I wouldn't consider myself a diehard Harry Potter fan. I remember when the first books came out and so many people my age were obsessed with them (they were, in a sense, written for my generation-- we "grew up" with them.) I knew the general idea of what they were about, and at the time it wasn't appealing to me. Even now, if I heard of a popular book series about wizards and magic and castles, I wouldn't read them. Fantasy books are not really my "thing."
But movies are less of a commitment, and when one of the first few movies came out (I think it was the third one) I watched it. And it wasn't the best movie I had ever seen-- but I liked it. Which led me to watch another one... and another one... and then purchase another one... and eventually I found myself being drawn in to the story, especially when the last few movies came out and it became more intense.
I tried to read a couple of the books after I started watching the movies. The first was one of a movies I had already seen-- and it was hard to read because I knew what was going to happen. I bought another one, which I hadn't seen, but I found myself feeling like I was "ruining" the next movie for myself. It was almost like watching half a movie and then picking up a book and trying to read the end. I couldn't do it.
So, no, I wouldn't consider myself a diehard Harry Potter fan. I didn't read any of the books; I didn't follow the movies when they were first made. But I have watched all of them, I owned half of them when I wrote my bucket list, and I think the story is beautiful-- especially the ending.
When this last movie came out, I knew that I wanted to go back and watch them all in order. I felt like there were a lot of details that I didn't remember from the first few movies that the entire plot built off of or the later movies referenced. I owned the fourth, fifth and sixth movies, but I hadn't seen the first three since I was a kid. Most of them I saw right when they were released and since there was a year or two between when I saw each one, it was easy to forget a lot. The story was drawn out over about a decade. That's a long time. It's really easy to miss things.
My original plan was to borrow or rent the movies that I didn't already own. But there ended up being a couple things that led me to buy all of them.
First, I heard a rumor that they were planning to stop selling them individually after Christmas and only sell 8-DVD sets or one individual movie for a few months at a time (kind of how Disney releases it's classic movies.) Since I owned about 3 or 4, I felt like I needed to make sure I watched my marathon before Christmas-- and maybe try to buy the ones I didn't own when I could, if I had the money. I didn't want to have to buy the entire set later on when I already owned half of it.
Also, around the time the last movie was a released on DVD, Target put all of the Harry Potter DVDs (besides the last two) on sale for $5 each. That same week Brian and I were "window shopping" at Mall of America (the poor person's idea of a date) and found the last two movies on sale for about $10-15 bucks each. Which was really cheap, so I ended up buying those too.
I should mention, since the $5 Harry Potter movies at Target were such a good deal, a lot of the movies were out of stock-- particularly the first two. I was able to get rain checks so I could buy them later at the sale price, but I was so antsy to watch them, that I ended up driving all over the Twin Cities area until I finally found the last one I needed in Brooklyn Park (if you don't know, that's about 30 minutes from my apartment and 30 minutes from Brian's, so I went pretty far out of my way.) And the only reason they were in stock was because that Target forgot to display the sale sign, even though it rang up at the sale price. It was kind of exhilarating to put so much effort in to completing the set, so I started watching them about an hour after I bought the last one.
I invited Alyssa over to watch the first two. And all the characters were so LITTLE! I couldn't believe we were that little when they were first made. I also realized that day that it was very possible I hadn't watched the second one, because I couldn't remember any of it. For some reason, I was convinced I had seen them all. Maybe I just couldn't remember since it was released about 10 years ago. But it helped me remember who Dobby was (I didn't understand his significance when I first watched the last two movies), and it made the entire plot make more sense too.
The rest of the movies I watched with Brian. I think it was kind of painful for him: he really likes them-- that wasn't an issue, but I have a tendency to fall asleep during movies. Especially lately since I work earlier than I used to. So a couple of them he ended up watching about 3 times, because I kept falling asleep. It felt like all we were doing with our free time was watching Harry Potter. I even had dreams about being a Harry Potter character running from Professor Snape. It took about a week, but we finally finished all of them.
And the story, as a whole, made a LOT more sense watching them all at once. It was definitely a worthwhile experience and I'll probably do it again-- since I own all of them. :)
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