Overall, I liked it a hëll of a lot.
I’ve given it some thought and decided that I won’t go into detail. I will simply say that I think Rowling pulled it off. Yes, to some degree it was “Harry Potter and the Deathly Exposition,” but she had a lot of ground to cover and loose ends to tie off. She accomplished a hëll of a feat.
And the only vaguely spoilerish thing I’ll mention is this: At one point Harry, having been rendered insensate, comes around, and we have the following sentence:
“Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked.”
Am I the only one who, upon reading this, immediately jumped to the conclusion that in a burst of metafiction, Harry was going to discover that he was on stage in a production of “Equus?”
PAD
• 
Oh, one other thing: At one point during his detention in the book Order of the Phoenix, Umbridge stares at Harry, and Harry’s scar hurts, implying a connection between Umbridge and Voldemort. I assumed this would be cleared up by the end of the story, but there was nothing in this book about it. What gives?
In reading these posts, I’m beginning to agree that yes, there should’ve been more details, especially about Umbridge and the Malfoys, but I would’ve put it before the Epilogue instead of in it. I’m even wondering if leaving the ending more open without an Epilogue, so that the reader can imagine their own Happily Ever Afters, would’ve been more advisable.
Sasha: Interesting bits of revelation of who “that awful boy” Aunt Petunia referred to…
Luigi Novi: Which book was this in? This one? Or a previous one?
John C. Kirk: However, I came across a page earlier tonight which quite annoyed me…
Luigi Novi: Just my opinion, John, but you might’ve considered not posting that url at all, so as to not give them more publicity, especially when you consider that that article features a pic of Emma Watson making the polyjuice potion from Chamber of Secrets, which has been photoshopped to so that her panties are showing, and features the caption “You can totally see up her dress.” Given that she was about 11-12 years old at the time, I don’t think it’s necessary to give publicity to sites with kiddie pørņ on them in order to express dislike of them.
Jester: However, I would expect Harry to seek out very few dangerous adventures since he wants to ensure that the Elder Wand is never taken from him and it loses it’s powers upon Harry’s (ideally natural) death. For that reason, I doubt he became an Auror.…
Luigi Novi: Harry doesn’t have the wand. He left it at Hogwarts, as he indicated to Dumbledore’s portrait. As for becoming an Auror, Rowling indicated in the interview that I and someone else linked to at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/, that Harry and Ron not only became Aurors, but Harry became head of the Auror Department at the MoM.
Eric Qel-Droma: I remember hating one girl to death on Monday and realizing that she was my density on Tuesday.
Luigi Novi: Your ”density”? Wow, how romantic. 🙂
Susan O: Knowing that invincible fantastic Harry is reduced to a job, bills, laundry, groceries, taking out the garbage, even finding a place to park a car, reduces him to a working slob like everyone else. It kills the fairy-tale aspect.
Luigi Novi: I don’t recall anything in the books that show Harry to be “invincible”, but quite the opposite. I also don’t see what the epilogue has to do with “being reduced to bills and laundry”, since it’s merely you decision to frame his life that way. Falling in love, getting married, and having a family is a “reduction”? I don’t see it that way. The way I see it, Harry has finally found the family he has always lacked in life, his demons have been conquered, literally and figuratively, has a great life, and is doing a job he’s been wanting to do since he was in school. If this is not a “reduction” when it happens to people in real life, why would it be thus in a fairy tale?
Patrick Hamilton: That kind of makes sense, though isn’t Harry or his body the container in a way?
Luigi Novi: Yes, but it’s not a mere matter of it being pierced. If it were, then any time he got a cut, or for that matter, when Pettigrew stabbed him at the end of Goblet, that would’ve done the trick too. But it didn’t. When the horcrux is a living being, it has to die to cease being a horcrux.
Cary, thank you for your responses.
Cary: Flamel used the Philosopher’s stone to make Elixir of Life, effectively making himself immortal, thus he lived for hundreds of years.
Luigi Novi: Read the rest of that passage in my post.
Cary: Dumbledore only got hurt because he tried to use the stone.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, I neglected to more closely proofread that post before posting. I wrote that after I read that part of the book, and should’ve removed it when I was done with it. Thanks, though..
Cary: I don’t think it explicitly said that he was going to Hogwarts, I took it as a kiss saying goodbye to the slightly younger Victoire who is probably in her last year.
Luigi Novi: Yeah, after a while, I thought of that too.
David Serchay: It wasn’t 5 years later. It was 5 years into Grindelwald’s “Dark Lord” period that Dumbledore finally went up against him.
Luigi Novi: Rereading that passage, that seems unclear. It mentions that Dumbledore delayed for five years of disappearances and attacks, his confrontation with Grindelwald, but because it is placed right after the scene of Ariana’s funeral, and no mention is made of how long before his “Dark Lord” period began, it read to me as if it was soon after. Thanks for pointing that out.
Eric Qel-Droma: I remember hating one girl to death on Monday and realizing that she was my density on Tuesday.
Luigi Novi: Your ”density”? Wow, how romantic. 🙂
P&P: It’s a “Back to the Future” reference.
David Serchay: It wasn’t 5 years later. It was 5 years into Grindelwald’s “Dark Lord” period that Dumbledore finally went up against him.
Luigi Novi: Rereading that passage, that seems unclear. It mentions that Dumbledore delayed for five years of disappearances and attacks, his confrontation with Grindelwald, but because it is placed right after the scene of Ariana’s funeral, and no mention is made of how long before his “Dark Lord” period began, it read to me as if it was soon after. Thanks for pointing that out.
I think some of that had been covered earlier. Both passages were from articles written by Rita Skeeter.
David
“Patrick Hamilton: That kind of makes sense, though isn’t Harry or his body the container in a way?
Luigi Novi: Yes, but it’s not a mere matter of it being pierced. If it were, then any time he got a cut, or for that matter, when Pettigrew stabbed him at the end of Goblet, that would’ve done the trick too. But it didn’t. When the horcrux is a living being, it has to die to cease being a horcrux.”
But the Horcrux has to be pierced/destroyed by specific things. Hermione mentions in DH that Horcruxes are notoriously difficult to destroy; only certain things–such as the sword or basilisk venom–destroy them. So the other wounds Harry received wouldn’t do anything to the Horcrux since they weren’t–as far as we know–from one of these specific methods or objects.
“Oh, one other thing: At one point during his detention in the book Order of the Phoenix, Umbridge stares at Harry, and Harry’s scar hurts, implying a connection between Umbridge and Voldemort. I assumed this would be cleared up by the end of the story, but there was nothing in this book about it. What gives?”
Further on in OotP, Harry realizes that the scar hurting him during Umbridge’s detention was coincidental – it did not relate to Umbridge at all. The scar hurt because Voldemort was feeling a powerful emotion (in this case, it was happiness) but Harry didn’t recognize the leaping feeling for what it was since he himself was so miserable at the time. If I remember correctly he came to this realization after his Occlumency lesson with Snape, when Ron went to check on him and he was feeling another scar pain & emotion unrelated to his own feelings.
“If Teddy Tonks was born during this book, then nineteen years later would be a year or two after he graduated from Hogwarts. Why would he be on the Hogwarts Express?”
The epilogue said that Teddy Lupin was there to see Victorie off – there was no mention of him getting on the train.
Page 605 Canadian Edition, paraphrasing the passage to include dialogue only: James said “Our Teddy! Teddy Lupin! Snogging our Victorie! Our cousin! And I asked Teddy what he was doing -” Ginny says “You interrupted them? You are so like Ron -” James continues “and he said he’d come to see her off! And then he told me to go away. He’s snogging her!”
“Harry sneaks into Thicknesse’s office, and after a bit, the door opens, and Thicknesse walks in. Harry then “backs out” of the office, but Rowling makes no mention of the door. Didn’t Harry have to open the door to leave the office? Wouldn’t Thicknesse have noticed that?”
Harry snuck into Umbridge’s office. Thicknesse came into the office while Harry was there…and I just assumed he didn’t close the door when he came in, as he was just leaving her a note, so Harry was able to sneak out through the open door.
“Given how good J.K. Rowling is at setting things up far in advance for a later revelatory payoff, I definitely did not like how, on Page 635, Fiendfyre was suddenly pulled out of the hat at the last minute as something that not only could destroy horcruxes, but which Hermione knew about. Yeah, okay, she didn’t consider using it because it was so dangerous, but so what? She could at least have brought it up earlier, if only to establish it up front and explain why she would not consider using it. Bringing it up here during the Battle of Hogwarts didn’t ring true.”
This didn’t surprise me at all. She has a history of keeping things to herself unless she is absolutely sure about them – remember CoS? She figured out the Basilisk, why Harry could hear the voice but no one else could (parseltongue), but had to check in the library to make sure she was right before telling Ron & Harry. Fiendfyre was a dangerous spell that she was not familiar with, did not have a teacher or probably even a book to describe how to cast it, and I would imagine it’s not “Ministiry of Magic Approved” – so in her mind, it was irrelevant until she saw it in action.
The more I read this book, the more impressed I am with how tightly the stories were woven together – an incredible feat, I think. I look forward to re-reading more Harry Potter in the future and am anxiously awaiting the encyclopedia that Jo Rowling has promised.
Having come to the end of the story, I think PoA is still my favorite book. It’s the one that started exploding the wizarding world as much bigger then Harry and his adventures, fleshed out his dad, (The mauraders!).
But I loved 7. And without a doubt, my single favorite line in HP ever:
“But he was home. Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found a home here…”
/cry
I love how it links Harry, V, and Snape. I love how it underscores the fact that they were all so similar. All three were abandoned by their families in many ways. All three had reasons to hate the world.
Yet Harry didn’t. What set him apart was the fact he still had the ability to love. His friends saved the day throughout the series. If he had rejected friends for Followers as Voldy did, he would have lost.
Sasha: Interesting bits of revelation of who “that awful boy” Aunt Petunia referred to…
Luigi Novi: Which book was this in? This one? Or a previous one?
Order of the Phoenix. When Harry tells the Dursleys about the Dementors, Aunt Petunia knows what they are, and explains that she heard “that awful boy” telling Lily about them (we see that scene during Snape’s memories). At the time we were probably meant to think it was James.
On Page 223, a mention is made of how Muggles can’t see number 12 Grimmauld Place, which makes eleven sit next to thirteen. Just out of curiosity, how are houses numbered in England? In the States, a number eleven would sit next to thirteen, because odd-numbered buildings are situated on one side of the street, and even-numbered ones on the opposite side.
I believe that the English practice is to number concurrently on a side–10 through 12 Downing Street adjoin each other, for example.
How does Harry know that the magical eye on the door of Umbridge’s office is Moody’s? Couldn’t Umbridge have bought her own?
I suspect it’s an item that was specially created rather than bought off the rack; it’s a pretty powerful item, and the demand for them (as prosthetics, not security cameras) is probably pretty low. (Moody was clearly willing to sacrifice cosmetic appearance for utility.)
Patrick Hamilton: But the Horcrux has to be pierced/destroyed by specific things. Hermione mentions in DH that Horcruxes are notoriously difficult to destroy; only certain things–such as the sword or basilisk venom–destroy them. So the other wounds Harry received wouldn’t do anything to the Horcrux since they weren’t–as far as we know–from one of these specific methods or objects.
Luigi Novi: Again, that’s for inanimate objects. When it’s a living being, it would seem that it merely has to die. Remember, the seventh horcrux residing in Harry was destroyed when Voldemort used the Killing Curse on Harry, and that was enough to do the trick.
Jocelyn: The epilogue said that Teddy Lupin was there to see Victorie off – there was no mention of him getting on the train.
Luigi Novi: I reread it, and saw that, thanks.
Jocelyn: This didn’t surprise me at all. She has a history of keeping things to herself unless she is absolutely sure about them – remember CoS? She figured out the Basilisk, why Harry could hear the voice but no one else could (parseltongue), but had to check in the library to make sure she was right before telling Ron & Harry.
Luigi Novi: She didn’t indicate that she wasn’t “sure” about Fiendfyre, but that she would not consider using it because it was too dangerous; She did not reveal the truth of the Basilisk in CoS only because the Basilisk attacked her right before she was about to do so. The analogy isn’t there, and any case, I’m making an external reference, not an internal one, because my emphasis wasn’t on Hermione’s mere mention of it, but Rowling’s. Rowling should’ve mentioned it earlier so it didn’t seem like pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the last minute. Establishing premises that are used solely to resolve a major crisis only at the eleventh hour in a story is usually a sign to me of bad writing. Rowling usually makes sure to set such stuff up earlier.
Trek Barnes: Having come to the end of the story, I think PoA is still my favorite book.
Luigi Novi: For me, PoA is one of the weakest, second in weakness only to OotP, because of its utterly preposterous use of time travel. These time turners are obviously dangerous, given what they can do, and do they ever use them to stop Voldemort? Nah. But let’s entrust it entirely to some thirteen-year-old kid so she can do more schoolwork.
My only question to JK is “What next?” I hope (apart from the Potterpedia) that this isn’t the end of her writing career. If she can continue to write books that simply demand that you read them, then I know I’ll be lining up for her next project no matter what it may be.
I do, however, hope that she might continue to set stories in this world she’s created. I’d love to see a story in which Fred and George are the main characters.(Although this would, now obviously have to be set prior to or during the events of Book 7.)
From Conversations with J.K. Rowling (2000; Scholastic), Page 55-56:
Interviewer Lindsey Fraser: What will you do once you’ve finished the seventh?
Rowling: I’m sure I’ll always write, at least until I lose my marbles. I’m very, very lucky. Because of Harry’s success, I don’t need to do it financially, nobody’s making me. I just need to do it for myself. Sometimes I think I’m temperamentally suited to being a moderately successful writer, with the focus of the attention on the books rather than on me. It was wonderful enough just to be published. The greatest reward is the enthusiasm of the readers.
My brother and I had bets going about who would die: I said Harry, Voldemort, Snape, and maybe Hagrid. He said Harry would marry Hermione… cuz the hero gets the girl. I just KNEW Neville would turn out lion-hearted. I thought Dumbledore would be faking his death (totally forgot about the paintings. Awesome touch!) I also never doubted Snape was a good guy, but I had no idea he was motivated by love–that was so sweet! And EW pointed out that the last thing Snape wanted to see was Lily’s eyes, so he asked Harry to look at him. That just melted my heart.
I thought the middle (they were in the woods…in the woods..in the woods…in the woods) was boring as dogshit, but I got it. How would three kids know what to do? They couldn’t ask anyone, and they’re not clairvoyant. I just think it didn’t have to go on so long…it seemed to be artifically stretched to cover the whole school year. And I was waiting for Moody to pop up as an inferi.
But, here’s the thing: I thought that Harry dying and getting to ‘choose’ to come back when no one else could was the biggest crock I have read in years. Deux ex machina, anyone? But I’ll be glad to have anyone explain it to me…please?
And the last chapter was extraneous, I felt. I have no problem with Harry marrying and having kids, since everyone knows that takes more determination and strength than supposed derring-do. I just think, like a lot of others, it was ill-fitting. It’s nice to hear what they did for a living, so to everyone who posted that, thanks!
Oh, and Victoire: I thought she was Ron and Hermione’s oldest daughter, named for Viktor Krum. Was she? Or Bill and Fleur’s?
“I thought that Harry dying and getting to ‘choose’ to come back when no one else could was the biggest crock I have read in years. Deux ex machina, anyone? But I’ll be glad to have anyone explain it to me…please?”
I read it as a “near death experience”.
Megan
On English house numbers, they vary on whether they run concuurently, or even and odd on other sides. They are mostly the latter but the other is not that unuusual particularly in older streets.
Sa,
As to how Harry coming back to life its telegraphed in Goblet of Fire, when Voldemort use’s Harry’s blood as part of the basis of his new body, Dumbledore even mentions it. He does this to bypass the protection Lilly’s sacrifice had given Harry as it seems to be based in the blood, because he is safe at hus aunt’s house who is a blood relation. When Harry is killed the fact that his blood and that spell still exists hold Harry into life. So groundwork was laid earlier in the books for that.
Victoire definitly Bill and Fleur’s daughter, Victoire is the french version of Victoria.
Luigi Novi: For me, PoA is one of the weakest, second in weakness only to OotP, because of its utterly preposterous use of time travel. These time turners are obviously dangerous, given what they can do, and do they ever use them to stop Voldemort? Nah. But let’s entrust it entirely to some thirteen-year-old kid so she can do more schoolwork.
Something I thought of in reading your comment: since time turners are dangerous, wouldn’t it be safer to use them for something small–like say Hermione getting to classes–rather than for something big? After all, it’s not like Hermione going to classes at the same time is likely to unravel their world, but going back in time to stop Voldemort might.
I agree that the movie will be really long, given that there are no side plots or secondary stories filling pages. How much can they cut?
I agree that the movie will be really long, given that there are no side plots or secondary stories filling pages. How much can they cut?
I’ve been wondering that myself. The most efficient way to trim down the screenplay for an adaptation of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS would be to cut out the plotline of the Deathly Hallows, somewhat defeating the purpose. (Or you can go ahead and do that and rename the last film, perhaps using the title Rowling almost used, whatever that was.)
PAD, as someone who’d be familiar with this sort of thing, I’m curious what your take is on the difficulty of making this screenplay work.
I imagine this film will have to be close to the 3 hour mark to do it minimal justice.
Well, for a start, I imagine the noodling around in the wilderness will be cut down to a minimum…(Probably enough to get in the stuff with Kreacher and the bit with the sword, which are the most important for the main plot.) Ron’s departure will probably be cut entirely. I wonder what they’ll do with Dobby, since his scenes have been cut from movies 4 and 5 (his role in the plot being handed to Neville in both cases, which wouldn’t work here).
Patrick Hamilton: Something I thought of in reading your comment: since time turners are dangerous, wouldn’t it be safer to use them for something small–like say Hermione getting to classes–rather than for something big? After all, it’s not like Hermione going to classes at the same time is likely to unravel their world…
Luigi Novi: Never heard of the Butterfly Effect, Patrick? 🙂
Thought the book was very well done — a satisfying ending to the series.
My main concern is for poor little Albus Potter going into Slytherin. Afraid he’s fated to it. Albus Severus Potter, A.S.P. An asp. With initials like that, he has to be a Slytherin.
(Sorry. I’ll let myself out….)
Luigi Novi: Never heard of the Butterfly Effect, Patrick? 🙂
In all seriousness (well, as serious as the topic deserves, anyway) I get the impression that the timestream in the Potterverse either has a robust error-correcting mechanism, or is one of those “you can’t actually change history because it already happened that way and so you’re fated to do whatever you planned on doing” worlds (a la Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps”). The former from Hermione’s comments about how wizards who meet themselves often wind up killing themselves without realizing it; the latter because Harry and Hermione didn’t change anything that we’d previously seen onscreen.
I’m with Doug. The butterfly effect isn’t some law of the universe that has to be acknowledged, it’s a time travel convention that many stories do without (Fritz Leiber’s Timewar stories assume the timestream resists even small changes).
I think the movie could trim a lot of the wandering around.
One thing I did like is that Draco never really redeems himself, he just stops short of going further to the dark side. Ultimately he’s a weasel and remains one.
I would imagine the best way to approach the 7th movie would be to add some of the plot onto the 6th movie (which, although the book was incredibly long, had a lot of material that could be potentially cut out)… although that might give the movie quite a different flow. If I were writing it that’s how I’d manage, though.
“Jasmine Loucks at July 31, 2007 08:14 PM “
What about a “mini-series”? Spread books 6&7 over three (slightly shorter) movies rather than 2 longer ones?
Megan
[i]Ron’s departure will probably be cut entirely. I wonder what they’ll do with Dobby, since his scenes have been cut from movies 4 and 5 (his role in the plot being handed to Neville in both cases, which wouldn’t work here).[/i]
They better not cut his departure and return. It’s a core emotional moment, and leads to the more powerful impact of the kiss later on. Plus the destruction of the locket is a big moment.
As much as the movi and book is called harry potter it’s about the three of them they need the neccesary moments, for these characters.
I think they may be willing to let the 7th movie hit the three hour mark.
They may reduce some of the ministry stuff and some of the travelling in the tent. We may lose the wedding, though.
But, here’s the thing: I thought that Harry dying and getting to ‘choose’ to come back when no one else could was the biggest crock I have read in years.
The way I read it is, at that point in time he used the Hallows, the ‘power over death’.
– inheritor of the Invisibility cloak.
– inheritor of the Stone.
– the true ‘owner’ of the Elder wand, via Malfoy.
While he wasn’t holding all three items at the time of the curse, he was in near proximity and their “rightful owner”, thus could reap the benefit.
This is a bit off topic, but it seemed the best place to share it. I had an odd moment this morning. I wanted to revisit Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, (which btw plays a lot differently when you’re fully aware of what Snape’s motives are.)so I was listening to the audiobook in the car this morning. Parts of the opening chapter describe the unexplained collapsing of a relatively new bridge, so imagine my surprise when I got to work and started seeing news reports of the same thing happening in Minneapolis. Weird.
Having finally finished it, the only thing I really found to be a let down was the way the final battle between Harry and Voldemort went down. It was so quick it didn’t really register that V was dead for at least a line or two after he was dead. I just thought that there would be more to it.
Other then that, good ending for the series.
For street names in England (I live here) if there is houses only on one side they go 1,2,3,4….
If there is houses on both sides it goes 1,3,5,7,9…. 2,4,6,8 on each side of the road.
Great book, but im still wondering how Neville got the sword, who sent the sorting hat out of the castle?
I missed it at first too Eevee, but when Voldemorte pulled the sorting hat over Neville’s head and set it ablaze, when the hat was removed, Neville pulled the sowrd from it (page 732 or so), which means there is probably one really pìššëd øff goblin wondering where his sword went….
I would imagine the best way to approach the 7th movie would be to add some of the plot onto the 6th movie (which, although the book was incredibly long, had a lot of material that could be potentially cut out)… although that might give the movie quite a different flow.
I agree that’d probably be the way to go–similar to how the Peter Jackson LOTR movies moved some of the material from Two Towers the book into other films–but since filming of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is supposed to start imminently, I’d imagine they’d have the screenplay completed by now. Not that that means there couldn’t be many revisions and tweaks up to and even during production, but I guess I wonder just how practical it’d be to move some of Deathly Hallows plot into the Half-Blood Prince movie…
“PAD, as someone who’d be familiar with this sort of thing, I’m curious what your take is on the difficulty of making this screenplay work.”
The wedding’s going to go away. The entire sequence with Ron leaving and then coming back can vanish. You can probably lose the sequence with Luna’s dad. Believe it or not, you might be able to drop the entire assault on Gringotts with some careful reworking.
PAD
But if you take out the Ron leaving and coming back, then the effect of Dumbledore’s passing of the Deluminator to him is pretty much washed out as well, isn’t it?
“But if you take out the Ron leaving and coming back, then the effect of Dumbledore’s passing of the Deluminator to him is pretty much washed out as well, isn’t it.”
Yes. And I’ve no problem with that.
When you’re whittling something like this down to a movie, you have to figure out what the spine of the story is and ruthlessly eliminate or rework anything that doesn’t drive the plot toward its resolution. In this instance, it’s “Harry vs. Voldemort to the Death.” You either find another use for Dumbledore’s gift or drop it from the movie completely.
PAD
But if you take out the Ron leaving and coming back, then the effect of Dumbledore’s passing of the Deluminator to him is pretty much washed out as well, isn’t it?
Well, yeah. But if you’re looking to cut things, you gotta cut things. And you couldprobably get rid of Dumbledore’s bequests to Ron and even Hermione in the interest of trimming the book down for the movie. (The fact that Ron’s gets the deluminator isn’t a vital plot point and is less so if you’re already planning to trim back the Ron-leaves-but-returns thing. And the fact that Hermione gets the book of fairy tales isn’t a huge either, provided that you can find some other way to do the exposition involving the story of the Hallows…)
Hmmm. My gut feeling is that Peter is right about what they will end up cutting except I can’t imagine them deleting the blind dragon and the flight to freedom.
So when do you think it will be announced that they will be doing miniseries of all the books. I say within ten years of the last movie. Perhaps, within five. This would explain why Rowling as been content to let them delete so much of her books.
The problem with cutting out the ron leaving and coming back storyline is, the the Ron Hermione subplot has been building in not just the books but the movies as well. There needs to be a resolution. Plus the Ron destroying the Horcrux scenes is just so powerful it’s going to be hard to cut.
JK really made things difficult for the 7th film, she added the Hallows which is a huge bit of exposition to deal with, plus you have two major character relevations.
That’s the thing that’s going to make half blood prince so interesting is there’s not a lot of plot in this book, it’s pretty much about the relationships.
The problem with cutting out the ron leaving and coming back storyline is, the the Ron Hermione subplot has been building in not just the books but the movies as well. There needs to be a resolution. Plus the Ron destroying the Horcrux scenes is just so powerful it’s going to be hard to cut.
Well, you could still have Ron-destroying-the-Horcrux scene, just without him having necessarily abandoned the others and returning to them. And you could certainly find a way to “resolve” the Ron/Hermione relationship elsewhere in the film version. They could share a moment during the battle of Hogwarts, or at another time during the action, which would still serve the characters’ development but not necessarily need the Ron-abandons-them-then-comes-back thing.
Just mathematically, the obvious way to cut down the story for a film would be to reduce the number of Horcruxes. As a bibliophile purist, I’d hate to think they’d do something so drastic, but on the other hand, like PAD says, the Gringotts caper could probably removed, and it’s not as if the Hufflepuff Cup is as an intrinsically interesting a prop as some of the others. (Heck, even in the book it was destroyed “off-stage”) On the other hand, the Gringotts scene is a great set piece, but maybe the last film will have enough great set pieces that we won’t miss it…
Well, you could still have Ron-destroying-the-Horcrux scene, just without him having necessarily abandoned the others and returning to them.
Or you can cut it down to the bare minimum necessary to make it work–Ron storms off in a huff, Harry goes off by himself and sees the sword, Ron returns to save him and destroy the Horcrux. All the key points, both plot and emotional, are there without the extra month after step one.
“Just mathematically, the obvious way to cut down the story for a film would be to reduce the number of Horcruxes. As a bibliophile purist, I’d hate to think they’d do something so drastic”
you could but then you take away the whole magic number of 7 thing still do able. They might cut the hufflepuff cup for no other reason then it cuts the scene from HBP absolutely destroys some of the motivation and symbology.
Well lets look at the major bits, you could remove the ministry of magic bit just have mundungus keep the locket, though that removes a nice set piece early on.
You can combine malfoy manor and gringotts really
my big worry over the ron destroying the locket stuff is kloves has a history of taking stuff from ron and giving it to other characters.
I’m not sure how you can remove luna’s dad. that’s the explanation of the Deathly Hallows and unless you change the title of the movie they have to be there somehow.
I think Deathly hallows is going to be a 3 hour movie.
I’m not sure how you can remove luna’s dad. that’s the explanation of the Deathly Hallows and unless you change the title of the movie they have to be there somehow.
Well, if you cut Luna’s father, then obviously, you’d have to find some other way to do the exposition involving the Hallows, but that’s not impossible. Maybe the book Hermione inherits from Dumbledore provides the fuller story of the Hallows (if you keep that part of ths book in the film.) Maybe some other member of the Order provides the Hallows backstory at some point.
The point is that there’s surely any number of ways to cut down this–or any other–book in order to make it a movie.
Come to think of it, what I find interesting are all the elements from earlier Harry Potter books that weren’t included in the respective movies that nonetheless turn up as somewhat important elements in Hallows–things like Sirius’s two-way mirror that plays a part in Hallows. Obviously, you can write around anything, but it’s interesting to think of all the things like that that the filmmakers will have to write around…
I think for the movie they should definitely ditch the final “Nineteen Years Later” chapter. I didn’t mind it in the book, even though it was a tad cutey-poo (even if it did set up more books/fan fic). I thought it ended much stronger on “I’ve had enough trouble to last me a lifetime,” with Harry’s final conversation with Dumbledore’s painting.
While its simply a somewhat weak way to end the book, but still okay, I think in a movie the sequence would be pure death. Basically, by this point, the audience has spent seven movies and gawd-knows how many years with these actors who play Harry, Ron, Herminoine, etc. So they would pull the rug out from under us and say, “hey, you get to go home after all these movies with some 30 year old actors instead of the people you’ve watched for all these hours. Enjoy!”
If they want to put the 19 yrs later scene in the flick, do it as a post-credits cookie.
Does anyone else want to see a “Neville Longbottom and the Really Bad Year at School”?
For the movies, they don’t have to reduce the number of horcruxes. They could just say that Dumbledore had already destroyed some of them (I see the cup being the first to go and either Nagini or the diadem going if the director wants.)
Is anyone else hopping that RTD directs a Harry Potter movie? And speaking of the Doctor, Tennant’s character’s soul wasn’t removed in the movie, right? Maybe the Doctor could have a cameo in the last film.
i think whatever they cut from this book is going to hurt more then any other book.
Can you cut Neville killing the snake? yes. Does it absolutely destroy the amazing character arc she’s built for him since book 1? yes.
Could you cut the lovegood scene? yeah kills the absolutely heart breaking moment of seeing Luna’s ceiling.
I know this whatever they cut from the ron hermione subplot they best be careful. they’ve been building that plot in the movies not just the book and if they kill the pay off you’ll pìšš øff a very large part of the fanbase.
Oh, and Peter, when I read the part where he was naked, I started saying “Ek- Ek-“!