I'm Harry Potter, school is for losers
Jul. 18th, 2009 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jade_sabreum um um crap y'all it's been four days so I'm running of what I can remember with minimal help (trying to avoid reading too many other reviews so that I can still write one) so if this seems completely WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT, it's because I'm ADD.
Also, just so you know,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda did a much more succinct review that I pretty much agree with in its entirety, and also I commented a few times around the post, and so you could bounce around there or read this (or, if you're obsessed like me, do both!).
Anyway, first off, the acting: DANIEL RADCLIFFE. DANIEL RADCLIFFE I THINK I LOVE YOU. AND RUPERT you know how I feel about you. For moments there I almost found myself being like, hey, Emma Watson is Hermione-ish, because of the bond between the three of them. In scenes where the three of them were together behaving in a Trio-ish manner (like on the train at the beginning, where Harry's all DRACO = DEATH EATER), it felt, well, like the Trio. And then Emma Watson would go off on some not!Hermione thing and I'd remember, oh, right.
Anyway, Daniel Radcliffe. I'm sure everyone's still going ga-ga over the Felix scene WHICH WAS SO MUCH LOVE OMG. I had really been looking forward to that scene, because Harry really is an ass in it (the whole thing where the only reason he goes to see Hagrid, who he's pretty much ignored all year, is because of a potion kind of ticked me off/made me sad in the book) and while that aspect of it was less noticeable in the film, Harry was still an ass. A hilarious ass. (May I please have my praphi--prophi--can I have it back please?) I liked his serious acting, I liked--he just felt, really felt, like Harry to me. ...which is apparently what I said about the last film (which I didn't rewatch before going to see this one), so, YOU JUST KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING, DANIEL, I LIKE IT A LOT. (Also, rather like RPattz, the more interviews I read with him, the more I like him.)
Rupert Grint! Is pure awesome. He still doesn't quite look like Ron to me, but uh, he nails the character. In spite of the script. I feel like I should talk about the script later, so for now, yaaaaaaaaaaaay Rupert!
Michael Gambon! Maybe it was because they gave him more Dumbledore-esque quips ("ah to be young and feel love's whatever" lolol irony of Dumbledore and Snape being the ones there and Snape having a "that is not funny" expression), but I felt he did a better job of toeing the line between whimsical old man and hardline powerful wizard. There was a softness in his eyes that made him more Dumbledore-y, even as he had some harsh moments ("are you saying you want me to let him?" you go Daniel Radcliffe.)
Actually, speaking of that last line, this movie was more aware of what was going on than the book was--Book Harry knew that he was supposed to be getting stuff from Slughorn, but I never got the sense (maybe this is just reread was a while ago, but) that he knew Dumbledore wanted him to pretend to be Slughorn's man, as it were. Oh! Another thing about Harry--I loved his lack of subtlety. That's like one of the biggest character traits I can peg on Harry (like, if you asked me to describe what kind of person he was, beyond "brave" and "Harry Potter"), and I thought DannyDannyR did a great job there--thanks to the script (but more on that later? Sooner?). The bit where he regurgitated when Tom Riddle said in the memory? Priceless.
Emma Watson, whatever. Still doesn't look, think, act, or talk like Hermione, but at least she is consistent in whatever performance she is giving.
Tom Felton! Did not get his own line in the credits! And Helena Bonham Carter did? WTF. I thought he did an awesome awesome AWESOME job. His expressions, the tightness and aloneness and everything weighing on him "I have to kill you or he'll kill me" and the indecision in the scene with Dumbledore--wonderful. I thought they did a fantastic job with Draco overall.
Lavender Brown! While the character bothered the hell out of me (hello, I am here to make out with Rupert Grint! alas, we are no longer making out!), I thought the girl playing her was hilarious and wonderful and did an amazing job, especially given the material (look jealous! look ridiculous! make out!). I really, really, really hope she gets to come back for the next movie and be involved in the epic battle--if they're making it as long as they seem to indicate they're making it (more on that later, though), surely they have room for her to come in and kick a tiny bit of butt and be, I dunno, a character.
(My lips are chapped! Look! LOLOLOL RON.)
Mr. Director Yates man is one of my favorite people. As with OotP, a lot of the little changes he made for cinema's sake were brilliant--like the bit with the birds and the Vanishing Cabinet. (I thought of it less as Harry-freeing-the-black-bird and more of Draco-sparing-the-black-bird.) And the movie itself was gorgeous and beautiful and I want, like, icons of Hagrid and Slughorn and Harry against the hill and other stuff (I want icons from the movie Harold and Maude too but that is for another day).
Slughorn! I enjoyed Slughorn. I wish young Tom Riddle from the old movies had come back, and then I realized, oh, wait, he's probably way too old for the part now. Baby!Tom Riddle was creepy as hell, as we already knew from the previews. Seamus blew something up in Potions, yay! Neville has a better haircut and is still attractive, ah-hahahahaha (hey little fat kid we'll cast you expecting you to stay little and fat--oops). Dean is also a looker. Luna was lovely, as usual. Maggie Smith is getting old (I mean to me she's always been older but my heart kind of broke a little when she first appeared on scene). I generally enjoyed the whole feel of having a regular background cast--regular background cast with regular lines and a sense of roundness, of world-completed-ness, that I know the first three films lacked and which I think has been building bit by bit in the latest three.
My major complaint with the directing would be that a few times in the film where there should've been a lot of tension and anxiety, he slowed it down to enough of a crawl that the tension sagged. (It happened early on, I don't remember when, which clued me into the fact that it would happen later, thus making later times [Burrowchase, fleeing Hogwarts] not unanticipated but still a little disappointing.)
Okay, time for some ranting! Let's see, what were my original complaints...
with the exception of one needless, pointless, stupid scene in the middle, the regular casting fail, some upsetting dialogue changes, and the fact that the last scene cut me to the core in a typical Steve-Kloves-is-a-bitch way
Ah yes. Needless Pointless Stupid Scene in the Middle, Thy Name is Helena Bonham Carter Vehicle.
Okay, so I was really enjoying what they did with Greyback--the sort of little detail that all the films needed, the sort of nod of "this exists and is there but we don't have time to explore it but it is there" that doesn't take too much effort (a poster!) and yet still enforces the sense of roundness. Kind of like Scotty's Tribble in ST09, or the bit about Admiral Archer's beagle.
And then along comes the Burrow scene, and well first, casting FAIL, who is that man and why is he saying Lupin's lines? I still cannot adapt my mental hangups to him. I what. Just. What.
On the other hand, Lupin/Tonks SQUEE. As soon as she made the little "don't push it" gesture I went HOMGYAY and then the "sweetheart" line--again, a little detail, slightly different from the books, but still giving the sense that the whole world is still there, one way or another.
Oh but then we're going to go on a long pointless run through the Burrowswamp (bwuh?) and Bellatrix and...I guess that's Fenrir...are going to hop around in the bushes, and then set the Burrown on fire WHAT. WHAT. I, uh, said, "YOU CAN'T SET THE BURROW ON FIRE" in the theatre (I was a bit of a mess in the theatre, honestly, and I kind of want to smack myself retroactively, but I am hopeful that it is related to other crap in my life so that's another post). The whole scene felt stuck there--like, literally, I could have excised it from the movie, and the movie would have been essentially the same. I don't really care how it was done, because it felt so--it felt like, hey, we need to bring Bellatrix in for another scene! Yeah! Let's do that!
and I have this thing about the HP movies, and how they sometimes add unnecessary things that subtract from their ability to show things I would consider necessary. Case in point would be Prisoner of Azkaban, where Lupin has an entire conversation with Harry about Lily Potter, and yet never mentions the whole Marauders thing. WHAT. WHAT.
So in this film, we traded at least a Snape-led DADA class for the Burrow catching on fire what. (Although I guess this does confirm rumours that they're cutting Bill and Fleur's wedding entirely [despite having filmed it?], because uh, the whole point of the beginning of DH is that you're freaked out because Hedwig dies and Moody dies and George loses an ear when really JKR is just dancing around attacking the Burrow, that bastion of safety. But we already did that? So.)
(Side note--loved the scene where Ginny discovered Harry's luggage. Ah-hahahahahaha. Yay Burrow! Nitpick!Jade wants to know why Ron's room wasn't orange.)
Anyway, back to the lack of Snape-led DADA class, which generally leads into the problem with the ending (not just the last scene, because that's a different side of the problem). First, though, I again would like to say love the Draco/Dumbledore bit, and LOVE LOVE LOVE the "Severus, please" line. Dumbledore's death itself was pretty much perfect.
But. Harry, trusting Snape when Snapeappears lurking sexily behind him says to keep quiet? What?
Oh, and then you look back on Snape's role in the movie, and you realize that while his appointment to DADA was greeted with dismay, you never get a scene of him teaching, and in fact most of his scenes in the movie are positive ones--Cormac puking on him for hilarity's sake, followed by a brief friendly-for-Snape message from Dumbledore; offering to help Draco (who, as the movie shows us, is seriously struggling), and healing Draco's wounds (scene that was somewhat disappointing, for lack of violence--his shirt wasn't even cut open, all you saw was some blood, and it just didn't have quite the impact it needed); and having a discussion with Dumbledore that made some sense in terms of what was going on.
Now that I think about it, I guess Lupin's whole speech was about trusting Snape while he offered to help Draco, but a) I was distracted by Lupin!fail and b) since Harry didn't harp on Draco as much in the movie as he did in the book (probably for the best) and since he wasn't sitting through Snape's hate-inducing class (not for the best), the issue seemed less important.
So basically, anyway, you get to the end of the movie, and here's Harry...not petrified and trusting Snape? AH. Trust issues aside, if he's standing there at the ready, then as soon as Snape starts to utter the curse he should have something, anything he can turn on him to throw him off. Part of what makes Dumbledore's death so especially hard in the books is that Harry is literally petrified, helpless, and unable to do anything but watch it unfold in front of his eyes. Leaving him mobile robs us of that.
On the other end of it, the movie was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less ambiguous about Snape's loyalties, which is, in my view, bad. But even aside from that, I'm still a little confused, because...Harry hates Snape. I mean, we've established that in previous films. So I'm not sure if we're supposed to remember how much he hates Snape, and therefore be surprised/confused/angry about Dumbledore's death/"I am the Half-Blood Prince," or if we're supposed to assume Harry's grown up and matured and gotten over it (a la "I pity you because you don't have any friends!" at the end of OotP). The latter view, btws, is so laughingly out of character for Harry that, uh, I welcome all y'all to laugh with me.
Also, the one scene I felt totally robbed of was DON'T CALL ME A COWARD. I sat through Dumbledore's death feeling torn between nausea (on the other hand, if Harry had been paralyzed, I probably would've been sick) and tears, and then I was waiting for that scene (maybe that was my fault), but it's such a--a huge scene, that as much as I love Alan Rickman, I can't get over it not being there. And Harry just wasn't yelling or trying hard enough or--and then the pacing was slooooooooooooooooooooowing doooooooooooooooooown, and the whole scene just tripped on Snape's robes and landed flat on his face while the Death Eaters flounced their way out.
(I will not get too much into the whole "DEs flounce in, DEs flounce out" problem, except to use the word flounce.)
"I am the Half-Blood Prince," says nice, conflicted, just-killed-Dumbledore, murmuring Snape.
"...so how are we supposed to feel about that?" the audience responds.
I just. Don't know. And I wanted Snape to snap. He needs to snap. At least once. Somewhere. Please.
So that was made of fail.
NOW onto the last bit: the last scene. You know, the one where Hermione is standing next to Harry saying "oh, we'll always be there for you!" while Ron is skulking in the darkness, and then Harry and Hermione talk about Ron like he's not there.
So some people are like, "well, Kloves is setting up for Ron's departure in the seventh movie," to which I reply, "that would imply he knows how to foreshadow!" Even if you want to grant him that, you still can't ignore the fact that he has consistently done this sort of nonsense in every HP film he's written. (Case in point, Prisoner of Azkaban, wherein Emma Watson steals Ron's turning-green-and-pale-while-trying-to-stand-on-a-broken-leg line, "If you want Harry you'll have to kill me first!" Dear readers, this theatregoer probably screamed. She doesn't quite remember, having blocked most of the PoA film out of her mind, but what. The. Hell. I love Hermione--love Hermione--identified with her through most of my teenage years--still have remnants of that--but that is not her line. That is not her role. Anyway.)
What confused me about this moment was how many times Kloves got it right in the rest of the film. Like, I was actually not that upset! And there was so much humor and there were so many BESTFRIENDZ moments between Ron and Harry--the sort that have been missing in the other films, because Kloves likes to make Hermione Harry's HOMGTWULUVSOULMATE while Ron is delegated to comedic lines involving food. I mean, compared to the other films, this one practically shipped Ron/Hermione. It was exciting to see everyone filling their roles, with a few exceptions, and I was so, so happy to see Ron get positive screentime.
(Also I thought they did an all right job of expanding Ginny's role, and again, I felt so bad for Lavender Brown, being nothing more than a makeout machine.)
And then there was the "how does it feel when you see Ginny and Dean?" line, and that whole scene, wherein I was like, "Oh Steve Kloves, I see you trying so hard to show that their pairing is TWU WUV, and I see that you just don't understand why Ron and Hermione would like each other, [and frankly at this point in the movies it's still weird to see Emma Watson crushing on Rupert Grint when previously she just tried him like comedic dirt]." And his whole "see you with Miss Granger" bit with Dumbledore was Kloves saying "OKAY SO APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG AND IN THE SEVENTH BOOK THEY DON'T GET TOGETHER, SEE I DID READ IT."
(side note--LOLOLOL skin conversation.)
But then that last scene relegated Ron back to being notimportant! and Hermione to being OMG THE ONE WHO IS ALWAYS THERE FOR HARRY. And it's just--wrong. It unbalanced the whole Trio, negated all the work that had been done earlier in the movie, and just--Ron! RON. I love you. I want you in the scene. I want you to be Harry's BESTFRIEND. I want Hermione to be Harry's best friend, too, because she has her place in the Trio as well, but oh my God Kloves it is not meant to be just stop.
And as for the last line of the movie...see here.
So, in summary: as I watched the movie, I loved it, aside from a few minor quibbles, and I thought that overall they did a great job capturing a lot of the stuff--but after the movie was over, especially after watching the last two or three scenes, I felt the absence of Snape and the obnoxiousness of Steve Kloves's screenplay writing (which had so many high moments in this film--at least he's learned how to adapt books?) and it's really just bringing me down.
Also, just so you know,
cleolinda did a much more succinct review that I pretty much agree with in its entirety, and also I commented a few times around the post, and so you could bounce around there or read this (or, if you're obsessed like me, do both!).Anyway, first off, the acting: DANIEL RADCLIFFE. DANIEL RADCLIFFE I THINK I LOVE YOU. AND RUPERT you know how I feel about you. For moments there I almost found myself being like, hey, Emma Watson is Hermione-ish, because of the bond between the three of them. In scenes where the three of them were together behaving in a Trio-ish manner (like on the train at the beginning, where Harry's all DRACO = DEATH EATER), it felt, well, like the Trio. And then Emma Watson would go off on some not!Hermione thing and I'd remember, oh, right.
Anyway, Daniel Radcliffe. I'm sure everyone's still going ga-ga over the Felix scene WHICH WAS SO MUCH LOVE OMG. I had really been looking forward to that scene, because Harry really is an ass in it (the whole thing where the only reason he goes to see Hagrid, who he's pretty much ignored all year, is because of a potion kind of ticked me off/made me sad in the book) and while that aspect of it was less noticeable in the film, Harry was still an ass. A hilarious ass. (May I please have my praphi--prophi--can I have it back please?) I liked his serious acting, I liked--he just felt, really felt, like Harry to me. ...which is apparently what I said about the last film (which I didn't rewatch before going to see this one), so, YOU JUST KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING, DANIEL, I LIKE IT A LOT. (Also, rather like RPattz, the more interviews I read with him, the more I like him.)
Rupert Grint! Is pure awesome. He still doesn't quite look like Ron to me, but uh, he nails the character. In spite of the script. I feel like I should talk about the script later, so for now, yaaaaaaaaaaaay Rupert!
Michael Gambon! Maybe it was because they gave him more Dumbledore-esque quips ("ah to be young and feel love's whatever" lolol irony of Dumbledore and Snape being the ones there and Snape having a "that is not funny" expression), but I felt he did a better job of toeing the line between whimsical old man and hardline powerful wizard. There was a softness in his eyes that made him more Dumbledore-y, even as he had some harsh moments ("are you saying you want me to let him?" you go Daniel Radcliffe.)
Actually, speaking of that last line, this movie was more aware of what was going on than the book was--Book Harry knew that he was supposed to be getting stuff from Slughorn, but I never got the sense (maybe this is just reread was a while ago, but) that he knew Dumbledore wanted him to pretend to be Slughorn's man, as it were. Oh! Another thing about Harry--I loved his lack of subtlety. That's like one of the biggest character traits I can peg on Harry (like, if you asked me to describe what kind of person he was, beyond "brave" and "Harry Potter"), and I thought DannyDannyR did a great job there--thanks to the script (but more on that later? Sooner?). The bit where he regurgitated when Tom Riddle said in the memory? Priceless.
Emma Watson, whatever. Still doesn't look, think, act, or talk like Hermione, but at least she is consistent in whatever performance she is giving.
Tom Felton! Did not get his own line in the credits! And Helena Bonham Carter did? WTF. I thought he did an awesome awesome AWESOME job. His expressions, the tightness and aloneness and everything weighing on him "I have to kill you or he'll kill me" and the indecision in the scene with Dumbledore--wonderful. I thought they did a fantastic job with Draco overall.
Lavender Brown! While the character bothered the hell out of me (hello, I am here to make out with Rupert Grint! alas, we are no longer making out!), I thought the girl playing her was hilarious and wonderful and did an amazing job, especially given the material (look jealous! look ridiculous! make out!). I really, really, really hope she gets to come back for the next movie and be involved in the epic battle--if they're making it as long as they seem to indicate they're making it (more on that later, though), surely they have room for her to come in and kick a tiny bit of butt and be, I dunno, a character.
(My lips are chapped! Look! LOLOLOL RON.)
Mr. Director Yates man is one of my favorite people. As with OotP, a lot of the little changes he made for cinema's sake were brilliant--like the bit with the birds and the Vanishing Cabinet. (I thought of it less as Harry-freeing-the-black-bird and more of Draco-sparing-the-black-bird.) And the movie itself was gorgeous and beautiful and I want, like, icons of Hagrid and Slughorn and Harry against the hill and other stuff (I want icons from the movie Harold and Maude too but that is for another day).
Slughorn! I enjoyed Slughorn. I wish young Tom Riddle from the old movies had come back, and then I realized, oh, wait, he's probably way too old for the part now. Baby!Tom Riddle was creepy as hell, as we already knew from the previews. Seamus blew something up in Potions, yay! Neville has a better haircut and is still attractive, ah-hahahahaha (hey little fat kid we'll cast you expecting you to stay little and fat--oops). Dean is also a looker. Luna was lovely, as usual. Maggie Smith is getting old (I mean to me she's always been older but my heart kind of broke a little when she first appeared on scene). I generally enjoyed the whole feel of having a regular background cast--regular background cast with regular lines and a sense of roundness, of world-completed-ness, that I know the first three films lacked and which I think has been building bit by bit in the latest three.
My major complaint with the directing would be that a few times in the film where there should've been a lot of tension and anxiety, he slowed it down to enough of a crawl that the tension sagged. (It happened early on, I don't remember when, which clued me into the fact that it would happen later, thus making later times [Burrowchase, fleeing Hogwarts] not unanticipated but still a little disappointing.)
Okay, time for some ranting! Let's see, what were my original complaints...
with the exception of one needless, pointless, stupid scene in the middle, the regular casting fail, some upsetting dialogue changes, and the fact that the last scene cut me to the core in a typical Steve-Kloves-is-a-bitch way
Ah yes. Needless Pointless Stupid Scene in the Middle, Thy Name is Helena Bonham Carter Vehicle.
Okay, so I was really enjoying what they did with Greyback--the sort of little detail that all the films needed, the sort of nod of "this exists and is there but we don't have time to explore it but it is there" that doesn't take too much effort (a poster!) and yet still enforces the sense of roundness. Kind of like Scotty's Tribble in ST09, or the bit about Admiral Archer's beagle.
And then along comes the Burrow scene, and well first, casting FAIL, who is that man and why is he saying Lupin's lines? I still cannot adapt my mental hangups to him. I what. Just. What.
On the other hand, Lupin/Tonks SQUEE. As soon as she made the little "don't push it" gesture I went HOMGYAY and then the "sweetheart" line--again, a little detail, slightly different from the books, but still giving the sense that the whole world is still there, one way or another.
Oh but then we're going to go on a long pointless run through the Burrowswamp (bwuh?) and Bellatrix and...I guess that's Fenrir...are going to hop around in the bushes, and then set the Burrown on fire WHAT. WHAT. I, uh, said, "YOU CAN'T SET THE BURROW ON FIRE" in the theatre (I was a bit of a mess in the theatre, honestly, and I kind of want to smack myself retroactively, but I am hopeful that it is related to other crap in my life so that's another post). The whole scene felt stuck there--like, literally, I could have excised it from the movie, and the movie would have been essentially the same. I don't really care how it was done, because it felt so--it felt like, hey, we need to bring Bellatrix in for another scene! Yeah! Let's do that!
and I have this thing about the HP movies, and how they sometimes add unnecessary things that subtract from their ability to show things I would consider necessary. Case in point would be Prisoner of Azkaban, where Lupin has an entire conversation with Harry about Lily Potter, and yet never mentions the whole Marauders thing. WHAT. WHAT.
So in this film, we traded at least a Snape-led DADA class for the Burrow catching on fire what. (Although I guess this does confirm rumours that they're cutting Bill and Fleur's wedding entirely [despite having filmed it?], because uh, the whole point of the beginning of DH is that you're freaked out because Hedwig dies and Moody dies and George loses an ear when really JKR is just dancing around attacking the Burrow, that bastion of safety. But we already did that? So.)
(Side note--loved the scene where Ginny discovered Harry's luggage. Ah-hahahahahaha. Yay Burrow! Nitpick!Jade wants to know why Ron's room wasn't orange.)
Anyway, back to the lack of Snape-led DADA class, which generally leads into the problem with the ending (not just the last scene, because that's a different side of the problem). First, though, I again would like to say love the Draco/Dumbledore bit, and LOVE LOVE LOVE the "Severus, please" line. Dumbledore's death itself was pretty much perfect.
But. Harry, trusting Snape when Snape
Oh, and then you look back on Snape's role in the movie, and you realize that while his appointment to DADA was greeted with dismay, you never get a scene of him teaching, and in fact most of his scenes in the movie are positive ones--Cormac puking on him for hilarity's sake, followed by a brief friendly-for-Snape message from Dumbledore; offering to help Draco (who, as the movie shows us, is seriously struggling), and healing Draco's wounds (scene that was somewhat disappointing, for lack of violence--his shirt wasn't even cut open, all you saw was some blood, and it just didn't have quite the impact it needed); and having a discussion with Dumbledore that made some sense in terms of what was going on.
Now that I think about it, I guess Lupin's whole speech was about trusting Snape while he offered to help Draco, but a) I was distracted by Lupin!fail and b) since Harry didn't harp on Draco as much in the movie as he did in the book (probably for the best) and since he wasn't sitting through Snape's hate-inducing class (not for the best), the issue seemed less important.
So basically, anyway, you get to the end of the movie, and here's Harry...not petrified and trusting Snape? AH. Trust issues aside, if he's standing there at the ready, then as soon as Snape starts to utter the curse he should have something, anything he can turn on him to throw him off. Part of what makes Dumbledore's death so especially hard in the books is that Harry is literally petrified, helpless, and unable to do anything but watch it unfold in front of his eyes. Leaving him mobile robs us of that.
On the other end of it, the movie was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less ambiguous about Snape's loyalties, which is, in my view, bad. But even aside from that, I'm still a little confused, because...Harry hates Snape. I mean, we've established that in previous films. So I'm not sure if we're supposed to remember how much he hates Snape, and therefore be surprised/confused/angry about Dumbledore's death/"I am the Half-Blood Prince," or if we're supposed to assume Harry's grown up and matured and gotten over it (a la "I pity you because you don't have any friends!" at the end of OotP). The latter view, btws, is so laughingly out of character for Harry that, uh, I welcome all y'all to laugh with me.
Also, the one scene I felt totally robbed of was DON'T CALL ME A COWARD. I sat through Dumbledore's death feeling torn between nausea (on the other hand, if Harry had been paralyzed, I probably would've been sick) and tears, and then I was waiting for that scene (maybe that was my fault), but it's such a--a huge scene, that as much as I love Alan Rickman, I can't get over it not being there. And Harry just wasn't yelling or trying hard enough or--and then the pacing was slooooooooooooooooooooowing doooooooooooooooooown, and the whole scene just tripped on Snape's robes and landed flat on his face while the Death Eaters flounced their way out.
(I will not get too much into the whole "DEs flounce in, DEs flounce out" problem, except to use the word flounce.)
"I am the Half-Blood Prince," says nice, conflicted, just-killed-Dumbledore, murmuring Snape.
"...so how are we supposed to feel about that?" the audience responds.
I just. Don't know. And I wanted Snape to snap. He needs to snap. At least once. Somewhere. Please.
So that was made of fail.
NOW onto the last bit: the last scene. You know, the one where Hermione is standing next to Harry saying "oh, we'll always be there for you!" while Ron is skulking in the darkness, and then Harry and Hermione talk about Ron like he's not there.
So some people are like, "well, Kloves is setting up for Ron's departure in the seventh movie," to which I reply, "that would imply he knows how to foreshadow!" Even if you want to grant him that, you still can't ignore the fact that he has consistently done this sort of nonsense in every HP film he's written. (Case in point, Prisoner of Azkaban, wherein Emma Watson steals Ron's turning-green-and-pale-while-trying-to-stand-on-a-broken-leg line, "If you want Harry you'll have to kill me first!" Dear readers, this theatregoer probably screamed. She doesn't quite remember, having blocked most of the PoA film out of her mind, but what. The. Hell. I love Hermione--love Hermione--identified with her through most of my teenage years--still have remnants of that--but that is not her line. That is not her role. Anyway.)
What confused me about this moment was how many times Kloves got it right in the rest of the film. Like, I was actually not that upset! And there was so much humor and there were so many BESTFRIENDZ moments between Ron and Harry--the sort that have been missing in the other films, because Kloves likes to make Hermione Harry's HOMGTWULUVSOULMATE while Ron is delegated to comedic lines involving food. I mean, compared to the other films, this one practically shipped Ron/Hermione. It was exciting to see everyone filling their roles, with a few exceptions, and I was so, so happy to see Ron get positive screentime.
(Also I thought they did an all right job of expanding Ginny's role, and again, I felt so bad for Lavender Brown, being nothing more than a makeout machine.)
And then there was the "how does it feel when you see Ginny and Dean?" line, and that whole scene, wherein I was like, "Oh Steve Kloves, I see you trying so hard to show that their pairing is TWU WUV, and I see that you just don't understand why Ron and Hermione would like each other, [and frankly at this point in the movies it's still weird to see Emma Watson crushing on Rupert Grint when previously she just tried him like comedic dirt]." And his whole "see you with Miss Granger" bit with Dumbledore was Kloves saying "OKAY SO APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG AND IN THE SEVENTH BOOK THEY DON'T GET TOGETHER, SEE I DID READ IT."
(side note--LOLOLOL skin conversation.)
But then that last scene relegated Ron back to being notimportant! and Hermione to being OMG THE ONE WHO IS ALWAYS THERE FOR HARRY. And it's just--wrong. It unbalanced the whole Trio, negated all the work that had been done earlier in the movie, and just--Ron! RON. I love you. I want you in the scene. I want you to be Harry's BESTFRIEND. I want Hermione to be Harry's best friend, too, because she has her place in the Trio as well, but oh my God Kloves it is not meant to be just stop.
And as for the last line of the movie...see here.
So, in summary: as I watched the movie, I loved it, aside from a few minor quibbles, and I thought that overall they did a great job capturing a lot of the stuff--but after the movie was over, especially after watching the last two or three scenes, I felt the absence of Snape and the obnoxiousness of Steve Kloves's screenplay writing (which had so many high moments in this film--at least he's learned how to adapt books?) and it's really just bringing me down.
Will probably go see it again, though.
SO WHAT DID EVERYONE ELSE THINK. Also if you wrote a review I may not have read it yet, so remind me.
