Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, in a scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (Warner Bros. Pictures)
The boy wizard with glasses and a lightning-bolt scar morphed into a man on-screen.
He stopped wearing the Hogwarts uniform. He kissed a girl. He grew whiskers and chest hair.
And at midnight tonight, when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 arrives in theaters, he will face the flat-nosed Lord Voldemort in a spectacular 3-D showdown.
It is the eighth and final Harry Potter film.
The movie posters say, “It all ends July 15,” but that’s tough for kids like Connor Braaten to imagine. Born in 1998, one year after the first book and three years before the first movie, Connor has never known a Potter-less world.
“I think he will live on forever,” says the seventh-grader, who lives in Katy and, with his blond hair, looks a bit like Draco Malfoy.
Connor and his sister, Catherine, will be in line at 6 p.m. for the midnight premiere.
“Normally, we wear our Harry Potter T-shirts,” says Catherine, 17, “but this year we’ll wear robes.”
Catherine and Connor Braaten, 17 and 13, at home in Katy with their pop-up Harry Potter book. They'll line up for the midnight premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. (Mayra Beltran/Chronicle)
The siblings have read all the books and seen all the movies. Of course. On a bookshelf in Connor’s room sits a cup of hand-carved wands.
The Braaten family happened to be in London for the release of the fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Although the Brits weren’t nearly as enthusiastic as they expected — there were “a couple kids in hats” at the theater, Connor recalls — it was cool to see the story on home turf.
Last summer, the family visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., where they were dazzled by the Forbidden Journey ride, which took them through Hogwarts Castle and some high points of Harry’s story.
“Even though they’re four years apart and a girl and a boy, this has been something they could share,” says Cindy Braaten, their mother.
Tonight, both are braced for tears.
“I’m hoping they do the flash forward at the end,” Catherine says. “So we can see them older. No matter what, I’ll be bawling.”
Connor predicts he’ll get emotional, too.
“I want the Battle of Hogwarts to be perfect,” he says. “Really. I had a breakdown when I was reading about it. I had to stop for a while.”
Ralph Fiennes as Lort Voldemort (Warner Bros. Pictures)
The Warner Bros. film franchise of J.K. Rowling’s seven-book series has grossed nearly $6.4 billion worldwide. It’s one of the most successful film franchises in history — in the company of James Bond and Star Wars.
“It was unique that the books were still coming out when the films were being made,” notes Charles Dove, a film professor at Rice University. “The films functioned as advertisements for the books. They leapfrogged each other in terms of sales.”
For Dove, the films got better as they got darker: “The first really good one, from an adult perspective, is The Prisoner of Azkaban. Evil becomes more threatening.”
It was wise, too, he says, to keep the films as British as the books, luring some of Britain’s finest actors.
But it started with the books.
“For librarians and booksellers, the series opened doors,” says Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop. “It said kids could read big books. It made fantasy more acceptable. It made it OK for adults to read children’s lit.”
And with the exception of Daniel Radcliffe’s recent revelation — that he had problems with alcohol in 2009 — the franchise has been scandal-free. Which is amazing, considering that Radcliffe, who plays Harry, Emma Watson (Hermione) and Rupert Grint (Ron) grew up in the public spotlight.
Of course, Harry and company will live on in different ways. Connor Braaten is waiting for the new LEGO Harry Potter video game, which will cover the final three books and four films. In the fall, author Rowling will unveil Pottermore, an interactive website with loads of new stuff about the series.
But the books and movies are over.
Mary Catherine Edwards, a recent graduate of Stratford High in Houston, bought tickets to tonight’s midnight premiere in Memorial City a month ago. Like the Braatens, the Houston teen heard the stories before she read them. When her grandmother read the first book to her older sister, she got hooked.
For the 18-year-old, the allure is the religious theme and the elaborate plot. And tonight, for the last time, she and 16 friends will dress up in school uniforms and stand in line with everyone else: the kids in black robes; the teens and 20-somethings who have seen all the movies too many times to count; the parents and grandparents who got hooked, too.
“It’s going to be weird that there’s not something Harry we’re waiting on,” says Edwards, who’s off to Baylor University in the fall. “But it’s also very fitting that it’s happening when I’ve started moving on, as well.”
