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'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows': Ending reshot and 'really charming'
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Filming on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" wrapped last June. Mostly, anyway -- the movie's stars returned in December to reshoot the final scene of the series.Don't worry -- no one went and did something foolish like rewrite the epilogue. But "Deathly Hallows" director David Yates didn't like the way his first take at the ending turned out. "We ended up with a scene that for all sorts of reasons ... just didn't work," Yates tells EW.
(If, perchance, you haven't read the last "Harry Potter" book, the following should be considered a spoiler.)
In the first pass at the scene, which is set 19 years after the main story, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ginny (Bonnie Wright), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) send their own children to Hogwarts. The actors were made up to look like 30-something versions of their characters, but Yates wasn't satisfied with it.
"I didn't want older actors," Yates says. "If you spent seven movies with these guys, you know these kids, and you want to end with them. ... I asked the studio to have a second pop at it, with a very simple solution -- simple makeup, which may be enhanced slightly with special effects -- that's really charming."
Producer David Heyman gives a big thumbs up to the reshot scene. "It was a funny day, seeing them made up to look in their late 30s," he tells EW. "It really accentuated the reality of the situation. I knew it had been 10 years [since the first 'Potter' film], but I didn't realize they had aged that much."
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II" opens on July 15.
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Photo/Video credit: Warner Bros.
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This was probably a good call. I remember seeing some images from the epilogue and I recall Radcliffe didn't look particularly good in the photo I saw, which made me wonder if they were going for a downbeat ending or something. We'll no doubt see the original version on the Blu-ray later, so it'll be interesting to compare.
Everything appears so dark.
Most of the detail is lost.
Rewriting the epilogue wouldn't have been silly. That was the worst piece of any of the books, and it only existed because Rowling wanted to keep the corporate owners of the books from continuing her cashcow without her.
I would have prefered they scraped it altogether. It can't possibly look good on film.
Actually if Rwling's wanted to continue the series she wouldn't have written the epilogue at all. She could have just continued with the Potter gang as twenty somethings with more adventures and romantic intrigue. I liked th epilogueit gave the series closeur which meant she played fair with the readers.
I just said she didn't want to continue the series, and didn't want them to continue it without her (which they technically had the power too). She at one point confirmed why it existed.
It was cheesy, not particularly well written, and way too much of a gushy "happily ever after". I didn't need to know that Harry had a few kids and named them after his parents, Snape and Dumbledore. I would have preferred she kept is ambiguous, and I was really hoping they wouldn't include it in the film.
CGing the actors to look 19 years older will look absolutely ridiculous.
while i don't really like yates version of harry potter, it's nice to know you're not completely brainless. thank God, you stick to the original cast for the epilogue
Keeping others' grubby little fingers off of her characters was a big reason for the epilogue, but I disagree that it was the *only* reason, and I also disagree that it was poorly done. Had she just listed characters and did a "where are they now" thing, now that would have been lazy and stupid. Instead, through one short scene, a snapshot of the future, she let us know (almost) everything we would have wondered if the book simply ended with Harry in Dumbledore's office. I saw an interview where Rowling herself said it was very important to her that the readers know that Teddy Lupin was okay - and she did this, not by saying "Despite being orphaned, Teddy turned out happy and well", but rather by giving us a few entertaining lines of dialogue between Harry, Ginny and James.
There was almost nothing she could have done to wrap up the books that could have pleased everyone..