Harry Potter: The Complete 8-Film Collection

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Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves 'Dumbledore's Army,' Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing the courageous young wizards for the extraordinary battle that lies ahead. It looks as if getting to Hogwarts will be impossible when Ron and Harry find that the magical gateway to Platform 9¾ is sealed against them, but a little ingenuity and the theft of Mr Weasley`s flying Ford Anglia insures that they make it to school in time for the beginning of term.

As it is, it’s difficult for me to judge this film on its own, and I really have to watch the final instalment also to see how well The Deathly Hallows fares on its way to the screen. There are no main menu screens, but Top Menu does take you out of the movies and presents the extras in separate menus. All that Harry, Ron, and Hermione need to do is to find the final few Horcruxes and destroy them, to render Voldemort vulnerable.

I suspect that it was never meant to be, it was instead supposed to grab the fans of the books at the age when what they wanted to see was the book faithfully recreated on screen. For Harry's protection, Azkaban has sent an army of soul-sucking Dementors to guard Hogwarts from a possible attack by Black - but they turn out to be as much of a threat to Harry as Black himself. Of course, Harry's wishes for an uneventful school year are almost immediately shattered when he is unexpectedly chosen, along with fellow student Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), as Hogwarts' representative in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, which awards whoever completes three magical tasks the most skilfully with a thousand-galleon purse and the admiration of the international wizarding community. I loved the way the books were written, growing up with their target audiences; fantastic, colourful children’s stories for The Philosopher’s Stone, and full on angsty teen fiction by the time Deathly Hallows came around. In an ideal world, they would have just shot a four and half hour movie and released that, it has been done before, but the studio have to get their money’s worth.

That would come later in the run, but The Goblet of Fire does manage to tell its story in the space of 2½ hours, although it has to be ruthless with what it cuts out. But it really is Harry, Ron and Hermione for much of the film with just the odd interlude to see what Voldemort is up to.In 'The Deathly Hallows: Part One' (2010) Harry, Ron and Hermione, now no longer at Hogwarts, set out on a dangerous quest to uncover and destroy the lost Horcruxes, the secret behind Voldemort's immortality.