It was very good, but it was neither perfect, nor my favorite of the film series.
I can remember, quite clearly, a conversation my friend Sam and I had back in high school, regarding Star Trek: The Next Generation. In specific, we were arguing, were the writers, or the actors, more integral to the show? I argued that the writers were the most important part, because if you didn’t have the writers, what exactly would the actors do? Given the quality of some of that show’s episodes, I may have been on the losing side of the argument, but if a work of film media, be it a TV show or a movie, is like a human body, then the script — the story — is the bones upon which all else, the acting, the directing, the cinematography and art design, the music, is layered upon.
If you start with a bad story, then people will say: “It was a good popcorn film”, or, “the special effects were really neat.” “It was totally worth seeing in the theater!” But if that’s the case, it is not a movie that twenty years from now they’ll be quoting on Twitter. Lord knows, I cannot count the number of times someone throws out a Princess Bride quote on that micro-blogging site.
I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Order of the Phoenix so much is because the screenwriter, Michael Goldenberg, was willing to try to capture the tone of the book, without necessarily being true to all the aspects of the book’s plot. I cannot read Order of the Phoenix without feeling an overwhelming sense of dread and doom — and the same is true for the movie. In broad strokes, Goldberg captured what Steve Kloves, who’d adapted the previous four films, had failed to accomplish.
Now, disclaimer: I don’t know how much impact the director has on the script. For all I know, the directors of each previous film was standing over Kloves’ shoulder as they tried to figure out what needed to stay, and what needed to be cut. In that case, credit should probably go to David Yates as much as the writer. In fact, after watching The Half Blood Prince, I think this latter assumption is probably correct.
Half Blood Prince wasn’t great — but it was very, very good.
I attended an afternoon showing at the Uptown Theater in DC. I love that place, really, I do, but I’m wondering why I bought a ticket — no one was there to check the ticket, and indeed, even the person in the ticket booth seemed so engrossed in her phone that I probably could have just walked in without being challenged. Clearly, I am an upstanding citizen of good moral character, right?
I was worried about attending the showing for another reason: kids. Yes, including teenagers. While the theater was nowhere near as empty as when I saw State of Play, it was pretty full. Fortunately, most of the young folks in the theater were teenagers, and I guess it’s either a testament to Harry Potter‘s ability to captivate, or to DC’s young theater going population, that the crowd was extremely well behaved: okay, there was clapping at certain points (like when Ginny and Harry kiss), but I thought that only added to the experience (sort of like when I went to see Snakes on a Plane opening night and the whole packed theater screamed along with Samuel L. Jackson’s famous line from that film).
It’s been half a year since I last read the book, so I’m a bit rusty on all the intricate details of the plot. The bare bones are the same: Harry stumbles across a Malfoy plot to injure someone in Hogwarts, at the bequest of Lord Voldemort. Meanwhile, Harry is using a used potions book, which once belonged to “The Half Blood Prince”, with incredibly detailed notes which allow him to succeed at his potions lessons. Also, Dumbledore has been leaving the castle looking for Voldemort’s horcruxes, through which he has stored pieces of his soul and made himself virtually immortal — Dumbledore is using his Pensive, and his own memories, to reveal to Harry much of Voldemort’s past.
As always, while Harry, Ron, and Hermione get plenty of screen time, most of the cast is relegated to what could be described as extended cameos. I literally jumped at the Katie Bell-gets-cursed sequence, which, in tone, reminded me a lot of The Exorcist. From a CGI perspective, the Gryffindor/Slytherin Quidditch match is light years ahead of what was done on the early films. There were certain liberties taken with the story, the one I found most egregious is discussed later, but: there is a sequence which I’m pretty sure is not in the book, where several Death Eaters attack the Weasley home and torch it.
However … the ending was very disappointing. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably read The Half Blood Prince, and you know it ends with Snape betraying Dumbledore and killing him. The death scene has been somewhat retooled — Harry is not immobilized by Dumbledore and hidden under his invisibility cloak. The fight sequence in Hogwarts is non-existent, but truthfully, neither of these movie liberties disturbed me –
– but what did bother me was the ending. Like, final scene ending. At the end of the book, there’s a funeral sequence where Harry announces his intentions not to return to Hogwarts to Ron and Hermione. In the film, this conversation takes place on the tower Dumbledore was killed. There is no funeral sequence, and while I can understand why from a logistical standpoint it might have been difficult to shoot, I for one would have liked to have the final conversation over Dumbledore’s tomb.
Finally, a sad note: during a dining sequence, several characters take a crack at a student named Marcus Belby, who is quite invested in his desert. Actor Robert Knox, who played Belby, was stabbed and killed shortly after finishing his role on the film. His killer was convicted and sentenced to life last March.
