Anyone seen it yet?  It opened in the US and the UK (and probably elsewhere around the world) yesterday.

It's broken a few first-day records, and may break opening weekend records.  Story here.

The film brought in $92.1 million USD on opening day in the US.  That's nearly $20 million more than the previous record-holder, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which held the record for two years.

Its opening day total in the UK was $14.8 million USD.  Warner Bros. (the film's distributor) says that's the biggest single day take in the UK ever for a movie.

And In a single day, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 took in more money than four of the previous seven Potter films did over their entire opening weekends.

Okay, okay, so it's not necessarily all about the money ;-)

I plan to see it after the crowds die down.  Then I'll probably miss the movies so much that I'll re-read all the books (yet again :-)

How about you?  If you saw it, what did you think?  If you haven't yet seen it, do you plan to?  How do you feel about the end of an era of Harry Potter films?

I saw it last night and *loved* it!  I've read all the books more than once and still believe the movies cannot even begin to compare to the books.  But I was presently surprised by this last movie.  It most certainly was the grandest of finales!

Strangely, I am not sad to see the end of the Potter era.  It was a perfect time to end.  And what an end it was!

**Spoiler Alert**

Two of my favorite characters ended up being Neville and Snape.  I was thrilled to finally understand Snape after all this time.  :)

Jul 16, 2011 -- 10:58PM, jane2 wrote:

Harry Potter belongs to my kids and their kids. I was always too old. Wonder if my son and d-i-l and their three teens went to the midnight movie last night.

I thought that for myself at one point, too.  I didn't begin reading the books until Order of the Phoenix (the 5th book) was in paperback.  Even then, I thought I'd probably be too old for what I assumed was juvenile fiction.  So I bought Sorcerer's Stone and Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time (Newberry Award winner) on the same day, assuming that Wrinkle (which I'd read when I was 10) would engage me more than Sorcerer's Stone. 

Surprisingly, I was wrong.  I love L'Engle, I still loved Wrinkle, and I heard L'Engle lecture at one point.  But still, I found that Sorcerer's Stone engaged me from a literary standpoint - as an adult reader - far more than did Wrinkle.  (Conceptually, Wrinkle has the edge over Sorcerer's Stone; but as the Potter series progresses, it reaches the level and depth of issues that L'Engle addresses in Wrinkle.)

I also discovered that each of the Potter books is progressively more "adult," in keeping with the aging and progressive maturity of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, et al.  So, for example, Deathly Hallows is a much more satisfying read for me than Sorcerer's Stone because the former seems to me to be directed to a more adult audience than the latter.

All that said, your mileage may still vary :-)