Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ***Spoilers***

Yeah, if I'm not left in tears at the end then they've failed horribly. I don't care if people tell me it's because I knew what was going to happen. I cry every time I read HBP, so they better fix Dumbledore before they kill him, although that may prove rather difficult since most of my emotion in the book came from growing up with Dumbledore over the previous five books, which as we all know, they haven't exactly got right in the films.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing Emily Blunt from Devil Wears Prada for Merope. Scrimgeour I'm not sure about. Liam Neeson perhaps.

 

Liam would be good as Scrimegour.

But for replacing Dumbledore, I've been crying out for Ian McKellan since Azkaban, but I don't think he will replace him. he likes having all the same cats, I saw that in an interview.

 

Ian McKellan is who I always imagine in the books. I've always said he'd be great, but sadly, we won't see it. Maybe if they remake the films in the next ten or twenty years

 

you can not cast mckellan as DD. ian mckellan with a big white beard will only ever make a movie audience think of Gandalf. and IMO the character of DD deserves an actor who wont bring strong connotations of a different role. richard harris was perfect. for those who think harris wouldn't have been able to pull off the strong fighting DD go back and watch harris' performance in the "TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!" bit. now tell me you cant see that actor telling Voldie that "it was a bad idea to come to the ministry tonight". but it's pointless to dwell on the thought of harris playing DD as god kinda screwed us all over in that department! now this is where i get confused. after watching the GoF film i hated gambon! i was of the opinion that if things carried on as they were i was gonno stand up and cheer when a certain greasy individual blasts that sorry excuse for an actor off of the astronomy tower...
but then OotP came out and showed us that Gambon, under decent direction, can play a decent DD. note the word decent, not perfect. so as long as yates is there for HBP then im sure the DD death will hit home. god knows the Siris death choked me up.
-doodie

ps. if they did recast then i would recomend, peter o'tool or max von sydow.

 

I have read on various movie website that IS indeed (Yates's) plan.

 

Someone above mentioned who to cast for the Prime Minister... you know what would be BLOODY cool?!

Well, I imagine this to be a very small role (as it is in the book), well why not, in a cameo, have TONY BLAIR as the Prime Minister!!! After all, he has now retired from the post now, and it *would* fit with the timeline, I believe!

 

nope year 6 is set in 1992 so john major was the PM back then.
-doodie

 

I thought it was set in 1996.

 

For some reason I thought that Blair came to power in 1996, and the book was set in the same year. Forgot that Blair became PM in 1997.

Nevertheless, he has young kids, so I am sure if they got wind of it, they would like to see him do it. And after all, ending a high pressure job, why not have a little bit of fun in 'retirement'?! I just think it would be a brilliant piece of casting.

If he can't / won't do it - they should get the actor who portrayed Tony Blair in the film 'The Queen', the film which Helen Mirren won numerous awards for.

 

Sirius was not hit by an Avada Kedavra curse in the book. Whatever curse Lestrange was flinging was sending jets of red light at Sirius, not green, and he was knocked backwards through the veil. In the movie he was already dead when he hit the veil. In the book, it was left up to question, which made you experience the disbelief and denial that Harry went through -- I, like Harry, kept saying "He can't really be dead...who knows what that veil is...he'll come back."

I was stunned at how much I didn't care when Sirius died in the movie, because that scene hit me so hard in the book.

Didn't like the structure of OOTP at all. But since they're getting Kloves back maybe he can steer things back on track.

How is that any different from OOTP?

 

woah are you serious? did you watch GoF? Kloves did good with the first three but IMO he seemed to fall apart with the bigger material. im actually quite dreading what he'll do to HBP.
-doodie

 

Well, that's where we differ. I'm reading through the books again in preparation for Book 7 this weekend. It's been a long time since I read them and I specifically didn't want to read OOTP before watching the film because I'd be too aware of the changes. Going through Book 4 again I thought "Oh, they changed that and removed that, but it makes sense. It would have been nice to keep but they made it work."

I'm less than 100 pages into OOTP and no less than a dozen times I've gone "How could they leave THAT out?!"

The more I think about it the less I liked OOTP as a film. It was one long montage sequence, it never felt like the movie properly started.

 

interesting. i'd love it if you went into more detail. im not trying to have a go, i am actually interested.
like i'll go first. the specific reason i dislike GoF film is because in my opinion if you haven't read the book certain aspects of the film dont make complete sense.
here are some specifics:
-lack of dusleys. i understand leaving out the dusleys but to not even mention them wasn't a good idea IMO. my mate, who hasn't read the books, even lent over and asked me "when did harry move in in with ron?" if klovis decided to include a little sentance from harry just mentioning the journey from privit drive to the burrow that would have been an easy way to clear that up.
-crouch's deathharry stumbles across a dead body which no one seemed to care about. sure DD and Fudge are heard mumbling about it but the audience isn't given a clear reason why this man was killed. as i typed that part my sister said to me. crouch saw moody flick his tongue
-the main one- Priory Incantatemthe same friend who asked me about harry living with the dursleys said to me, "so the bald guy was keeping harry's parents souls?". again here is a rather important aspect of the potter mythology that was completely ignored. the fact that the main protagonist can not fight the main antagonist with wands is a pretty big thing to leave out.

now here are the little niggles. these are just niggles. i get that these arent too important to the whole scheme of things.
-Albus Gambondoreto see my beloved albus dumbledore, run and jump around like a lunatic, physically shake harry, fall to pieces in his office, AGREE TO USE HARRY AS BAIT?!
-dragon soo the dragon breaks free and chases harry around the castle? no ministry wizards on hand with stunning spells? no one thought to jump on a broom and chase after the 14 year old who's about to get toasted? no one? so you're all just gonna sit there... right ok... um nice.
-fleur and krum had about three words each.
ok ok i geddit...film makers interpretation... stylistic choice... individual adaptation...etc

so there is my rant about why i disagree with GoF as a film. without readin the book there are some plot holes. now unless i am blinded by love, it's happened in the past,i am of the opinion thet OotP works well as a stand alone movie which does not require the viewer having to read the book. these aspects of the book that made you think "How could they leave THAT out?!" im interested to hear about. it's possible that they just havnt hit me yet.

i really hope i havnt come across as one of those idiots who condemn a harry potter film just coz hermione's hair isnt as bushy as it should be, coz im reeally not that guy. i see these films as what they are. adaptations.

-doodie

edit: im not all hate. loved the graveyard, the maze, prefect's bathroom, learning to waltz, oh and the "I told Hermione to tell you that Seamus told me that Parvati told Dean that Hagrid was looking for you."

edit again: if this is too far off topic lemme know and we can carry on in PMs or in the OotP board.

 

I always imagined James Brolin as a good Marvolo Gaunt.

[image=http://www.jonesreport.com/images/291206_James_Brolin.jpg]

 

I hear this a lot, but uh...

I've always been of the opinion that you really should read the books, as they are canon, and then treat the movies as a treat. When they screw things up, I do wonder about how confused the average movie-goer is, but at the same time think "well, I know what's going on, and I just kinda feel sorry for those who aren't patient enough to sit down and read a book for once in their life.

 

We ARE talking about the HBP film, aren't we?

 

My ideas for casting HBP:

Slughorn: Jim Broadbent
Scrimgeour: Liam Neeson
Greyback: Jeremy Irons

 

That's a very good way to look at it as well. But yeah...

...we did stray a bit there

 

I hope they don't cut down ANY of the memory sequences, like they did with Snape's Worst Memory in OOTP. That's the only thing I really didn't like about the whole movie.

How many memories are there?

1. The Gaunts (Bob Ogden's)
2. The Orphanage (Dumbledore's)
3. Attacking Morfin (Morfin's)
4. Hepzibah Smith (Hokey's)
5. Asking Dumbledore for a Job (Dumbledore's)
6. Horcruxes (Slughorn's)

That's all of them, right?

 

Including ALL of the memories plus everything else that HBP has to include won't work. At minimum, the only memories needed will be the Horcrux (fake), Horcrux (real) and the one with Hepzibah.

On the other hand, I could well imagine that the moviemakers invent a new memory, one where Tom torments the kids at the seaside cave. This could be squeezed into the memory lessons, or if they want to be real clever, they could use it as the prologue for the movie. Showing the cave early is just good sense because it will help the audience to understand where Harry and Dumbledore go.

 

My issue with the OOTP movie vs the book is actually perfectly applicable to a discussion of HBP, because many of the changes they made have a DIRECT effect on HBP and, more importantly, Deathly Hallows.

For example, nary a mention of Regulus Black? Who is widely presumed to be the RAB who stole the medallion Horcrux? No reference to Aunt Petunia's deeper-than-we-thought ties to the world of the wizards? Kreacher is reduced to just being small and grumpy, not dangerous, racist and hateful? And that's just in the first hundred pages of re-reading OOTP.

Not to mention the utter lack of any scenes between Dumbledore and Harry. When Dumbledore told Harry "I'm sorry I've been ignoring you" my roommate said "He has?" Everything moved so quickly from scene to scene it was impossible to get a sense of anything. It feels like Snape and Harry only practice Occlumency for, like, an evening or two, not several months.

The two most important characters in the next film -- Snape and Dumbledore -- were reduced to day players in this one, and this was where they really needed to be developed.

I have to say I don't have a good feeling about HBP the more I think about it. The other directors had a theme they followed to give their movies structure. Cuaron's was "coming of age". Newell decided Goblet was a "thriller". Yates' theme was apparently "The events of Harry's fifth year" which, as we all know, is not a theme at all.

I just hope HBP gains more focus. OOTP was just a series of scenes and character actions that were in their because they "had" to be there, either for the sake bridging GOF and HBP, or for the sake of fanwankery (neither Luna nor Cho had the depth of their book counterparts; the movie would have been pretty much the same if you'd excised them completely, they were only there because the fans wanted them).

 

Well, we don't have Deathly Hallows yet, do we? So many of our predictions could be wrong. Jo only requested one change to OOTP when she saw the script, and that was to add Kreacher in.


-Maybe RAB isn't Regulus, or it could easily be explained in DH without going into much detail
-Kreacher IS shown to be mean, I remember him saying something about mudbloods when Sirius kicks him out of the tapestry room
-maybe the Aunt Petunia plotpoint coming up isn't as important as we thought, and could just be that she does care?
-Snape was in it where necessary, I thought. This isn't his story, HBP is.
-There is supposed to be hardly any Dumbledore in this movie, my younger cousins all got the right feeling that Harry was being ignored
-Everybody I talked to thought Luna was great, I thought she was perfect too
-Cho was in it the right amount, I think, but she's not important overall anyways
-I think the movie had a theme. Of Harry feeling secluded and alone, and then bringing himself back with his friends and into starting Dumbledore's Army, which is then broken up again, but Harry lets his friends go with him to the Ministry. It's about how they were all in this together.


Besides, anything they feel they missed in the movies to make DH the best as possible could just be added in HBP somehow.

I'm sure this movie will be fine. Have some hope. Besides, I look at the movies as treats to the real thing, the books.

 

There was more to it than that. Kreacher was the reason Harry rushed off to the Ministry, because he lied about Sirius. That's a big change to the arc of the whole thing (as I mention below) to just mumbling a dirty word in one scene.

But he's in that book even less than he is in OOTP! You don't find out it's Snape's story until the end, and we'll have forgotten he was important by the time we get there since all he's done the last three movies is smack Ron on the head with a book (in each film).

Have your younger cousins read the books?

I think part of it, admittedly, is that Dumbledore/Harry's relationship in the last two movies has been so neglected by the filmmakers that when it came to OOTP, you could hardly get any sense of a change. In the books you get the warmth and caring Dumbledore has for Harry, and then the sudden absence of it in OOTP. In the films Harry and Dumbledore rarely talk to each other anyway, except at the end of each film when Dumbledore spends 30 seconds vaguely explaining something that made more sense in the books and probably would make more sense without the truncated explanation (like priori incantatem). I really don't blame Gambon for the direction Dumbledore has taken, those are choices made by the writers and directors.

She nailed the character, but the character's purpose in the book was completely eliminated in the movie. She was just there, she didn't have a real point to her.

I don't think there was enough of Harry feeling left out, because he was pretty much in the thick of things once Dumbledore's Army started up. (And, if you didn't know you were looking for it, you might have missed that they even called it that until the confrontation in Dumbledore's office.) The theme was a bit the same, Harry realizing that everything doesn't rest on his shoulders and he can, and should, let others help and sometimes even leave it up to others completely.

The genius of the book was that Harry was so certain that Voldemort was up to something and nobody else but him would see it coming or try to stop it, that he rushed off foolishly to the Ministry when he got the slightest hint. As it turned out, Voldemort WASN'T really up to anything, he was biding his time, but Harry putting himself out in the open the way he did was an opportunity too great to resist. In refusing to trust others, Harry endangered everything he held dear, and lost the most important person to him. That was a powerful thing in the book.

What do we get in the movie? Hermione saying "You should trust the rest of us, Harry." Oy.

I'm just saying, I hope HBP has more actual development of themes and characters, rather than just characters (probably Hermione) telling us what we're supposed to think about it all.