Finally, after being pushed back seven additional months, fans crowded theaters at midnight on July 15 eager to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Expectations were high, especially since fans had already been disappointed and angered once. Warner Brother’s wanted to guarantee that their new movie would be 2009’s biggest summer release, difficult especially with the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen recently in theaters as well. Breaking the record for the biggest midnight showing, the movie brought in approximately $22 million with midnight showings and a later total of $58.2 million for the entire opening day throughout all of North America. The movie continued to rake in the profits, making it one of the highest grossing films of the year. With the amount of money spent by Warner Brothers to market the film, this type of profit was no surprise, especially with the success of all five of the previous movies. Unbreakable vows, love potions, vanishing cabinets, luck potions, and the return of Quidditch were few of the surprises set in Harry Potter’s sixth year. The movie is darker because now the Death Eaters and Voldemort are attacking both the wizard and muggle worlds. Harry is once again set to face challenges, making his sixth year the hardest so far. Add in relationship problems a new teacher, and Dumbledore’s new task for Harry, and the year seems to look even harder. Being about 153 minutes long, the film made audiences laugh and cry, without dragging on, despite its length. The movie was well advanced in its visual effects, with very advanced computer graphics to make certain “fiery” scenes really look amazing.
As each one of J.K. Rowling’s books goes on, more and more is added into the plot. The directors of the films have a tougher job with each movie because a good deal of the work stems from deciding what to keep and what to cut. The sixth and seventh books are the two books that bring the whole series together, composed of roughly over 700 pages each. This resulted in the decision to film the “seventh” film in two parts to include more of Rowling original work. However, all that is on paper cannot be included in the film, often making gaps in explanation for certain things or even elimination of characters all together. Even the new film failed to give the viewers a decent explanation of things in certain cases. Without reading the books, viewers could really be missing out on what everything really means. Because, honestly, do movie watchers really know the significance of the “Half Blood Prince” or are they still left in the dark?
