The Half-Blood Prince Broke My Heart

Firstly let me say that I am/was a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. Wait let me correct that, a huge fan of the movies, because up until about 3 months after the release of Order of the Phoenix I hadn't touched a Harry Potter book. This may be the best and worst decision I could have made. I loved the book it was excellent, and that is the issue. The book was so great that I was worried the movie wouldn't do it justice and on July 15, 2009 my fears were confirmed.

Now I have heard people talk about how they hate Harry Potter movies for years and I never understood why until I experienced it myself. I read Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. Those were my first two Harry Potter books and they will be my last in order to keep the perfection of the first 5 movies. So now I will do what was never done for me, I will explain what went wrong and why I feel the way I do.

Before I complain too much I just want to say that visually this movie was amazing, David Yates really outdid himself. The problems come from all the things that were left out and the pacing. This movie was 2 hours and 33 minutes, the book was 600 plus pages, obviously some things are going to be lost in translation but there is no excuse for some of the things that were left out of this film or the amount of time they spent on things that do not matter.

I really liked the book because it was so dark and I was really looking forward to seeing this on film, but instead this turned into a teenage love fest. These elements were present in the book as well, but not nearly to the extent they were displayed in the movie. It seriously felt like 90% of the movie was about relationships and a Hogwarts party or something. What happened to all the death and destruction that was going on in the world? This alone was enough to ruin the movie for anyone who read the books, but the worst was yet to come.

My biggest gripe is this one unforgivable exclusion. In the book there is a huge battle between the death eaters and the students of Hogwarts. It is really quite amazing, and it would have been great to watch it play out on film, this is the only part of the movie I was dying to see. But of course it was cut out completely which is unforgivable. The scene they showed where Dumbledore is killed was changed so much that it was ruined for me and it just felt so unfinished at the end. Mostly because they also cut out Dumbledore's funeral, which I was also looking forward to seeing.

That about sums up my feeling on the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series. I went from counting down the days until Harry Potter comes out to just wanting them to hurry up and be done with it in one heartbreaking letdown of a movie. On a brighter note, The Deathly Hallows is being split into two movies therefore I doubt they can ruin it too much, But I won't be holding my breath this time around. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me...