Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009). While I own and have finished several reads of each of the seven Harry Potter books, I’ve never really got ‘into’ the series. There’s a lot of story in each, but also some level of indulgent writing. It occasionally just takes too long for a plot arc to get resolved, or that a plot development feels contrived with too superficial a setup but awkward in the payoff, especially in the death of several characters in the last book.
That said, it’s been interesting to watch the evolution of the Harry Potter films. They’ve gone from obviously kid-centric films to fare that while is still safely PG13 has stylistically gone darker. Gone are the almost Disneyland sets in the first two movies; Hogwarts in the last few films look more like what you could mistake to be Arkham Asylum of Gotham City.
The last few films – particularly from Goblet of Fire onwards – has also faced the increasingly difficult tasks of compressing huge novels of 700+ pages – into films of 2.5 hours. Scenes get cut. Characters that have presence or developments in the book get the short stick in the film.
The cast in each film remains huge, but several characters get reduced to mere cameos or background filler. In Half-Blood Prince, it’s Hagrid, Neville Longbottom, Tonks and Lupin among others that are barely in this time. I wonder if in the next decade or so, someone is going to try turning the books into a TV series – now 4-5 hours per books would definitely do nicely.
While Ling hasn’t actually verbalized this much, I suspect she’s happy to be get some relief from Hannah every now and then. So, we left Hannah at Lentor on Saturday morning and headed to AMK Hub to catch Half-Blood Prince.
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The sixth book/film is tricky: unlike the first four books at least, book VI is all setup for what will happen in the last book. So, you get a lot of development on Voldemort’s background, his motivations, and the efforts of the Hogwarts’ crew to fight him.
There’re a couple of key developments, including the death of a key character – which was hyped beyond belief in the months leading to the publication of the book in July 2005 – and the supposed ‘turning’ of another major character – which would get heavily debated upon until Book VII finally resolves that character’s real agenda. In between, there’s a lot of the peripheral stuff, like the trio’s gradual discovery of their hormones, Quidditch matches and more lessons at Hogwarts.
To the film’s credit, the production has retained bits of all these both major and minor story elements, and things move along briskly in the film’s about 2.5 hrs run time.
The production quality remains mostly impeccable – costumes and interior sets especially – though a couple of backdrops in the exterior scenes are obviously the result of computer wizardry.
But it’s the cast that I watch these films for. Never mind that these are teenage now turned young adult actors who’re still learning the art. There’s just something incredibly reminiscent to watch young actors who’ve grown grown comfortably into their roles since 2001, and that with each new film they better themselves.
As for the adult crew, I still miss the late Richard Harris’ Dumbledore. While Michael Gambon has filled in the shoes nicely in the last four films, watching Film VI where the Headmaster has a meaty role in and especially the seaside cave scene where he shows just how great a magician he is, I can’t help but wonder how Harris would have fared.
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On the overall, Half-Blood Prince is in a difficult spot as it’s trying to tell a complicated story condensed from a huge book but yet saddled with the challenge of keeping audiences interested while holding off the real ‘action’ until the last (two) films. There’s a lot of drama, maybe too much of adolescent love, and too little wizardry action – the battle inside Hogwarts was not filmed by the director (didn’t think it was the right decision).
So, for persons who’ve not read the books or whose interest level in the series has come entirely from the films, Half-Blood Prince may not be the same ride as previously. The litmus test is Ling, who’s never read the books and have watch only the films.
She liked it.
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