Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Ξ July 15th, 2009 | → | ∇ Reviews, Film |
OK. Whose stupid idea was it for David Yates to come back and direct Harry Potter 6? He bombed 5, easily the worst movie of the six made so far.
I really wanted to like this film. I really did. But let’s get to the movie.
Voldemort is officially back. Harry Potter’s name has been redeemed and everything is back to normal. Well, if you call having an evil wizard trying to take over the world normal.
Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermoine go back to Hogwarts. Enter a new Potions professor called Horace Slughorn. We get to see a lot more of Dumbledore too.
Thumbs up to Yates for adding a lot of humor here and there. Another thumbs up love in the air. You finally get to see Hermoine’s true feelings for Ron and Harry and Ginny both trying to suppress their feelings for each other. Yates does this well.
Well, where does he screw up? I’ll tell you, without giving the movie away. Yates can’t do a climax to save his life. He completely screwed up the climax in Harry Potter 5 and he bombs this one as well.
The elements leading up to the climax fell short as well, and this is without a doubt the most important climax of the seven books. Yes, even more important than the finale in Harry Potter 7.
I can’t say more than that for anyone who hasn’t read the books. I will say however that the movie is pretty to look at. Goths would love the sets and the scenery.
Too many others had such bit parts that you’d wish the producers would make two movies with this one, and definitely with someone other than David Yates directing.
I’m not going to give this a horrible rating because as I mentioned above, the movie did have redeeming qualities. Plus it was a big improvement over that disaster of a previous movie. Not saying much though.
5 out of 10 dead zombies. For the love of Hogwarts, fire David Yates. 
on July 16th, 2009 at 3:15 am
MINOR MOVIE SPOILER ALERT!!!
I have to agree with you. It wasn’t as bad as HP5, but hell, it would have taken serious effort to be that pathetic. I think HP6’s saving grace was the screenplay writer from HP1-4 was back. I blame the writer for HP5, not that Yates wasn’t horrible.
Tears fell from my eyes throughout the entire end of the book of The Order of the Phoenix and had a boatload of tissue in my purse, but didn’t need it. How on earth can a certain character die and me not cry? Okay, I did a very little bit, but for me? That’s bad. I cry at everything!!!
Also, the elimination of the Bill & Fleur storyline??? How on earth are they going to rectify that in HP7? They’re pretty key.
Eliminating the fight scene at the end while adding in the bizarre Bellatrix/Fenrir scene at The Burrows - WHY???? To say nothing of burning down The Burrows (I’m assuming here).
All in all, it was better than HP5, but I wasn’t thrilled to death with it.
They should just go back and re-do HP5 and HP6 into two movies and include everything, IMHO.
on July 16th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Agreed.
Hopefully in 20 years, they’ll do that.
on July 16th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Well, if we’re going to wait 20 years, they can re-do all of them properly!
on July 18th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Where in the hell did the end fight scene go?!
Like Kathleen said, they added that weird Burrows scene and eliminated key story-lines.
I heard that they are making 2 movies out of the final book. They’ll have to, just to backtrack and add the key story-lines they’ve missed in all the movies.
Z came up with a great explanation for all of this mess: They shot the movies before the next book came out. The writers didn’t really know what was crucial to the ongoing plot.
I read an interview with Rowling after the HP5 movie came out where she is walking on the set, points to an object, and tells the director to “Keep this around, it’s crucial in the next book.” My guess is that she was referring to the pensieve.
on July 24th, 2009 at 8:11 am
I went into this movie expecting massive important pieces being left out, so when watching it I found it very entertaining and funny. I wasn’t expecting it to be funny, so that was fun.
But, and there is a but, three things for me made it bite the big one.
1. Dumbledore died, and i hadn’t cried. That is UNHEARD OF. I was bawling when i read the book. so that tells me the scene was so botched it’s not funny.
2. the kidnapping of Olivander. WHY??!! that doesn’t happen till the next book and is important! It was so strange to just throw that in when there was no reason for it. Very random.
3. The entire thing with the Horcruxes. I mean, the movie kinda makes it seem like Harry has no idea where to go next, or even what they are. But in the book it is very well explained as to what they are, where Dumbledore was looking, and the gist of how to get to them (as in the houses).
I suppose if the same director is there it will be some magical will or something Dumbledore leaves and illuminates them all as to how to defeat the dark lord. I dunno how they are going to do it.
on July 24th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Kathleen - They won’t need to redo 1-3 though.
Tshsmom - Or Yates just sucks. That’s my explanation. Occam’s Razor applied here.
Xmichra - Yes, especially your #1. Yates can’t do a death scene to save his life. That death scene sucked.