Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: The 90 Minute Wicked Edition

While there are few awkward edits around Rons storyline, overall this edit is better paced than the theatrical cut without loosing the meat of the story. A fantastic edit.

January 3, 2012

A job well done by AEmovieguy. The editing is fantastic and the edit looked and sounded great. For the most part I was satisfied with what was cut, but I felt it was too short. I know his intention was to do that, but I really liked HP7 pt1 and had no problem with the length or the pacing. Some good character development was gone but it still made for a great film.

steelio2006 jun 21 2011

Watched this the other day. Have to say that this is an awesome edit. It definitely is a nice companion edit to have to fit on the shelf next to the extended edition that’s available as well.

This is what had got me excited bout the idea of it being possible to edit Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2 into a complete 150-180 minute movie.

The edit flows very well. And since it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original, I wasn’t able to notice the edits. Which is a great thing. One of the things that I thought was a bit better in this edit than in the original is the knife going through the wormhole. Cause now it’s a little bit more of a shock of what happens.

I’d give this edit a 9 out of 10. And the dvd itself a 9.5 outta 10. Loved the menu for the SL Dvd.

sunarep jul 2 2011

In my eyes Harry Potter 7 (and probably 8 as well) was the victim of fanboys having too much influence on the creative process – resulting in a product tailored for the bean counters that don’t realise that a good adaption is never a scene by scene recreation of the book or that faithful is not equal to following every tiny detail.

Because of that Deathly Hallows while enjoyable never reached the status of a truly marvelous adaption that could stand on it’s own two feet.
AEmovieguy delivers the closest thing we will probably ever get to this: a fast paced version of a movie that should have never been split apart.

STORY (9/10)

The problems with both book and movies for me were:

1) the obviously from lord of the rings lifted plot
2) the obligatory “it’s fantasy so there has to be a lof of nothing happening”
3) plotdevices over plotdevices

make no mistake a lot of those things are still there but cutting away the deluminator makes the ride much more plausible, the thing itself is now no longer of plot importance, but still it is not as much of a missing plotline since ron uses it once to turn of the light and once to turn it back on so let’s just assume dumbledore wanted the kids to have a flashlight :P

Cutting out ron’s forced character drama also works to the story’s advantage – even more it shows how unneeded the initial conflict was since ron’s jealousy is still there when hermione and harry are walking together

it even enhances the character of ron or at least adds “suspense” since up until the horcrux’s destruction ron has not yet made a conscious decision to stand on harry’s side whereas in the original version he has proven his loyalty already by returning

Getting rid of godric’s hollow is also a great improvement – yes it is sentimental bla bla grave of parents bla, but the sequence was never important, neither in the book nor in the movie and is more of a wasted potential than a great scene
where in the book one could have semi-argued why it had to be there Godric’s Hollow was never important in the movies and our heroes don’t do anything useful there so it just adds to the frustration

The only thing weird that remained was the Rita Skeeter discussion at the wedding since the obvious “harry later in the movie you have to go there” plot setup remains but in this version he never goes there.. maybe one could make the case for the dumbledore biography’s introduction… not sure about that

Moving the mirror to sirius’s bedroom is a stroke of genius which I never understood in the original. I firmly believed before seeing the film it would go like this, but as I mentioned: this movie was more about pleasing the “it has to be exactly like in the book” group than standing on its own

EDITING (9/10)

Sadly the obliviate montage and the discussion about wiping memories is gone, but the editor explained his reasons so this is a personal complaint

Moving the flesh memory before the snatchers seemed like a wise move since the snatchers distract from the fact that the “realization” doesn’t really do anything, but as another reviewer said there is a lip problem with hermione because the voiceover is during the scene where harry and hermione walk
Also the discovery of the hallows symbol in the book seems a bit overkill – the audience is already wrestling with that they see harry and hermione coming fromt he snatchers while talking about something via voiceover that was in a scene before and then they get another voiceover dump and a picture of a symbol

I think the sequence would work better if the discovery of the symbol would be moved between the sequences of travelling through britain.

Harry using the charm on the fire now feels a little out of context since in this version he doesn’t break his wand
same goes for hermione being mad – now it seems as if aunt erma is visiting instead of a plausible character evolution

PRESENTATION (9/10)
The dvd menu is pretty nice and the chapter selection is also done very much in the vein of official dvd menus instead of just pasting pictures of the chapters onto a static background so that is pretty nice to look at and shows the faneditor caring about his edit
only a semi transparent bar for the title menu would have been nice since the “start movie” and “scene selection” overlap with the title of the opening menu

TECHNICAL (10/10)
Clear picture, clear sound, nice edit and it just continues to amaze me how much the quality of this site has risen – i mean hell this is a firstling, I am pretty sure that 2-3 years ago something like that would have been a holy grail for edits

the fact that it is “another good edit” speaks for how much the ambition has risen

OVERALL 9/10
It won’t replace my original dvd – not yet :D

emphatic jul 21 2011

So, I watched this today (AVCHD, stripped down to just the movie file to watch in my HTPC, so sadly I’ve missed out on all the cool extras).

Video is crisp and good, but some compression artifacts are present on dark areas, but doesn’t bother me much, however, the scene in the Malfoy’s basement felt a bit too bright and sunny considering the situation.

Audio is magnificent.

The edit worked very well for me all in all, but there were some stuff, good and IMHO less good that should be mentioned:

* The Harry Potter title appeared twice (just before Snape enters the story and after Nagini has a snack). The second one felt redundant.

* I loved how a bitter Ron turns of the light in the tent, cutting short Harry and Hermiones discussion about the sword of Godric Gryffindor and his line afterwards then a swift cut.

* When Harry is pulled out of the icy water by Ron, the conversation kinda reveals that Ron has been gone, why else would Harry be so surprised? Perhaps adding an “always the tone of surprise” could fix it? :D

As a fan of the book, I prefer the theatrical version, but for a quick fix or paired with a shorter part 2 this edit is excellent. I give this a 9.5/10.