Movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

[amedia]

We went to see the movie last night with a friend from work, his daughter and one of her friends, and we all enjoyed it. I had started rereading the book earlier in the week, and hurried to get through as much as possible, though I didn't quite finish (I finished this morning - I had about 80 pages left).

They compressed a lot of the book, usually pretty well. I don't see why they had to introduce a new episode (the Death Eaters' attack on the Burrow) - they could have used that time to incorporate more canonical material. I was disappointed that they left out the memories showing us the Gaunt family; I had been wondering if Ralph Fiennes would play the elder Tom Riddle, since the book emphasized that the young Tom Riddle looked a lot like his father. But I was more disappointed that they left out the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters at the end of the book.

I did like the youngster who played the young Tom Riddle; he was appropriately creepy. His flashbacks, and some of the other scenes, had a kind of horror-movie flavor that worked pretty well, I thought.

The theater audience, which appeared predominantly teenaged, loved the teen-romance humor, and I thought the srs bzns and the comic relief were well-proportioned in the movie (which I also thought was true of the book). There was a huge collective gasp when the Inferius grabbed Harry's wrist, which was almost comical. Not when a more shocking event happened closer to the end--I think most of the audience had either read the book or at least heard of the ending. (Nonetheless, the young woman next to us turned to her companion as the credits began and said loudly, "That was the worst ending EVER." In general, there was a lot of rude behavior during the movie - people constantly going up and down the aisles, talking, checking their very bright cell phones for text messages, etc. I'm beginning to agree with our friend's wife, who stayed home because she simply doesn't like to see movies in theaters at all anymore.)

On the whole, though, I enjoyed this movie more than the previous two.

Comments

[naturalbluicons.livejournal.com]

The reasoning behind not having the final fight was that they don't want to have the fight in the seventh be rehash and stuff people will see and go "We've seen this before" which I actually do understand, because while they come off differently in the books, battle tends to look the same in movies, and they want to save the Hogwarts stage for the finale.

I missed the battle and seeing the Order again, but from a film-maker standpoint the reason does make sense.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

they don't want to have the fight in the seventh be rehash

That makes sense, especially with the Battle at the Ministry at the end of #5.

I can also understand why they didn't include the funeral--they would have had to have gotten an awful lot of expensive people together for one scene--I'm wondering if they'll include it in part 1 of #7, though.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten a lot of what happened in this book--I had thought the Burrow attack was new! (Also, was that a new Burrow than what we've seen in previous films?) Also, I had forgotten about the battle with the Death Eaters at the end--I remember now how Neville and Luna were the only ones from the original DA who showed up.

I've heard that book 7 will be split into two movies, so hopefully they'll be able to cover everything important. I am looking forward to a certain scene involving Bellatrix and Molly.

I liked the foreshadowing at the end, with Harry handling Dumbledore's wand. Nice.

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it was a new Burrow, but I loved the scene looking up the stairwell and seeing the different heads pop out at different levels!

I noticed the wand thing too - that *was* nice!