Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

It starts off fine, and we feel the threat throughout the first hour of the film. Once we got to the second hour, I was desperately waiting for something to actually happen. David Yates was so fixed on showing Harry, Ron, and Hermione's camping trip throughout the second hour of the film that it was almost worth sleeping to. Nothing happened during the second hour of the film except develop the three main characters, even though six movies should do the trick, and destroy only one Horcrux. It felt as if nothing was accomplished in the end. We don't even know, well if you never read the books, what the Deathly Hallows even is until almost 2 hours into the film. David Yates could've made the second hour exciting by going back and forth between different scenes showing what the Order of the Phoenix was doing, what the Ministry of Magic was going through, and show Hogwarts or at least one scene of Death Eaters creating havoc to make the second hour of "Part 1" have some feel of threat. Imagine if "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" only showed one of the stories going on, instead of showing all the different stories going on at the same time. It would be extremely dull after a while. "Part 1" was almost like watching Merry and Pippin adventuring in Fangorn forest, but for the whole movie, and therefore annoying us because they aren't showing the other stories that are going on other than this one. David Yates did such a fantastic job with "Half-Blood Prince," and he gets extremely lazy with this Harry Potter film, which is to me the most important installment of the series. Since the final film was split into two parts, for the first time in the series we won't we shouldn't, be getting complaints that things were left out because now there is time to show everything in the book, and show most of the detail that none of the previous films had the opportunity to provide. "Part 1" was apparently a strong adaptation, however, now that they finally have time to show everything in the book, it felt almost as if David Yates was more of wasting time, instead of really showing everything that was going on. There was talk that Guilermo del Torro was going to direct both parts, and I think they should've went with him because he is definitely one of the best in the industry when it comes to making fantasy films. Also, the thing that was lost when David Yates took over, going back to the fifth film, was the level of excitement from its music and especially form its direction. Del Torro would've made Part 1 exciting, and a very strong fantasy tale. As it seems as if I am bashing the film, I am not. There was just so much more they could've done with this film, however, there was a saviour of this film that pretty much made this film not a complete disaster. That was the level of filmmaking. It didn't feel like watching a Harry Potter movie because there was more focus on the characters, and the acting was very good along with the strong direction of actors that was brought to this film. It was, for the first time, a very arty Harry Potter, and it is nice for a film of such a high budget to show such strong filmmaking to those many moviegoers who don't see this kind of filmmaking that often. For that kind of filmmaking to be in a Harry Potter movie is quite beautiful, but who cares about the filmmaking. This is a Harry Potter movie, not an arty Oscar movie. It's the seventh movie, and yes it's nice to have this kind of filmmaking in a such a high-budget feature, but that's not what this film is suppose to be. There are scenes that show the impact of the horcruxes on the characters personalities that really stand out, and really make an impact on those who have followed the series for all these years, and yes, the filmmaking was strong, but if more shown other than the 3 main characters' adventure, and if they showed some of the things that we only heard on the radio, "Part 1" could've been a great, great film. It's just the level of filmmaking that saves this film, but also breaks this film.