Always: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II

SPOILER ALERT!!!!! IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE MOVIE YET, DO NOT READ FURTHER. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

As all of you already know, I went to the midnight premiere of the 8th movie last night with Shayne and Josh (Harry Potter has always been a family thing for us, seems like). 


I had about three hours of sleep last night because we got home around 3:30am. At the premiere, I represented Sssssssslytherin (SLYTHERIN!!!!), of course, and I also donned a Dark Mark (courtesy of my brother, Josh). But today, I'm sporting a Gryffindor shirt and, of course, proudly displaying "I must not tell lies" on my left hand. 


Overall, I liked the movie. I am not wholly disappointed; I did not like the latter half of the movie but not enough to be super mad about it. It is the end after all, and I would feel terrible if I didn't have "proper closure" (in quotes because it isn't really closure--it truly never ends).


We got to the theaters at 7-ish and there were already a lot of people there (3,000-ish by midnight?). We were on the stairs, not a bad spot compared to the poor souls who were all the way across the street near midnight. We played hangman while we waited and I tried making the Deathly Hallows sign with our orange post-its on the floor, but we didn't have enough space . I saw a bunch of people, even some old friends from elementary school. Josh was having fun playing "volleyball" with the beach balls that were bouncing around. 102.7 Da Bomb was there and I think the music that the DJ was blasting was the reason for my massive pre-movie headache. The costumes were amazing but I expected more people to dress up. There were a lot of Dobbys walking around, I saw a Quirrell, several Harrys, a lot of Hedwigs and Death Eaters, a couple of Voldemorts, and a Snape-and-Lily couple, and a lot more. I cheered for someone I saw on the escalators who was dressed as Ron Weasley and was  also wearing a blue headband (Joey!) and I saw someone in line at the concession stand wearing an actual Scarf of Sexuality (I wanted to give her a high five). The lines for the bathroom were so bad that there was even a line for the men's room. One girl in line just didn't want to wait any longer so she went inside the men's room (haha).


We sat up front, maybe in the 8th-ish row, so we were pretty front-front and the screen was huge. But it wasn't bad. We thought it was gonna be uncomfortable but it wasn't. I was sitting with my legs up on the seat, my ankles tucked as far back against my butt as possible and I was hugging my knees the whole time to keep myself from shaking. 


They started the movie late, around 12:08-ish maybe. Someone dressed up as Voldemort went down in front of the screen at one point and yelled "Avada Kedavra", pointing his wand at someone dressed up as Harry in the back. People cheered. I don't know why. We also did minute by minute countdowns (which failed because the movie was late).


My thoughts in random order:
-I think the movie was incredibly fast-paced. When the words "19 YEARS LATER" showed up on the screen, I was like, "That's it? This is the end? Noooooooo!!!!"
-When Voldemort ordered Lucius to call Snape, I started to tear up (I thought Alan Rickman was amazing. I've always liked Snape but now . . . MARRY ME, SNAPE, PLEASE). I started bawling when Nagini killed Snape (They made it so graphic without really showing anything because of that screen/wall/thing) and I just couldn't stop after that. I was just crying non-stop--I'm talking tears streaming down my face, sobbing and shaking to keep quiet kind of crying--for the rest of the movie.
-My favorite chapter in the whole series is "The Prince's Tale" so I was pretty excited to see that. I was a bit disappointed to find out that they decided to keep Snape "super good"; they didn't really show him slowly turning to a Death Eater and fighting with Lily because of his "dark ways". 
-I also noticed that they did that for Dumbledore--it wasn't clear that he wasn't the perfect person, that he actually wanted power and everything when he was younger, because Aberforth didn't go too much into detail about his relationship with Dumbledore. The movie definitely downplayed their faults, not to mention the overall darkness of the book. 
-The beginning was very very very faithful to the book, which I liked--there were parts where it was almost word-for-word the same.
-OMG, FRED, LUPIN, TONKS (I am still crying inside). 
-I liked how David Yates added that short clip where Fred and George were getting ready to fight and George was like, "You all right there, Freddie?" and FRED LOOKED SO SCARED (I whimpered when I saw this).
-And I also liked how Yates had that part where, right before the war, Lupin and Tonks were reaching for each other's hands but they didn't quite make it. And then, the next time we saw them, they were dead, still reaching for each other's hands. Yates gets a nod from me for that. 
-I thought Helena Bonham Carter did well pretending to be Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix. I really felt like I was watching Hermione trying to act like Bellatrix (but I found the fact that they kept Hermione's voice a bit irritating). 
-And why was the Imperius Curse treated so lightly? It seemed amusing, not evil.
-I hated Griphook (but then again, I hated him in the book too, that bastard). 
-I fell in love with how they did the dragon--I loved its eyes, its horns, its color, its seemingly scale-lessness (it didn't have scales, right?). 
-The Hufflepuff cup, in my head when I first read the book, looked more like Chip from Beauty and the Beast, but it was more like a golden goblet in the movie. 
-I was so looking forward to seeing the reunion with Percy! But I guess because they didn't make a big deal out of it in the fifth movie, it would have been weird to do so in the last movie. The Room of Requirement bits were funny, though (especially Seamus' comment about Ginny, Ron and Harry).
-Where were the creatures?? The house-elves, the hippogriffs, the good giants (Grawp?!), the centaurs? 
-Which brings me to the "war" which didn't really feel like a war. I mean, it felt like it was just a handful of people protecting the castle (which was filled with students just running around). In my mind, I liked how the war was so busy, so BOOM (as McGonagall so eloquently put it in the movie). Rowling had people running around, dueling in every corner, throwing Mandrakes and crystal balls at the enemies. And they didn't really have that.
-The battle between Voldemort and Harry? Um, okay, what was all that? I thought it was too long, and unnecessary until the point where they actually dueled outside in the courtyard (because essentially, that was what was supposed to happen). 
-Why didn't Harry fix his old broken wand?!
-Hermione and Ron's kiss was pretty random. We all cheered for that one. But Ginny's and Harry's was awkward.
-Kendall's in the movie: when Voldemort tried hugging Draco, the whole theater was just, "Uhhh, what the--? What is going on? OMG, we already know he doesn't know how to hug because he doesn't know love!" and I also thought of Kendall. Ninth-grade Kendall, haha.
-I liked the continuation of the Malfoy family's "disintegration". If you look at the whole series overall, they went from pureblood supremacists and supporters of the Dark Lord to a family trying and struggling to stay together. In the end, when they walked away from Hogwarts once they got Draco back, it was clear that only one thing mattered to them at that point: their family.
-We cheered when Bellatrix died. Go Mrs. Weasley!
-I thought Neville was amazing. We cheered for him, too.
-The bloody Voldemort baby was horrible--but it was especially freaky to me because of my cursed fear of fetuses (Fetuses? Fetusi? What is the plural?).
-I wanted to see little Teddy!


That's it for now. Kendall and Tiffany are dressed up today: Kendall's wearing his Gryffindor robes and Tiff's in Ravenclaw garb. Tiff also went to the midnight premiere but at another theater. Kendall hasn't watched it yet, so HA.


All right, that's it for now because I have to work soon.


Oh, and HAPPY 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY, KENDALL!


Today....
I really loved...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II.
I smiled because...of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II.
Lyrics playing in my head right now:
"I gotta always keep in mind: another great adventure waits on the other side. I'll see you on the other side..." (On the Other Side by M.O.M.)
Friend of the day: Severus Snape. Oh and Kendall, of course.
Hours of sleep last night: 3-ish (I drank this really good Butter Toffee coffee this morning to wake myself up...mmmmm...)