The Battle of Hogwarts Review

I haven't posted anything in a while so I've decided to review the Harry Potter fanfilm "The Battle for Hogwarts". I previously reviewed a Lord of the Rings fanfilm, "Born of Hope" and in my review I mentioned how impressed I was with the quality. So I came into The Battle of Hogwarts with some high expectations and hopes, which were encouraged by the quality of the trailers and the cool premise. Unfortunately, I did find myself a little disappointed.

The Battle of Hogwarts is supposed to be a Documentary made 20 years after the final battle. It has a small amount of narration, but it is mostly interviews with survivors from both sides. This includes well known characters such as Hannah Abbott, Dean Thomas, Luna Lovegood, and Ginny Weasley as well as a former Death Eater and some unnamed students. A promising premise. Visually, it's beautifully done. The sets, the lighting and the camerawork were great. The writing, however, could have been better.

My main issue with it is the obsessive focus on Harry and his story, especially his "coming back from the dead". The interviewer was asking the same pointed questions about Harry's "coming back" to every single person and it got a little tiring. More importantly, it felt like a waste. Instead of focusing so obsessively on this one aspect of the battle and on Harry it would have been amazing if  these characters had been allowed to tell their own stories and give us something new, something we didn't know from the books. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything new or original presented here, all of the details came strictly from the books leaving the intriguing possibilities of all these characters' own separate experiences unexplored.

What I really like about fanfiction is that it doesn't necessarily focus on Harry. I read fanfiction to hear the story of a random character that was mentioned maybe once or twice in the books, or to get a totally different perspective on the same events, and usually fanfiction authors are very original... unfortunately even when they were interviewing a former Death Eater the writers of this fanfilm focused obsessively on Harry. I was particularly upset when the Death Eater was saying he hoped Harry Potter would forgive him. Dude, it's a struggle that engulfed the entire Wizarding world, there were people that suffered a lot more than Harry! If he was going to ask for forgiveness he should ask it of the people he hurt and tortured, the Muggle-Borns whose lives were ruined, the people he failed - not Harry.

The other main annoyance was the dialogue. It felt very fake and unnatural at some points. I'm not talking about the accents, I'm talking the actual words that were chosen and how it didn't seem to flow naturally. This was especially the case with some of the narrator's lines, the lines of the middle aged man with the wine glass, and the woman whose face wasn't showing. Also, sometimes the word choice made me feel like this documentary was filmed by Muggles. For example, Harry and Ginny living out their lives in the Muggle world as just an "ordinary" family... if the documentary was made by Wizards then it wouldn't be "ordinary" to choose to live away from Wizard society and we would have had some comments on the odd ways that Muggles live...

As for the accents, the first time I saw this they actually didn't annoy me too much. I was focusing on what they were saying and on the great visuals and wondering which character was going to be next, so the accents didn't register so much. I did notice the narrator's weird accent, but I assumed that it was a Scandinavian accent and kept going. However, now that I watch this a second time the accents really stood out and I fear that the narrator's accent wasn't a Scandinavian accent at all - just a bad attempt at a British accent. I can understand if they couldn't find actual British actors or actors that could do convincing British accents, and I think they made up for it by picking the actors based on physical resemblance to the child actors that did Potter. Luna, Hannah, Ginny, and Dean looked so much like the actors from the Potter films. Also, the actress for Ginny and the two in the woods did have great/genuine British accents.

Overall, this fanfilm isn't a bad one. Whoever did the filming and the visuals should definitely go on to do more  because they did an impressive job, but it could have done with better writing. I don't think it would hold the interest of non-Potter fans and I honestly wouldn't recommend it unless you are starving for a new Potter-related film, but check out a couple of minutes of it just for the visuals!