Harry Potter and the Bungled Sequel

Now that J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers have used their combined strength to crush a dorky Harry Potter fan and his fanboy lexicon, maybe Rowling can get a court injunction to keep Warners from releasing the upcoming film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Some undercover geeks have seen advance screenings of the thing, and the news is anything but good:

I had the most problems with the film’s final third. Harry and Dumbledore’s trip to the caves seemed to come out of nowhere, as did Dumbledore’s declaration that he had to drink the water from the podium in which the locket they were after was held. I don’t remember if that’s how it happened in the book, but I remember arriving at that location & conclusion in a way that at least felt more natural.

After that, they make their way to the tower and instead of using a charm to immobilize Harry and cover him with the invisibility cloak like in the book, Dumbledore just sends Harry away, and Harry goes downstairs, stops & watches the following scene through cracks in the floor above him. Malfoy tries to kill Dumbledore but realizes he can’t. Snape arrives on the floor below & signals Harry to be quiet, which he uncharacteristically does. Snape then goes upstairs & sends Dumbledore to his death. The modifications made to this scene from book to film are terrible, and they partially blow what may be the biggest surprise of the entire franchise.

Afterwards, there is no enormous battle. The Death Eaters stroll out silently. I remember the fight in the book being fantastic, and I personally would rather have had a short scene in the beginning with two guys talking about the horrible things the Death Eaters are doing than eliminate the battle at the end. Harry runs after them and confronts Snape, who quietly tells him he’s the Half-Blood Prince. Again, due to lack of attention paid to this plotline, I didn’t really care. In the book, he screams his response. The book has Snape screaming and the film has him using his indoor voice. What a disappointment.

And as if this weren’t enough, there is no funeral for Dumbledore. It’s been cut.

Yikes. Well, that’s only one guy’s reaction. What about somebody else from the same screening?

Uh oh: 

For a book based on Harry and Dumbledore’s quest to find out more about Voldemort, and how to stop him, via his memories, all but three memories have been cut from the film. Why is it that the filmmakers decided it was more important to focus on teen-age love rather than what are inarguably critical plot points? It is aneurysm inducing logic that will surely leave me dead in my bathtub.

And the ending. Good God, the ending. Not only is the fight between the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix completely removed, but so is Dumbledore’s funeral. The last third of this movie is so incredibly mishandled that Dumbledore’s death feels more like an unfortunate accident than genuine tragedy. No one in the film seems even remotely upset that he’s gone and the Death Eaters who murdered him, including would-be-good-guy Severus Snape (Alan Rickman, the title-character in cameo form), walk out of Hogwarts unmolested.

I was sorely disappointed when Warners rescheduled this film from a November release to a mid-July slot, chiefly because (A) Half-Blood Prince is the gold standard book of the series, and (B) I was looking forward to seeing it in a theater with Dances With Mermaids, who came late to the Harry Potter craze and has only seen the films on video, having waited until we’d read our way through the whole series a couple of times. Now I’m beginning to think the schedule shuffle is a sign of a film in trouble.

One of the book’s greatest strengths was the way Harry’s blossoming happiness paralleled the investigation into young Voldemort’s transformation from a troubled boy to an outright monster. Cutting the Pensieve sessions down to a single scene while pumping up the teen romance angle is going to be catastrophic to the narrative. And getting rid of the final battle? Stupid. Really stupid.    

Maybe we’ll just wait for the DVD on this one as well.