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Original thread here, ('07) mega rants start up on page 2.

For this thread:
Post 1: My lengthy rant.
Post 2: Rumors/spoilers confirmed for the next movie, or info about this movie.

Disclaimer: If you're here, I'm assuming you've read Half-Blood Prince (and the other 5 books), or at least seen the movies, or any combination of the two. I'm not holding back on spoilers for either version of HBP, but I am whiting out important - spoiler things going on in Deathly Hallows for the sake of the movie fans, and ask that you guys do that too. My memory may be fuzzy so please bear with me. xD

Another last disclaimer: I walked out of that movie and completely completely loved it. IMHO, it's the best of all of them so far. I'm ranting on what I know was wrong/different because it's a great movie with flaws.

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So this time, I went to a midnight premiere (a first for me) with two guy friends. Long story short about that, fangirls went nuts at a trailer for HBP as well as a "Twilight 2" trailer. *cry*
ThPriestess told me she went to see HBP and there was a Torchwood trailer for Children of Earth. O.o

Before I completely explode my brain or something, I wanna point out how well the CGI, the atmosphere, acting, music (mostly lack of it), all of that was beautifully done and gave such a good feel to it that only Harry Potter has.

Things I noticed (not necessarily in order):
1) The Dursley's scenes are all gone. So no exposition about how Harry's home is keeping him safe until he turns a certain age. Or something like that.
2) The book, for being a pretty dark read, has a extremely lighthearted (up until the last 15 minutes) movie counterpart.
3) They give us 2 of (I can't even remember how many, but the case in the movie has a lot too) the Tom Riddle memories and left out almost all of his backstory. And he's the main villain of everything.
4) Oooh, the Pensieve got a cool upgrade.
5) I didn't even see Neville once. Or Kreacher/Dobby/other house elves (who are important). Also, lack of Mcgonnagal
6) Lupin and Tonks' relationship was sped up in a not-so-subtle "sweetheart" line from Tonks.
7) Insertion of attack on the Burrow (first time) although TBH I don't remember if that was in the book.
8] No Grawp. He's important later if I remember right.
9) Everything concerning the (boring) Muggle Prime Minister scenes are gone - but the bridge collapse scene was mentioned in the book.

10) Pointless destruction of the Burrow. (This is most likely to cut down on all random Death Eater destruction scenes and make it affect the viewers/Harry more by happening to someone he/we love.)

11) The Astronomy Tower. What. The. Heck. The pentultimate scene there turned into something almost emotionless. It was going well until I realized Harry had no invisibility cloak, and Dumbledore didn't immobilize him. So in my opinion, it made Harry look like a weak child who had the chance to act and didn't. Also WTF Snape shushing him? My assumption is that Harry trusts Dumbledore who trusts Snape, therefore despite disliking Snape, Harry will trust him. Still, a completely pointless change.

12) Dumbledore had no funeral scene. Instead, everyone raised their wand so it glowed a bit. What struck me as oddly funny, is that while everyone is doing that, Dumbledore is still on the ground. He had no funeral scene or even his beautiful coffin (which would have been amazing to watch being created). Although I have heard that Deathly Hallows is going to start off with his funeral, and they didn't want to end three movies in a row with a focus on a death. (Cedric, Sirius, Dumbldore).

13) Draco's sub-plot was partially disguised in the book; if I remember right, we weren't sure who was trying to send gifts to Dumbledore other than Harry's wildly paranoid guess of Draco. The movie makes it ridiculously obvious, so that the Astronomy Tower scene has no weight in that regard.

14) Snape's entire backstory. The book is named after him. You think they wouldn't have ignored the subplot with Hermione's attempts to find out who he is -- that was the huge mystery for me in the books and I loved it. Instead we get one scene where they all drop the subject after she says the library has no information. =/

15) The build-up to Snape's reveal. Again, he's got a huge character in book 6 and the reveal was really laaaame. His character is spelled out to be good in the movie (Harry overhears Dumbledore's comment about "promising" to do something and that's that) and then if you watch the movie with the ending in mind, there are many foreshadowing moments that stick out that spell out Dumbledore's impending death.

16) Destruction of Hagrid's Hut, along with Hagrid's CMOA (Crowning Moment of Awesome).

17) Opening scene with random girl flirting with Harry. Unneeded but funny. I now have a friend who is a Harry/randomgirl shipper.

18] Not mentioning that Greyback is a werewolf.

19) Setting up plot for Bill and Fleur's awesome scene in the next book! Even a mention would be nice, and it would be cool to start DH on that happy light note.

20) Very minor but I know I'm not the only one who would have loved to see the big neon sign on the Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes' shop, mocking Voldemort.

21) Or hearing the song, "Weasley Is Our King" (left out from movie five?)
Because Ron is just that awesome and there's a huge part in DH where he isn't there..

22) The ending of the movie. It kind of just.. ended. confused


1. Ignored almost completely
2. 90% of the movie is this
3. Ignored a little less completely than 1
4. More of a focus on this but it's made too obvious

I haven't read this book since it came out, but a few things did bother me with the movie--which I don't consider anything like the best. It was good and entertaining, but not the best.

1) I really disliked that line early on in the dining hall where somebody says something like, "Here comes Harry Potter covered in blood again. Seems like he's always covered in blood". It sounds so self-referential. I swear, you could use that in a parody of the series. Is that actually in the book? 'Cause I don't remember anybody saying such a thing, at least aloud. It's approaching the same self-mockery with the oft-repeated observations that Harry has his father's face & mother's eyes. He's beginning to do a "yeah, yeah, everybody says that, shut up" kind of thing.
(I did just check the book & saw such a moment written in Horace's intro scenes--but it looks worse visualized on screen than it reads in the book.)
Making fun of what you are trying to show as a believable world just doesn't work--like Doctor 4 openly laughing at the Daleks for not being able to go up stairs.

2) Yes, it wasn't right to completely cut the obnoxious Dursley's out. I mean, they didn't want him around any more now that it was getting dangerous, & had to be strongly convinced to keep him a little longer because Harry needed the protection. The increasingly volatile relationship between Harry & the Dursleys pretty much came to a head at this point.

3) Was that really the Burrows? I don't remember the Weasleys living in a towering structure like that even in earlier movies! I wondered if they were on the run now, potential targets themselves as strong supporters of Harry & Dumbledore--but they DID react as though that was really home they were losing.

4) Nothing has been said in the movies about the romance & marriage of Lupin & Tonks, but there they are without a word of explanation to any who haven't read the books yet, clearly a couple now.

5) Ron suddenly involved in Quiddich without any lead-in in the movies.
Also Ginny. And is Harry now the captain? I've forgotten that detail, but he certainly seems in command of practice. That would be another important event that would at least merit mention.

6) The fact that the central mystery of the movie is solved by Snape just basically saying "oh yeah, I'm the HBP" in passing as he leaves REALLY annoys me.

7) Yes, absence of House-Elves, especially Dobby, is really annoying given what happens in DH. We should get to see Dobby as a free elf, not just as the ragged slave of the Malfoys.
I never expect to see the whole Free the House Elves campaign at all, since it has a rather old-school British "know your place" attitude, with the elves wanting to stay servants & slaves because that's the proper way of things. That would go over like a lead balloon in the US, I'm sure.

cool No Grawp? How about no FOREST?? The mountainsides are downright BARREN! It's supposed to come right to the back of Hagrid's hut!

I DID like some things, though.
heart heart 1) The Weasley twins' shop! xd Loved looking at the whole mad thing, and I always love that great Celtic theme they have.
This was the high point of the movie for me!

2) Watching Harry & Ginny, & Hermoine & Ron finally begin to sort out who they really want to be with. biggrin

3) All that in the cave & Dumbledore's end is done pretty well, but completely lacks the emotional impact of the book.

About the thing with the wands over Dumbledore's body:
I think the point of that was that the Death-Eater symbol was still hanging over the school, and nobody could stand it. If you note, McGonigal looks up at it and then raises her wand, gradually followed by the others. A small light appears in the middle of the skull, and immediately it begins to disperse. They were wiping out this sign of victory the Death-Eaters had left.
I'm sure I saw Neville, but at the moment I couldn't say where all--I'm pretty sure he's in the crowd around Dumbledore, for one. But he IS very much a background character this time.


The fact that they nowadays routinely chop the book plot to pieces & seem to write the scripts only for those who have already read the books is the main reason the first movies will always be my favorites. They excel as good book adaptations.

Still haven't had a chance to see this movie yet, but it's interesting to hear how people who enjoyed the books feel about the film adaptations. Even though I read all the books, i have a terrible memory, so I really never noticed what was missing in movies 3-5. My main recollections about book 6 were that a large chunk was devoted to diving into Riddle's memories and destroying horicruxes. I remember Dumbledore drinking some toxic gunk out of a fountain (or something like that), Harry discovering his father was kind of a jerk (or was that book 7?), and of course Dumbledore getting killed by Snape.

I tend to view the movies as their own thing, separate from the books. So as long as the movies can stand on their own, without requiring supplemental knowledge from the books in order to follow what's going on, I probably wouldn't mind things getting cut. Illiteracy has its privileges.

They started a thread for discussing this over at SCAS guild.
Somebody declared there was a lot of fanservice in this movie & named scenes that seem to involve Harry with other boys. (Harry behind a curtain with a boy, Harry in bed with Ron, Ron all over Harry under the love potion spell) xp
Are they writing a lot of slash fanfic with Harry?

Ewww. All those combinations gross me out. :XP:

Someone should do a "What if?"-style fanfic where Harry decides to take the Sortin Hat's advice and join Slytherin during his first year. Would Voldemort establish a new reign of terror, or would Harry become the new 'He-who-must-not-be-hugged'?

There's no Dumbledore slash? Must be. I'd hate to think who he's most often paired with. McGonegall would seem an obvious choice, although Dumbledore might be kind of disinterested. But something tells me that it's Dumbledore/Harry, which seems downright icky. Like a gay version of Harold and Maude with wands. gonk

Tch, all the Hogwarts males are gay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9D0veHTxh0

I read the entire series and didn't pick up on anything about Dumbledore being gay, so when Rowling later said he was and it was shown all over the news, I was just... confused . I don't think it adds much to the character, and it seemed like a cheap way to include a gay character in the series, since I'm pretty sure a fair number of people were oblivious to the hints about his sexual orientation as I was.

My biggest gripe about the Harry Potter series is that beginning with 'The Goblet of Fire', every subsequent book has been about who was going to get killed off. While I understand that partly it was to show that there was a war going on (sort of), and wars have very real consequences, it felt to me like JKR felt the need to outdo herself with each subsequent book as far as deaths were concerned. The difference in tone between the 1st book and the 7th is about as great as 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings'.

I have a feeling (and I'm not alone) that that statement was purely for more hype/publicity after the last book was published. I don't consider it canon any more than some of you consider different aspects of Doctor Who as non-canon.

I've read through each of the books (except for the last one) more than once and it's never even popped into my head.

And as for the deaths, it was more of the idea that Harry had to "go it alone", so instead of making the characters change, she kills them. It was pretty much an epic battle but I see where you're going.

Something a friend pointed out to me: Book 5 was published a year before movie 3. This may or may not have anything to do with it, but the books got darker as the movies gained mass popularity.