Joey’s Musings

I warn you now. This post contains spoilers to both the book and movie of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I did my best to leave things out that would spoil things for people who have yet to read “The Deathly Hollows.” I would also love to hear your comments about the movie.

So Thursday afternoon I went to go and see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was a good movie. Unfortunately it pissed me off at the same time.  It pissed me off worse then the Order of the Phoenix Movie.

The Order of the Phoenix pissed me off because a great many things were left out of the movie that were in the book. I was able to forgive this for two reasons. First, is tha obviously not everything in a book can be put into a two and a half hour movie. The second reason is that when the Order of the Phoenix was being made Deathly Hollows (The last book) was not out yet so they didn’t know that cutting out some of the stuff they cut out might come back to bite them in the butt later.

With the Half-Blood Prince I cannot forgive them for leaving out just about 75% of the book. Again, yes I understand that the movie can’t have everything from the book unless they want to make a minimum of a four hour movie. However, Deathly Hollows was out before they were even writing the script for the Half-Blood Prince. They knew what was in the final book. This movie gave them a chance to correct some of the issues I had with the Order of the Phoenix, highlight how the Muggle World (Non Magic Users) and the Magical world interacted with each other in the meeting between Fudge, Scrimgeour and the Muggle Prime Minister. I believe that having Dumbledore’s conversation with Harry and the Dursely’s was important because Kreacher plays an important role in the Deathly Hollows and they should show why Kreacher has to obey Harry. People who didn’t read the book wouldn’t understand.

In this book they introduce another Death Eater (well, more of an honorary Death Eater for all practical purposes), Fenrir Greyback. In the movie, they show him, they a wanted poster for him, but they never explain who or what he is. They give him no development. Yes, he is not the most important Death Eater, but his background is what makes him important to readers (and movie watchers), but they totally ignore it.

In the book there are (Basically) two fight scenes. Potter vs. Malfoy, which they had and did a decent job with in the movie. But they didn’t put moaning Myrtle in, or the aftermath with Harry getting in trouble for using Sectumsempra, a dark magic spell.

The second fight in the book is a battle between Hogwarts Professors, some members of the Order of the Phoenix such as Tonks, Lupin and Bill Weasley and some of the member sof the D.A. (Dumbledores Army) such as as Hermoine, Ron, Neville and Luna who fought against several Death Eaters including Draco Malfoy, The Carrow siblings and Fenrir Greyback and Severus Snape amongst others. In the movie they basically cut out this scene. They just had the Death Eaters show up and wait for Dumbledore and Potter to arrive on the Tower. To make it worse they didn’t have Potter in his cloak and petrified by Dumbledore. They just had him standing there like an idiot.

To make up for the lack of the Hogwart’s battle scene they made a new battle, which took place at the Weasley’s during Christmas. The fight scene was horribly choreographed and lasted maybe 1 minute and ended in teh destruction of the Weasley household. It totally ignored the fact that in the book teh Weasley Household is probably the third safest place for Potter because of extra protections put in place by the ministry, as well as the fact as Voldermort had basically ordered Potter to not be touched because he wanted to follow through with his plans of getting rid of Dumbledore and taking over the ministry. It also nerfed Ginny Weasley’s ability as a fighter. Something those of us have read in the books, You don’t mess with Ginny because her combat spells tend to be very destructive.

Now in the case of Harry and Dumbledore’s trips into the memories of various people who, whether knowingly or not, had information on Voldermorts past they forgot to have the discussions about the memories. I understand, and agree that they didn’t show harry viewing all of the memories. It would have made the movie way to long. But what they have done was had Dumbledore say there were other memories after Harry found out about the Horcruxes and tell Harry what he believed, at least about the cup because Harry knew about the cup in the book.

Actually, I believe Dumbledore (and I don’t blame Michael Gambon, at least not completely) was misportrayed. Dumbledore is supposed to be, for the most portrayed as a somewhat carefree and very friendly guy, who even when serious has a nicness and humerous attitude. In the movie, the script has him portrayed as this always perfectly serious guy who has no joy and seems to have no feelings.

Snape was another big mess up in character development in this movie. They got it right towards the beginning when he made the unbreakable vow. However later, they actually showed the argument between Dumbledore and Snape, something not done in the Half-Blood Prince book, it is only mentioned by Hagrid that they were in an argument. And at teh end when Snape kills Dumbledore they had him show emotion, mainly to me what seemed more like guilt and sadness. In the book, he is virtually emotionless when this happens. For this, I do blame the actor, Alan Rickman. I think he forgot to read that part of the book when he was preparing for the role. They also never showed the buildup of hate and mistrust Harry had for Snape. Yes, it is not a secret and is shown in the other books, but even before Snape kills Dumbledore Harry and Snape are butting heads more and more throughout the book.

Now down to the relationship between Harry and Ginny. Yes it is important. It is a part of the book that shows Harry does care about other things other then just VOldermort. He is a 16 year old. Hormones are flowing. He wants to hook up with some girl, Ginny Weasley to be specific. Though they had the timing of there eventual kiss about right, (After he gets in trouble for using Sectursempra) but it was in the Room of Requirement, right next to the vanishing cabinet. They should have had him get detention from Snape and him missing the Quidditch match. It would have shown that Hogwarts business truly went on as normal. It would also had made the kiss a better and more meaningful scene, instead of this Ginny being kind of a mysterious tease.

My last major peeve with the movie they didn’t have Dumblefore’s funeral. It was one of the most touching scenes in the book. It also showed how important Dumbledore was in the wizarding world.

In short they basically one or two pages from like five chapters, amde a script out of them and added a lot of crappy filler content and cheapened out on on getting actors to play roles of Death Eaters and Order of the Phoenix members and hoped that the name “Harry Potter would bring in money for them, which unfortunately it did, and will bring in more.

 Loading ...