Before I start my reviews, I just had to give a shout out to how much Harry Potter has done for me and how much I will miss it. 10 years it took to make 8 films to what I believe to be the greatest movie franchise ever, adapted from published material. In 2001, I was only 10 years old when I heard there was a Harry Potter movie coming out in November on the 16th. Like every other kid that didn't think Harry Potter worshiped the devil, I got excited. The even better thing is that I actually got to go on a field trip opening day to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I'm serious, got the whole day of school off just for that one experience, which I still consider to be one of the greatest of last decade. At age 20, I still wish I could re-live that experience over and over. When I saw that movie, I was hooked; hooked enough to go see it two more times in theaters that same weekend. I even got it on DVD the day it came out and watch it about 4 or 5 times in one weekend. Obviously, it was something like I've never seen it before, and I had been watching a ton of movies since my dad introduced me to his VHS movie collection when I was age 8. I agree with what Richard Roeper said in his review on "At the Movies", it was like The Wizard of Oz of our time. He still stands by that statement, and I still concur.
Over the years, I went to every single opening day of a new Harry Potter movie because I couldn't get enough until it ended. I never knew when it was going to end because J.K Rowling kept writing books while the movies were already being made. I knew that the students at Hogwarts only attended there 7 years until graduation, but I kept wondering if J.K Rowling would get greedy and start writing spin-offs and such to make more money. Thankfully she didn't, because I was also worried if the kid actors would be too old by the time the seventh book/2 movies were made. Thankfully they were not as well, and no replacements were made among any of the characters EXCEPT for Dumbledore.
In 2002, I was devastated to hear that Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in the first two films, had passed away. I was sad and worried at the same time. I thought Richard Harris made the PERFECT Dumbledore that he seemed totally irreplaceable. So after his passing I asked myself, who would play Dumbledore in the next 6 films? Well thankfully the new Dumbledore, played by Michael Gambon, wasn't a disappointment at all and managed to play the role well throughout the rest of the series. I still overall think that Richard Harris was the better Dumbledore, but Gambon did great at the role as well.
As years went by, I aged as fast as the actors did and came to the year 2011 where I finally got to see the end of the series, which was one of the most exciting experiences to any franchise. My expectations were high, and they all came true. I'll discuss more of that when I review the last film. If you haven't seen the last film yet, it'd be best to catch up before reading my reviews, though I never post any spoilers in my reviews anyway unless I alert it. This case being not.
So overall in reviewing the movie series as a whole, I'm happy to say that I was so entertained by each movie (except one of them) so much that it was totally worth the 10 year wait to see what happens in the end. People complained about there being too many movies, or them being too long, and etc. Thankfully I didn't care and after seeing the final movie, it ended exactly how I wanted it to. I'll go into that more in the review.
I just wanted to give a special thanks to the three main actors of Harry Potter: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson; the directors: Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell and David Yates; the lead producer David Heyman; the screenplay writer Steve Kloves (no I'm not including the other guy who wrote the 5th movie); and most of all J.K Rowling for creating one of the most fantastic looking, entertaining, and magical experience that I've ever seen on the big screen. Harry Potter will always be my most favorite saga of all time.
:D
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