So here it is, the final chapter. Ten years in the making, millions of dollars spent, billions of dollars reaped. The most successful film franchise in the history of cinema, a decade-long gravy train that comes chugging up to Platform 9¾ for the last time. It’s all led up to this, this moment, this ending. A battle between the forces of good and evil, a choice between what is easy and what is necessary. There will be tears and deaths, breath-taking battles and the resolution to some long awaited romances, one you didn’t know was coming. There’s even a bad word. Harry Potter, a superstar in his world and in ours. The boy who lived. Can he possibly defeat Lord Voldemort, a wizard so infatuated by cheating death that he’s split his very soul apart? Or will the answer to this Riddle prove impossible to overcome?
Come on, it’s not 2007. You know exactly how it ends.
Indeed, that’s been the problem that’s plagued Mr. Potter all along, just how could the boy who lived live up to expectations of millions of fans who know him inside and out? For the most part, he hasn’t, with the opening movies bogged down by a constant need to razzle-dazzle audiences with quaint magical puns and protracted origin stories for every piece of bedazzled brickabrack found on Diagon Alley. This Bertie Bott colourfulness required a complete tonal shift round about number three, where they turned down the saturation and learnt that the series would need to get some edge before it could pack a critical punch. Their solution, make each subsequent movie darker, both thematically and literally, than the one that came before. And again, mixed results.
