So I saw the new Harry Potter movie last week. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)
I’ve got mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand, the movie went by really fast for me, and losing track of time like that usually means I was entertained.
But I had a bigger problem in that I read the book prior to watching the movie. It’s like Lord of the Rings all over again. I couldn’t help but be annoyed when I saw scenes that weren’t exactly like how I pictured them in my head when I initially read the books. Likewise, I was irked when certain portions of the book were left out or shortened. Intellectually, I know why they did what they did (otherwise the movie would’ve been 5 hours long). But I still felt cheated, much like when the Barrow Wight encounter was left out in Peter Jackson’s LotR movie.
Also, for those that weren’t expecting it, this particular book might seem a bit out of character from the rest of the Harry Potter books. It dealt more with interpersonal relationships and teenage hormones than the previous movies. The mystery of the Half Blood Prince mitigated that somewhat in the books, but it was given short shrift in the movie. When the identity of the half blood prince was revealed, you sorta got the impression of “oh yeah, we were supposed to care about that weren’t we?”
The movie felt very much like a transitional piece, laying the groundwork for a much bigger story in the future. That’s fine I guess, but I was sorta anticipating more fireworks and special effects and was a tad disappointed that I didn’t get more of it.
So bottomline: I liked it, but not as much as the previous Harry Potter movies.
