Saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at 9:30 yesterday morning — the old person’s midnight screening, let’s call it — and enjoyed it fine, Read the full post.
Jul 16
2009
08:00 PM ET
'Harry Potter' geeks: Vent your frustrations about the movie changes here!
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My kids (3teens) and I saw the midnight showing. I had been up all day since 5am for work and sat over 3 hrs in a movie theater waiting for it to start. I was so excited and then wanted to throw rocks at the screen by the time it was done! I maybe a “purist” when it comes to HP but what was the point of naming it HP & HBP if you left out half the book and added junk! I thought for sure I would cry when dumby died and surely by the time the funeral came – omg! no funeral! and the death was SOOOO anticlimatic and frustrating to watch the lame way they used Harry! I did tear a tiny bit at Fawkes’ departure – which made me wonder – if you go through the point of making that fine detail in the movie showing the end of dumbledore why not put in the major points like tom’s memories and the importance of what items might be horcruxes? I don’t get it and am extremely disappointed! I cried alright- but over the lameness of the storyline and what they did in defiling the story!
I thought they should have included the fight scene at the end between Harry and the good guys and Voldemort’s minions. This movie had less action than I like and putting this in the movie would have improved it for me. If Warners and director Yates were worried about the movie running long they could have cut about 5 minutes of the romantic subplot.
I haven’t seen it yet but after reading these comments I am a little bit wary.
So I kind of liked the Burrow burning down scene, only because this movie lacked the fighting and obvious tension of the ‘dark times’. But the other two were definite gripes that bothered me. The other thing was the lack of learning more about Tom Riddle, ie when a young adult Tom Riddle get’s the Hufflepuff heirloom. The most annoying thing that was missing was the fact that Harry did not seem as angry and upset as he should have been, as his godfather had just died!!!
I was frankly disappointed. I felt that they could have extended the film a few minutes and edited down some of the stuff that made it in and been more faithful to the story…the romance/hormones stuff got a lot of play, but the Harry/Dumbledore relationship seemed a little cold. Where was Voldemort? Why not end on the funeral? Did anyone else think the cinematography was TOO dark? And the cave scene…it had its moments, but didn’t hold a candle to the description in the book.
I have really enjoyed the last 3 movies, and the first couple were good, but I think this is the first time I’ve actually been disappointed. Perhaps my expectations were too high.
This all isn’t to say it was a bad movie…I’d give it a B+, and I thought the actors all did a great job as usual. Some of the special effects and sets were great, too.
where the hell was dumbledore’s funeral!?! why was so much left out of the book?! the reason its getting such good reviews is because the storyline is brilliant, but if you’ve read the book, the movie is very lacklustre, and lacks the magical ambience of the previous 5.
Clicked here just to see what this is about. Jeez folks, these are kids books made into a cheesy movie franchise. That’s it.
Everyone who isn’t a tween should be embarrassed to be posting here. Get out of the house and have a date. Maybe read the real news and find something concrete to care about. There’s plenty there to be upset about.
Which is why you’ve decided to pop up here, eh? Just seeing what this is about, huh? Oh, maybe if you took your own advice, instead of caring what Potter fans do with time, you could, I dunno, get a date, find something concrete to worry about, and of course, get out of the house.
The only thing worse than a loser is a person who spends their time all up in a loser’s business. That must mean you got less of a life, huh?
It is a MOVIE! Get a life…
I agree with everything you said 100%. I liked the movie, but I was certainly disappointed. I was angry about Dumbledore not freezing Harry. I agree with everyone else; Harry would NEVER have let that happen. He always plays the hero. I couldn’t believe there was no Death Eaters/OotP/Dumbledore’s Army fight. Everyone is right: what was the point of bringing them in to Hogwarts then. What angers me most is the omission of the funeral and the memories of Riddle tracking down his eventual horcruxes. Also, they didn’t talk about him killing his parents (how he ripped his soul to make horcruxes) What in the hell were they thinking for some of these things? The entire burrow scene in the middle could have been cut to make room for any of the things mentioned here. No Weasley is Our King made me sad as well. Oh one more thing: WHERE WAS DOBBY? I am worried he won’t be in DH and he is, in my opinion, a major charcater. I realy did like the movie- but I can’t resist critiquing it.
It was so far off the plot of the book, it wasn’t even funny. I mean what was the dopey director thinking, did he even read the books!
I thought that it the movie was a lot better than the ones in the past.
I agree with your first two points but your third one was not something that really bothered me.
I felt that Dumbledore’s death was handled very nicely. I know I know the deatheater and blah blah blah… but when you take that out it was done better than I thought it would be. I liked that there wasn’t a battle because it added a nice tone to the scene. Instead of making a bit noisy scene it was more quite which I felt added to it.
My biggest problem with the film was that sometimes there would be two people on screen and the person talking would be out of focus and the other person would be in-focus. That pissed me off to no end.
I’ll just second what others have said:
1) Dumbledore never explains anything to Harry about what Voldemort would likely have used for Horcruxes, finding important/significant items, etc. How will Harry know what to do in #7?
2) DEFINITELY wanted to see the Harry/Ginny kiss from the book. The movie scene felt like such a let-down.
3) The end really doesn’t make sense without the battle.
4) Harry would NEVER have stood by and let Malfoy point his wand at Dumbledore. Not having him immobilized ruined the entire scene.
5) Snape’s reveal was a big “so what”, and there was no explanation of the term “half blood prince”.
6) No way that Harry would read the Daily Prophet in a Muggle coffee shop.
7) Disapparating from Hogwarts? Not even Dumbledore should be able to do that!
But on the plus side, Ron + love potion = hysterical! And Lavender was great.
This is why I didn’t re-read the book because I knew it could never live up to my expectations. And it’s been forever since I read the book so I was more than prepared to enjoy the movie on its own, which I did. HOWEVER, the left-outs or rewrittens that peeved me the most were the Harry/Ginny kiss (if they’re gonna include Quidditch, which is time suckage anyway for the films, then they ought to have done the kiss the correct, by-the-book way; this does not bode well for the Ron/Hermione snoggle!). Second, where the heck was Dumbledore’s funeral??? A MAJOR character is killed and all you do is some kind of Freebird-style salute where the body has fallen? Puh-leze!
In my opinion, the movie’s greatest pitfall was REMOVING THE BATTLE SCENE in the end. According to the movie, Voldemort’s and Draco’s Big Secret Mission was to let the Death Eaters sneak into Hogwarts to watch him not kill Dumbledore, and then set Hagrid’s hut on fire, without really doing any other damage, when let’s face it, THEY COULD. They finally find a way into Hogwarts, and they’re not going to try and do everything they can?
It was horribly anticlimactic. And on top of that, the fight between Snape and Harry was laughably short and boring. I have no idea why David Yates opted to replace what is an important, crucial, and exciting battle at Hogwarts and between Harry and Snape for the trippy Burrow burning.
Don’t even get me started on how unimportant the whole “Half Blood Prince” plotline was in the movie. It could have even been written out, it was given that little weight.
awesomesauce – she was referring to the first movie when Luke had a crush on Leia BEFORE he knew they were siblings. There really was zero sexual chemistry between Luke and Leia. Whitney is saying that Harry and Ginny’s sexual chemistry in the movie was worse than that.