Having been a big supporter of the Harry Potter series since the very first book, it is nearly impossible for me to be an impartial observer of any of the books or films. So instead I'll recount how the movie impacted me subjectively
As with most good films, I was able to lose myself in the story. I was no longer a person sitting in a theater on the outside, I was in the action, running for my life from Death Eaters and traveling all over the country with Harry Ron and Hermione.
This film is based off the first half of the seventh book in the series. The filmmakers split the seventh book into two films so they don't have to condense over 10 hours of book into three hours of movie. With this new format they were able to go into much more detail that they didn't get out of the previous book-to-film transitions.
However, it does create complications for the next movie. Though this film has intensity and action in its own right, it is mostly exposition and rising action that will lead ultimately to the climax in the next film. This means that the next film will have all the action, and this movie, by comparison, will ultimately fall by the wayside.
The Deathly Hallows follows the story of Harry's quest to find and destroy Horcruxes, which will allow him to kill the dark lord Voldemort. His mentor Dumbledore is dead and Harry and his friends are on their own. They begin to learn about the mysterious Deathly Hallows, objects that make the possessor conqueror of death, and Harry begins a search for these too. Their paths lead them ultimately to the great wizarding war and Harry and Voldemort have a final showdown. The film, however, is cut off before the war begins and the audience is left with a cliffhanger ending.
The best part of the movie by far is when they recount the story of the Deathly Hallows. It is when Hermione is reading about the story of the Three Brothers from a children's book and animation is used to display the tale visually. The animation looks like hand-drawn ink on parchment and reminds me of the same animation used for classic Tim Burton films. It was fantastically done and displayed the story better than I could have imagined it.
Every time there is a book converted to film there are things, as a fan, that you would do differently, and the same goes for this film. There is a specific moment in the book when Ron as a character takes a tremendous leap forward and reveals himself as much more than just Harry's sidekick. They do a great job in portraying this moment onscreen with the special effects, but they cut his character short when they decide to insert a little humor at the end, rather than show real emotion and character development. In the book you see Ron in a whole new light, in the movie you think "same old Ron."
There are other things in the dialogue that would have been easy to change. Since the book relies heavily on dialogue, fans want to hear the same lines in the film that they read in the book. In some cases it would have taken hardly any time at all to incorporate a line from the book and the film could have been SO much stronger. And on the other hand, there were things they added that were not necessary and made the film weaker.
The acting ability from the three main characters has slowly improved over the last few films. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry has stopped looking constipated when he is portraying anger and Emma Watson as Hermione can actually convey emotion without looking fake. But the strongest performance, I think, came from Rupert Grint as Ron. Over the course of the film he has to be funny, serious, jealous, remorseful, in love, frightened, angry, gravely injured, foolish, and occasionally insightful; and he pulls these emotions off almost flawlessly.
Harry has certain dream sequences that reveal important parts of the plot and foreshadow events to come. These scenes could have been done better. In order to make it look like a dream and separate it from reality they often made it a series of short snippets of footage usually blurry and convoluted. It was hard to glean any information at all from these dreams and so the audience missed out on essential plot points. You would have to have read the book to understand what is really going on during these dreams.
All in all, they did a much better job in this film than others before it. Any changes I would have made to this film are minor in comparison to what I would change in the fourth fifth and sixth movies. It was exciting, fun, and fantastic. If this movie is any indication, then we are well on our way toward the truly epic finale that the Harry Potter series deserves.
