I saw The Half-Blood Prince today after days of nervous finger-biting anticipation bordering on hysteria all of which involved reading the book all over again, snapping at any remotely anti-Harry Potter remark, watching all previews on TV, buying ridiculously expensive tickets to watch the 3D version of the movie etc... I was just extremely anxious to know and once and for all be relieved knowing that the film version of THBP was going to do justice to the novel. I had my reasons to worry... if the film version of 'The Order of the Phoenix' was anything to go by then boy, I had a lot to worry! After all it was the same director and the same team who had successfully managed in trashing probably the most intricate HP book... So, I saw this movie and I'm... well, OK
I'm not seething in righteous indignation as some Potter purists might be... but I'm just very disappointed...
I just wish they had stuck to the book completely... Why did they change all those things? Why did they add things that weren't there in the book? Why was the film swathed from beginning to end in a gray palette? I understand that times have changed and the Dark Lord has grown stronger... but was it really necessary to visually make the film so dark? In the previous films, I really felt like I was inside Hogwarts and with the characters and a lot of that had to do with the design of the film - the great hall, the Gryffindor common room, the area around Hagrid's house and the interior of Hagrid's and Ron's house... these were places I had begin to love and I really looked forward to "visiting" them again... So seeing this shrunken dark, dingy version of most of the above mentioned beloved places was a nasty shock... Never had Hogwarts looked more a CG-creation than in this film... And that was one of the main reasons I felt disconnected from things happening there... And since when did the Weasley's perennially bright cozy country cottage The Burrow turn into Number Twelve Grimmauld Place? I know they didn't mean it to be... but look-wise it was as grimy and dingy as the way Grimmauld Place was designed in OOTP... In the book THBP, The Burrow is still the same old beautiful country haven... Even everything at Hogwarts was shrunken, dingy and depressing... If David Yates meant this as some sort of a motif, then it was a very bad, literal and lame one...
And those were just the design issues... the changes they made to the story is a different matter altogether... since when did the Death Eaters look exactly like the Dementors? Why did they add that bit about The Burrow being burnt down and not show the first memory that Harry and Dumbledore enter into - the one about Voldermort's mother and Tom Riddle Sr.? I remember when I first read the book, that was probably (no pun intended) the most memorable memory out of all the ones that Harry and Dumbledore visit... It was so beautifully written... so vivid, scary and sad at the same time... In the film, even the memory in which Voldermort first sees the Hufflepuff Cup and the Slytherin necklace which would later on be his Horcruxes was omitted and so was the one in which he visits Dumbledore in Hogwarts asking for a job. Besides these crucial scenes, they also did not include even one in-depth discussion that used to ensue in the book between Dumbledore and Harry after their visits inside the memories... I think those bits are crucial in really understanding the basic premise of the entire Harry Potter series. They're the meaty informative bits... Instead of wasting money on one expensive bridge collapsing CG sequence which is referred to only in retrospect in the book, the film should have focused more on the memories, on Dumbledore's discussions with Harry etc... After watching the film I was at a complete loss - the film catered neither to the hardcore Potter fans nor the new ones it might have wanted to entice... Neither was there enough quality for the former nor enough quantity for the latter... Harry was like in a limbo - not completely with Dumbledore, not with Ron or Hermoine, not with Ginny... he just existed somewhere in between... I didn't for a moment feel like I was there with Harry, Ron and Hermoine... And it wasn't because the book didn't give me that feeling... it was because the film didn't give that to me...
I really don't know why David Yates was chosen to direct this film... After the horror that was 'OOTP', I thought the producers would have wizened up... but evidently not... looks like Mr. Yates is their golden boy... what with him directing The Deathly Hallows too... In an article, Yates commented that if the audience thought THBP was spectacular, they should just wait for The Deathly Hallows. To which, I have this to say to him... High-end CGI, loud ear-shattering sound effects do not a good film make. Yes, they contribute to a film's viewing pleasure, but they cannot replace good solid story telling... So far, out of all the HP film-adaptations, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' has been the best - the most loyal to the book, the film that most engaged me into the happenings and the most stunningly directed and filmed HP-film till date... For the longest time, how I hoped they would approach Alfonso Cuaron again and he would agree to direct one more Potter movie... but alas, that was not to be... I have no grand hopes for The Deathly Hallows. I am assuming that the reason they are making two movies of the book is so that they can do more justice to it. Yes, I still hold on to that hope, naive though it may be...
I just wish they had stuck to the book completely... Why did they change all those things? Why did they add things that weren't there in the book? Why was the film swathed from beginning to end in a gray palette? I understand that times have changed and the Dark Lord has grown stronger... but was it really necessary to visually make the film so dark? In the previous films, I really felt like I was inside Hogwarts and with the characters and a lot of that had to do with the design of the film - the great hall, the Gryffindor common room, the area around Hagrid's house and the interior of Hagrid's and Ron's house... these were places I had begin to love and I really looked forward to "visiting" them again... So seeing this shrunken dark, dingy version of most of the above mentioned beloved places was a nasty shock... Never had Hogwarts looked more a CG-creation than in this film... And that was one of the main reasons I felt disconnected from things happening there... And since when did the Weasley's perennially bright cozy country cottage The Burrow turn into Number Twelve Grimmauld Place? I know they didn't mean it to be... but look-wise it was as grimy and dingy as the way Grimmauld Place was designed in OOTP... In the book THBP, The Burrow is still the same old beautiful country haven... Even everything at Hogwarts was shrunken, dingy and depressing... If David Yates meant this as some sort of a motif, then it was a very bad, literal and lame one...
And those were just the design issues... the changes they made to the story is a different matter altogether... since when did the Death Eaters look exactly like the Dementors? Why did they add that bit about The Burrow being burnt down and not show the first memory that Harry and Dumbledore enter into - the one about Voldermort's mother and Tom Riddle Sr.? I remember when I first read the book, that was probably (no pun intended) the most memorable memory out of all the ones that Harry and Dumbledore visit... It was so beautifully written... so vivid, scary and sad at the same time... In the film, even the memory in which Voldermort first sees the Hufflepuff Cup and the Slytherin necklace which would later on be his Horcruxes was omitted and so was the one in which he visits Dumbledore in Hogwarts asking for a job. Besides these crucial scenes, they also did not include even one in-depth discussion that used to ensue in the book between Dumbledore and Harry after their visits inside the memories... I think those bits are crucial in really understanding the basic premise of the entire Harry Potter series. They're the meaty informative bits... Instead of wasting money on one expensive bridge collapsing CG sequence which is referred to only in retrospect in the book, the film should have focused more on the memories, on Dumbledore's discussions with Harry etc... After watching the film I was at a complete loss - the film catered neither to the hardcore Potter fans nor the new ones it might have wanted to entice... Neither was there enough quality for the former nor enough quantity for the latter... Harry was like in a limbo - not completely with Dumbledore, not with Ron or Hermoine, not with Ginny... he just existed somewhere in between... I didn't for a moment feel like I was there with Harry, Ron and Hermoine... And it wasn't because the book didn't give me that feeling... it was because the film didn't give that to me...
I really don't know why David Yates was chosen to direct this film... After the horror that was 'OOTP', I thought the producers would have wizened up... but evidently not... looks like Mr. Yates is their golden boy... what with him directing The Deathly Hallows too... In an article, Yates commented that if the audience thought THBP was spectacular, they should just wait for The Deathly Hallows. To which, I have this to say to him... High-end CGI, loud ear-shattering sound effects do not a good film make. Yes, they contribute to a film's viewing pleasure, but they cannot replace good solid story telling... So far, out of all the HP film-adaptations, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' has been the best - the most loyal to the book, the film that most engaged me into the happenings and the most stunningly directed and filmed HP-film till date... For the longest time, how I hoped they would approach Alfonso Cuaron again and he would agree to direct one more Potter movie... but alas, that was not to be... I have no grand hopes for The Deathly Hallows. I am assuming that the reason they are making two movies of the book is so that they can do more justice to it. Yes, I still hold on to that hope, naive though it may be...