I am back with HBP Review.

[elanor_x]

  RE: ROMANCE.
 I felt about movie romance much better than about the one in the book both since watching several minutes is easier than reading hundreds of pages and because they greatly improved (read: completely changed) H/G.

Let's start with Ron\Hermione

I found the canaries' scene more disturbing than in the book.

Comments

[elanor_x]

Re canaries: I didn't mean to make birds inflict on him relatively serious injuries, but rather comically peck Ron a couple of times. They could also choose to make Ron jump & close the door behind him with the birds happily flying away. Not make Hermione and Draco the two bird killers in the movie.

[norton_gale]

It's like H\G's great kiss was almost to the last detail reenacted with R\L's a parody of a relationship on purpose, to show JKR what the producer thinks of it.

Very astute observation, and it's so true... this works better and is more believable as a R/L parody rather than what happened in the book with H/G. Being ambushed with a kiss is more frightening/annoying than romantic.

[elanor_x]

I think in the book Harry was more relieved than considered it romantic. Relieved since:
1.No awkwardness in choosing how to tell Ron.
2. No need to have The Talk with Ginny (that they're officially dating).
3. All previous & potential Ginny's suitors have been warned to keep away.

[ellecain]

I agree, the vanishing apples and birds thing was very cool, I wish they'd put it in the book!

Draco's bird experimentation also involved killing birds, but I'm more willing to forgive that. :-)

[23luxuries]

I think the scene with the dead bird is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. He seems so disturbed by it, and when they pan out, you hear him crying in the background. I think it shows that if Draco Malfoy is crying over a dead bird, he can't truly be evil.

[sunnyskywalker]

I thought it was odd that Draco didn't applaud at Snape's appointment at first, but on a second viewing, I wonder if it followed from Snape intervening about the walking stick earlier that evening. I mean... Draco couldn't even convince the Squib groundkeeper to let him have his walking stick, and he's supposed to be Mr. Super Death Eater now, so he must have felt pretty pathetic about that, and then Snape just waltzes over and makes the problem go away. So maybe he felt like Snape was being condescending and treating him like a helpless child (and to be fair, it's entirely possible Snape was), and that's why he didn't feel like clapping.

I'm torn on the canaries. On one hand, the fact that they exploded into feathers and nothing else makes me think that conjured birds aren't actually birds but some bird-like construct thingies, and Ron didn't get injured, so it could be seen as less violent than in the book. On the other hand, I don't actually know they weren't real birds, and the visual of the exploding feathers is a bit chilling

[elanor_x]

I wonder if it followed from Snape intervening about the walking stick earlier that evening
Haven't thought about it, but it totally could have. Snape could say something to him too on the way to the castle. Draco doesn't know yet about the Unbreakable Vow, right?

Out of curiosity, does anyone know whether that bird died because the cabinet wasn't working properly yet, or because Fenrir killed it on the other end the way he took a bite out of the apple?
Were we shown Fenrir bit the apple? I thought the apple returned bitten since the cabinet wasn't working properly and imagined Draco first accomplishing that it transmitted objects properly and only then trying it on living things (birds). We know working with objects is much easier. For example: in Transfiguration students were first taught to work with objects, like turning matches to needles on their first lesson, and only in advanced years advanced to animals, like frogs and ravens. I thought the cabinet was gradually fixed in a similar way too

[sunnyskywalker]

Hm, now I can't remember why I thought Fenrir bit the apple. I think I imagined him doing it as a kind of "message received, now try the next step (live things" and we know he likes biting things. And I guess I figured if it didn't work properly, the apple would have been chunky applesauce. But you're right about us hearing the bird alone in the shop's cabinet, so maybe "bitten apple" is just a weird magic side effect of a half-fixed cabinet.

I really don't know what they were trying to do with the birds. You're probably right that they just made it less graphic than it logically should have been because otherwise everyone would freak. I think if they absolutely had to keep the bird scene in the movie, they at least could have altered it so that Hermione was actually flying origami paper birds around the classroom instead (like the one the gave Draco in the PoA movie), or something else definitely not alive.

Unless they're trying to hint that Hermione has a nasty streak? It fits with a lot of her characterization in the books...