But where Part 1 was mostly drama with the three lead actors on the run and an occasional action scene thrown in to shake things up, Part 2 had mostly action with just enough personal drama to remind us how much we learned to love these characters over the years. I could watch Part 2 over and over again. Action movies are great for that. Part 1 almost doesn’t belong in the series, it’s so different. It deserves critical acclaim, but it’s just not the kind of movie that I can repeatedly watch.

It was so much fun to watch all 8 movies over the course of three days. It helped me to appreciate how well the entire story was planned by Rowling, and how much work it must have taken to bring them all to the theater. Think about how they were able to get all the same actors back over the course of all 8 movies. So often personality conflicts and contract disputes ruin the continuity of a series, but not Harry Potter. The loss of Richard Harris as Dumbledore after Chamber of Secrets was unfortunate, but Michael Gambon grew on me, and I had no problem with his take on the character by the end of the series. My favorite character was Snape, greatly due to the brilliant acting of Alan Rickman, but also because his character was the most complex of all the characters in the stories, and Deathly Hallows Part 2 made that very clear.

My favorite of all the Harry Potter movies was the third installment: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Perhaps it was the directing style of Alfonso Cuarón. It’s a shame he only directed one movie in the series, although I’m sure many would disagree. What I liked most about Prisoner was the introduction of smart humor and the darker feeling compared to the first two. It wasn’t the darkest of the movies, but it was a great transition from the lightness of the first two movies to the truly adult nature of the rest of the series.