Return of the Muggles: A Goodbye Harry Potter

Putting the books aside for a minute (blasphemy), think about the whole generation has grown up on the phenomenon of Harry Potter movies.

This weekend’s release of the final Harry Potter installment is this generation’s Return of the Jedi with less Muppets.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 may end the immensely lucrative Warner Bros. film franchise, but to millions of Muggle moviegoers, it’s an emotional finale to years of movie magic.

Regardless of what you thought about the individual films, the films as a collective or even the book-to-film translations, you have to admire the imaginative scope of the series.

For the producers to embark on a consistent production schedule from installment to installment, without even knowing what J.K. would conjure up next, took a lot of courage, faith and acting lessons for its correspondingly growing cast.

Yet, even having read every book, I could never get all that excited about the movies. Maybe it was my not always being completely convinced by the casting, but more likely it was the uneven variations on style. The high point was clearly Afonso Cuaron’s imaginative part three, and this last installment opening Friday is a close second. Other than that, they range from the sugary sweet Chris Columbus starters to oddly straightforward attempts to abridge their source books.

For most HP fans, the books and the movies seem to captivate equally. At a certain point, and I’m pretty sure it was once the first film was released, the cinematic vision became the representative image of the Potter universe. The merchandise, the theme park and probably soon the online “Pottermore” reflect the movies over the books.

At this past weekend’s screening of the new film, I watched a transfixed 6 year old girl bravely ask actress Emma Watson if “the magic is for real.”

The audience melted and Emma looked the girl right in the eyes and explained there was a lot of real magic that went into making the movies. Then, not even missing a beat, she told the girl in a convincingly sweet way that if you believe in the magic, it’s there.

You know what? That’s all that really matters.