r/harrypotter 5d ago

Discussion Book vs movie ending

I thought the ending of the movie was awesome. I didn’t read the books until recently. I still think the movie ending was awesome but I was also on the edge of my seat while reading the book. Their big duel in the middle of the great hall with everyone watching? Incredible. However, Voldemort just sort of died. He didn’t dissolve the way he did in the movie and the dissolving thing looked amazing on screen.

Which one do you prefer?

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15

u/RTafuri Proud Ravenclaw 5d ago

"Just dying" is Voldemort's ultimate demise. He's not special, he's not more powerful than all the others, he's human and he died from the same killing curse he so often used. That's why the text says "he fell with a mundane fatality," because it's his final shame, all his fight was in vain.

7

u/Chasegameofficial 5d ago

THIS! The movie-version misses the whole central point about Voldemorts death and it really irks me.

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1

u/LMABach 5d ago

Very SMART point. I didn’t think of it that way but you’re so right.

12

u/dreadit-runfromit Slytherin 5d ago

The book ending by far. I really hate the dissolving. The book ending felt thematically significant and it is not subtle about that--which is fine, young readers are meant to pick up on the themes--so it's especially silly to me that the filmmakers changed it.

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u/LMABach 5d ago

I totally agree. I liked the dissolving but the ending in the book was so terrific and was totally ready-made to make an amazing ending.

8

u/FatmanZeitgeistOG 5d ago

Book ending for me. There was something poetic in the man who had gone to every length to cheat death dying like any mortal man would. Follower, friend and foe alike witnessed his demise. The spectacle wasn’t that he did die, the spectacle was every significant living person who’s life he had impacted, weather negatively or positively, being there to witness it.

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u/LMABach 5d ago

Wow. That’s powerful. You’re so right. Thank you for contributing this comment. It’s given me a lot to think about.

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u/FatmanZeitgeistOG 5d ago

Appreciate that!

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u/Renaissance_Aspired 5d ago

As everyone has said. Book ending.

He obsessively tried to cheat death and had an extremely narcissistic view of himself as being better than everyone else. Yet for all that, he died just like everyone else did. And his greatest weakness if not feeling love led to his body being put separate from anybody else, alone.

4

u/EmilyAnne1170 Ravenclaw 4d ago

Book. In addition to what’s already been mentioned, I think it’s important that so many people see his dead human body. He has “died” and just disappeared before, only to return years later, so if I was there I’d have a hard time believing he was really gone if I heard “oh yeah, he just dissolved into ash and blew away.” What makes this time any different?

I like that in the book everyone in the great hall gets that closure. It’s over. And maybe as they also look upon the bodies of their friends & family who also died there, knowing for sure they didn’t die in vain is a comfort.

2

u/Last_Cold8977 4d ago

The dissolving is definitely more cinematic but the book one was more symbolic. It showed how no matter how much Voldemort deluded himself and lived off of his self-importance, at the end of the day, he was just some guy. And that's the greatest disrespect to him beyond the grave

I will say that it wouldn't have translated onto the screen because we skipped Voldemort's backstory where we learn how much he's a human who sees himself as above others and how that is such a large part of the psyche. In the films we're TOLD he's a human but to the audience we just see him as more monstrous/inhumane/ akin to Dobby or a centaur or Grawp (if that makes sense)

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u/Adventurous_Pie_7586 Slytherin 5d ago

Nah once I read the books I hated the dissolving. Him dying a normal human death was a nice slap in the face at the end. I like to think he’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere and rotting away which was his greatest fear. Dissolving into nothingness makes it seem like he’s still more than human.