The Final Chapter

In May, my best friend Army Girl and I decided to go back and watch all of the Fast and the Furious movies before going to watch the fifth movie in the theater. We had a lot of fun working through this series; we took about two weeks to find enough evenings (3) when we were both free to work on our movie marathon. Then we finished the marathon off by going to watch Fast Five in the theater.

After accomplishing the 5-film marathon in May, we were ready to tackle something far more challenging (but far more worthwhile!!!): The Harry Potter film series. You have to understand that Army Girl and I started watching the movies together when the very first film came out back in November of 2001. We had both managed to read books 1 - 4 for the first time that fall (there were only 4 books at that time). I remember watching the movie and thinking, "Holy crap, that's EXACTLY HOW I PICTURED IT when I read the book!" (which is rather amazing, if you consider how far most movies stray from their book roots). We've each read every book and watched every movie as they were released, with two minor exceptions (neither of us managed to watch the 6th and 7th movies). I even managed to re-read every book in the series each time a new book came out. Unfortunately, that meant I had only read the 7th book once, so I went back and read it in the first two weeks of July. (It was just as good the second time, and slightly easier to follow.)

So Army Girl and I worked through all seven of the Harry Potter movies on DVD. It took us about three weeks to find enough free evenings, but we finished last Saturday. On Sunday, we went together to see the last movie in the theater. It was fabulous, and provided a well-done ending to the series. Yes, in all of the movies, there were many many many many MANY things left out... (Hey, you'd have trouble condensing a 700-page book into 2 hours too.) But mostly, the film versions did an excellent job conveying the stories on screen. *happy sigh*

One brief note of dissatisfaction: at the end of the book, there is an epilogue that involves 36-year-old Harry Potter seeing his kids off on the Hogwarts train. Unfortunately, in the movie version of this epilogue, both Ron and Harry ended up looking far less attractive (like paunchy, somewhat creepy 45-year-olds). Depressing... I prefer to believe that Harry and Ron remained handsome and charming throughout their lives. ...sort of like Neville, who appeared to be played by a 30-year-old man in the movie.

This brings me to the compliment that I would like to pay to the most brilliant person associated with the Harry Potter movies: Fiona Weir. Fiona Weir is the really smart casting director who kept all of the same actors for all eight movies. Yes, Neville looked 30, and yes, people talked about how old the supposedly 17-year-old stars were while filming. But for the sake of HP fans everywhere, I think she made an important and genius decision by keeping the cast the same. The characters don't change in the books, so reader-fans were more devoted to the films because the actors didn't change. Thank you, and kudos, Fiona. You're my hero.