Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: What Did You Think?

Posted by Dr. Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 20, 2009

HarryPotterSoundOff

The wait is over. You’re there with your friends all dressed up in Slytherin colors (screw Gryffindor), walking out of the theater and feeling…excited? betrayed? tingly? disappointed?

Or maybe you’ve waited to avoid the massive lines and fandemonium, but still caught Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We want to know what you think!

While you’re at it, check out these to salve your Pottermania:

Please be really conscientious of the spoilers. Besides, if you haven’t seen the movie…why are you even reading this post? Seriously. Get out of here.

For those who have seen the movie – tell us everything. What did you love? What did you hate? What did you think of Ron and Harry’s kiss? As shocking as Bruno? Basically…

What do you think?


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  • Aaron
    This is by far the best looking potter yet. Aesthetically, this movie is near perfect.
    However, writing-wise...
    The romance scenes were awkward and overly silly, they were a needed relief from the seriousness of the rest of the movie, yes, but they were very poorly written. In the theatre, the audience laughed when Hermione was crying over Ron, and when Ginny made any sort of advance on Harry at all.
    The last half hour of the movie was unfortunatly very boring. The cave scene was amazing, best scene in the movie. But Dumbledore's death was too brief, people who haven't read the book will not understand that he died, and the chase out of hogwarts was dulled to a quite stroll through the hall and out the front door.

    The movie was entertaining despite what I see as cripiling (damn lack of spellcheck) problems with the script. To see how they fix all the absent details from this movie in movie seven will be interesting.
  • How the hell are they not going to understand that he died? The death scene is shown.
  • juanitothegreat
    I am going to say that I wasn't completely blown away by this movie, but I did fall in love with it. Yes, there were a couple of very important things cut out, but I think they can be mentioned in the next films and bring us up to speed right then and there instead of having to think back to that little bit of information when it has pretty much already been forgotten.

    However, overall, it was a great movie. When faced with the task of fitting a 600+ page book into two and a half hours, most people would be knocked on their ass. However, this was done really well. I never felt as if it was rushing to touch the plot points and move on, it went at a very deliberate speed toward the end.

    Yes, it left us at a kind of a pinnacle, but that is exactly where we can start the sweet, sweet ride to the finish.

    For anyone interested in the rest of my thoughts, here is a review I wrote.
    http://tinyurl.com/ntdb3q
  • Must agree with what's been said already. I'm torn between the incredible look and feel of the film and OK with most of the changes, save the ending. I can only imagine the difficulty of adapting this story for the screen and understand time constraints, but man did I miss The Order and the few DA members that show up to fight. And they could have at least thrown Neville a real line or two, jeez. It may prove to be a great set up for the last two films, we'll see. But, I screened it Monday and it's still lingering in my mind - always a good thing.
  • Curtis G
    I thought this was good but it was not what I was hoping it would be. The last 30 minutes of the movie was just horrible. It felt rushed and I didn't get a sense of shock or any kind of emotion at the shocker ending. I'm a huge fan of the book so of course I am going to be critical. Anyone think the PG rating hurt the movie? The way they ended the movie took away all suspense, mystery, emotion, theories that you got when reading the book. It's always a different experience from book to movie but you can still have that sense of mystery and leave you thinking maybe he isn't dead?! Where does Snapes allegiance lie and so forth. I have never been so dissatisfied with a ending like I am with this one. What a unimaginative and bland/flat way to end it. The movie was great all around but it makes me terrified to see the 7th movie.
  • Do you remember the end of Chamber of Secrets? God that was terribad...
  • It was a good film, not a great film, and a decent adaption. They got the most important stuff in, at a bare minimum. The romance didn't work for me, the humor worked quite well (if not a little TOO common), they made some completely unnecessary changes (what was the point of the Burrow attack?), but it was visually orgasmic. It had no beginning, and no end, which was interesting. There wasn't a lot of action. The acting was the best yet.

    There were lines of dialog in the book, that take no more than fifteen seconds to say, that give so much character. For instance, Snape getting upset (for perhaps the first time in the series), and yelling "Do not call me coward!" At Harry. I love Alan Rickman, but he was a little TOO emotionless in that last scene.

    But it was good, I'll have to see it again to really work it out.

    But they have such an impossible job I pity them.
  • Cole_Abaius
    David Yates and Steve Kloves said they added the attack on the burrow because there hadn't been an action beat in a really long time by that point, and they wanted to display the real danger from Death Eats on a personal level (since the disappearances happening are just mentioned in conversation or in news print stories).
  • Yeah I guess, but it wasn't really action... They run through a wheat field and set the burrow on fire. If they wanted action, they could have done that last fight at Hogwarts right. What they should have done, since the film was character based and not very action oriented as is, is show more of the memories of Voldemort. I would have loved to have seen Ralph Fiennes play the part, without beings the disfigured monster he has become.

    Also, the whole time the Burrow was burning, I'm saying "Put the fire out, you idiots!" As they just watched it burn. It wouldn't be half as funny if Harry didn't reveal at the end that there exists a spell to summon water...
  • There was no battle at Hogwarts in this film because the filmmakers felt it would be repetitive to have one since there's one in the last film as well.
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