Isn't there supposed to be a garden at Shell Cottage? I thought that was where Dobby was buried, and not in a random field with long grass, which is a bitch to dig through.

Radcliffe looks odd in the picture. Might be the expression. But he's also goddamned short. Even Wright is taller than him!

 

It might be. However, he did get Fleur, and that's got to account for something. Either way, I'm sure his looks won't even matter because we'll see him for roughly five minutes and then the movie will skip to the next hour of Harry/Hermione/Ron sitting in the woods action.

If the directors really want to tease Harry/Hermione fans, there is a lot in DH to work with - both of them alone in the woods and Hermione saving Harry's life at Godric's Hollow, for example. Of course, they'll probably do something incredibly out-of-place like a whole conversation between Harry and Hermione where they firmly state their platonic feelings for one another. [Dumbledore asking Harry about Hermione in HBP was unbelievably terrible.]

Agreed. The field looks like the same field that surrounded the Burrow in the HBP movie.

Radcliffe's expression is pure agony to look at, imo. And I absolutely hate his stupid jean jacket.

 

Something I just remembered: I liked how they used the original 150 years old age for Dumbledore, rather than the retconed 115.

 

^
Ugh god, that made me remember the horrible scene where the trio laughs at Dumbledore's age. I never want to hear such fake laughter ever again.

 

Overall, I enjoyed seeing the movie. It wasn't great by any means, but it had a couple funny parts; plus, Felton's Draco was a much more compelling character than Radcliffe, which almost made me laugh each time the movie lit up the neon "LOOK AT HARRY, HERO, LOVER, CHOSEN ONE" signs.

However, two of the movie's most developed scenes, the Burrow attack and the cave scene, were poorly done and greatly hurt the movie.

-The biggest problem with the Burrow attack scene was the ring of fire the Death Eaters used to cut off Harry from marginally more competent adults. I say marginally competent because of the totally, mind-bogglingly incompetent way Remus, Tonks (a trained Auror!), Arthur, and whoever else was out there tried to get past the fire. I'll run through a few of their options.

• Apparation: well, I'd say Apparation is an extremely hard, obscure, or unkown branch of magic that only great wizards like Dumbledore can accomplish in the move-verse, if not for the fact that Fred and George do it, too.
• Charm themselves against the flame: maybe, in the centuries since the ineffectual witch burnings/ticklings, wizard-kind has lost the knowledge of how to protect themselves against a bit of fire?
• Jump through: honestly, if Ginny Weasly can have a dramatic slow-mo shot jumping through the conveniently parted fire, then you can get through it too, Tonks, you battle-hardened Auror.
• Use their retarded 'white fog' flying ability: and if anyone thinks that the fire is some sort of impenetrable barrier that would reach up and stop them from flying over it, I'd like to point you to the previous point, where Ginny jumps straight through it unharmed.
• Put it out: whether through conjuring a bunch of water (even Harry THE HERO can do this in the cave scene) or through using a 'put-out-fire' spell.

But wait, there's more. The final part of the scene, when they're all standing forlorn in front of the burning Burrow and the camera pulls away for a dramatic shot, was clearly meant to show the consequences of Voldemort's rise and the increasingly grimdark atmosphere of the movie. The only emotion I felt during the shot was scorn for the people (I would say wizards and witches, except I'd be hard pressed to find evidence of it if asked) standing apathetically around their burning home. "Put it out!" I felt like screaming, "Use this thing called magic!" Any sympathy the filmmakers wanted me to have for the Weasley's vanished under the realization that they should have been able to put out the fire in about two seconds and repaired the damage in under a day.

The utter lack of anything approaching intelligence in this entire scene (Harry's run into the whatever-fields/marsh is only the most egregious) is not only a blatant insult to all who view it, but also feeds directly into my disappointment with the lack of magic use in the entire movie series (see second to last paragraph).

- Secondly, the cave scene. Okay, fine, I can deal with the cave's opening being dramatically posed in front of a raging sea, but obviously Riddle taking two (?) of his fellow orphans down there didn't happen in the movie-verse, and just as obviously he learned to Apparate before he went to Hogwarts. At least the filmakers could have modified his "I see dead people" speech to include "I can teleport." Also, the area was clearly a barren, rocky place, with no beach at all, which means the only area for people to be would be atop the cliff, which means Riddle would never have gotten the opportunity to wander off, especially near the edge of the huge cliff-of-death-plummeting. Maybe he was a dowser of huge caverns, too.

Harry and Dumbledore gaining entrance to the cave: at least we didn't see them swimming, which is an improvement upon the book - why couldn't Dumbledore have conjured a boat? However, I felt the filmmakers lost a great opportunity to impart to us the same mystified awe Harry experience at the book in this scene. None of Dumbledore's book activities were included, nor even was the short, short line "Oh, surely not. So crude." Inclusion of any of these would have taken no more than thirty seconds maximum, would have served to advance Dumbledore's character as a skilled and subtle wizard, and perhaps made me a tiny bit attatched to him, thus producing at least an equally tiny bit of pathos at the death scene.

Moving on: the semi-crystalline cave interior was just... weird. Not being a geologist, I don't know if such places could exist, but if, as I suppose, such a cave could not, then obviously this part of the decor was meant only to enhance the 'mood'... which, for me at least, it was too bizarre to do. Don't tell me a dank, dark natural cave (like, say, the 'antechamber with the blood-door - did Riddle hollow out a huge pocket of quartz?) wouldn't have plenty of potential for 'mood' that a skilled director could take advantage of.

The crossing was fine, plus I can't remember much of it, but the island of upthrust crystal was even stranger than the shore. Once there, Harry, of course, was as useless as ever. And, in a further lost opportunity, Dumbledore wasn't shown (not at all clearly, at least, or at length) to be exhausting all his knowledge in the attempt to penetrate the barrier over the Horcrux. Then came poison time, with acting so unconvincing that the filmmakers knew they had to bolster it with flashbacks. Finally, unnecessarily showy CGI, basically this movie's version of a big shiny explosion.

--

All in all, both scenes showcase my biggest disappointment with the whole Harry Potter movie series: not once has my Suspension of Disbelief really been allowed to flourish. Harry Potter is a series with such a convenient, flexible magic system that it is used to solve the littlest problems in life, and is omnipresent in the magical world. However, in the movies, magic was used sparingly, as if there was a CGI budget that couldn't cover the cost of sparkly lights or floating objects or any of a myriad of small details that put together would have created the feel of actually experienceing a world where magic was prevalent. This failure does not just extend to the dearth of magic; the directors' unconcern for presenting a believable society extends to other details, such as the SUITS that half the cast seems to be wearing. Every time I saw Malfoy in his SUIT I cringed.

In conclusion, while I was amused by parts of the movie, Half-Blood Prince did no better a job of immersing me in a magical world than the previous movies.

 

Does anyone remember any scenes of Harry giving cheek to Snape in the DADA classes? I at least wanted to see those to characters put each other in the medical ward.

Seemed they did a lot of glassing over the Harry v. Snape interaction in the movie.

 

I'm pretty sure that in the book they said that the three climbed down the cliff. Something like "it was easy for Tom with his magic, but probably would have terrified the other two"

The only part I remember being crystalline was the island in the center, which I just attributed to magic. However, as a geologist I can say that there is such a thing a crystalline caves, though I doubt you would find one in England. The best ones that I've heard about are in South America.

 

There were no fucking DADA classes. Which pissed me off. Because then at least Harry would have known what Inferni are.



Edit: I meant DADA, not DA.

 

The DA didn't restart in the book either.

 

We were bored out of our fucking minds the entire movie. Yes we knew the book sucked, but the kids were getting PISSED, and at one point started falling asleep. Nothing worthwhile happened to make it better then the book, barely any action, and the Inferi looked like they straight ripped off Gollum.

More moments with magic like Dumbledore did to fight off the Inferi would of been better. We were reminded why we stopped bothering with HP after HBP, the quality after GoF just went to hell and never climbs back out of the hole. Total make no sense moments all over.

The fire circle of DOOOOOOM!.... Ginny runs through it, no one else can. Bullshit. The Burrow being trashed? Dumbledore fixes an entire house with a cleaning charm. Put the fucking fire out, and fix it.

Spot on Ron, I actually like him more as the movies go on. Felton is probably the hands down best.

 

I meant Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA). Not Dumbledore's Army.

 

Potions was the only class that got any screentime whatsoever.

 

Well, he had DADA classes in canon which told him that Inferi can be killed with fire, and was told so at least two other times IIRC, but still didn't use fire in The Cave in the book, so having DADA would only have served to annoy people more with regards to Harry's incompetence.

It was possibly the most annoying part of the HBP book, actually. Harry always had going for him the fact that he didn't crack under pressure, and had good instincts in dangerous situations. HBP destroyed that.

 

I'm sure this has been stated earlier in the thread as well (though I can't summon the willpower to scan through nine pages worth of posts) but having just seen the film in Italy I thought I'd just chime in by pointing out that this was a horrendously boring pile of shit and manages to surpass even the Columbus Potter films in awfulness.

Obviously Book 6 is in no way the best book but the elements of it that arguably provided the most enjoyment (the comic interludes/romance) were the most flat sections of the film. Important areas of the book important to the plot of the finale (such as the whole "Voldermort born out of loveless encounter" shebang) were omitted in favour of stupid fucking scenes like the stupid fucking burrow. Even the otherwise enjoyable areas of the book such as the fight in Hogwarts were brutally shortened in favour of over lengthy shit scenes such as the ridiculous "You've got to hide it Harry!" scene in the Room of Lost Objects.

Astonishingly even worse in the film was the already laughably bad mystery of who was trying to off Dumbledore. Now, its hardly going to take anyone with an age in double-digits long to figure out that it was Malfoy, but the film doesn't so much present you with easy clues so much as continuously slap you in the face with them. At least my nine year old cousin was able to enjoy book 6 when I read it to her, however even she found this shit film boring.

And don't even get me started on the special effects (or almost total lack of them). What, did they waste all the SFX budget on the intro and two fire scenes and consequently had to replace all other spells with blue flashes of light? Before when I walked into a potentially boring Potter film at least I knew I was going to be visually astounded. David Yates was somehow able to fuck that up as well.

Alfonso Cuaron is still the best Potter director.

 

I personally like the not-very-flashy spell effects in the movies - it shows how the spells are moving too fast for you to watch them sail across towards you, which lends the combat a sense of speed and urgency.

 

Maybe so but they could have mixed it up a bit. Maybe some flashes of light from other parts of the colour spectrum? It made it seem that everyone in the film was casting the same spell, they also could have had different effects rather than just knocking people onto the floor.

Ever heard of the disarming charm for chrissakes Yates?

 

This movie is fun as long as you don't expect it to make much sense. I found it a good source of lulz. Here’s a list of some funny/WTF/simply good moments that I’ve picked out:

- Dumbledore tasting the blood in Slughorn's house, which implies he knows the taste of both human and dragon blood.

- S (on his former students): All mine, each and every one.

- D: Professor Slughorn possesses something I desire very dearly. He will not give it up easily.
H: You said Professor Slughorn will try to collect me.
D: I did.
H: Do you want me to let him?
D: Yes
H: *looks grimly determined*

- Harry picking up Slughorn in the Three Broomsticks.

- The part where Ginny reads aloud that the book is property of the Half Bloof Prince, and they share an understanding smile with Hermione, and Harry looks all embarrassed and leaves because he realizes how gay that sounds.

- When Dumbledore enters Tom Riddle’s room in the orphanage, we get flashes of his possessions accompanied by creepy music, like in serial killer movies. The trick works here, I was actually a little creeped out.

- Ron making a move on Slughorn while intoxicated by the love potion.

- D: Oh, to be young, and to feel love’s keen sting.

- Slughorn stealing from the greenhouse and breaking off Aragog’s mandible.

- The teenage Voldemort was spot-on. For once, a Harry Potter movie has a believable villain, if only for a couple of minutes.

- The entrance to the Horcrux cave looking exactly like a vagina.

- H: I never realized how beautiful this place was.
It was such an inappropriate final line that I LOLed.

The one thing I really hated:

The attack on the Burrow. It was as exciting as a shopping list and pointless to boot. I can’t fathom why they included it when they could have done a battle at Hogwarts (that was actually in the book), or more exposition on the Horcruxes, or a Hermione/Slughorn sex scene. They must have been possessed by Satan or something.

 

They managed to ruin the climax AGAIN.

Movie was solid otherwise though, aside from the Burrow scene.

 

Fucking stupid piece of shit movie.

I hated it in more aspects that one, just saw it a few days ago. Decided not to post a retardedly long rant on it though.