As we approach the eighth and final installment in the "Harry Potter" series, what can I say? You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind's blowing. The fans are already getting their tickets, while the less-committed have long since departed, especially since director David Yates has pretty much abandoned making sense of the plot for those who haven't read J.K. Rowling's books.
The fans will certainly find much to like in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." The exposition of "Part 1" gives way to a climactic struggle in which Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) — no longer a boy, but a tough and resilient wizard — and his friends Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint, Emma Watson) must find and destroy the final Horcruxes (magical objects) in which dark magus Lord Voldemort has alchemically stored pieces of his soul to make himself immortal. The siege of Hogwarts is suitably apocalyptic, the long and oblique character arc of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) finally pays off, and Ralph Fiennes gets to be his no-nosed nastiest as Voldemort has a final face-off with his nemesis Harry. (And mercifully there isn't any "I am your father, Harry" revelation in the denouement.)
The sceptics meanwhile can point to an opening scene where our heroes descend a roller-coasterlike track into a goblin vault, in what seems rather shamelessly like an ad for the inevitable Universal Studios theme park ride. There's also a major life-or-death plot twist -no spoiler here — that is just flat out inexplicable based on what the film gives us. The Christ allegories, meanwhile, are entirely predictable, the fallback position of every fantasy film striving for significance from "The Matrix Revolutions" to "The Lord of the Rings."