Since I haven't read the books, I was unable to fully engage in the weepy sniffing and applause that was going on all around me as the movie played. For me, the Harry Potter films have seemed like the writers ticking off moments from the books on a list. I appreciate the story and the work gone into the films, but it's simply impossible to reveal the entire backstory that the books provide. This means that I've had to enjoy the films on a sequence-by-sequence basis, with my wife's crying as a cue that I should be moved as well.
For example, there's a scene at the end where one of the nerdy dudes redeems himself and kills a snake. This is an iconic, HUGELY important moment in the book, and the people in the audience that had read the book applauded heartily. I smiled and said "Oh, that's cool." The moment is shot and edited strangely, with no real sense of action geography and pacing, leading to a jump cut of the nerdy hero doing the cool thing. As a film, it failed in cueing me, the neophyte, to feeling how I should feel. Doesn't that matter? I say yes, but whatever.
Additionally, the first 40 minutes, where they have to break into a bank or something, bored me breathless. I caught myself staring at the walls. However, the final 90 minutes on compelled me, and, most importantly from my perspective, really made me want to read the books. I'd found the films a pleasant diversion, and appreciated the story's plunge into darkness, but this film was the first one to make me say, "Wow, this is a helluva story, I need to read this thing."
Sure, I'd felt that moment fleetingly in the past, but the way everything paid off made me, a guy with no idea what's going on, really satisfied. I still don't get why they camped so much in the first Deathly Hallows, but what the hell. You were pretty good, Movie!
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