing this cinematic behemoth (‘How will we do it?’ executive producer Lionel Wigram is said to have asked producer David Heyman, when pressing for the originally planned single cinematic release to be split into two) or, more likely, that they felt that the battle of Hogwarts deserved its own cinematic spectacle.

Stylistically, it follows on from Half-Blood Prince – dark filters, muted lighting and a sense of dread and despondency threaded through every frame of its run time. There’s a sense of urgency almost baked in to the DNA of the thing, the film never feeling like it actually pauses as it hurtles from one plot point to the next. The Dursleys return – albeit briefly – as we see them evacuating their home for their own safety on the eve of Harry’s 17th birthday and the breaking of his protective charm. It seems curious that this scene is cut down from the book rather significantly; given the two film adaptation one assumes the cut is not for length, and the scene wherein Dudley essentially apologises to Harry and shakes his hand is a big moment, though perhaps the director feared adding complexity to what had essentially become a background character in a narrative already crammed with so much stuff to resolve.

There’s oddness as well which carries over from decisions to remove certain elements from previous entries, the most pronounced one being the fragment of mirror into which Harry keeps looking and thinking that he’s seeing Dumbledore. In the novels, this mirror was originally one of a set of two – called a two-way mirror and used to communicate. Sirius gifted Harry one half of the set, and Harry refused to use it lest he tempt Sirius out of hiding. In the films, this never came up, so Harry’s sudden possession of a broken fragment of mirror he keeps gazing into and at one point asks for help makes little sense to anyone who hasn’t read the books. In a series that’s generally quite good at sticking within its own continuity, even though there have been a number of directors involved, it seems a peculiar mis-step.

There’s also the reappearance of Dobby, who appears several times in the novels in Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince but in the movies just suddenly reappears here having been gone since Chamber of Secrets. The cutting of the House Elves plots in general means that Dobby’s death here, while still touching, lacks the true impact that it should have not just on Harry but Ron and Hermione too. Though Ron and Harry both greet Dobby as an old friend in this film, if one has only watched the movies, there seems little reason for this, especially in the case of Ron who has never met him before. It is arguable that both the mirror and Dobby are impossible to separate from the narrative of this adaptation, but some sort of backfill ideally needed to have been done on both to actually have them make sense. Here, as it does a little too much, the film begins to rely on the fact that viewers will have read the novels and therefore be able to fill in certain blanks on their own, and this weakens the strength of it as a standalone narrative.

Other elements point to this – Bill and Fleur suddenly appearing despite Bill never once having been on screen previously, the replacement of Fudge by Rufus Scrimgeour as Minister for Magic and sundry other details are simply thrown on screen and dusted over – as a fan, it can get a little frustrating, especially as again this narrative gets spread over two films when others might have benefited more from the same treatment, but one might expect at the very least this film might use this opportunity to fill in a few of these elements better.

But given the odd decision of where to end this film – at a point nearly three quarters of the way through the book – it becomes inevitable that there isn’t the time to do this, because so much of the plot must be squeezed in to this entry’s 146 minute run time. The film moves from one scene to the next while scarcely drawing breath. It is because of this that while watching the film, details such as the above don’t impinge as much as they otherwise might because there’s simply too much going on to pause and register them.

From its initial high stakes chase with seven different ‘Harry’s’ provided by Polyjuice potion (which results interestingly in the on screen death of Hedwig the owl, which the viewer feels, and the offscreen death of Alastor Moody which just gets announced by the arriving Bill – just as in the book) to the attack on Bill and Fleur’s wedding, the trio of heroes going on the run and their various adventures as they do so, it’s a film brim-full of action, and it never fails to look seriously at the stakes. When Harry, Ron and Hermione infiltrate the Ministry of Magic disguised with Polyuice Potion, the film doesn’t flinch from the seriousness of what is happening. The statue of Muggles crushed beneath their Wizard ‘betters’, the various pamphlets and books that are seen on screen being produced by the new Voldemort-controlled ministry and the sight of Mad-Eye’s magical eye set in Umbridge’s office door all reinforce the exact situation in which the world now finds itself.

We also see more of the villains in this movie than we are historically used to. Previously mostly restricted to the heroes’ eye view or small asides, here we get whole scenes involving them, and not just from Harry’s visions. The torture and murder of Professor Burbage by Voldemort both reinforce the cruel disregard the Dark Lord holds for the lives of others and either the ironclad self-control or definitive villainy of Snape (depending on whether the viewer has already read the book or not). It also firmly underlines the core principle of Voldemort’s control, and why he must ultimately lose: looking at the people seated around that table, it’s clear that – the insane Bellatrix aside – most are there because they fear Voldemort. Fear breeds obedience rather than loyalty – a distinction one suspects would be as lost on Voldemort as are other concepts like love – and it becomes clearer still exactly how so many of his followers were not only able but willing to don the mask of polite civility among wizardkind in the intervening years of his absence.

In parallel with this exhibition of just how fragile Voldemort’s empire of fear can be is the journey of our three central protagonists and how strongly and closely bound together they are, even through the worst adversity. It’s tempting on a surface read to see their journey through the opposite lens – after all, Ron leaves the other two, feeling increasingly left out and convinced that there is something between them which excludes him. What one must bear in mind though, are Ron’s words to the pair when he returns – that he wanted to come back the second he left, but that he had been unable to find them again due to Hermione’s magical hiding of their location. It is only through Dumbledore’s gift – the deluminator – that he is able to finally return. It must also be recalled that Ron’s jealousy and the anger it causes are fanned by the Horcrux, which seeks the very worst in the soul of anyone wearing it – it’s perhaps instructive or simply an oversight that we see this dark impact on both Ron and Harry, yet Hermione seems to remain unaffected. Perhaps she’s more evolved, perhaps it’s that she is simply a more logical being (as she herself points out at one stage) or maybe it’s just left out altogether.

But the point is that through it all – through a quest with no real clear start or end, through encounters with snatchers, life and death chases and battles, an infiltration of the Ministry itself under the very noses of their enemies – these three hold true to one another. Harry never wants anyone to die for him. Voldemort only ever expects his followers to offer up their very souls and lives to further his cause. In every aspect, the two are shown time and again to be polarised opposites of one another.

There’s parts here that feel referential too – Hermione’s bottomless bag can’t help but recall Mary Poppins and the effect of the locket on the wearer – and indeed the decision to share that burden among the protagonists – recalls the One Ring. Both are of course drawn from the novel itself, and in a crowded genre it’s inevitable that some generalised tropes like this will get repeated over time.

Most noticeable though, is the lack of humour to be found. It still appears in moments – George’s first words to his brother after losing his ear, the inherent physical comedy that goes with use of the Polyjuice potion and so on – but these moments are few and far between. Unlike the belly laughs delivered at strategic points by Half-Blood Prince, here the humour is rare, fleeting and fades fast in the light of the darkness that surrounds the whole story. As the saga heads towards its conclusion, it seems intent on reminding us in almost every frame of just exactly how high the stakes are.

Mostly though, where it suffers is in how much it attempts to squeeze in, at the cost of certain amounts of sense narratively as well as at the cost of certain performances. Bill Nighy’s Rufus Scrimgeour – already cut from the previous film – barely gets a couple of scenes in a performance from the veteran actor which promises much. Rhys Ifans’ Xenophilius Lovegood, Imelda Staunton’s Umbridge, Julie Walters’ Molly and Bonnie Wright’s Ginny all feel similarly short-changed, as we find their parts slimmed down to try to cram in all that adventuring, discovery and sideplot so that the second film can wind up with the enormous extended battle scene that you can feel in your bones is coming in Part 2 from the second the credits roll.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is not a bad film – far from it, it does a great deal with its source material and with its cast. What’s a shame is that where we get an extremely good and entertaining movie here, it feels like with a bit more balance we could have had a truly special one – one for the ages. Dealing with adult themes while retaining enough wonder for a younger audience was never going to be an easy tightrope to walk, and Yates balances it tremendously well. There’s just always that feeling at the back of this fan’s mind that if one hasn’t read the book, then one might struggle to follow certain sections of the story, and miss whole other parts altogether. That’s never a good look on an adaptation such as this, and it’s what makes this – for me at least – one of the weaker entries in the Harry Potter film canon.