When last we left our young wizard hero,
the Order of the Phoenix had
triumphed over a villainous band of Death
Eaters in the Department of Mysteries.
But at the tragic cost of
his god father's very life.
Can the boy who lived, and his cohorts,
defeat he who must not be named?
Who is the half-blood prince?
Do you seek the hallows or the horcruxes?
What did the filmmakers leave out of the
adaptations and why is that significant?
To answer all of these questions and
many more,
with no restraint on spoilers,
we take you now to the thrilling
conclusion of Cinefix's three-part
wizarding world extravaganza.
What's the difference?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Hallows.
- Man, you didn't leave anything for
me to introduce, did you?
- Nope.
(Music)
- Well I'll just jump in here while I've
got the chance to remind everybody that
this is not an exhaustive list of every
single change from the book to the movie,
because there are enough of those
to fill a vault at Gringotts.
We're focused more on the significance
of the changes made to the final two
books and three movies in
the "Harry Potter" franchise.
So if we look at years one through three
as thoroughly setting up the wizarding
world and placing our heroes squarely
in the middle of it's central conflict.
Years four and
five are about transitioning Harry and
the gang from children to adult,
then year six and
seven have to be about our main characters
to become fully realized heroes.
Right?
- That's right.
And "The Half-Blood Prince"
settles right into that plan.
The novel opens with the muggle
Prime Minister receiving a visit from
two wizards.
First, the outgoing Minister
of Magic Cornelius Fudge,
then the newly elected lion-like
minister Rufus Scrimgeour.
The wizards bring the muggle PM up to date
on all the recent craziness spilling into
the muggle world as a result of
the open war with Voldemort.
The movie on the other hand,
skips straight to seeing the craziness.
The film opens on Death Eaters
kidnapping the wand maker Ollivander and
tearing an iconic London bridge to pieces.
As we've seen with previous
installments in the franchise,
layering texture onto the wizarding world
has not been a priority in the film series
since the first few films.
So, this cut is no big surprise.
However, immediately following
the attack on the bridge,
we find Harry hanging in a cafe
in the underground, cruising for
waitresses, before Dumbledore
comes to fetch him.
- I fear I may have stolen
a wondrous night from you Harry.
She was truthfully very pretty.
The girl.
- It's all right sir.
I'll go back tomorrow, make some excuse.
- The book sees Harry whiling away
the end of the summer at the Dursley's
when Dumbledore shows up, of course,
sending the Dursleys into a tizzy.
So right off the bat,
movie Harry is shown to be out on his own,
less dependent on adults
than his book counterpart.
Even the bit about how Harry is
protected from Voldemort while he can
call the Dursleys' home is
removed from the movie.
This guy is officially no longer sitting
at the kids table, you know what I mean?
>From there several scenes
play out largely the same.
Dumbledore and Harry recruiting
Professor Slughorn, Bellatrix and
Narcissa making the unbreakable
vow with Snape,
the gang spying on Draco sneaking
off to Borgin and Burkes.
Although in the book,
Draco sneaks off by himself,
as opposed to being accompanied by his
mother and Fenrir Greyback in the movie.
Which is a difference that has
the opposite effect from putting
Harry off on his own.
Whereas, book Draco is taking it upon
himself to plot his nefarious plans,
while book Harry is
sheltered at the Dursleys',
movie Draco is still chaperoned, and
movie Harry's doing his own thing.
- And it doesn't stop there.
When Harry sneaks into the Slytherin
car in the Hogwarts Express,
with Peruvian instant darkness powder,
only to be discovered and
subsequently face stomped by Draco,
it's fellow Dumbledore's Army alum
Luna Lovegood who finds Harry hidden
beneath his invisibility cloak.
- Hello Harry.
- Luna, how did you know where I was?
- Wrackspurts.
Your head's full of them.
- She escorts him up to the school,
even fixes his nose after they run into
Malfoy at the gates, being shown through
the security checkpoint by Snape.
- Book Harry is discovered on the train
by Auror and Order of the Phoenix member,
Tonks, who now stationed at Hogsmead,
came looking for
him when he didn't show up to the feast.
Then Snape meets them at the gate to
escort Harry the rest of the way to
the castle, and take 50 points from
Gryffindor like a slimy little jerk.
So, here we have another
change that makes the movie
good guys less beholden to adults.
And the movie bad guys, more so.
Meanwhile, Draco's plans are going
just as poorly in the movie as they
do in the book.
The cursed necklace lands quidditch star,
Katy Bell, in the hospital wing.
The poison mead ends up nearly
doing in a love potion-addled Ron,
even Christmas party and Draco's
gate crashing play out the same way.
However, over the Christmas break
we find another significant change,
while Harry is staying with the Weasleys,
the Burrow is attacked by Death Eaters.
In fact,
it's kinda exploded by Death Eaters, and
that's a change I personally
can't get behind.
But more on that later.
- (Sound) Tease.
- But in the book Christmas break instead
finds the new minister of magic popping in
to visit Harry at the Weasleys instead
of a violent pair of Death Eaters.
Scrimgeour attempts to recruit Harry
to be the Ministry's poster boy for
the war on Voldemort.
Of course Harry refuses and while it
certainly reads as Harry firmly standing
up for himself, there's more than
a little childish anger in his tone.
Leaving this scene out of the movie keeps
the focus on Harry coming into his own as
an adult, as opposed to feeling all
angsty against authority figures.
- You have to realize who you are Harry.
- I know who I am Hermione, alright?
Sorry.
- Another difference where this is evident
is in the trimming of the pensieve
sequence.
The book gives much more
of Voldemort's background,
including the origin of the ring and
locket that would become horcruxes.
The movie though,
keeps only the memories directly relating
to the job Harry has in front of him.
Instead of dropping clues through a year's
worth of pensieving, movie Dumbledore
tasks Harry with retrieving Slughorn's
unaltered memory much more directly,
treating Harry as more of a partner
in the fight against Voldemort.
- The movie continues to rearrange some
events and drop side plots wholesale,
as is necessary in adapting 650 or so
pages into a two and half hour movie.
While Harry's romance with Jenny is kept
in the movie, it's mainly glossed over and
still kept secret from Ron in the film.
But gone completely
are the apparition tests,
Harry's employment of Dobby and
Creature to follow Malfoy, and
of course the bulk of Harry's classes,
including one of Snape's Defense Against
the Dark Arts classes in which
he teaches nonverbal spells.
Granted, the kids were already using
nonverbal spells in the previous film,
see also Clint's outrage
from the last episode.
- I stand by that, by the way.
- But the exclusion of nonverbal spells
is very significant in year six.
Harry's inability to cast them
contributes in part to the ease of
Snape's escape after killing Dumbledore.
Harry shouting all those spells at him,
not only gives Snape something to needle
Harry with, it also allows Snape to
reveal himself as the half-blood prince.
(Sound)
- That he's able to toss spells around
without barking them is another example
of giving movie Harry more agency,
abilities more on-par with
the of-age wizards he deals with.
Truth is though, there's no real rule
regarding which spells are spoken and
which are not, in the movies.
So when he shouts,
Sectumsempra, at the fleeing Professor
Snape, there's no real reason for it,
other than we as an audience need to
hear it to follow the events on screen.
It also didn't matter much because,
frankly, the movie doesn't make a big
deal of discovering the identity
of the Half-Blood Prince.
- In the book, the kids spend
a great deal of time wondering
who the Half-Blood prince is.
There are even all these trips
to the library involved.
Harry at one point even wonders if his dad
might have been the Half-Blood Prince.
The moment of Snape's reveal is
very well earned in the book, and
in the movies it's kind of, who cares.
- Did you use my own spells against me,
Potter?
Yes, I'm the Half-Blood Prince.
- You're the Half-Blood Prince?
Yeah, I'm Santa Claus who gives a (Bleep).
- But we did cruise past one notable
difference that we have to mention.
In the book, upon hearing footsteps
coming up the astronomy tower,
Dumbledore freezes Harry in place.
So that no matter how bad
Harry might want to intervene,
he's powerless to do anything but watch.
On the other hand, movie Dumbledore
instructs Harry to just stay out of sight
imploring the young wizard to trust him.
- On first watch I have to say,
I was all like, tsk,
no way does Harry just sit there willingly
and watch Dumbledore get murdered.
But remember, this is movie Harry.
Not book Harry, the Harry that told off
the Minister of Magic over Christmas
break, that Dumbledore has strung
along with tidbits of clues all year,
has been replaced by a Harry who's
been given more agency at this stage.
Movie Harry's choice to trust Dumbledore
in that moment was just that, a choice.
An opportunity never afforded
his book counterpart.
And so, moving into the seventh and final
chapter of his story, Harry is well and
truly an adult making his own decisions.
- So here we go down to home stretch now.
As the Deathly Hollows was
split into two movies,
they didn't have to ditch as much plot
wholesale as the rest of the films.
But the adaptation is still littered
with tiny superficial changes between
the significant ones.
So again, please forgive us for not
mentioning every time Ted Tonks isn't in
the movies or Fenrir Greyback
isn't that important in the books.
So the book opens with a meeting of
the Death Eaters at Malfoy Manor.
Snape reports the date and time Harry
Potter will be moved and Voldemort murders
the Muggle Studies teacher,
then feeds her to his frigging snake.
And he does this in front of
all the other Death Eaters, and
they're feeling somewhat terrified,
but kind of into it.
- God, no.
- Yes.
- No, no, yes.
- The movie version of
this scene plays the same.
However, it's preceded by a bold,
extreme closeup of new Minister of Magic,
Rufus Scrimgeour.
Which is important only because the film
version of Half-Blood Prince didn't bother
with him at all.
And a real sad montage
reminding us that Harry, Ron,
and Hermione are really
out on their own now.
With Hermione wiping her
parents memories and
Harry bidding farewell to the Dursleys.
One interesting difference that pops up
almost immediately is Sirius' mirror.
It hasn't been seen at all in
the film series until right here,
in the first few minutes of
The Deathly Hallows Part 1.
Of course, the mirror comes in
very handy for Harry later on,
so it's a difficult thing to work around.
It's just strange.
The film version of
Order of the Phoenix and
The Deathly Hallows book came
out in the summer of 2007.
So it's conceivable, and in my opinion,
a little short-sighted that J.K.
Rowling didn't tell the filmmakers what an
important role the mirror plays in book 7.
At the end of the day, though,
it's not like the change broke the movie,
it's just something to get stuck
in the craws of Harry Potter fans.
So moving away from that
obviously personal tangent,
the beginnings in both book and
movie move along basically the same path.
Harry leaves the Dursleys,
accompanied by six polyjuiced up decoys,
only to be attacked by
the Death Eaters immediately,
with Headwig and
Mad Eye dying in the action.
Then, after regrouping at the burrow,
Harry's had enough of people
dying because of him, and
declares that he wants to take off.
Of course, the room full of
adults nags him out of it,
without even empathizing with Harry's
concern for their well-being.
The movie replaces the room
full of adults with just Ron.
Harry tries to sneak out, but
his best friend catches up with him and
quite rationally talks him out of it.
Again, putting all the decision-in
the hands of our young heroes.
- You may the chosen one mate, but
this is a whole lot bigger than that.
- After that comes a long stretch that's
basically the same in the book and
movie, with only the standard trims
that happen in every adaptation.
Scrimgeour gives Harry, Ron, and Hermione
the bequests from Dumbledore's will.
But book Harry gives him a petulant hard
time, as he did in their previous meeting.
Bill and Fleur's wedding is the same,
but Harry is there as a distant
Weasely relation thanks to some good
old-fashioned polyjuice potion.
Then the Death Eaters show up, which-
- Which,
in the books, is the first time
the Burrow is made unsafe.
This is what I was talking about.
The Burrow has already come under
attack while Harry was there in
the previous film.
This is one change that actually
works against the overall theme of
the adaptations.
The attack on the wedding in the book and
Harry, Ron, and
Hermione's flight to safety is a moment
that cuts them off completely.
They no longer have the safety
of home to fall back on,
as opposed to the movie in which its not
the first attack on the Weasley's home.
Once they retreat to Grimmauld Place
however, the book gets back to sending
the old folks around when Lupin
stops by to offer to his help.
Harry turns him down in a fury after
learning Lupin is abandoning his family to
offer his services to Harry.
But the movie skips this bit completely to
keep focus on the kids being in charge of
their own plans.
- The rest of Deathly Hallows Part
1 follows the book very closely,
a few minor twists and turns aside.
The gang discovers Mundungus Fletcher
sold the locket to Umbridge.
Then they infiltrate the Ministry and
recover the horcrux,
only to narrowly escape and splinch Ron
while disapparating into the woods.
- Then they wander around for
awhile, get all mad at each other,
because of the horcruxes,
like my precious.
And then Ron takes off.
But after Harry and Hermione return to
Godric's Hollow and have an encounter with
Voldemort's snake, masquerading in
a skin suit made of a magical historian
Bathilda Bagshot, Ron returns in
time to keep Harry from drowning.
Hooray!
- They find the Sword of Gryffindor,
kill the first horcrux,
then go to see Xenophilius Lovegood, who
makes Hermione read the tale of the three
brothers to them all before
calling the Death Eaters.
And when the kids
disapparate out of there,
they pretty much immediately
run into a group of snatchers.
Who, in spite of the stinging
hex to Harry's face,
suspect this bunch is more important.
So they take them to Malfoy Manor, where-
- Where they get locked in a dungeon and
using Sirius' mirror that the movie
version suddenly had to remember,
Harry asked what he thinks is
Dumbledore's eye for help.
Only to have Dobby show up,
drop a chandelier, and
disapparate them all to safety.
But take a dagger in the belly and
die tragically, causing Clint to cry,
which-
- (Sound)
- Is actually not a difference,
because it happened in the book and movie.
- That's actually true.
But if it seemed like we fast
forwarded there, it's because we
wanted to impress how similar the first
half of the book and part 1 are.
The most significant
difference in the whole thing,
is how much of Dumbledore's backstory
is left out of Deathly Hallows Part 1.
The book dedicates much more
time to revealing the events of
Dumbledore's youth.
His father imprisoned for
attacking muggles.
His fight with his brother
Aberforth over their sister, and
his relationship with
the dark wizard Grindelwald.
All of these served to drive
a wedge between Harry and
his unyielding faith in Dumbledore.
I mean, the headmaster even lived
in the same village as Harry, and
he never even mentioned it.
The movie doesn't cut
this thread entirely, but
it does fade to the background.
There's a discussion at the wedding
between Harry and Elphias Doge, and
what we can assume is
Ron's Aunty Muriel that forces Harry to
question how much he really
knew about Dumbledore.
But the movie uses it more for Harry
to question his ability to do the job,
as opposed to Dumbledore's motives for
making the job so difficult for him.
This way, the film franchise, having
spent six movies giving Harry the agency
to take care of business on his own,
keeps the focus on Harry struggling
almost exclusively with the task itself
over the emotional baggage surrounding it.
- And so Deathly Hallows Part 1 ends about
two-thirds the way through the book,
with Harry and Ron and Hermione laying
low at the Shell Cottage with Luna,
Griphook the goblin and
Ollivander the wand maker.
Dean Thomas, one of those precious
few students back at Hogwarts, FYI,
has also tagged along in the book version,
but
didn't make the traveling
squad in the movie.
And, again, it's these kind
of superficial changes that
make up most of the differences between
the second half of the book and
the Deathly Hallows Part 2 movie.
- The team pretty quickly decides to break
into Gringott's after making a deal with
Griphook to trade the Sword of Gryffindor
for his help breaking into the bank.
And while the journey to Bellatrix
LeStrange's vault has a few extra layers
of difficulty in the book,
the film version and the escape via
Pale Dragon is roughly the same.
In the aftermath of theft,
Voldemort murders everybody in sight,
including Griphook.
Then we see the Sword of
Gryffindor disappear.
- The book, though,
never mentions Griphook again.
It could be assumed that he is
a victim of Voldemort's murder
bombing in the book as well.
But, I personally like to imagine him
chilling at home later on in the book,
when the sword suddenly vanishes
in Neville's time of need.
- But Casey, my boy, we're not there, yet.
I've got a soap box with that
moment's name all over it.
In the mean time, we can fast forward
through much of the back half of the novel
as the changes, like this Griphook
situation we just described,
are pretty insignificant for
both plot and character.
Harry, after splashing down off
the dragon and into the lake,
has a vision from Voldemort's mind where
he learns the location of the final
Horcrux, is in fact, Hogwarts.
And Voldemort knows his secret's out,
so they gotta move fast.
So they pop over to Hogsmeade,
setting off all the alarms,
only to be rescued by Dumbledore's
brother Aberforth who,
after a soul-searching conversation,
shows them the way into Hogwarts.
- There's something we need to find.
Something hidden here in the castle.
It may help us defeat you-know-who.
- Right, what is it?
- We don't know.
- Once there it's a bit of a longer for
Harry to track down the final horcrux.
- The lost diadem of Ravenclaw.
- As opposed to the movie where a fellow
student Luna Lovegood tells about him
about the Grey Lady, book Harry talks to
Nearly Headless Nick, then the Grey Lady,
then Hagrid for
a little bit before finally realizing he
remembered seeing it last year when he hid
the Half-Blood Prince Is his copy
of 'Advanced Potion Making'.
Well, this change feels like a no-brainer
trim in the name of screen time
efficiency, it does give all the agency
back to the young fighters of Hogwarts.
The movie also chooses to cut all the talk
about underage wizards being evacuated for
the Battle of Hogwarts,
especially concerning Ginny Weasley.
It's just the first years that get hidden,
but
outside of that, if you've got a wand,
McGonagall can use you.
- Piertotum Locomotor.
(Sound) I've always
wanted to use that spell.
- But as for most of the other changes
made at the second half of the book,
they're mostly about threads that have
been left out of previous movies.
For example,
Percy Weasley comes back into the fold,
reuniting with his estranged family,
a thread that had been gone completely,
going back to 'Goblet of Fire'.
He appears in the movie, but
he isn't actually mentioned.
Ron and Hermione's first kiss comes when
Ron thinks about getting the house elves
to safety, and Hermione snogs him good and
proper on the spot.
- Schwing!
- Giggity giggity.
- But Hermione's SPEW movement and
general concern for
their welfare has also
been left out completely.
By the time we get to Harry's sacrifice
the only difference is that book
Harry snuck out of the castle
under the invisibility cloak
as opposed to explaining himself
to his friends in the movie,
trusting them to know
it's the right decision.
You know, like adults.
- The boy who lived come to die.
- Then after being hit with a killing
curse from Voldemort again,
Harry arrives at Kings Cross Station for
a conversation with Dumbledore.
In the book version of the scene
Dumbledore explains all of Harry's
nagging worries.
Why didn't you tell me more?
Were you really friends with
why'd you make this task so hard?
But, the movie version, once again
portraying Harry as a fully capable
wizard, basically just
asks him to make a choice.
Go on, because, frankly,
you've done plenty, or go back,
and continue the fight.
- But and here's my Neville soap box,
when Voldemort trots out Harry's body
in the movie, Neville steps forward and
makes a decently lame speech then just
brandishes the sword like it means a damn
thing to anybody,
only to get knocked unconscious.
- (Sound)
- You mean,
as opposed to the book where he rushes at
Voldemort only to have the sorting hat
forced on his head before being
set on magical fire for a minute.
- Yup.
- And then he whips out the sword
of Gryffindor from said sorting hat and
kills the snake like a bad ass.
- That's the one.
While everyone around him is fighting
to the death movie Neville wakes up in
a stupor like one of the three stooges and
casually grabs at the sword.
Yeah, he ends up killing the snake as it's
about to strike Ron and Hermione, but
this is not a moment befitting Neville,
he became a leader, a gorilla warrior over
his final year at Hogwarts and the movie
plays this big moment for laughs.
"Boo," I say, "boo." No other character
in the 'Harry Potter' novels get short
changed more by the adaptations
than Neville There I said it.
Gee that was quite a soapbox.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm gonna wrap this up though.
Probably a good idea.
The books final showdown between Harry and
Voldemort takes place in the great hall.
Harry has produced a shield charm around
them to keep any other spectator from
interfering.
Harry then lays it all out for
Voldemort here,
including why the elder wand
doesn't answer to Voldemort.
It's a reverse of the classic villain
explains everything to the good guy right
before the good guy escapes the elaborate
death that was planned for him situation.
And it's there in front of everybody that
Harry defeats Voldermort once and for all.
In the movie their showdown is
a much more private affair.
Two of them out in the courtyard with
Voldermort kind of Corn flaking apart into
ash, I guess you would call it,
at the end.
He doesn't explain the wands
allegiance legions until afterwards to
Ron and Hermione.
In both mediums, Harry decides he doesn't
even want the elder, although in the book,
he tells it to Dumbledore in his portrait.
The last bit of the book,
the one I like to call needless epilogue,
is adapted very faithfully to the screen.
As our main characters are loading
their kids into the Hogwarts Express,
some 19 years later,
we catch up on all the great things
our young heroes have grown up to do.
The movie version, of course,
doesn't get into all of that.
But Ron does have a very
badly receding hairline now.
Then cue the iconic music and
fade to black.
So that's that.
Eight movies, seven books, and three
episodes of "What's the Difference Later"
we've made it through
the wizarding world of adaptations.
I frankly don't know what
to do with myself now.
- In deed.
What world's are left to conquer?
Let us know if the comments below and
be sure to like and subscribe for
more "What's the Difference"
right here on Cinefix.
(Sound)
