Book-Movie Comparison: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Like The Order of the Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince does a little adaptation tug-of-war.  There are parts of it that are just excellent (places where, speaking as someone who’s not overly crazy about the book, I feel it improves on the source material a little,) but other parts really drop the ball.  As such, while it has some really strong things going for it, it’s hard to give it the full stamp of approval (spoilers.)

We’ll start with what I like.  As usual, casting is spot-on, and Jim Broadbent is just inspired as Slughorn.  And beyond his performance, I really like what the film does with the character.  They maintain the core of who Slughorn is, absolutely, with his “collection” of future stars among the student body, but they also show how that’s a little pathetic and in places even bring a small amount of pathos to the character.  The monologue he gives about his fish is absolutely lovely.

Draco’s whole plot is really well-done too.  It’s fun watching the young actors grow into their skills over the years (some more so than others, of course,) and looking back on The Sorcerer’s Stone, I wouldn’t have thought Tom Felton would be as genuinely excellent as he is here.

This is the one movie in which a good chunk of the teen romance stuff works for me, even though, as I said, it gets super tiresome in the book.  This is mostly down to Lavender and Cormac and how much fun they are:  between Cormac’s pompousness and Lavender just giving it her all, both of them entertain in every scene they’re in.  And let’s be real – every scene of someone under the influence of a potion is awesome.  The Felix Felicis scene is especially great.  As dark as this story gets, it needs these moments of pure delight.

Where the movie chiefly missteps is, oddly enough, in its two main plots.  Harry and Dumbledore’s study of Voldemort’s past is barely there – the majority of the memories are cut out altogether, and the few that remain lack most of the commentary to show their relevance.  While we do hit the absolute highlights of introducing Horcruxes, there’s so much missing about Dumbledore’s speculation/reasoning as to what the Horcruxes are that the knowledge is basically pointless.  It’s an instance where it doesn’t hurt this film as much as it does the next one; it makes no sense how the trio even begin to start looking for the Horcruxes in The Deathly Hallows, which was tenuous enough in the book.

The Half-Blood Prince plot also loses quite a bit.  Again, the bones of the storyline are there, and there are individual scenes that are really well done – the sectumsepra scene is wonderfully-realized – but on the whole, it feels like an afterthought in a movie that’s named after it, which is weird.

Finally, Tonks and Lupin?  If they were gonna reduce it to literally one line in the whole movie, I don’t know why they bothered.  Seriously, what was the point?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)

The first time I read it, The Half-Blood Prince was one of my least favorites in the series.  While I still wouldn’t put it up with the likes of The Prisoner of Azkaban or The Goblet of Fire, I did find it improved on reread, and I feel I understand better what it’s setting out to do (still too much teen drama, though.)

By now, it’s unequivocally known and felt throughout the wizarding world that Voldemort is Back.  He’s gathering his forces, and his Death Eaters are causing enough chaos and turmoil that even the Muggles know something is up.  In preparation for the coming war, Dumbledore starts Harry on a course of private study:  using Dumbledore’s Pensieve, they view memories related to Voldemort in order to better understand him as a man, a wizard, and a monster.  One vital memory is only available to them in a seriously corrupted form, and the only way to acquire the real memory is for Harry to get in the good graces of the coattail-riding Professor Slughorn, who has a habit of “collecting” important young wizards.

One of the biggest themes/plots here, of course, is Harry and Dumbledore’s examination of Voldemort’s past.  This is something I wasn’t much of a fan of the first time around, but I think I like it better here.  With the benefit of hindsight and coming at it from the angle in which it’s intended, I have a better grasp not only on who Voldemort is, but also why Dumbledore shows Harry the memories that he does.  That said, there is a continuing sense of plot-driven withholding of information:  from the curation of memories, it’s obvious what Dumbledore’s assumption is, but he doesn’t enlighten Harry on it until an artificially-suspenseful moment.

There’s even more teen-romance stuff than in the last book, and it’s even more grating here (although it does give us that great line in Puffs where, during the Half-Blood Prince section of the play, one of the characters says, “We’ll be okay as long things don’t get super sexualized.”)  All the back and forth with Ron and Hermione and their love interests(?), along with the lust monster for Harry’s chest (for real,) don’t really appeal to me at all.  So much snogging. 

What I continue to like, though, is Slughorn and the Half-Blood Prince plot itself.  Just like Umbridge in the last book introduced someone bad who isn’t a Death Eater, Slughorn shows us an example of a Slytherin who isn’t in the vein of a Voldemort or a Malfoy; it’s interesting to see that ambition express itself in ways other than a violent devotion to blood purity.  And I just love the idea of Harry “meeting” an old Hogwarts student through the meticulous notes and corrections they made in the margins of their potions textbook, using the Prince’s advice to become a potions virtuoso and wondering about the mystery of the Prince’s identity.  That mystery, I think, is rolled out pretty well, and even if the ultimate revelation comes at a moment when it’s so not a priority, I definitely like it on the whole.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009, PG-13)

The watchword here is “dark.”  The Half-Blood Prince very much wants you to know it’s not messing around (except for the utterly ridiculous teen romance stuff, which is actually mostly amazing) – the situation is dire, the music is ominous, and the lighting is art-school moody.  Overall, it’s a fairly decent film, but even at two-and-a-half hours, it’s seriously hampered by time constraints.

By now, it’s unequivocally known and felt throughout the wizarding world that Voldemort is Back.  He’s gathering his forces, and his Death Eaters are causing enough chaos and turmoil that even the Muggles know something is up.  In preparation for the coming war, Dumbledore starts Harry on a course of private study:  using Dumbledore’s Pensieve, they view memories related to Voldemort in order to better understand him as a man, a wizard, and a monster.  One vital memory is only available to them in a seriously corrupted form, and the only way to acquire the real memory is for Harry to get in the good graces of the coattail-riding Professor Slughorn, who has a habit of “collecting” important young wizards.

I’ll be honest.  In the book, I wasn’t terribly interested in all the Voldemort flashbacks, so from a pure entertainment standpoint, I’ve never minded how many of them are cut from the movie.  From a plot standpoint though, while the omissions don’t seriously affect this movie, they strike a major blow to the last two, because without the information Harry learns from these memories, he has practically no clues to go on for his quest in The Deathly Hallows.  In that sense, it poorly serves the rest of the series.

Cinematically, the romance is kind of problematic as well, but mainly because it’s such a departure from the dourness of the rest of the film.  Still, tonal dissonance aside, this is a film where the comic relief is just that – relief.  Everything is so serious that it’s actually nice to take a break from it once in a while and just see teenagers acting crazy.  Jessie Cave makes a great splash as the lovesick Lavender Brown, and any scene of someone under the influence of a potion is fantastically funny (although the love potion stuff makes you worry about how consent works in the wizarding world.)   However, let it be known that none of the above applies to Harry’s romantic storyline, which I personally find to be dull as dishwater.  Just completely lifeless, and it grinds the film to a halt without fail.

So what works unquestionably?  The cave scene is gripping and intense, the Apparating effect is spot-on, and the astronomy tower scene is perfect (Alan Rickman is magnificent in it.)  It’s also a very strong film for Tom Felton’s Draco; Felton does an excellent job showing the conflict of a boy who’s gotten in over his head.  Additionally, I really love Jim Broadbent as Slughorn.  On the page, the character is silly, kind of embarrassing, and a tiny bit sinister, but Broadbent brings some surprising pathos to the role that really makes me feel for Slughorn.  Lastly, it’s a small thing, but after having a few films with no Quidditch, it’s fun to see the kids, even briefly, out on their brooms.

Warnings

Scary stuff, magical violence, light swearing, drinking, and thematic elements.