Saw it last night.  I often wait until big movies have been out for a week or two before going to see them, both because of my schedule and the fact that I’m over the whole line-up-with-a-thousand-people-on-opening-night thing.  I prefer seeing movies in a nice quiet theater, when possible.

That said, HP7, Part 2 was great, a worthy climax and conclusion to the series, just as the book was.  I’ve always been impressed by J.K. Rowling’s ability to control the plot arc of the series as a whole — by which I mean to say that she does an excellent job of making things that happened in the earlier books relevant to the story of the later ones.  She also does this without any obvious foreshadowing, which makes it all the more interesting.  A good example is the simple fact that the diary of Tom Riddle turned out to be a horcrux — so a piece of the plot of Book 2 suddenly becomes very relevant to Books 6 and 7, and she knew it all along, even if we didn’t.  A better and larger example is the fact that so much of Book 7′s plot involves flashbacks and references to things that happened almost twenty years before, and Rowling makes it clear the the ultimate resolution to the larger story draws on all of the books she’s written — she wove it all together into one whole, rather than introducing some kind of new macguffin or solution in the last book.  Everything’s connected.

Mostly, though, the movie made me think of the first time I picked up Sorceror’s Stone.  I was home from college for the summer, had nothing to do, picked up one of my little brother’s books, thinking it would be silly — and was completely sucked in.  I think I read the first four books in less than two weeks.  It’s always bittersweet to see a favorite story come to an end.