Whenever my wife watches a Tom Clancy movie, I have to suffer through her mumbling to herself “that’s not how it is in the book.” As a comic fan, I’ve learned enough times that the movies will never be the comics and vice versa but for some reason, I can’t apply that lesson to the Harry Potter films. Actually one of the strengths of the latter Potter films have been that they’re not the books. J.K. Rowling never met a plot point that she didn’t like and the Harry Potter books are over 700 pages because she jams every minute detail about the wizard’s school year into each and every page. The first movies suffered because they were quite literally the books brought to the big screen with little regard for what works on the printed page versus what works projected on a movie screen. Since the third movie, some story editing has taken place, removing the bits and pieces that occur in every book. By The Half Blood Prince, gone are the Dursleys, Harry’s muggle family. Gone is the majority of the quidditch match; what’s shown is actually used to progress the plot rather than show off what can be accomplished with special effects. In the end, David Yates keeps enough story to show the mounting danger without overloading the movie with every menial test and trial that Harry faces throughout the school year.
Luckily what he cuts out is a lot of the cuteness. Go back and check out those early Harry Potter films. Look at all the small details like the moving staircases, the paintings whose subjects are always shifting, the silly little magic objects that pop in and out of the screen or even the countless classroom scenes where Harry, Ron and Hermione learn an “important” lesson about the magic world. The vast majority of that eye candy is gone, replaced by a leaner, darker Hogwarts school. Maybe it is a sign of the audience that were kids watching the first movie that are now teenagers but a lot of the extra stuff that was there to supposedly amaze us in the early movies are now gone, providing less of a distraction from the main story.
And again, maybe a sign at the maturing audience, but the childlike wonder of a magical school is now replaced by teenage lust and longing. The shadows that once were occupied by magical trinkets now contain groups of kids, snuggled together in the darkness doing who knows what. Worrying about passing their Newts (look it up) has been replaced by worrying about who’s taking whom to the Christmas party. While Rowling allowed her characters to grow up over 7 books, The Half Blood Prince allows the characters to enter puberty in a big way. The love and relationship stories set up in this movie are almost more fun to watch than any of the magical battles.
It’s good that Yates had so much interpersonal material to work with in this movie because the magical elements are downplayed a bit here. Like Rowling’s book, The Half Blood Prince is the final calm before the storm. This is setting up the final battle that will occur over the two-movie adaptation of The Deathly Hallows, moving around characters for the final endgames. Where the book spends a good deal of time on the history of Tom Riddle or the mystery of the Half Blood Prince, they’re only small parts of the movie. Perhaps knowing what explosive tales the final two movies need to be, Yates gives Harry and his friends a bit of time to breath in this movie. He gives them and us a final time to look around Hogwarts and to remember the good times and the magical times before the final dark days that loom ahead of us, something that I honestly don’t think Rowling was ever skilled enough to accomplish in her books.
While I don’t think that Rowling was a very good writer, I think she’s a marvelous storyteller. Since shortly before the first movie, I’ve been amazed by the world of Harry Potter and the school that she’s created. To varying degrees, the movies have equaled the passion and wonder that she created. With The Half Blood Prince, Yates may have made decisions to downplay some important aspects of the novel but he’s delivered a solidly entertaining movie that should build up anticipation over the next two years for Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.
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Tags: David Yates, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings, The Half Blood Prince
I actually really liked this Harry Potter movie, i do not get tired of seeing the next chapter in the life of a wizard.
I really enjoyed the 6th movie. I think they do a great job of compressing such a long book into a movie. I do think you need to read the books first and that the movies are great but you miss a ton if you don’t know the background.