Entry 5: The Deathly Hallows

           The Deathly Hallows saw a very interesting, more unique release than the previous film adaptions of the Harry Potter books. Rather than try to cram this massive book into a movie, having to pick and choose what gets changed and what gets left out, they decided to go with the risky move of making the final book into two movies. I say risky, because this is at a point where much of the fanbase was finally anticipating an end to a series of movies they’ve been with for years. 7 books should naturally equal 7 movies, right? Not 8? It’s not so bad, but there was also the actors to factor into this decision. Around the time of the release of the fourth movie there was a lot of speculation about whether or not the actors were getting too old. With each book covering only one year, these actors were starting to really pass the ages of their respected characters. While many actors have been known to play younger characters before, I think people were just worried that watching grown men play 15 year olds was going to become a bit weird. Several rumors even started going around about how they may just have to recast younger actors at some point, a really awkward decision if you’d ask me. Dumbledore had already been replace after the second movie due to the unfortunate death of his previous actor, and many people were already having a hard time adapting to that. Replacing the cast we’d been with for so  many years now though seemed crazy. In the end it worked out, and we did manage to retain most everybody from start to finish, even many of the background characters from the first movie still playing the background in the 8^th.

            This split in general of making one book into two movies really did seem to be the right move though. Some things were still left out, namely a few details from more flashbacks this time involving Snape, but nothing that would have been totally necessary to the advancement of his character compared to what got left out with Voldemort in the last entry. While this really worked with the last book though, it would not have worked had they, say, tried to make every book into two movies. Then we really would have had a bunch of old men and women running around as teenagers.