Nicola McLeod believes that anyone who hates Harry Potter doesn’t have a soul.
McLeod, who’s entering her second year at St. Thomas University in the fall, has been a Potter fan ever since she can remember. Her father read her the first three books and she read the fourth to seventh on her own.
“They’re the books that really got me into reading,” she said.
Fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are saying a final farewell to the bespectacled wizard with the release of the final movie installment Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. The film officially opens in Canadian theatres tomorrow, with a midnight showings in select theatres tonight.
In 2008, Warner Brother’s and the producers behind the Harry Potter films announced that the final book would be filmed in two installments. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, series star Daniel Radcliffe said that dividing the films would be the only way to fit in the entire plot of the book.
Margot Malenfant, a STU student entering her fourth year, liked the suspense added by dividing the book into two films. She said she enjoyed Part 1 and is eagerly awaiting Part 2’s release.
“I might wear robes to the movie,” Malenfant said. “I feel like it’s my last chance.”
Malenfant has been a Harry Potter fan since she was twelve years old when her aunt bought her the first book. She believes the series has seen so much popularity because of the fascination surrounding the subject matter.
“When I was young – and still now – I always wonder what life would be like if that’s actually how things were. So I think the ‘what if’ factor is huge,” Malenfant said.
Movie theatres across the country have been selling advance tickets to midnight showings of Part 2 for enthusiastic fans who simply cannot wait until the next day to see it.
Chris Wilson is entering his second year at STU. He says he and his friends are watching all of the previous Harry Potter films before midnight, when they’ll head to the theatre for the final installment.
“I am very excited,” Wilson said. “Like a kid in a candy store!”
Empire Theatres Fredericton is presenting the movie in four theatres tonight starting at 12:01. Both 3D viewings are already sold out.
The excitement surrounding the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is dampened only because it marks the final time Harry’s adventures will appear on the big screen. McLeod says she’s “over the moon excited” to see the movie but is also dreading its release.
“It truly is the end of an era,” she said. “I grew up with Harry Potter and was always anticipating the next big book or movie. Now, as the movies come to close, it’s all over. Most of us have had Harry in our lives for so long that we can’t imagine it really being over.”
Wilson, a fan since 1997, said that the approaching end of the series is for the best.
“All good things must come to an end,” he said.
The Harry Potter series has enchanted readers and viewers since Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released in 1997. The film adaption came out in 2001.
McLeod says that while the wizarding world is completely different from our own, the story is “totally relatable and universal”.
“Even though Harry is a fictional wizard, his life problems are very real,” McLeod says. “Rocky love lives, family problems, friendship problems, school problems, evil arch nemesis problems… He’s fake but it’s all very alive. Sometimes we all feel like the little boy under the stairs.”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has a July 15, 2011 release date in Canada. The Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey gave the movie a four-star rating, writing: “Harry Potter’s final outing casts a magical spell.”
