Camille Soroudi, 18, and her friends London Venturelli, 19, and Gaby Witte, 18, arrived for the 12:15 a.m. show at CityWalk dressed as Gryffindor and Slytherin students. Soroudi was anxious for what she was about to see on screen.
"It better live up to the book," said Soroudi of Tarzana, who with her friends started a Harry Potter club at Brentwood High School when they were students there. "I don't want it to be like 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.' If you're going to bring the book to the big screen, do it right. They should have brought [director] Chris Columbus back."
The darker sixth installment in the Potter franchise, which finds the Death Eaters, mobilized by the return of Harry's antagonist Lord Voldemort, threatening Hogwarts and the wizarding world, is directed by David Yates, who did the previous film and is at work on the final two installments.
There was fan outrage last year when Warner Bros. abruptly postponed the release of "Half-Blood Prince" for eight months to maximize its marketplace position, and many wondered if the delay would adversely affect box office returns.
But Potter-mania via cyberspace didn't end with online ticket purchasing. Fans of the boy wizard and his sidekicks have made "Harry Potter" a top 10 "trending topic" on Twitter since July 13. As midnight neared Tuesday, many tweets buzzed with anticipation.
Around 6 p.m. PDT, "Erickaholic" wrote: "Waiting in line for the harry potter premierrr :)"
"Bamberella" wrote: "Harry Potter tonight . . . not an avid book reader but fan enough to go to the midnight showing. Boo ya!"
Others, like "PhantomWho," planned to tweet their thoughts of the movie as they watched it.
And many expressed their plans to watch Harry, his sidekick Ron and brainy gal pal Hermione more than once.
"Are you kidding?" said Lauren Poissant, 19, of Long Beach, who came dressed as Rubeus Hagrid and lugged along an egg (made of papier-mache) housing the baby dragon Norbert. "I'm definitely going to see it more than once. It's just that kind of movie."
For some, once the 2 1/2-hour film came to an end, the spell wore off and reality set in again.
Kristine Espinoza, 19, of Carson left the screening feeling "really incomplete" for two reasons: she had an 8 a.m. physics class in a few hours, and the end of the film meant the waiting process for the next cinematic chapter had just begun.
"I'm eager for the next one to come out," said Espinoza, who didn't make it home until 4 a.m. "I don't know when it will come out . . . but I can only hope they don't push back the release of that one."
Others were still caught up in the magic.
"I thought it was really, really, really, really good," Poissant said, listing her favorite scenes. "Stuff was altered. Some scenes were added . . . but, overall, it was excellent. I liked it more than the last film, for sure . . . I could have watched it for another hour."
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yvonne.villarreal@latimes.com
ben.fritz@latimes.com
