Dear Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,

Hope this letter finds you well, though from the looks of the box-office sales, you seem to be doing just fine!

Now, I don’t know how you’re going to take everything I have to say, but I hope that you’ll hear me out.  After having met you on Friday, I’ve been doing some thinking about what didn’t sit well with our meeting. My biggest issue is with the way you allotted the time to certain aspects of the story.  You foregrounded the teenage romance stuff, which I understand is part of the story and is true to the development of the characters, but it’s in truth only a subplot, and a parallel plotline at best.  But the feeling I got after meeting you was that the snog-fest was the whole point! You focused on the romantic lives of the characters at the expense of developing some crucial elements that would have made you make a lot more sense, especially to people who have not read your book counterpart.  I don’t really want to spend any more talking about this part, because there are other pressing issues, but you can read what someone else has said in this very “clean cut” movie review.

You really missed an opportunity to develop several characters:

• What I loved about the book was that Draco became a really complex character. You did not show any of his struggle (c’mon, that bathroom scene was simply not enough).  Therefore, it was really hard for me or my friends to have any sort of sympathy for him.

• Next, you dismissed the quest to find out who the Half-Blood Prince is with that one little scene where Harry and his pals were walking in the snow, but in actuality, pursuing the quest would have made you far more balanced and made what was supposed to be part of a climactic scene (you know which part I’m talking about – the reveal) a lot less cheesy, not to mention, it would have made some sense.  I mean, this is KEY!  Related, this would have allowed you to deepen Snape a lot more.  Thankfully, Alan Rickman does a spot-on job of portraying Snape every time, but again – a missed opportunity.

• Most frustrating was the fact that you did not develop Dumbledore at all. This is, after all, Dumbledore’s book.  He could have become way more interesting, complicated, and we would have been able to connect with his moral dilemma.  (The familiar motif most recently highlighted in the relationship between Master Shifu and Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda.)  It just didn’t make a lot of sense to people.  The hand?  The relationship between Dumbledore and Harry?  I was expecting to cry, but I didn’t.  And the benefit you would have yielded in the way of deepening Dumbledore as well as giving us more of a window into he-who-must-not-be-named far outweighs the cost of devoting a little more time in the flashbacks (you know which really important one I’m talking about!).

Oh, another thing. I just thought it was really unrealistic how you skipped over the process of Bellatrix & Co. arriving at the climactic scene.  It just didn’t make sense (I sound like a broken record, but “that’s the problem. THAT’S the problem!”)

I did, however, think your special effects were neat.

I’ll be honest.  I didn’t have high expectations of you, because your counterpart (the book) is one of my favorite ones in the entire Harry Potter series, and I knew it would be impossible to capture everything.  That being said, I was still disappointed.  Given the choices you had to make with regard to the time limit (though I think enough people would have sat through the movie no matter how long you needed…was it a matter of budget?) I think you made some fairly poor decisions.

I know, I know, you’re sick of living in the shadow of the book, hearing people compare you to it all the time,  and you want people to accept you for who you are.  But look, even apart from the book, people ended up feeling like you didn’t tell the whole story.

I know it might hurt your feelings but I want to tell you what I’ve heard some people saying about you:

“It felt like one long trailer for the 7th movie.”

“It wasn’t Harry Potter.  It was Harry bboh-bboh!” (sorry, I can’t make the Korean characters show up)

“It was ok.”

“Where was the action?  It started about 2 hours in and then it was over.  I was confused.”

Overall, my friends who have never read any of the books said they felt lost and that there wasn’t the mystery, magic, and wonder your sister movies possessed.  And well, I don’t think you want to hear the details of what my friends who have read and love the book said.  But I hope you know where I’m coming from.  I just wanted you to know the truth about what I and others think.

On the bright side, I think your lack of story-telling, plot and character development will push people to actually read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to fill in all the holes you left!

Regards,

H. (not Hermione) Emily Kim, bibliophile