Harry Potter and the Tilt-A-Whirl Metaphor
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the sixth movie in the Harry Potter canon and it really would have been nice if, instead, it were the seventh and eighth. The film is one of the most solid entries to the group of mostly hit and occasionally miss series. The thing is that, throughout the chronicle of our bespectacled hero, he is vexed far less by Lord Voldemort and more often by the titanic task of cramming all of the epically long books into a two and a half hour running time. One can judge the quality of a Harry Potter film director not so much on his overall vision, but on how he manages to hide the fact that the films script is hurtling you along like a crack fiend carny operating the Tilt-A-Whirl at a county fair. Taking that into consideration, director David Yates has done a very decent job. Yates also directed Harry’s last outing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was sort of like experiencing said cracked-out carny overdosing and setting the Tilt-A-Whirl on maim. Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves have managed to, mostly, take control and tame the epic length of the story.
The main change comes in the villains that take over from the over-hyped Lord Voldemort, who spent a large amount of time in the last film sinisterly making Harry Potter have bad dreams and not sleep so well. When the villain can be pwned by a bottle of NoDoz, you may want to rethink your approach. In Half Blood Prince we are given the missing Draco Malfoy [Where has he been since movie number two?] and the sneering Professor Snape. These two liven things up by actually plotting onscreen, as opposed to Voldemort who prefers to leave moviegoers guessing as to how effective his sleep deprivation tactics are.
The secret weapon of the films has always been the acting God-on-Earth, Alan Rickman, who plays Snape. Between Snape and his classic Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Mullets, he is in danger of becoming the most incredible badass ever. Rickman’s Snape uses pauses the way Chuck Norris uses fists. He has mastered the “despising look” glance and the voice dripping with “go fuck a pipe wrench” attitude. He is joined in villainy by one of the Potter franchise’s young stars that can actually act. Tom Felton has matured over the years, despite a criminal lack of screen time, into a very passable actor. He conveys the torn nature of Malfoy in this sixth film with an excellent use of both body language and voice, apparently attending Alan Rickman’s “How To Wither People’s Genitals With Your Vocal Chords” workshop.
Thank you Brian, for saying it so no one else had to.
Yates excels at the beginnings of films. In Order of the Phoenix he let us see Harry in the Muggle world facing Dementors. Here he faces some hot Brit chick in a train station, and the tone is set nicely for pointing out that Harry and friends are not the chipmunk cheeked children we once watched. The films grow darker and darker each time and, often, better and better. Yates paints the screen with looming shadows and an almost Gothic Modern European feel that suits the franchise perfectly. Nicholas Hooper’s slow brooding score has replaced the frantic hornpipes of John Williams and for the even darker Potter this is a good thing. Technical aspects have always been the highlight of the Potter series and are all present and awesome here.
The only let down comes from the steadfast refusal of the powers that be to grant Half Blood Prince the similar treatment it has granted the series final chapter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The final film is being split into parts one and two and it come two books too late. Yates does admirably, but at times Half Blood Prince leaves you feeling as if you had been catapulted from one set piece to the next without any transition. One day it is Christmas and the next it’s mid May. They arrive at Hogwarts and then we are launched eight weeks later into the book. By no means am I suggesting that a slavish adaptation would be the correct answer here. I really enjoyed the added moments and would love to see more of them, nor am I asking the writers to adapt every word of the book so that we can enjoy Harry Potter taking a magical shit in real time. What I am asking for is for the pace to match the books. Don’t thrust me from one thing to the next so damn fast. These movies feel like you’re getting a tour of the Louvre by way of a bullet train. Let the story build its momentum naturally, the first three films managed this fairly well, but that was because the first three books were about a quarter of the length of books five through seven. It was time to split the book in twain about the time that Order of the Phoenix began rivaling War and Peace in terms of page numbers.
Yates manfully does his best throughout most of Half Blood Prince’s two and a half hour running time to keep things sane, but the final fifteen minutes speeds through one of the franchises finer endings without a glance. The film is really very well done and all involved deserve high marks for excellent work. It is therefore a great shame that the movie commits such a stumble in its final moments. Still it is one of the better films in the Potter series and is a thoroughly enjoyable ride, just watch out for the meth carny moment at the end and hold on because the Tilt-A-Whirl is now set to kill.
Manfully? Also, yes it’s been said multiple times, but it deserves to be said much more: Emma is Hawt with a capital “Rule 34″.
I haven’t seen this yet, but I agree! They should totally split more book movies in half. Get all the coolness in there. I’ve liked each Harry Potter movie better than the previous one, so I’m pretty pumped.
Great movie for sure! like you said they cant cover it all but for the most part they kept the story moving forward without a loss of to much information.
Oh and Jason GREAT choice on a photo for Emma!
Yes, I think we can all agree that Hermione is way hotter than little Wesley-by, Ginny, and yes, Librarians are hot! What more is there to say…
Thanks Dave! I had to do a quite a bit of scouring, but it wasn’t so bad… haha.
i think this Half Blood Prince becomes my new 2nd top HP movie of all time…no one can still beat Prisoner of Azkaban…but this new movie has many good advantages on its own…i love the acting, the intensity, and the cinematography, i don’t care if it has less action than the others but this one didn’t get me bored not like the Goblet of Fire…and Helana Boham Carter as Bellatrix rocks!!!!!!!!!
Apparently I’m the only person that thinks this movie was a bunch of production company pandering. Lets consider the evidence:
-Teen romance angle beaten to death. Could this be because of the recent success of Twilight?
-PG rating. Could this be why the final battle was cut? Not to mention the awkward cuts and the vacant collapsing bridge in the beginning that somehow resulted in “Many Dead”?
I dunno. This just didn’t seem like the Harry Potter world to me. There wasn’t much wonder and awe (or MAGIC for that matter). It was all just love triangles and unresolved plot points.
“I am the Half Blood Prince!” “Really, and why should we give a damn?”
Points well raised.
Indeed, the romance teen angst was pretty lame, especially the Harry/Ginny one which I thought was the best in the book [God, I sound like a 13 year old girl] but was about as fun here as watching wet dogs mate. I think the actress they got to play Ginny is from the Keanu Reeves school of acting.
Snape, whilst at least IN this film, was reduced to the lame “I am the Half Blood Prince” line and since it is the name of the book it WAS strange that they pretty much shit all over that like a German pornstar.
I did read about the fact that they cut the final battle for two reasons.
1 There is a FINAL battle at the end of the next film.
2. In the book Harry does not see any of the actual battle, he just sees the aftermath.
This does mean that Bill and Fleur just got toasted down to SPEW hell, where left over Harry Potter plots go to die. Very sad.
Despite many short coming I did enjoy this one quite a bit. I thought they hit the tone fairly well, and in all fairness most of the sixth book IS teen romance angst, but it does seem to get a little to much screen time. I think I loved this one so much mostly because 4 and 5 were epic shit, and had most of their plot chopped into house elf pieces. They learned that if they, like aforementioned German pornstar, take a dump on my chest twice, then when they pee in my face I will be so relieved and happy. Not the best metaphor, but there it is. Maybe I need to put the content filter back on my Google search engine.
haha. I liked 4 and 5 the best of the series so far BECAUSE they are so manic. I mean, it’s a magic world where all kinds of crazy shit is going to be happening all the time. It doesn’t fit into a standard narrative. That’s probably why this latest one was so boring for me, because they tried to package it into more of a Hollywood structure. It was so average.
And that’s true, there IS a final battle in the last film, but this is supposed to be a war between good and evil. There’s going to be more than one large scale confrontation. And Bellatrix going around breaking windows and glasses didn’t exactly seem sinister to me. She might as well have lit a bag of dog shit on the porch of Hogwarts. “Take THAT good guys!”
There IS a lot of shit talk going on here. Maybe we both should look at getting some help.
“Harry Potter Verbal Smackdowns” sounds way more entertaining than watching WWE sweat dudes beat each other down. We need to get some wizard robes in neon colors and get Jason to dress as a Vince McMahon type and say something like “Lets Get Ready To MMMMMMUUUUUGGGGGLLLLLEEEEE”. Then the audience throws shit at us while we discuss merits of Potter films. [Just to work the poo angle in there]
Bellatrix destroying windows was extra lame, particularly since Bonham Carter has been playing her as two slit throats away from Jack the Ripper. For hyping themselves as “dark” they sure do puss out alot.
You know there is one director who could turn Harry Potter into the wild and magical mayhem that it does deserve, Terry Gilliam, but they wont EVER let him near the franchise and thats to bad. My favorite was 3 mostly because Alfonso Cuaron gave it his best shot at a more magical Potter. I do agree that there should be more magicalness in the series. I still stand by my distaste for 4 and 5 though, 4 was like some PBS Poirot mystery with teens, and 5 gave me a TOTAL lack of Gary Oldman among many other things.