The_Jazz

You know you've been waiting for it. And it looks pretty cool.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Moviefone

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fresnelly

"Are you a Doctor?"

"Yes. I'm Dr. Zaius."

Seriously though, it looks great!

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snowy

Can't wait!!! Really, can't wait!

Though the trailer didn't show it, I KNOW there's more Snape, and that just...well, you know.

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Willravel

I remember the first day of maths in grammar school I sat down with my teacher and he said, "I'm like you. I'm different."

"Prove it," I challenged.

He wrote down a quadratic equation and the blond girl in the front row burst into flames. It was the first day of the rest of my life.

Poppinjay

I was hoping young Riddle would look more malevolent. Like Damian.

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Jove

This is going to be an intense film especially the ending. How tragic!

ShaniFaye

Ok...where are the people that saw this yesterday? lol no reviews yet?

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spindles

i've read a lot of reviews and lots of people are sounding disappointed - quite a few things missed, quite a bit added that doesn't necessarily add to the story line and quite an anti-climax at the end

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gump

I went yesterday and watched it. Besides all the kids running everywhere it wasn't bad. Of course its not as good as the book but it doesnt stray to far from it. I thought it was alot better than the last however I've read the next two part movie is going to be real good.

ShaniFaye

I read somewhere they made a major change in the circumstances in the ending? is that right?

Spoiler: Im wondering how many people will go to see this that have no idea Dumbledore dies lol

I wont get to see it until Sunday

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Xerxys

Of course the movie is going to suck. I haven't watched it, I have only watched the first harry potter and I hated it. The books, however ... must be why I hated the movies so much. I had never expected such a raping of my beloved characters on screen like that.

Baraka_Guru

The blond kid from the films made a promo appearance at CityTV (MuchMusic), down the street from where I work.

The studio was open to the street, of course, and there was a mob of teenage girls cluster-bombing it with high-pitched screams that resonated a block or two in each direction.

It's positively electrifying the amount of energy such raging hormones and emotions can give off.

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gump

Yea in some ways but its not true to the book ending of course. I dont want to give anything away so go see it Shani .

Redlemon

Can you just put it in spoiler tags? I read the book and I'm not going to see the movie, but I'm curious about the change.

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DaniGirl

I cant wait to see the movie!! I bet my sister has already seen it, shes obsessed with Harry Potter.

Lasereth

I hope this is good because they're gonna have a hard time turning the last book (which was horrid) into a good movie.

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Frosstbyte

Super spoilerific post follows but not behind tags because I am on my iPhone. You have been warned.








Spoiler: I have heard this from a few people but I have no idea why they believe it. Dumbledore obviously and unequivocally gets killed by Snape in much the same way as he does in the book. The only "major change" about the end is that they don't show the funeral. I guess they also changed where Harry is standing during the end too and they took out the brother getting mauled bit but those are fairly minor points. Unless it has been too long and I am really not remebering the book correctly.

In short, this movie was a pedestrian adaptation o the book which happens to be my favour of the series. David Yates is not capable of capturing the magic of this series and so instead plods clumsily along from awkward teenage moment to special effect driven magic. Some of it works and some of it doesn't. I enjoyed it but it was nothing too special.

Also, don't get your hopes up for the zombies. They were easily the worst liking zombies ever committed to film rivaled only by the crap in I Am Legend. Diablo 2 sprite zombies look better. Major disappoitment.

mrklixx

I thought this was the least visually stimulating/special effectsy movie of the series.

Those were supposed to be zombies? I thought they were just dudes lookin for a sammich!

Here's the review I posted in the other thread (for which I got blasted for not reading the books. How dare I)

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Frosstbyte

Now that I can actually post, let me be more specific:

Spoiler: They took out a lot just like they took out a lot from book five and book four (less so from the first three). This is in part because after book three came out, no one bothered to edit J.K. Rowling's manuscripts so the stories became sprawling tomes containing hundreds of pages of superfluous text and all of that is the first to go when you make a movie based on a book.

The "big change" at the end is that there is no battle throughout the halls of Hogwarts. They all show up, Dumbledore dies and everyone runs out as Bellatrix lays waste to the great hall. No one gets mauled by a werewolf, we don't have any Molly and Fleur bonding over broken Charlie (think that's his name) scene and no one else at the school really even seems to notice that they've been invaded by a bunch of bad guys. Which is kind of odd, but the movie's pretty damn long as it is without needing even more crap going on to confuse things further.

They leave out a variety of other things which hardcore fans of the book will claim are "essential" to a coherent seventh movie, but I don't imagine it'll make much difference when we get there, most notably most of the Tom Riddle memories (there are only two shown) and a lengthy discussion of what all the possible phylacteries could be and how many there are.

Basically, the HP movies at this point are having to ride the knife edge between people who have read the books and people who haven't but who enjoy seeing the movies. Hardcore fans (be honest with yourself if you are one) really are going to insist that they see literally every moment of the book, or they're going to be disappointed because the filmmaker left out his "favorite scene" or a "critical plot point." People who haven't read the books need to be able to sit down and watch a movie for two hours and follow what's going along.

I called Yates a hack in the last pst I made because I think he's doing a terrible job of appeasing these two groups. He somehow manages to cut tons of material that the hardcore fans are going to want to see and simultaneously fails to really tell the story in a coherent way. I'm not a huge HP fan, but the basic plotlines of the books are compelling and entertaining. You don't need to fuck with them much to make them make sense and flow. When I watch HP5 and HP6, I basically feel like I'm watching a series of arbitrarily selected scenes from the books which are in the right order but lack meaningful connections and transitions. Because I know what's going on from reading the books, I can fill in the blanks to know what's going on and I can see where he's throwing out little fanservice-y bits here and there, just to have them. Instead of experiencing two hours of storytelling, I feel more like I'm hearing a story from an over-eager friend who keeps saying, "Remember when this happened? Oh yeah, and remember when this happened? OH! And then THIS happened!" Yeah, I remember, I read the books, too, why don't you just tell me the story as you envision it?

For example, he goes PAINFULLY out of his way to get Neville into this movie not once but twice. Neville, likable fellow he is, has no business being in this movie. The 5 minutes taken up by him on screen could've gone to any number of things which would've set up the last movie and made this one fit together. Instead, he chose to put a fan favorite (?) character back in to have him back in. Crabbe and Goyle got the treatment that Neville should've gotten. We see them next to Malfoy on the train and then never see them again. We get the idea that they're still around and you get to say "OMG THERE THEY ARE" but they don't take more than a second of screentime.

Same could be said of the house elf in HP5. While in the book he plays a major role in how the story plays out, that role is completely eliminated (for good reason) in the movie. Yet we still waste time playing lip service to his existence and his excised plotline. People who read the book get excited because they think there's going to be follow through on it and then are disappointed when there isn't. People who haven't read the book wonder why we care that Sirius tells him to go away and why he's talking to a covered painting on the wall and why he's around in the first place when no one seems to like him.

HP3 remains my wife and my favorite movie without much competition. It's meaningfully different from the others in tone and style, but it just holds together the best for me and, I think, I like the darker twist on the world. HP6 I'd put above 5 for sure (in part I imagine because I like the source material better), but other than that it kind of falls into the general muddle of "didn't like it the best didn't like it the least." I'm SURE we'll own it, and I'm SURE I'll watch it again, but it could've been a lot better. Just as I'm SURE most HP fans will have no shortage of reasons to enjoy the movie just to enjoy the ride.

Needless to say, I'm sorry I'll have to endure two(!!) more Yates films to finish out the series.

mrklixx

Those are very good points Frossbyte.

Especially this one, Spoiler: [quote]The "big change" at the end is that there is no battle throughout the halls of Hogwarts. They all show up, Dumbledore dies and everyone runs out as Bellatrix lays waste to the great hall. No one gets mauled by a werewolf, we don't have any Molly and Fleur bonding over broken Charlie (think that's his name) scene and no one else at the school really even seems to notice that they've been invaded by a bunch of bad guys. Which is kind of odd, but the movie's pretty damn long as it is without needing even more crap going on to confuse things further.[/qoute]

Because, as it played out in the movie, the death eaters presence had no meaning whatsoever, and therefore Malfoy's entire plotline (including him overdramatically whipping off the cover to the cabinet every 10 minutes), was also meaningless.

I do disagree with you though on the ranking of the HP5 vs HP6 movies. I watched HP5 again today so I could have fresh comparison. And while HP5 is still not my favorite HP film, it is leaps and bounds better than HP6. I mean, at least stuff happened in HP5. I really feel like that, other than Spoiler: Dumbledore's death, the "movie only" crowd could completely skip this movie and still know what is going on in the next one(s). This is the first HP movie that I actually feel like I wasted my time and money on. I, for one, will not be buying this one on DVD.

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ShaniFaye

Ok I saw it....I hated it, worst of all 6, I seriously wanted my money back. wtf is up with wasting "precious" time adding stuff that wasnt in the book when they could have used that time to...oh I dont know Spoiler: explain what the hell half blood prince was considering it was the name of the damn movie....what is with that ending? what is up with having Harry just stand around while Dumbledore dies instead of the agony of being paralyzed and not being able to do anything? Whats up with Luna being the one that finds him on the train instead of Tonks? Where was the development of Tom Riddle. Why was Bellatrix hanging out with a werewolf? Why even include grayback when there was nothing at all about Bill and Fleur? The Burrow was under the highest security possible and Bellatrix could just swoop in and burn it down?

I will stop now, Im getting all riled up again, I will console myself with all the screen time Snape had lol

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Xerxys

I hate to say I told you so ... erm, I'm lying ...

Yeah I knew this would happen. I however disagree with this statement ...

I think because the book's detail was integral for it's captivating quality. I'm trying very hard and coming up short thinking of useless info in any one of the books. Some of my friends say that she was overly descriptive but I think the book would have been a bland conspiracy theory type of fantasy story without it.

Plus, her names J. Rowling. The K was added there to make it difficult to discern sexes. It means nothing.

No, I am not a hardcore fan.

Frosstbyte

The name that she publishes under is J.K. Rowling. I couldn't care less what her "real" name is. Robin Hobb's real name is Margaret Ogden, but if you're talking about the realm of the Elderlings, you'd never refer to her as Margaret Ogden. Whatever.

Most authors (particularly genre fiction authors) aren't concise. And they're particularly not concise after they achieve some success (to say nothing for Rowling's unheard of mega-success) and their editors stop giving them a lot of grief. They (hopefully) love the worlds they've created so they spend a lot of time indulging in the minutia of it. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.

Regardless of how it reads, the more they vamp the more difficult it becomes for a movie to contain all of those side- and sub-plots. As Shani noted, there was a lot of important *plot* in this movie that got axed for either stuff that didn't happen in the book or stuff that did happen in the book but didn't make a shred of difference, and that led to the movie not really working, despite the amount of fanservice they dumped into it.

I might get hosed for this example, but quiddich in the context of the movies is a total waste of time. Spoiler: The twenty+ minutes that go to quiddich could've been used to explain who the half blood prince is. It could've gone to explaining...anything...about the ring. It could've gone to speculation on the other horcruxes. It could've gone to having an actual battle in Hogwarts. It could've gone to more memories (by FAR my favorite parts of this movie).

He hit a lot of highlights of this specific book/movie, but didn't do anything to set up the next two. Based on what we saw him discover in the movie, Harry has NO clues to go on. That likely means that he'll just retcon Harry knowing about it without any explanation, which I don't think will end up being very satisfying.

Charlatan

The biggest issue for me: Spoiler: Harry was not paralyzed while Dumbledore was killed. When he was paralyzed he had no choice but to watch it all play out before him. The film, as it stands, makes Harry out to be paralyzed with fear... or at worst a coward who couldn't even raise his wand to defend Dumbledore. This is not what Harry would have done.

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