Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (film)
spoilery, obvs. In handy +/- points:
+ the shippiness of this book translated to film. I loved it. They even manage to make me like the Harry/Ginny. I think I might be in the minority, but I *like* how Bonnie Wright plays Ginny, the quiet surety of her. She’s got steely cool that matches Harry’s hot-headedness, and even while I was going “…?” at the scene outside the Burrow I liked that she dashed after him and they both held their own against Bellatrix and Fenir
- I’ll get back to shippiness later, but while we’re on Fenrir - WTF was that ending? I’ve seen this mentioned a few times and yeah, what was the point of Draco fixing the Vanishing Cabinets if they just needed people to stand around snarling while he failed to do the job? Where was the terrorizing of the school? Where was the sense of danger (beyond the killing of Dumbledore, I guess) that the Hogwarts community needed to experience to be galvanized into action? Bah. Also, this ending changes things because Draco is still going to be screwed, but he’s not on the run with Snape alone.
+ But omg, Snape/Draco - YES. Just the right tone of petulance but acquiescence from Draco and the right amount of protection and exasperation from Snape (particularly the scene where Draco gets thrown out of Slughorn’s party).
(an aside - wow, the level of possible pedophilic creepiness in this movie is HIGH. Just, there are so many old man/young boy close relationships pertinent - Snape and Draco, Dumbledore and Harry, Harry and Slughorn, Slughorn and Tom, Dumbledore and Tom…it just seemed so much more prevalent in the movie than I remember in the book. Harry being the conduit between Dumbledore and Slughorn, and some of the ways Harry phrases his mission…I had to suppress my inappropriate laughter a lot.)
+ The killing of Dumbledore was really heartrending for me - Gambon hit it out of the park with his tired but knowing “Please” at Snape, and Draco’s near-hysteric unraveling in the moments beforehand. The one benefit of the annoying change where Death Eaters are just useless audience members rather than fighting is because without the increasingly frantic chain of events beforehand, the shock of Snape killing Dumbledore has more resonance - it really does seem to come out of nowhere, and the moment has time to make an impact.
+ and pacing and structure is *much* better in this movie, particularly in the first half, than it has been in the previous movies. David Yates’ direction has the urgency and tension that I expected from the last movie and didn’t get. It was funny when it needed to be too. But then there was a weird disjunct between the first and second half, which was much much darker and I guess there wasn't as much build for that grimness? Oh well, at least there was much less of “staring at pretty scenery with no emotional resonance” except in that dreadful dull last scene.
- Yeah, the last scene. A) why did Ron get no lines whatsoever? It’s the three of them against the world, not Harry and Hermione (and tagalong Ron). BAH. B) wow, insipid much? I guess it was trying to show that they’re growing up, they have to leave the sanctuary of Hogwarts behind and Fawkes flying away was a nice shot but still. So blah.
+ Ron and Hermione! The Ron and Lavendar bits were funny, and Lavendar was exactly how I’d imagined her - good naturedly delusional and hormonally in love. But ok, Emma Watson has improved a lot, and I was sadfacing all over the place when she and Harry are commiserating over their unrequited crushes on people. But I just want them to kiss and get together already, okay? (they are truly one of my OTPs for life) Anyway, the movie did a really good job of showing how Hermione and Ron really like each other, but Ron is too thick to realise it yet.
+ RON. <3333333333333 everything.
+ props where it’s due - Dan Radcliffe has improved too. Harry on Felix Felicitas was hilariously done, the stoner-vibe was a good touch. And I really liked Harry in this movie, more than I felt when reading the book - in the book he’s starting to become a hero-figure, something unreal. In this, you can chart his growth as a person, but he did come across as flesh and blood, that gap between child and man.
+ the scene in the cave. ;________; I cried when I first read it, and I was emotional in the cinema today (but didn’t actually cry). Again, Gambon did such a good job that I felt supersuperbad watching Harry force-feed him in the potion. And even though I knew that the water was full of the zombies I shrieked when the hand came out of the water. GOOD JOB.
+ Luna <333333333333 I really enjoy her character. I went with two other raving fanatics (who didn’t like the movie, boo), 5 people who had read and watched some HP, and 1 HP virgin. The virgin loved Luna best.
+ Back to Draco. I’m way over invested in this plotline - I wrote tonnes about it back here - and I kinda wished they played up Harry’s obsession with Draco a bit more. I really liked what Rowling did in the book, kept Draco’s true plans secret until the end - but I also understand that it wouldn’t work as well in the movie, and what they did do helped keep the movie going at a good clip without having to backtrack and exposit about Draco later. I liked the repeated imagery for Draco’s plotline, the pulling down of the cover of the cabinet at each try, the grand gesture of it all. But I was annoyed that Draco’s motivation was that Voldemort would kill him. I would’ve rather it had been about his family, because that’s what I love about the Malfoys - they are proud and insanely loyal to themselves. Sure Draco *is* a coward and fear would be a great motivation too, but I really wanted it to be about the family. (Also, Narcissa is *nothing* like I thought she should be.)
I wished they’d kept Crabbe and Goyle as the little girls. Instead, I kept wondering if the black and white birdies where Crabbe and Goyle instead, and I had this thought that Draco was upset because the white bird died in the experiment and he hadn’t meant for to kill his friend, etc. But that was just all in my head, I guess. Sometimes birds are really just birds.
+ this is one of the prettier HP films.
- Not enough about Tom Riddle. No incestuous crazy families. No hurting of little Muggle children. Bah.
+ Slughorn - I found him a really annoying character in the book, but I really liked the way Jim Broadbent played it, that old man bravado, that amorality hiding behind respectability, the constant name-dropping…it didn’t irk me, it just gave him character.
I think overall this makes it a good, with reservations. Or maybe my expectations are so low at this point that I'm just happy to be fannishly invested rather than impressed. Either way, it definitely made me happy to be a HP fan still. :)