lazycrockett said:

SUPRMAN said:

You may want to try it as an audiobook. They are fantastically done IMO. The US versions are read by Jim Dale and the UK ones are read by Stephen Fry (those are the ones I've heard). Here's the beginning of HBP read by Jim Dale: http://www.youtube.com/wa...F8zMmP4CXQ

Vendetta1 said:

Good points, but I can see why they just introduced the horcruxes here. They'll be spending much more time with them in the last two.

I really need to see this movie again. I thought Harry was sufficiently enraged after Dumbledore's death. Maybe I was projecting memories of the book onto the movie?

AlexdeParis said:

i think I just need to re-visit the book.

AlexdeParis said:

They didn't include the scene?



That was one of the funniest parts in the entire series. I had to put the book down and I laughed for at least 15 good minutes at that scene.


I really really enjoyed the books that I've read. After book 7, it was like saying goodbye to friends.

AlexdeParis said:

I agree.

Imago said:

You will love every last scene Luna is in, though. She was AWESOME.

Overall I absolutely loved it. And I'm a huge fan of the books. I understand why they took out what they did and still think it was a coherent movie. They really butchered Order of the Phoenix on that end, I think if you hadn't read the book you wouldn't understand half of what was going on.
I loved that they allowed us to see the teenagers starting to grow up.
I loved the pensieve scenes.
I love Luna.

Imago said:

I hated the "ending." I was glad to be done though. I felt the last three books were all written with an eye on the movie to come. Like a scene in the last book that occurs for no conceivable reason other than generate on screen action. . .

I loved the characters and the acting. Alan Rickman's Snape Rupert Grint's Ron Just everyone was so wonderful.

The folks who adapted the book to a screenplay should NEVER be allowed to do so again.

WTF!!

Adding scenes that weren't in the book and leaving out so much that was.

Dumbledore coming to the Dursley's SO should have been the opening.

Bill and Phlem

Tonks and Lupin

And I CANNOT believe they didn't have Harry under the cloak and petrified when Dumbledore is killed! It completely changed the essence of that scene!!

I had read that the franchise took a lot of flack for how dark HP5 was so they wanted to make this movie "lighter". They took out so much of the depth of the book.

I will be seeing this again, because that's what I do with the HP movies, but they utterly dropped the ball with this adaptation.

I re-read the book before seeing the movie and I know I shouldn't do that, but even if I hadn't, I think I'd have been 'd about how it played out.

imo all the HP movies have been crap, except for the first one

I thought it was very good.
Not as good as The Prisoner of Azkaban though, which still remains the
best IMO, but it's definitely up there.

And I thought they did a great job of keeping the essence of the book, despite
deviating from it in a few places. Plus, the places where thy did stray from the
book a bit was done in a logical way IMO.

It does suffer from being a bit slow, but then so was book, which mostly
concentrated on unraveling Voldemort's past and the early relationship
problems of the students. They managed to extract enough humor from
their relationship issues to avoid the film getting too overwhelmed by
the darkness and sense of approaching storm that the movie has (quite
rightly). In fact there's a distinct feeling of things decaying and falling
apart that hangs over everything in this movie. The tone is definitely
very dark, right from the opening titles where the Harry Potter logo now
appears battered and weatherbeaten to the way almost all the color seems
to have been sapped out of the movie.

I can see why they changed the ending slightly and didn't include the battle
at Hogwarts. There's a huge battle at the school at the end of the final movie
so changing HBP finale to merely a Death Eater hi t'n' run escape rather than
a full blown battle made sense, so as to avoid repetition in the Deathly Hallows.

I also didn't mind Harry not being petrified under his invisibility cloak prior
to Dumbledore's death. In fact I thought that it actually worked better with him
seeing everything from below, but being bound not to act by his promise to
Dumbledore (which carried on logically from his promise to do exactly what
Dumbledore said without question in the Cave). Then Snape arriving and
passing Harry allegedly to save the day, worked really well. Harry's
subsequent pursuit of Snape was pretty much just like the book (just with
the absence of other Teachers and students).

However, I'm sure I remember the trailer containing the pivitol line from
Harry in this scene "Fight back you coward!", yet this was missing from
the finished movie for some reason (maybe they thought this exchange
between Harry and Snape gave too much away about Shape's apparent
allegiances and decided to cut it).

The only things I missed really was the Dursley's opening and Dumbledore's
funeral at the end. Other than that I think they did a great job.

I just finished re-reading The Deathly Hallows again as I wanted to try and
work out where they're gonna split the movie in half. Personally, I think
they'll finish Part 1 on a cliff hanger, at the point where Harry, Hermione and
Ron get captured by snatchers in the forest just after destroying the 'first'
Horcrux. So part 2 will start with them being taken to Malfoy Manor.
[Edited 7/20/09 17:33pm]

Would be nice to see if there is some magical director's cut or something when they release this on dvd which helps clean up some loose ends

Nothinbutjoy said:

exactly

kcwm said:

In the BOOK Harry was under the invisibility cloak and frozen so he could not move or be seen. But even then Snape would not take Harry to Voldy.

erm.

I saw the movie. It was o.k. I guess.



The problem with the movie is that unlike all the previous movies, I actually read the book first.

They left out way too much out of the book, but still managed to make a confusing movie--for people not completely aware of the storyline. The movie could have been 15 or 20 minutes longer and clarified a few things, and the general audience would have not complained.


Luna was brilliant as always. I laughed out loud when she sat at the dinner table with that stupid lion-hat on her head

replacing Tonks with Luna in the train scene was actually a good idea--it helped simplify and streamline the movie.


The problem with the movie is that it could not have possibly encompassed all the themes of such a brilliant and entertaining book. It was bound to fall short. So I think most of the folks who read the book were very forgiving in that respect.

However, it's the ways in which the movie falls short that astounds me. This is a movie that should have been a march-against-time movie (much like the last book will be), and yet throughout the entire affair, it plays out like a mystery but there's no sense of a race-against-Voldermuffin at all. There's no sense of urgency.

And the scene of Bealitrix-6 and the other death eaters harassing Harry in the cornfield could have been completely left out and replaced with the Tom Riddle story line or scenes expressing the urgency of Harry's plight. It felt like a disruption in the flow of the movie if anything else.

There is no sense at all in the last scene of the importance of the scene--the last scene with DumbleMuffin, afterall, sets the stage for the whole of the next book.

Overall, it was a very entertaining film simply because I've become a fan of the franchise, and it was like a chance to visit old friends.

But the movie is lacking in so many areas, I can't really say it was a great movie at all, and am surprised at how much others loved it.





I will say the young man playing Malfoy has become a better actor over the years. You do get a sense that he's no longer the one-dimensional character he portrays in the earlier books. He's more fleshed out and human in this one, if only slightly.

I agree w/ everything except the replacing of Tonks w/ Luna bit as, in the book, that helps develop how tense the situation is, ie. Members of the Order of the Phoenix are now posted to guard Hogwarts.

The attack of the Weasley's house was completely unnecessary.

The time spent on that could have been used to develop the Tonk/Remus or Bill/Fleur storylines.

"The Goblet of Fire" had a lot going on it it. As I was reading it, I could tell they'd have to cut out quite a bit to make the movie work. I thought they did a good job of it. That movie is a good adaptation of the book, so I was really looking forward to seeing "The Half-Blood Prince" given the same treatment.

It's a disappointment that it was not

Nothinbutjoy said:

OK, now that you explained it that way, I agree wholeheartedly. It would have increased the tension--which was lacking in this movie.


I know that the books become increasingly more complex as the story progresses, but I think the audience would really be o.k. with the directors stepping outside of the hour and 1/2 hollywood length and going all Peter Jackson and shit.

The problem with this movie is it takes for granted that you've seen all the previous ones. Given the complexity of the overall story line, this is understandable, but there's just no way you can skimp on a few vital elements.

We need to understand Hermoine's jealousy of Harry Potter's Half-Blood Prince book of potions, but instead we're supposed to just somehow know she's the goody two-shoes smart one. We need to understand Harry's fear of Voldermort, and instead he's been relegated to a spoken-of myth. We need to understand DumbleMuffin's role as the sage, but instead we get only glimpses of this very complex character---all of these elements are 'assumed' to be understood, when the movie really has an obligation to explain them further, even if it seems redundant while watching a Harry Potter marathon

In the first 3 movies, there is a sense of magic that prevails throughout the entire span of those movies. By the 5th movie, this magic is lost and the movies take on a very necessary dark feel to them.
But the problem is these movies don't actually flesh out the 'dark side of magic' very well. It almost feels like a a-team verses b-team battle, and it's really much more than that.


OK, enough with the negative stuff:

I really liked the fact that the movie didn't rely on special effects. As a matter of fact, at times, the matter-of-fact feel to the special effects was refreshing.

Also, the actors are getting better as they age.

.
[Edited 7/22/09 9:23am]

Imago said:

Co-sign 100%!!!

Perhaps on a second viewing I'll agree, but on first, I really think it was a great adaptation. I think the scene they added at the Weasley's helped serve to show just how serious and how bad things were getting. In the book, that feeling is gained as a slow build-up of several events over time, which could have been distracting and disjointed trying to throw that all in the movie. The one scene accomplished giving us that sense of doom in one fell swoop.

And I agree with what someone said that foregoing the battle at Hogwarts here will make the the battle at the end of the next one that much more significant.

If I had any problem at all, I think that the romance between Harry and Ginny lacks any kind of spark. They tried to do little things to foreshadow in the last movie, but there simply wasn't enough lead-up in this one. And the actors have no chemistry together.

But I think they did it very well w/Ron and Hermione.

CarrieMpls said:

One of my co-workers has said that the actor playing Ginny has not facial expressions and it puts a damper on the romantic storyline. I agree with that.

The Ron/Hermione relationship was done very well!

Nothinbutjoy said:

I agree.


But let's face it--Carrie is essentially wrong on everything else. And we're right.

She'll come around to our way of thinking after she sees the movie again. She may not admit it and post it here, but you know she's going to agree secretly.

Imago said:

Naturally

I was trying to describe the movie, as someone that has like all the previous movies.

I was going to say it sucked donkey balls, but in that situation, at least one of the participants might have fun.

This movie was like blowing a syphilitic donkey and punching the donkey in his diseased balls while blowing him.

Luna was awesome. Hew headdress / hat was kick ass. Only part of the movie I enjoyed.

Mars23 said:

Now that you described it that way, I'm inclined to agree.