Hogwarts Herald

This afternoon we went to the first showing that we knew about here in the middle of nowhere Georgia where I am currently on my summer long cross country baseball trip. I am not disappointed to have gone and seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the first day in the theater, however, I was appalled at how different it is than the book. Click read more below for my sort of spoiler review. DO NOT Click if you do not want to spoil seeing the movie for yourself without already knowing some of the differences between the book and movie.

I am extremely discouraged to see how much they messed with the plot line in the movie version of the 6th book. There are so many things that are different degrees of wrong to almost passable things that I understand work better in a movie than a book to the totally unexcuseable changing the tone of scenes. Sure the previous five movies change, add, and delete aspects of the book, but I really do not think any have come close to screwing with it as much as this one.

From the beginning the movie totally deviates from the book with Dumbledore fetching Harry suddenly from a train station and taking Harry away from an almost date with a girl he just flirted with. They did basically skip the scene with the two ministers, but they did show the disasters that the ministers discuss, which really would confuse anyone who has not read the book, as they never really explain what the disasters have to do with anything. That is not that major of a thing, but them changing what would have been a rather humorous scene of Dumbledore fetching Harry from the Dursleys is rather annoying. Instead they added humor where it was not in the book and sometimes to the point of totally changing the tone of certain scenes. For example, Harry makes a rude humorous comment about people being scared of spiders due to their pincers directly to Hagrid at Aragog’s funeral. Harry might not have ever liked the giant spider, but he was a better friend than to make such a comment in front of Hagrid so directly.

There are so many other changes and it would become a rather long and tedious post if I listed just the ones I can remember, but here are just a few more:
-Luna unpetrifies Harry on the train rather than Tonks.
-It reveals what Malfoy is up to involves the vanishing cabinet in the scene of the three seeing him at Borgin & Burkes.
-Several pensieve scenes about Riddle are missing and the word Horcrux is not even known until Harry gets the memory from Slughorn.
-The Burrow is attacked by Death Eaters on Christmas Eve, which never happens in Book 6, although does happen in somewhat different circumstances in Book 7.
-There is no battle at Hogwarts. Snape just rather quickly arrives after Bellatrix finds Draco hesitating and kills Dumbledore.
-There is no funeral, however everyone raising their wands lit like candles does make a fitting change and very moving one that I actually liked in terms of being more theatrical.

Overall the movie was enjoyable, but it is not at all the same as the book. It kind of would standalone as a good movie, but at the same time it would not because it skips things that I think would make the plot hard to follow if you have not read the book and can fill in the gaps. I am sad to come to the conclusion that this is kind of a flop.