I was talking to Dione about this movie tonight, and she was asking me some questions about scenes that were in the movie and how they related to the book, and about what had been left out and whatnot; and she asked about the scene toward the end when the Death Eaters torch Hagrid’s hut, and whether that was relevant to anything or if it was just gratuitous nonsense. I couldn’t remember for sure, but I told her that the scene when the Death Eaters torched the Burrow was just gratuitous nonsense, and that it didn’t occur in the book.
And then Adam piped up and said that that scene had been added so that there would be an action scene in the middle of the movie - with the theory being, apparently, that an action scene was needed at that point in order to keep people interested. Am I actually supposed to believe that director David Yates thought that the target audience for this picture was going to lose interest at some point? Really? You know the movie is going to sell, and break all kinds of records, so you don’t need the action scene - complete with explosions, don’tcha know? - to get butts in the seats.
Like people were going to walk out, right? Adam chimed in a few minutes later with the fact that the battle between the Death Eaters and the students and teachers of Hogwarts, in the run-up to the scene on the Astronomy Tower, was cut due to budget constraints. (And yes, I’m accepting as truth a lot of hearsay; but a lot of people on my staff are pretty well-informed when it comes to movies. That said, if anyone has a link that can corroborate any of the information I attribute to Adam, feel free to drop it into a comment.)
What a bunch of crap. You undermine the excellent story that Jo Rowling came up with, so that you can appease a bunch of nitwits who judge the quality of a movie on the number of explosions. Not cool. Not defensible, either. See...the next two movies are already in production - it’s not like the success or failure of this one has any bearing on the next two. Also, as idiotic as these explosion-seekers are, they’re not going to foment mass revolution after opening weekend and get people to stop buying tickets if the torching of the Burrow isn’t in the movie. Nobody’s counting explosions to see if the movie is interesting enough.
Of course, the people who would have preferred to see the story respected aren’t going to foment mass revolution after opening weekend, either. In terms of dollars, it doesn’t make a lick of difference whether they have the Burrow-torching or the Battle for Hogwarts. But when you’re talking about how good the movie is, the choice to placate the mouth-breathing explosion lovers makes Half-Blood Prince a weaker film - which is unfortunate, because there are lots of really good moments in the movie.
There are some nice interactions between characters (especially in a scene where Harry comforts Hermione), all of the kids do a great job of playing awkward kids who are starting to discover the things about the opposite sex that make their hearts race, the sets are just amazing to look at (and I can’t resist this, sorry - props to the props people!), and the stripped-down thrust of the narrative - Harry has to coerce Slughorn to reveal a previously-tampered-with memory, so that Harry and Dumbledore can learn critical information about Voldemort - is reasonably effective, especially if you are well read with respect to the novels and can take this story as a transitional sort of episode that paves the way for the things to come in Deathly Hallows.
But the movie, on its own merits, lacks richness and depth. In the novel, you learn much about the back story of Tom Riddle and how his history shaped the man that became Lord Voldemort; you learn much about how Voldemort understood the world around him and how his responses to that world pointed him toward the path that would make him the most dangerous dark wizard of all time; and, best of all, you learn some amazing things about some very dark magic and how the knowledge of that magic helps set the stage for what is to come.
Unfortunately, precious little of this stuff makes it into Movie #6. It makes for robust literature, but not, apparently, robust cinema; and what we’re left with is a movie that gives the strong impression that it is apologizing for its source material. Director David Yates will helm the two-part seventh film, and it can only be hoped that he treats the source material more fairly than he did here - or the conclusion to this bombastic cinematic orgy is going to be awfully disappointing.
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