Letter from a Disgruntled HP Fan

Dear David Yates,

I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all. After making me and other Harry Potter fans wait an additional six months, this is what you give us? Plot changes without reason and the abbreviation of the climaxes of the book, the cave scene and the battle at Hogwarts. If you can still call it a battle, that is, seeing as all they did was kill Dumbledore (oops, spoiler), set Hagrid's house on fire and kick glass goblets off the long tables in the Great Hall (courtesy of Bellatrix). I felt so let-down and the word anti-climax is definitely appropriate here.

Ok, I accept that it's an adaptation which means rewrites are inevitable, and that the story has to be distilled to fit within a reasonable movie timeframe. Still, changes are only reasonable, only logical, if they better support the development of the movie compared to the original. What point did the Burrow attack serve? Everything just went by too quickly for any sort of impact to sink in. What point did overhauling the entire Harry-Ginny relationship serve, for that matter? It doesn't seem to add value to the plot. It was so ironic how their book kiss, which occured after a successful Quidditch match, became Ron and Lavender's kiss. It was as if the scriptwriter went, "Ho hum, I'm tired of everything so I think I'll just switch up their parts."

Remove that irritating waitress scene and the attack on the Burrow and there'll already be additional minutes of screen time which can be used to supplement other parts. Stop changing lines senselessly and giving one character's lines to another (Ron was practically mute in the last scene). Do that and I'd be a happier fan. Seriously, the next movie's got to be better, though I don't have high hopes.

All this sounds very pessimistic, but that's just me judging it critically. It's good if you counsider it in terms of entertainment value, and the acting was great, especially Rupert Grint's performance. Despite its flaws, it's still one of the better HP movies to me (the first two were too Christmas-y for my liking, if you know what I mean). Just that I'm not so rabid a fan as to rush out to catch it again.