Over the weekend my partner and I saw the last Harry Potter film. We watched it in 3D (which I hate, because it just gives me a headache with the occasional "hey, that thing is floating" moment, but the 2D screenings were all sold out. Hah.) which I must say is used very subtly in the film (so subtly, in fact, it doesn't add a damn thing to the proceedings and might as well not be there.) You're certainly not missing anything by watching in 2D, but the 3D is at least not used as a gimmick anymore.

I was interested to see my partner's response compared to mine: he hasn't read the books, missed some of the films and his memory isn't geared to remembering the minutae of detail necessary to connect Part 1 and Part 2. After asking for the cliffnotes of what happened in the preceeding three movies, we entered the theatre. And from here there will probably be SPOILERS, because my discussion rather depends on you knowing what I'm talking about. If you have somehow managed to avoid all knowledge of what happens at the end of the series and care about retaining that precious ignorance, by all means go read something else. Here.

I was particularly interested to see what he thought of the Horcruxes, the Hallows and the Wand Lore Handwavium (which, despite a number of people insisting to me the movie explains it better, is still more full of holes than a cheesegrater. By the time you get done with duelling in schools, no one should have the faintest idea whose wand belongs to whom. Not to mention what happens to The Explanation when you start tracing back the Expelliarmuses between Snape, Potter, Draco and various nosybeaks in the previous books.)

As we watched, I was impressed with the Snape Revelation, disappointed with the anticlimactic end of Voldy and often faintly bored with the repetition of run-blast-duck-explode-hide fight scenes toward the end. But it was their delivery of information that I most wanted to analyse.

It turns out that the Horcruxes posed no problem (I agree with many others; the movie handles that explanation far better than the book. Though I did find myself continually trying to count to seven, feeling they'd forgotten one.) and the Wand Lore, whilst still questionable, was at least explained more clearly. Though it's not explained why the Elder Wand chose *that moment* to spring to Harry - in fact, the movie brings to light a logic problem of the wand conveniently deciding the most dramatic time to return to its 'master'. But the Hallows had a bigger issue.

When I was watching, I was particularly looking out for how they would explain the complex moments like Harry's return to life. In the book, it's comprehendable but fairly hazy, complicated and rather deus-ex-machina in my opinion (let's not get into what happens with blood donations in the muggle world...). I was surprised to find that (unless I missed it) they took the opportunity to not bother explaining it at all.

We understand that Harry, as an unintentional Horcrux, must die (and I will say, that revelation was handled beautifully, communicating a complex concept without beating the audience over the head. I really enjoyed the moment of Harry telling Hermione and Ron.). But when Harry realises he has to return, we're given no explanation as to why this is an option for him. Why him, and no one else who's previously been Avada-Kedavra'd out of existence? There's a clear point in the script where the explanation could have occured, the question is plainly in the air unspoken, but we just sail smoothly on into deliberating whether or not Harry should just let it all go and move on.

My partner, given no better explanation, assumed that as Harry had the resurrection stone, it'd be No Worries from here on in - that the resurrection stone would allow Harry to, well, resurrect himself.

"But it doesn't work like that, it only brings back shadows of the dead that you love."

"Well, I didn't know that. It says 'resurrection stone'."

"Yes, but he dropped it on the ground before that. He didn't have it anymore."

A shrug. "So? It's magic. I don't know how these things are supposed to work."

Good point. The main issue here is that this miscommunication completely destroyed the tension of that moment - walking in to duel with your nemesis carrying a get out of jail free card doesn't really amp up the stakes.

It's partially because they hadn't reiterated the limits of the stone's power within the film: the fairy tale told in Part 1 explains it, but does so within the confines of a fable. This presents a problem where, as happened with my partner, audience members less experienced with the text and genre find it hard to judge where they should draw the line between fable and actual information in a fantasy world (my partner was hoping that Death as an actual character would turn up, a-la Pratchett, to claim Voldy, and was sorely disappointed.). But it's also because nobody ever wonders how Harry made it back. Not even Harry himself.

This is about as classic a case of 'writing for the initiated' as I've seen. The assumption is made that 99.99-ad-infinitum % of audience members will have at least read, if not devoured, the source material. So you're writing a movie that seeks not to tell the story, but to reinvigorate the experience of reading it. The movie depends, at least a little, on the fact that the audience already knows what's going on - it's playing to their favourite moments, rather than focussing on storytelling. And this isn't necessarily an issue, except when it leads to radical reinterpretations of the text due to missing information.

Which isn't to say it's a bad movie - both my partner and I enjoyed it, it brought the series to a reasonably satisfying close (the epilogue at the end was far too saccharine for our tastes, but we've never liked wholly-happy endings anyway.) and on the whole, did justice to Rowling's work.

What will be interesting to see is how well the movie series fares in about ten years, when the next generation discovers it, and how much  of an effect this 'greatest hits' form of storytelling will have once separated from the hype and source.