My LTTP on the Previous Movie:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=490207
It's been a few weeks since the last one, so here's a quick rundown:
At the beginning of August I'd never seen a single Harry Potter movie and had only read the first book. I'd intentionally avoided the series in any fashion out of a misplaced hate for it based on the first book alone. My SO, in an effort to make me pay for all that I've done, took it upon herself to get the movies via Netflix so we can watch them all in order.
Last time I watched 'The Order of the Phoenix' and this time I watched:
First let me apologize for the delay in creating this thread. It's been in the back of my head for at least a week and a half and yet real life would not allow me to sit down and do it. Well SCREW YOU real life! LOOK AT ME NOW!
The movie opens to the immediate aftermath of the previous movie. People are taking pictures with their inferior Wizard cameras of Harry and Dumbledore and Harry is looking none too pleased. (Are the photographers Wizards too? What kind of job is that for a wizard?) I enjoy that the director decided to deal with the aftermath of the Voldemort fight in that way. It's big news that he's back and Harry's the dude who has to deal with it so he's (once again) a celebrity. It's a very real way of showing that while Voldemort's return is a threat to everyone, only Harry is getting his ass beat because of it.
So far! Because the very next set of scenes involves the Death Eaters fucking with Muggle London. (Mugdon? Longle?) Very rarely have we seen the Wizard world interact with the Muggle world in any way and almost always there seems to be at least some kind of consequence for that interaction. Now we see not only some Wizards interacting, but we see them treating London like Johnny Depp treats a hotel room.
I don't know if that joke works anymore.
Not much happens because of this, it's obviously just to show that the Death Eaters do what ever the hell they want and you can eat a bag of vomit flavored jelly beans if you think otherwise. What would Voldemort's plan for Muggles be if he was able to... do whatever it is exactly that he wants to do anyway? These are the kind of things an aspiring evil dictator needs to think about.
For there we transition to Harry sitting in a diner reading a Wizard paper that impresses a pretty server. Instead of getting laid for the first time ever he's whisked away by Cockblockledore to a house being occupied by an old professor whom they trick into coming back to teach at Hogwarts. Dumbledore seems to want to involve Harry more in actually trying to stop Voldemort and explains to him that Slughorn is an important player in this war. The pacing in this film is already much better than the last and I don't feel lost yet at all. It seems like the director stopped trying to so blatantly ape the feel and tone of the 3rd movie and it's for the better.
The Headmaster then takes him to Ron's house where Harry and Ginny share an awkward moment made even more awkward for me because she's slowly, movie by movie, starting to look better than Hermione. Where as in the previous movies this part of the film moved at breakneck speeds, trying to get through all these bits so it could get to what was deemed more interesting bits, this movie has no problem taking it's time setting up for the rest of the film which isn't exactly action packed. Our heroes follow Draco to a shop where they see him, his mother (presumably?), and some nasty looking guy that's on some wanted posters.
At this point everyone SHOULD know that he's evil.
Well, as evil as a 17 year old emo kid can be.
Snape turns out to be in deep double agent territory (or so I think) and has to make some magical pinky swear with Draco's mom. If this does turn out to be a double agent thing then I'm not entirely sure WHY he needed to do this... it's obvious he in some way arranged this meeting afterall. It could also just be that he wants to protect Draco from what happened to him after being lured into Voldemorts personal army.
Then they all go to school with a brief scene of Harry spying on Draco and Luna saving the day. Might I again say how grounding it is having an insane character to make everything else look relatively normal by comparison? I don't know if I would have liked to have her in all of the movies, but she's a great addition to the last two. Oh, before they go to school we get to see the Weasley twins new business venture and I have to say... it stands out.
Dumbledore wastes no time this year fucking around and tells all the students that Voldemort will push their shit in given the slightest opportunity. It seems irresponsible to have school this year, but maybe it's better to have the students busy with classwork instead of out there doing who knows what. For as much as he has manipulated Slughorn into teaching this year, maybe the ENTIRE year is a ruse simply to get information out of him. If this movie taught me anything about Albus Dumbledore, it's that he puts the defeat of Voldemort above everything else to the point of madness.
With the normal introduction out of the way, Harry finds a special book in the Potions class that lets him basically cheat his way through everything while everyone else bumbles around. Someone put a lot of hard work into finding out all the information in the book and Harry is just content to treat it like an Answer sheet. I know that he's only taking the class in order to pry information out of poor Slughorn's addled brain, but have a little self-respect man! This sequence starts a secondary plot that kinda of fizzles out and goes no where, but I'll get to that. Harry bests everyone else in class by cheating to get a potion of liquid luck. (The only real reason he needed the book to begin with.)
A lot of these regular school scenes are punctuated by Dumbledore and Harry conspiring to get what they want out of Slughorn. It serves well to break up the doldrums present in most of the other films and constantly reminds the viewer exactly what is going on. For story reasons this couldn't have been done before, but I would have really enjoyed all the other movies much more if there was these kind of secret top-level meetings interspersed with school related things. Dumbledore is at this point just using Harry but at least we get to see that there are pieces being moved around the chess board. (Unlike in the previous 5 movies.)
The idea is that the need to figure out what really happened between Voldemort (Then Tom Riddle) and Slughorn. The old professor has muddled with his memory, so he's obviously hiding something. The fact that Dumbledore has access to these memories is unnerving. A weird parallel to real life London where CCTV is everywhere. Dumbledore plays the roll of Big Brother, benevolent as he may be, and Harry is his unwitting pawn. Shit's getting very mature and serious very fast in this part of the story and suddenly little things start having much broader implication than just "Teenagers do stupid shit yall!".
Although, teenagers do still do stupid shit. The humor and humanity of the movie comes from Harry's growing affection for Ginny and Hermione's unrequited love of Ron. Both of these relationships probably cut deep for most people watching. Teenage angst over starting a new relationship and not being able to even have one are something that everyone can identify with and, as usual, the fact that these teens can all cast deadly spells makes for interesting drama. Hermione's troubles in particular are most poignant because the genders are usually reversed in popular media, with the boy looking on in anguish as the girl romps around with someone else.
For the first time in six movies, I felt like Hermione was more than just a walking talking Potter Wikipedia/Dues Ex Witchia.
These angsty scenes also have a darker twist as we continually see Draco having emotional trouble in dealing with his new position of Jr. Death Eater. He's lashing out much more violently then before and even cries in what I can only presume is helplessness with his lot in life. There's an unstated narrative of Father and Son here where Draco undoubtedly feels the pressure of redeeming his Father's failures. It's nice that they don't spell it out for you.
All of these machinations (including the C plot love stories) culminate in Harry FINALLY finding out what happened between Slughorn and Riddle. It turns out that Riddle asked the professor about Horcruxes. Magical charms that let a person split their soul so as to be essentially immortal as long as the soul is not brought back together.
Here is where I find issue with the story.
I get that the finding of the magic seals is a tried and true trope in fantasy fiction. But lets not be so heavy handed with it yes? Voldemort goes as far as to ask Slughorn 'Could you split your soul into seven parts?!' with a laughable gravitas. Why seven? Why not 100? Or 1,000? It's a stupid conceit and ruins an otherwise engaging and mature plot. So now, obviously, they're going to have to go on a magical journey to find all of them and destroy them. (Well, Dumbledore's around found a few, and Harry accidentally destroyed one.)
Armed with their new knowledge, Harry and the Headmaster fly off to some cave where inexplicably Dumbledore knows there is a Horcrux. An aside quickly... if Dumbledore was ALREADY collecting Horcruxes, and knew the location of the next one, why on earth did he have to manipulate Slughorn? Just to find out how many there were? To confirm his suspicions even though there was ample evidence already? The adding of these charms to the story is so far fucking awful and I hate Rowling for it. Anyway, they fly to this cave where to get the Horcrux Harry has to make the old man drink a bunch of rancid water that makes him cry and weak. Then they fight off a bunch of Smeagols and fly back to school.
Here we have another climax, the Death Eaters have broken into Hogwarts and are looking to wreck shit. Dumbledore tells Harry to hide as Draco makes his move to accomplish what was requested of him. The Death guys find them and cheer him on, but he just can't do it. Poor guy. Snape, sworn to finish Draco's deed if needed, crawls up and (on Dumbledores insistence)
.
Truth be told I was not able to remain unspoiled for this part. It was all over the internet for ages at the time the novel was released and became such a part of the internet culture that for all the trying you'd never be able to hide from it. So for me, I was not surprised. It seems that Dumbledore knew what was going on and knew that Snape, to remain undercover, had to kill him.
Harry goes after Snape (after the Death Eaters blow stuff up for shits and grins) and Snape then lets him know in the worlds stupidest climax that HE WAS THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE! To which I said... kay? Who cares. We dropped that story-line pretty much half the movie ago... does this get fleshed out later?
...
All in all, I really enjoyed this flick. Better than Order of the Phoenix, there are only a few glaring issues that mar the overall pace and plot. The acting is probably the best it's been out of Dumbledore and the guy who plays Slughorn is equally as fantastic. If only they didn't introduce these stupid charms I'd be VERY excited to see the next film. I'd heard this film described as slow in the past, but I think the slow pace is well suited for what I want from the story. I want them to be deliberate and measured without having to spell everything out and Half-Blood Prince mostly succeeded in this.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=490207
It's been a few weeks since the last one, so here's a quick rundown:
At the beginning of August I'd never seen a single Harry Potter movie and had only read the first book. I'd intentionally avoided the series in any fashion out of a misplaced hate for it based on the first book alone. My SO, in an effort to make me pay for all that I've done, took it upon herself to get the movies via Netflix so we can watch them all in order.
Last time I watched 'The Order of the Phoenix' and this time I watched:
First let me apologize for the delay in creating this thread. It's been in the back of my head for at least a week and a half and yet real life would not allow me to sit down and do it. Well SCREW YOU real life! LOOK AT ME NOW!
The movie opens to the immediate aftermath of the previous movie. People are taking pictures with their inferior Wizard cameras of Harry and Dumbledore and Harry is looking none too pleased. (Are the photographers Wizards too? What kind of job is that for a wizard?) I enjoy that the director decided to deal with the aftermath of the Voldemort fight in that way. It's big news that he's back and Harry's the dude who has to deal with it so he's (once again) a celebrity. It's a very real way of showing that while Voldemort's return is a threat to everyone, only Harry is getting his ass beat because of it.
So far! Because the very next set of scenes involves the Death Eaters fucking with Muggle London. (Mugdon? Longle?) Very rarely have we seen the Wizard world interact with the Muggle world in any way and almost always there seems to be at least some kind of consequence for that interaction. Now we see not only some Wizards interacting, but we see them treating London like Johnny Depp treats a hotel room.
I don't know if that joke works anymore.
Not much happens because of this, it's obviously just to show that the Death Eaters do what ever the hell they want and you can eat a bag of vomit flavored jelly beans if you think otherwise. What would Voldemort's plan for Muggles be if he was able to... do whatever it is exactly that he wants to do anyway? These are the kind of things an aspiring evil dictator needs to think about.
For there we transition to Harry sitting in a diner reading a Wizard paper that impresses a pretty server. Instead of getting laid for the first time ever he's whisked away by Cockblockledore to a house being occupied by an old professor whom they trick into coming back to teach at Hogwarts. Dumbledore seems to want to involve Harry more in actually trying to stop Voldemort and explains to him that Slughorn is an important player in this war. The pacing in this film is already much better than the last and I don't feel lost yet at all. It seems like the director stopped trying to so blatantly ape the feel and tone of the 3rd movie and it's for the better.
The Headmaster then takes him to Ron's house where Harry and Ginny share an awkward moment made even more awkward for me because she's slowly, movie by movie, starting to look better than Hermione. Where as in the previous movies this part of the film moved at breakneck speeds, trying to get through all these bits so it could get to what was deemed more interesting bits, this movie has no problem taking it's time setting up for the rest of the film which isn't exactly action packed. Our heroes follow Draco to a shop where they see him, his mother (presumably?), and some nasty looking guy that's on some wanted posters.
At this point everyone SHOULD know that he's evil.
Well, as evil as a 17 year old emo kid can be.
Snape turns out to be in deep double agent territory (or so I think) and has to make some magical pinky swear with Draco's mom. If this does turn out to be a double agent thing then I'm not entirely sure WHY he needed to do this... it's obvious he in some way arranged this meeting afterall. It could also just be that he wants to protect Draco from what happened to him after being lured into Voldemorts personal army.
Then they all go to school with a brief scene of Harry spying on Draco and Luna saving the day. Might I again say how grounding it is having an insane character to make everything else look relatively normal by comparison? I don't know if I would have liked to have her in all of the movies, but she's a great addition to the last two. Oh, before they go to school we get to see the Weasley twins new business venture and I have to say... it stands out.
Dumbledore wastes no time this year fucking around and tells all the students that Voldemort will push their shit in given the slightest opportunity. It seems irresponsible to have school this year, but maybe it's better to have the students busy with classwork instead of out there doing who knows what. For as much as he has manipulated Slughorn into teaching this year, maybe the ENTIRE year is a ruse simply to get information out of him. If this movie taught me anything about Albus Dumbledore, it's that he puts the defeat of Voldemort above everything else to the point of madness.
With the normal introduction out of the way, Harry finds a special book in the Potions class that lets him basically cheat his way through everything while everyone else bumbles around. Someone put a lot of hard work into finding out all the information in the book and Harry is just content to treat it like an Answer sheet. I know that he's only taking the class in order to pry information out of poor Slughorn's addled brain, but have a little self-respect man! This sequence starts a secondary plot that kinda of fizzles out and goes no where, but I'll get to that. Harry bests everyone else in class by cheating to get a potion of liquid luck. (The only real reason he needed the book to begin with.)
A lot of these regular school scenes are punctuated by Dumbledore and Harry conspiring to get what they want out of Slughorn. It serves well to break up the doldrums present in most of the other films and constantly reminds the viewer exactly what is going on. For story reasons this couldn't have been done before, but I would have really enjoyed all the other movies much more if there was these kind of secret top-level meetings interspersed with school related things. Dumbledore is at this point just using Harry but at least we get to see that there are pieces being moved around the chess board. (Unlike in the previous 5 movies.)
The idea is that the need to figure out what really happened between Voldemort (Then Tom Riddle) and Slughorn. The old professor has muddled with his memory, so he's obviously hiding something. The fact that Dumbledore has access to these memories is unnerving. A weird parallel to real life London where CCTV is everywhere. Dumbledore plays the roll of Big Brother, benevolent as he may be, and Harry is his unwitting pawn. Shit's getting very mature and serious very fast in this part of the story and suddenly little things start having much broader implication than just "Teenagers do stupid shit yall!".
Although, teenagers do still do stupid shit. The humor and humanity of the movie comes from Harry's growing affection for Ginny and Hermione's unrequited love of Ron. Both of these relationships probably cut deep for most people watching. Teenage angst over starting a new relationship and not being able to even have one are something that everyone can identify with and, as usual, the fact that these teens can all cast deadly spells makes for interesting drama. Hermione's troubles in particular are most poignant because the genders are usually reversed in popular media, with the boy looking on in anguish as the girl romps around with someone else.
For the first time in six movies, I felt like Hermione was more than just a walking talking Potter Wikipedia/Dues Ex Witchia.
These angsty scenes also have a darker twist as we continually see Draco having emotional trouble in dealing with his new position of Jr. Death Eater. He's lashing out much more violently then before and even cries in what I can only presume is helplessness with his lot in life. There's an unstated narrative of Father and Son here where Draco undoubtedly feels the pressure of redeeming his Father's failures. It's nice that they don't spell it out for you.
All of these machinations (including the C plot love stories) culminate in Harry FINALLY finding out what happened between Slughorn and Riddle. It turns out that Riddle asked the professor about Horcruxes. Magical charms that let a person split their soul so as to be essentially immortal as long as the soul is not brought back together.
Here is where I find issue with the story.
I get that the finding of the magic seals is a tried and true trope in fantasy fiction. But lets not be so heavy handed with it yes? Voldemort goes as far as to ask Slughorn 'Could you split your soul into seven parts?!' with a laughable gravitas. Why seven? Why not 100? Or 1,000? It's a stupid conceit and ruins an otherwise engaging and mature plot. So now, obviously, they're going to have to go on a magical journey to find all of them and destroy them. (Well, Dumbledore's around found a few, and Harry accidentally destroyed one.)
Armed with their new knowledge, Harry and the Headmaster fly off to some cave where inexplicably Dumbledore knows there is a Horcrux. An aside quickly... if Dumbledore was ALREADY collecting Horcruxes, and knew the location of the next one, why on earth did he have to manipulate Slughorn? Just to find out how many there were? To confirm his suspicions even though there was ample evidence already? The adding of these charms to the story is so far fucking awful and I hate Rowling for it. Anyway, they fly to this cave where to get the Horcrux Harry has to make the old man drink a bunch of rancid water that makes him cry and weak. Then they fight off a bunch of Smeagols and fly back to school.
Here we have another climax, the Death Eaters have broken into Hogwarts and are looking to wreck shit. Dumbledore tells Harry to hide as Draco makes his move to accomplish what was requested of him. The Death guys find them and cheer him on, but he just can't do it. Poor guy. Snape, sworn to finish Draco's deed if needed, crawls up and (on Dumbledores insistence)
Snape kills Dumbledore
Truth be told I was not able to remain unspoiled for this part. It was all over the internet for ages at the time the novel was released and became such a part of the internet culture that for all the trying you'd never be able to hide from it. So for me, I was not surprised. It seems that Dumbledore knew what was going on and knew that Snape, to remain undercover, had to kill him.
Harry goes after Snape (after the Death Eaters blow stuff up for shits and grins) and Snape then lets him know in the worlds stupidest climax that HE WAS THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE! To which I said... kay? Who cares. We dropped that story-line pretty much half the movie ago... does this get fleshed out later?
...
All in all, I really enjoyed this flick. Better than Order of the Phoenix, there are only a few glaring issues that mar the overall pace and plot. The acting is probably the best it's been out of Dumbledore and the guy who plays Slughorn is equally as fantastic. If only they didn't introduce these stupid charms I'd be VERY excited to see the next film. I'd heard this film described as slow in the past, but I think the slow pace is well suited for what I want from the story. I want them to be deliberate and measured without having to spell everything out and Half-Blood Prince mostly succeeded in this.
