Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
After a 2 years wait, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is finally here. It’s well worth the wait. First of all it’s so nice to be reunited with my favorite characters on the screen! Just seeing them put a smile on my face. Then the surprising direction to play up the light-hearted moments, the romantic and comedy aspects of the book really give the series a whole new feeling and even look as well. It’s actually a well-needed balance from the last movie and I can imagine for the next one too since we know the war is imminent.
Going into the theater I know it will be much different than the book because the book was humongous, there’s no way they can put everything in the film. Indeed many scenes and characters and events were cut, a few I have problem with, but in most cases they are acceptable. And of course following the cut there would be scenes changes to make things more cohesion, and to my surprise there are even new scenes that don’t exist in the book added as well! The added scene at the café inside a train station served as a mission statement for the movie, it pretty much telling you that they are not kids any more, they are now teenagers and ready to date! While the burning of the Burrow showed that no place is safe from now on, all bets are off!
The change scenes are the ones that I actually like a lot, like how the collapse of a fictional bridge in the muggle world becomes the real Millennium Bridge in London. That is quite effective because I was on the bridge at one time and it’s very scary to imagine it would sway around and collapse! Another great one is when after Harry’s unsuccessful attempt to spy on Malfoy on the train and was left frozen on the train floor with his invisibility cloak on him. It was Luna instead of Tonks, who found him with her Spectrespecs. The scene just works much better because it makes so much sense that Luna is the one who wander around and looking everywhere for no apparent reason! And her line after she fixes his bloody nose – priceless!
Now out of all the scenes that got cut the one I have the most problem with is the battle scene at the end that was going on at the same time as the drama unfolded at the Astronomy Tower. Hogwarts suppose to be well defended, even the bad guys can sneak in, they need to fight to go around or get out! Even if they cut the scene either deal to budget or their reasoning of avoiding repetition of the next installment, they could have it happened off screen, just like how they never showed on screen with the rest of the champions fighting dragons in the tournament in the fourth movie! With the battle scene cut, I have no idea how they can resolve the ramification of the result of the battle – where Bill Weasley was heavily injured by the werewolf Death Eater Fenrir!
And that’s not the only plot hole they need to resolve due to these changes – It is now Ginny who hide the potion textbook in the room of requirement, not Harry. This is important because where he hide the book was actually the location of where one of the Horcrux is, without that memory of where the textbook is, I dunno how he’s going to find the Horcrux. In addition, Dumbledore told Harry his suspicion of what are the remaining Horcruxes in the book, but in the film he didn’t mention it so it will add another layer of difficulty for Harry to find the Horcruxes since he now need to guess what they are!
Other things I like in the film: foreshadowing what’s to come – the showing of the empty wand shop, so we know the wandmaker from 1st movie will be back on screen in the next film; The cursing of Katie Bell – that scene when she fly off the air and scream with her hair flying around – creepy!!!; Harry used the “for enemies” spell – Sectumsempra – from the potion book on Malfoy and almost killed him if Snape wasn’t there to heal the deep wounds – that was very powerful and dramatic with blood in the water; The internal conflict of Malfoy is brought out by the excellent performance of Tom Felton, Draco is no longer a one-dimension bully but someone who is clearly in pain and is in a unwilling situation that he can’t get out of; Jim Broadbent’s version of Slughorn is a lot more likable in the film than in the book; liquid luck makes you appears drunk!; Weasley Twin’s Joke shop – as awesome as I imagined! Every costumes that Luna wears!!; Dumbledore borrowed the knitting magazine and confessed to Harry that he likes to knit!; McGonagall’s few but effectively humorous lines; Lavender Brown’s comical performance and the super hottie Cormac McLaggen!
Now let’s take a look at the awesome posters from the movie and reset our countdown until the next one! :)
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