Judging from the advanced ticket sales and pent-up anticipation, the chances are good that you braved the crowds of costumed Harry Potter fans to see The Deathly Hallows Part 2 at midnight. The tragic, violent and nostalgic finale hits many of the notes Potter fans have been waiting to see onscreen with aplomb ("I open at the close"!), but there are still some pretty hefty changes -- especially involving Alan Rickman's Severus Snape. Why did screenwriter Steve Kloves decide to move the location of Snape's biggest Hallows moment?
Ed. note: spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't read the book.
Well, he didn't. "The boathouse was not my decision," Kloves said at a press conference for Harry Potter last weekend when asked why Snape's death took place in a boathouse instead of the J.K. Rowling-approved Shrieking Shack. "I wrote it for the Shrieking Shack. The Shrieking Shack has always been a problematic set for us. [Production designer] Stuart Craig did as brilliant a job as anyone could, but I think we felt that given the magnitude of this moment -- I think David Yates wanted something a bit more visual for himself." Not that the director went off half-cocked; per the press notes, Yates received permission from Rowling to switch the setting of the pivotal scene.
The boathouse isn't the only Snape-centric addition in the final film; Harry also confronts the sullen wizard in the Great Hall, a moment teased during the marketing campaign. "I liked particularly the Great Hall -- it was one moment, it came into my mind," Kloves said at the press conference about the added scene. "What happened to me in that case was Harry seeing Snape standing where Dumbledore would stand, and saying, 'How dare you stand there where he stood?' I thought that's really where the emotion is for Harry. You defiled this place by killing the headmaster, and that was the best way to express that visually."
Despite the fact that it isn't in the book, the scene works as Kloves intended in the finished film -- not that he was surprised. "To me that's a good move for us. It's a visual and a literary stroke. That's what we try to do in Potter, as opposed to being always in lock-step with the books. Though, emotionally, we're absolutely in lock-step with the books, which was always our guide."
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is out now.