Loramir Of Gondor's Journal

So: HBP!

Just got back from the midnight showing. It was awesome! I didn't even know Sumter had that many HP fans diehard enough to go to a midnight showing!

Anyway. It was great! I'd forgotten how great HP movies are. I can't remember the first thing about OotP. I have lots of small nitpicky things and several big things that bothered me, but on the whole it was really good. Funny and still very dark, close enough to the book not to give me a heart attack, suspenseful, well-shot and good cinematography and special effects...

One problem of course is that I haven't read the book in ages, so exactly what is and isn't in the book are a bit hazy at times.


Probably trying to put this into organized paragraphs is a lost cause, so here are thoughts, in no particular order:

--The beginning was very abrupt. Why exactly was Harry in a cafe in a tube station? And how did he suddenly know to look at the exact spot Dumbledore was about to appear? Also, nitpickily, it annoyed me that he was reading a Daily Prophet in a very populated Muggle area, and then when Dumbledore appeared, he left it there! Sure that violates the Statute of Secrecy or something? Probably you just weren't supposed to notice, of course...

--Still, very abrupt. Harry reads about how he's Chosen One, gets flirted with by a unintelligible Cockney waitress, runs into Dumbledore in a tube station, and the next minute they're off to find some guy pretending to be a chair. Although Harry's quote is brilliant: "Actually sir, after all these years I just sort of go with it."

--Also, Slughorn claims he's hiding some Muggles' house. If so, why are all of his pictures of his "collection" there? Does he bring them along and display at all of his hideouts from the Death Eaters?

--It would have been great if they'd had the scene with the Muggle Prime Minister that starts the book. That scene was really interesting, revealed a lot about Muggle-wizard relations, AND showed very well just how powerful Voldemort had grown (enough to cause problems in the Muggle world as well).

--Harry & Ginny's relationship I thought was handled fairly well. I'm a bit iffy on the scene where Harry and Hermione confide in each other about their respective crushes, which I'm fairly sure was not in the book. Plus wasn't Harry supposed to be all agonizingly secretly in love? Ginny seemed to know pretty quickly seeing how she was always hanging around and stuff. I really liked the kiss scene in the book better, where Harry kisses her in front of everyone without thinking (after a whole book of agonizing), and then has to deal with Ron and stuff afterward.

--Lavender Brown was pretty good. Very annoying, but then she was supposed to be.

--While I'm on relationships: LUPIN AND TONKS!!! Well, the most I can say is...they were there. They had such a beautiful scene in the book, with the whole "Too old, too poor, too werewolf" thing, and I LOVED it. The movie reduced their entire relationship to her grabbing his arm and saying "Sweetheart" at one point during the minute or so they were onscreen.

--Fenrir Greyback was also THERE, but largely superfluous and not at all explained. Unless you happened to catch sight of a "Wanted" poster in Knockturn Alley as the camera panned past it AND connect it with him, you had no idea who he was, and no mention at all was mentioned of him being a werewolf, other than him requesting to kill Dumbledore "my way." But then I guess since Bill wasn't around to be bitten and there was no big showdown at Hogwarts with Lupin present, I guess it didn't matter.

--There did seem to be a number of things that weren't explained much and assumed you were familiar with the content. Spinner's End, for instance, didn't make very clear who "Cissy" was, unless you know Draco's mother is Narcissa. Wormtail was present for about three seconds with no explanation as well. In general a lot of people were not introduced at all. However, this was fine with me, since most people are familiar with everyone.

--Also, the Inferi in the cave place - since we didn't see any of Snape's DADA classes, they weren't identified at all. Also, they looked a lot like Gollum.

--A lot of people were also completely forgotten. Some, like the Dursleys, Percy, Bill, Fleur, etc. were simply left out of the movie. Others, like Neville, were just ignored. I think I saw Neville once just before the trio encountered Katie Bell and her cursed necklace, but that was it. Even Seamus got one line! Poor Neville, after all his heroism in OotP.

--Slughorn. I never really formed much a picture of him in the books, so I thought he was pretty good.

--Potions! The scenes where Ron ate Harry's love-potioned chocolates was hilarious. Also Harry's scene with Felix Felicis whatever. The whole theater was laughing at him and Slughorn by the greenhouse.

--The whole "Half Blood Prince" aspect was practically ignored. Everyone wonders briefly who it might be, then forgets altogether. And then they decide the book is evil and chuck it in Draco's vanishing cabinet. Snape tells Harry at the end that he is HBP, but that's that. What about that whole backstory with Lily and stuff? Isn't that in the book? Who tells Harry about that? Or is that later? Or am I thinking of the Shoebox Project?

--Regarding Draco's vanishing cabinet... I thought the Room of Requirement shows different things to different people. So how come Harry and Ginny can see Draco's vanishing cabinet? I guess they needed/required it? Meh. Also, how did a vanishing cabinet with a twin in Borgin & Burke's just happen to get there, or was that Room of Requirement magic too? This is probably in the book.

--Draco! Tom Felton was really good! Better than ever, I think. Especially since he had some actual depth to his role besides sneering at Harry all the time and pretending to faint, get attacked by hippogriffs, etc. He really made you feel a bit sorry for Draco, in over his head with Voldemort. And he looked really good, all gangster-like in his black suit!

--I liked the penseive bits - the way they appeared and disappeared was neat. Leaving out the Gaunts and stuff was fine with me, since I can't ever remember that part much anyway, although it made Dumbledore's hand a bit...unexplained (well, he did finally say it was from destroying the ring Horcrux).

--Dumbledore. Oh my goodness. I simply cannot stand Michael Gambon. I'm sorry. He's just WRONG. Richard Harris was the PERFECT Dumbledore. Friendly and twinkly and jolly (and yes, I realize, Dumbledore's not always supposed to be friendly and jolly) and wise. Michael Gambon was okay in PoA, but he really lost me in GoF when Harry's name came out of the Goblet and Dumbledore yelled at him. Maybe that was the scriptwriters or something, but that's just NOT Dumbledore. Dumbledore doesn't yell at people. He regards them very solemnly and sorrowfully over the top of his half-moon spectacles until they feel guilty. And occasionally he makes grave pronouncements. But he doesn't YELL. And then in OotP one of the small things I do remember is at some point a bunch of students were somewhere and he was all, "Don't you all have some studying to do?" and angry and stuff. So while he didn't do any of that dramatically out of character stuff in this one, he's just so brusque and curt and not DUMBLEDORE. I do think he did a pretty good job on the cave scene. And the final confrontation with Draco, Snape, etc.

--Speaking of which... Dumbledore's death was pretty well done, I think. It, or at least the events surrounding it, were pretty different from the book. The whole epic confrontation with Death Eaters at Hogwarts was pretty much not there, the Order did not show up, etc. The Death Eaters just kind of dropped in, trashed the dining hall, watched Snape killed Dumbledore, sent up a Dark Mark, set Hagrid's hut on fire, and left. I'm not really sure how the whole school ended up outside at the end, for that matter.

--Snape really is just awesome. I'm not really a fan of him as a character, redeemed in DH or not, but he's just so...cool. Alan Rickman is, anyway. His voice! He's just absolutely perfect for the part. Someone described Snape in one of the early books as swooping around like an overgrown bat, and that is exactly what he does. Alan Rickman is excellent at swooping.

--On a random side note: why can Death Eaters zoom around like black smoke? I seem to recall this from the OotP movie as well. How come they can do it and not the good wizards? (Although maybe I do remember the Order doing it as well at the showdown at the Ministry in OotP)

--Also: when the Burrow was on fire in that totally random, not-at-all-in-the-book scene, couldn't someone have done something magic-wise to like, put it out? Harry used magic to produce water in the cave later - couldn't they have done something similar? They're wizards. Dumbledore fixed a whole trashed house with one wave of his wand!

--There were some great little details that I really liked. Just small stuff from the books that caught my eye - like Mr. Weasley's plug collection when he's talking to Harry in his shed, and the dish of lemon drops on Dumbledore's desk.

--McClaggan or however you spell it... I remember him from the book, but does it say where he comes from? Or was he just around for six years and never mentioned?

--I was afraid they'd manage to leave out Dumbledore's line "I do love knitting patterns," but they didn't!

--Speaking of which, McGonagall always gets cheated out of her awesome snarky lines. Especially in the last movie. She didn't get to say "Cough drop, Dolores?" OR "It unscrews the other way." And wasn't it in OotP she went after Umbridge and got hit with a bunch of stunning spells? McGonagall is awesome. But all her cool scenes get left out of the movies.

--The very end was a bit weird. It seemed odd that Harry & Hermione would be talking while Ron hung back and looked sulky. I think it was meant to indicate he was feeling weird about Harry and Ginny, but it just looked kind of weird. It was also weird how they were all sad about Dumbledore, fake Horcrux, etc, and then abruptly changed the subject to Harry and Ginny. I was glad Ron finally wandered over to join them, since it seemed fitting that they should all be together at a time like that.


Well, it's nearly 4:30 AM. So, conclusions: definitely very well done. I think it's tied with PoA for my favorite. It was just the right balance of humor and darkness. It would be very easy for it to be too dark and depressing, but it wasn't. It maybe wasn't dark enough, really. You didn't really see just how grim the Voldemort situation was and how much his power had grown, at least not as much as you did in the book. And if you didn't know what happened at the end, it maybe kind of came out of nowhere.

But anyway. I think it struck a good balance overall. The humor wasn't as forced as it has seemed in some of the movies, they did a good job of showing how the gang is growing up...

Anyway, I could probably go on for ages, but I must go to bed! Now I'm looking forward to reading the book - must finish GoF and get through OotP (aka "HP and the Teenage Angst!").