“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” may have been the teen phenomenon of the moment at the MTV Movie Awards last night, but those in attendance were also the lucky first viewers of the teaser for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Although we’re skeptical of calling the first view of a teaser trailer a premiere, the unveiling does mark the beginning of the end of a massive movie franchise and arguably the largest pop culture fixture of the last decade.
The Potter franchise has certainly had its ups and downs over the last nine years. Stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson have aged faster than their characters (Radcliffe, for example, is playing a 17 year old despite being nearly 21 himself) and the films have seen a slew of directors (reaching its high point, in our opinion, with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”).
The series’ producers seem to have found a winner with David Yates, director of the last two installments as well as the final film. Yates has brought a darker, grittier feel to the project, one that matches the more somber tone of the later books of JK Rowling’s series.
The trailer itself, though, leaves much to be desired. It’s filled with requisite scenes of teen passion (Radcliffe’s Harry and Bonnie Right’s Ginny smooching, awkwardly), teen angst (Grint’s Ron and Harry fighting) and shots of Ralph Fiennes looking badass and menacing in his excellent turn as arch-villain Voldemort. Other than that, there’s no real sense of a plot, which is forgivable in a teaser, but hopefully the next trailer will have a bit more meat.
Most interestingly, the spot makes no mention of the fact that it is only part one of the ‘Hallows’ film, set to be released this November. Part two is due out in summer 2011. Will Warner Bros. add this in later in the ad campaign? Let’s hope so, because otherwise audiences are going to be very confused (and probably more than a bit unhappy) to walk out of a two hour movie with no resolution only to be told to wait another year for the second half.
In the light of the other major two-part film in the works, Summit’s “Breaking Dawn” with Bill Condon in the director’s seat, is this the beginning of a trend in Hollywood? We hope not. Although the producers of ‘Hallows’ have held firm that the decision to split the final book into two films is solely for the benefit of the story, it’s hard not to see the added benefit to those same producers’ bank accounts. In the end, though, maybe we should be grateful—there’s no way this writer could survive a bladder-punishing four-hour movie, even for Harry Potter.