<41 days before - Harry Potter and the HBP

It's nearly 3:30 in the morning, and I've just come home from seeing the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And as I haven't blogged yet today, I thought I'd share my thoughts and impressions now while they're fresh in my mind. Just to warn you, these thoughts might not be the most coherent in the world, and I'll probably leave a number of things out.

Let's start with things I liked. Surprisingly, there were quite a few.

(This format, by the way, was stolen from my sister.)

THINGS I LIKED

-The directing: I love David Yates' directing. He has a good feel for the story, for what needs to be emphasized, and how to call attention to things. There was also a fair amount of little symbolic things thrown in, which was nice. Also, I don’t think I saw a single instance where a scene was stuck in for the sake of showing off their way cool special effects. In fact, on the whole, the special effects were pretty simple, just what was needed to tell the story and nothing more.

-Alan Rickman and Tom Felton: These two were phenomenal. Their acting was absolutely superb in this film. You could see the anguish and the divided loyalties of both Snape and Draco. Snape, of course, continues to be morally grey professor you love to hate. And after years of being the snotty little git that you want to punch in the face, Tom Felton actually enables you to feel a little bit sorry for Draco in this film. No easy task, that.

-Young Voldemort: Incredibly creepy! Which is as it should be.

-Harry/Ginny moments: Okay, I'll admit it . . . I'm a bit of a sucker for these. There were a number of nice little moments between Harry and Ginny, and also Ron and Hermione, of course. I did enjoy the scene in the Room of Requirement, though it may not be strictly canon. (Hang on though . . . I have more to say about this in a later section.)

-Harry/Hermione moments: I am not a Harry/Hermione shipper and never have been, but I do like the moments that these two had. Considering that Harry and Hermione were both having their hearts broken at about the same time, I think moments like these might have been natural between the two. I like exploring Harry and Hermione's relationship, though I do not think they ever should have paired up.

-Harry/Ron awkward moments: Harry, Ron, and nice skin. That's all I'm gonna say.

-Dumbledore's death: The whole thing. I have never in my life sat in a theatre that crowded and had it be that silent. That alone speaks for this scene's impact. It was the shining moment in the ending scenes. (More on that later.)

Okay, now on to some things I didn't like so much

LITTLE THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE

-Invisibility Cloak?: Throughout the movie, I found myself thinking, "Gee, if only Harry had some sort of article of clothing that would render him invisible . . ." I find it strange that they went to great lengths to find ways to hide Harry when the cloak is a perfect and non-complicated way to do this. Plus, in the book he uses the cloak ALL THE TIME! One of Dumbledore's instructions is that he keep it with him at all times. In the movie, he used it, like, once. Why didn't he have it with him? Your guess is as good as mine. (Also considering the prominent role it plays in the seventh book . . .)

-Harry and a waitress?: Really? I mean, it was cute and all, but not really conducive with Harry’s character. He’s not a lady’s man, or at least he doesn’t want to be. He has two crushes and two crushes only: Cho and Ginny. That’s it. No passing fancies with waitresses. No being tempted by Romilda Vane. No “but I AM the chosen one.” This isn’t Harry. Yeah, it’s funny, but I’m looking for more than funny.

-Dumbledore surprised: “I never imagined anything like this.” “I didn’t realize until just now.” Um . . . yes, he did. He knew, or at least suspected, what Voldemort had done. The final memory just confirmed it. Dumbledore knows everything, remember? And speaking of . . .

-”The locket, the cup, the snake, something Ravenclaw’s or Gryffindor’s . . .” Remember that mantra? Dumbledore fails to explain a number of key things about Voldemort, even though he has the opportunity to: he collects trophies, he’s fascinated by Hogwarts and the Founders . . . so how exactly is Harry going to know what he needs to be going after to find these Horcruxes? True, he had little to go on in the book . . . but in the movie he pretty much has NOTHING to go on.

-Advanced Potions: Would someone explain to me how it is that Neville, Seamus, Crabbe, and Goyle all managed to get into Advanced Potions? Okay, sure, they’re familiar faces, but c’mon. It is not necessary that all the kids be together all the time.

-Harry/Ginny, revisited: The bits they had in the movie were cute. It’s the bits they left out that bothers me. There was no closure to this particular story line. One of the things that speaks to the urgency of the end (more on that later) is when Harry breaks up with Ginny to keep her out of danger. First of all, Harry and Ginny never even STARTED dating in the movie, so couldn’t break it off. Also, the break up showed just how much he cared for Ginny. By not finishing it, Ginny just seems like another passing fancy of Harry’s . . . you know, like the waitress. (And on a brief side note, there had better be some serious snogging come movie seven! I want to see them get to first base, at least!)

-The return of Sidekick Ron: He’s not quite as obvious as he has been, but he is back. Ron’s role in the movie seems to be purely comic relief . . . and Hermione’s love interest. This movie was still very much about the Harry and Hermione . . . oh, and their good buddy Ron. To be fair, Super Hermione didn’t see a similar reemergence. But Ron has some serious character development in book seven that has roots here, and we never really see it. This is especially obvious in the last scene when Hermione is the one saying, “We’re with you Harry, we’ll help you find the Horcruxes, we’re behind you all the way!” . . . and Ron just sits there. No lines or anything, he just sits. Which kind of reflects Kloves’ attitude toward Ron in general . . . he’s just kind of there.

-”Why’s it always me?”: Neville’s character was reduced to comic relief again. Now admittedly, he doesn’t do a lot in book six, but he does fight in the Battle of Hogwarts . . . oh, wait . . . So yeah . . . after his kickass moments in movie five, it was kind of a letdown to see him pushing tarts at Slughorn’s Christmas party.

-Dumbledore in the cave: They didn’t really play up Dumbledore’s anguish upon drinking the potion, which is supposed to lead naturally into the things Harry discovers in book 7.

And then, there were these . . .

BIG THINGS I LOATHED AND DESPISED

-The Attack on the Burrow: I knew this was coming, and I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it. I thought maybe with the rewriting, there’s a place for it in the plot. But my doubts, unfortunately, were justified here. There was no place, no purpose, no earthly reason for this scene to even exist. It didn’t forward the plot, it didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, and most importantly . . . IT WASN’T IN THE BOOK!!! I think it’s obvious just how little effect this had on the story in the fact once its over, Ron and Ginny seem to be showing absolutely no emotion over the fact that their HOUSE WAS JUST DESTROYED!!! Seriously, in the scene immediately after the destruction of the Burrow, we see Ron playing with Lavender as if nothing happened. And it’s never mentioned again. I can’t think of any reason why they felt the need to include this scene. None at all.

-The End: Everything from the cave onward needed to be done better (with the exception of Dumbledore’s death, which I mentioned earlier.) I didn’t get the feel like this was the point that the movie had been building toward. The above attack on the Burrow helped facilitate this, because that was their major battle scene. There was no Battle of Hogwarts at all, meaning that a number of things were lost, including some kickass Neville scenes (see above), but more importantly, a feeling like a major safe zone had been breached. Dumbledore’s death did this some, but there needed to be more . . . something that gave a sense of urgency, the sense that something now needed to be done, now that Hogwarts has been breached, there is a traitor among us, and our leader is dead. These last two things in particular were not played up enough. Books six and seven, more than any other books in the series, cannot be seen as separate stories. They go together. They are practically the same book. You can’t look at them as individuals. By the end of the movie, I should have been on the edge of my seat thinking “OMG, what happens next?!?” like I was with the book. I wasn’t. I felt like just another ending to just another movie, not a natural lead-in to the next movie, which is what it should have been. There was too much closure, in this case.

Overall, Steve Kloves deeply disappointed me. I was hoping that, now that he has the whole series laid out before him, he would write a better movie that reflected the spirit of the overall story. But he still writes his screenplays for Harry Potter as individual movies, chunk, chunk, chunk, with nothing really to indicate that this is part of a larger story. And he’s still falling back on his old bad habits of putting humor in just for the sake of it, reducing the importance of certain characters, and seeing the golden trio as Harry, Hermione, and that other guy with the red hair.

Also, Steve Kloves has not yet mastered the art of multiple subplots. Rowling's writing is made up of multiple strands that interweave and come to a conclusion together. At the same time as Voldemort's rise to power and the whole backstory with Draco, we also have trust issues, Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione intrigue, Quidditch, classes . . . a number of things that were introduced in the movie . . . and then just kind of dropped. The main strand and Draco's strand were the only ones that were carried through to the end, while everything else was left by the wayside. If you're going to introduce a subplot, you have to carry it through to the end. Otherwise, we're left with kind of this empty feeling. And I don't know whether Kloves did this because he's just incompetent, or because he felt movie audiences wouldn't be able to keep track of everything, but either way, it's annoying.

The redemption for this video was most definitely its directing. The screenwriting was what kept this movie from being as good as it could have been. I think what my sister said at the end of the film pretty much sums it up: it wasn’t as bad as it could have been . . . but it wasn’t as good as it could have been either. At the moment I’m ranking this somewhere toward the top, near one and five, though I can’t say exactly where yet.

So . . . what did you think?

-Matt