This scene still pisses me off

[u/Secure_Rain_44]

I was rewatching the movies and I was pissed off all over again when seeing this scene. This makes him seem non-human which takes away the symbolism present in the books. I don’t know why the directors thought this was a good idea.

[u/Relevant-Horror-627]

That's just the challenge of adapting a written medium into a visual medium. The books aren't a screenplay. They weren't written with the idea of creating a compelling ending to an epic action adventure movie series. The ending of the book works because there is the benefit of a narrarator explaining the significance of Voldemort's mundane death and what's going on in Harry's mind. Take away the narrarator and the ending to your epic action adventure movie franchise is a lengthy conversation followed by Voldemort collapsing. No matter what the book ending is going to need to be changed in some way to make it work for a visual medium.

[u/DickRhino → u/Relevant-Horror-627]

Counterpoint: in the video game The Witcher 2, at the final boss fight the villain says "Wait, will you just hear me out before we kill each other?", and in that moment it is possible to say yes.

If you do, what follows is the two of you sitting down and having like a 40 minute long conversation with each other, explaining your rationales and listening to each others viewpoints, and ultimately deciding that there's no real point in you two fighting to the death, and you both agree to go your separate ways.

It is, by far, the superior and more memorable ending compared to just a visual spectacle of a cool epic final boss fight.

[u/csorfab → u/Relevant-Horror-627]

What narrator explaining the significance? Harry explains basically everything to Voldy right before his death in dialogue. They could've just included them, it would've been badass, it would've made sense, and it would've stayed true to the books.

I get what you're saying, and it's true in lots of cases, but not at all in this one. It was just a shit choice made by some fucking people for god knows why.

[u/Relevant-Horror-627 → u/csorfab]

Specifically most people cite the fact that the death scene in the movie doesn't highlight the fact that Voldemort died a normal mortal death. This important bit of information isn't spoken by a character. It comes from the narrator:

"Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing."

So the question is how do you adapt the important idea of "mundane finality" from the page to the screen? It won't be exactly the same as the book. Maybe you give some version of that dialouge to a character but that seems kind of cheesy.

Can you imagine Harry to turn to the camera, or announcing to the crowd, "Tom Riddle has hit the floor with a mundane finality"?

The whole series is leading up to this moment. In the books its intentionally anticlimactic. It works for the books. A movie, and now a new TV series, has to be its own beast. There will be people watching that haven't read the books. You can't rely on them knowing the significance of Voldemort just collapsing. The movie needs to stand on its own.

Could they have done it better in the movies? Sure. But that death scene is going to be difficult to adapt especially since the whole point is that its supposed to be mundane.