Hold on to your Horcruxes

I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I'm just going to get that out of the way. I made my own wand, my own broomstick, my own robes that no longer fit me, and haven't since I was 11....the works. Since I was 10, I have read and reread the books, and when the movies first came out, I was ecstatic. The first two movies were amazing. I even bought a poster for the fourth movie. However, then, I saw it. I was dissappointed. The changes it was bringing were not welcome. But that was nothing compared to the fifth abomination. The longest, richest book in the series was castrated and condensed into the shortest and shallowest movie. That was the last Potter movie I saw in theaters. When "Half Blood Prince" came out, therefore, I was more than wary. I waited til it was released on dvd, and then I watched it.

The movie was dissappointing. Certainly, I understand that long, rich books cannot be completely represented in film. However, there is a difference between cutting out the occasional unimportant detail, or maybe condensing a couple of events, and castrating a story. Half Blood Prince does the latter. While I was more entertained by it than by the fifth movie, I still found myself resentful of how it treated the book. It was made for those who'd read the books. No explanatory details were given at all. You understood what was happening if you had read the book, but not otherwise. This lack of explanation left me very much unsatisfied, and very much resentful of the story.

Another serious PLOT SPOILER AHEAD omission from the movie were the other memories of Dumbledore. Instead of the backstory of Voldemort being revealed, painting his past and corruption as gradual, and his entire journey to creating his horcruxes (the objects in which he hides pieces of his soul), you simply see Dumbledore meeting him and him asking about them. One is left wondering "what the hell is happening and what the hell are horcruxes" rather than actually figuring anything out. Dumbledore is also much less powerful than he was in the book, requiring much more help then the Dumbledore of the book. As for his funeral, that is also taken out of the movie, taking out most of the dramatic and emotional impact of Dumbledore's death. Dumbledore dies, yeah, but the lack of the funeral scene takes away Harry's, and therefore the audience's, ability to deal with the death.

On to the stylistic criticism. The movie also was shoddily edited. throughout the first and second movies, and even into the third and fourth, the movies told a whole story. However, in the fifth and especially the sixth movie, the movie seems more to be a collection of random scenes that have some relation to each other. There is no continuity. When Harry attacks Draco, leaving him bleeding on a floor, the scene simply ends, and we never hear about it again. If I hadn't known the result of that attack in the book, it would have been an even bigger "WTF??" moment than it was. Transitions are completely abrupt, leaving no time for adjustment at all. Though two hours long, it still gave the impression, due to the crappy editing, that it was a short movie.

Another huge stylistic problem I have is with costuming. When the series started, everyone was wearing the same style of school uniform. Then the uniforms themselves changed a little bit in the third movie, and that got a bit annoying. Now it seems that everyone in Hogwarts is wearing jeans and t-shirts, or, if you're Draco Malfoy, a black three piece suit that looks more like it belongs in a Tim Burton film. In the books, the difference between Wizard and Muggle clothing is stressed again and again, and they attempted to show the differences in the first few films. Now wizards are dressed so that if we saw most of them on the street, we'd either think them slightly eccentric or Goth, not weird.

Acting was the only thing I didn't find sub par, even if I did find it underused. Alan Rickman gives quite a different interpretation of Snape then I was expecting, but not one that at all clashes with the character of the novels, as much as it may occasionally differ from the actions of the character. Sir Michael Gambon also gives a quite powerful performance as Dumbledore, despite the bad script he was given, he still gave the role his best and the film shows it. The "kid actors," most of whom are now adults, also gave quite good performances, particularly Emma Watson, playing Hermione dealing with Ron's idiocy and Harry's stubborness. Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy, while I applaud Mr. Felton for his acting talent, portrays the character as slightly too whiny for my tastes. While I'd say there are no bad actors in this movie, I did feel that Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, was nowhere near as good as he's been in the other movies.

Special effects were nothing special. Myself, the scene in which Slughorn transformed from couch to human was amusing less because of the idea of a human being a sofa, but instead because the special effects were horrible. Similarly, the effect used to show Apparition looked like it came right out of photoshop. Even the inferii had a distinctly "computer" look about them. The sets, besides Hogwarts, were also sub par, especially the "locket cave." The locket cave looks like something out of a 70's Doctor Who serial, not a multi million dollar movie.

All in all the movie, while better than the 5th, was still dissappointing. If you want to see relatively clever depictions of a collection of scenes from a great book, then the movie is fine. However, if you, like me, want to see a visual representation of the STORY of the books...well, you're S.O.L.