Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

[duper]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

But it takes a real nerd to go into a thread marked "spoiler alert" and ask people not to talk about plot spoilers.

Fair enough.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

Getting out of the Shire at a relatively quick pace makes so much more sense than what was in the books that its almost laughable. You have an incredibly dangerous item on you, and there are going to be things hunting you because you have it. You can't just throw it away. So the solution is... wait 20 years before you do anything? What?

At the risk of a threadjack here... it took them most of that time just to know what the ring really was. Gandalf knew it was a ring of considerable power, but he spent the next decade or so researching it in Minas Tirith and tracking down Gollum. It's all well and good to know that you have an exceedingly dangerous item, but until Gandalf's return, they didn't know exactly what it was nor how to destroy it.

They spent the rest of the delay trying to make their departure somewhat orderly so that they wouldn't be announcing it to the entire world. Part of that, too, was Gandalf getting waylaid by Saruman so that he wasn't able to get back there and hurry them on their way.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

At the risk of a threadjack here... it took them most of that time just to know what the ring really was. Gandalf knew it was a ring of considerable power, but he spent the next decade or so researching it in Minas Tirith and tracking down Gollum. It's all well and good to know that you have an exceedingly dangerous item, but until Gandalf's return, they didn't know exactly what it was nor how to destroy it.

They spent the rest of the delay trying to make their departure somewhat orderly so that they wouldn't be announcing it to the entire world. Part of that, too, was Gandalf getting waylaid by Saruman so that he wasn't able to get back there and hurry them on their way.

Agreed. Seems people have this weird attitude (see Book 5 of Harry Potter) that they want the Readers Digest version of their books. Maybe it has something to do with short attention span, I don't know. What I do know is there is no such thing as too much Tolkien and the books IMO are as perfect as fresh fallen snow.

 

[Jon]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

What I do know is there is no such thing as too much Tolkien and the books IMO are as perfect as fresh fallen snow.

I look forward to your first post on a Gopher's game thread written entirely in Elvish.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

I look forward to your first post on a Gopher's game thread written entirely in Elvish.

Good idea.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

Watched it again, read the book, and I'm still happy with the adaptation, FWIW.

I was surprised how hard it was to find a reasonable showing. The latest it's playing around here is 6:45 pm.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

Came across some stuff I want to reply to while going back through the thread looking for something else I want to reply to...

...I don't even think [Harry] actually shares the screen with Romilda in this movie...

I don't think he actually shared a page with her in the book, either.

...and it really takes away a lot of the depth of his developing relationship with Ginny. In fact, so little time is devoted to it that when it shows up, it sort of feels obligatory and has that "lightswitch" feel to it that makes it seem so disingenuous.

In my estimation, the movies have taken a much more measured pace with the Harry-Ginny relationship than the books. In fact, they start hinting about it in #5 (maybe even a little bit in #4—this was something I noticed when I went back and watched the previous movies again leading into watching #6 a second time), and they build up tension between them through the whole movie in #6. In the books, it just suddenly explodes partway through #6, and then Harry spends the next three months afraid of how Ron will take to the whole thing.

Likewise, not seeing much of the Quidditch/schooling stuff takes away from a different side of Harry that you see much more of in the books. It's always seemed like those cuts are made for money/length reasons and not narrative ones, which is why I've spoken out against them here.

I'm not sure I agree about the narrative reasons here. I would like to see a hair more schooling (particularly in HP6, where there are several very notable developments: Snape teaching DAtDA, non-vocalized spells, and apparating, none of which actually appear in the movie), but I'm not convinced that the Quidditch cuts have been extraneous (though they certainly could have and should have played up Harry getting cut out of Quidditch in #5, given that it wouldn't actually have required showing Quidditch). #4 had so much other stuff to cover anyway, I think it's understandable for narrative reasons that the Quidditch part (like SPEW) got cut out.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

I doubt that anyone would argue with that, Priceless.

But considering that each film has made more than five times its budget (although, at $250 mil for HBP, that might be a challenge this time around), and that Warner Bros. seems to have no problem with domestic box office success, it's just funny to see how much WB just wants to milk the cash cow vs. making the best films about the series that they can.

I don't think they're going to hit $1.25 MMM, but it's doing quite well. Per HTF, it's up to $896.1 MM worldwide as of the end of August, third behind Goblet and Sorceror's Stone. Ticket sales are lagging a bit (leading only Azkaban), but it's very close to OOtP (I'd say likely to overtake) and could possibly catch up to Goblet and Chamber (both of which are very close to one another).

 

[hockeybando]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

I don't think he actually shared a page with her in the book, either.

I thought maybe they shared a very small bit of dialogue in the book, but it would take far too much digging to find where it would be right now.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

I thought maybe they shared a very small bit of dialogue in the book, but it would take far too much digging to find where it would be right now.

Romilda and Harry had some page time together at the beginning of the Hogwarts Express chapter in book 6. She's the one who opens their compartment door, and asks Harry if he wants to sit with cool people (he's with only Luna and Neville at the time), there's room in her compartment.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Movie (spoiler alert)

Oh yes, that's right.

That's something that would have been nice for them to get into the movie, now that you mention it.