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The Harry Potter franchise will forever be loved by generations of fans. Every Harry Potter fan has their favorite book, or movie, but generally a love for the entire series has grown the franchise into a world wide juggernaut.
Though towards the end of the movie franchise, one movie specifically stands out as the absolute worst Harry Potter movie.
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0:00
Lumos
0:07
This is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The sixth installment in the immensely popular movie franchise
0:13
it's an important transitional film that bridges the gap between kid-friendly adventures and life-or-death stakes
0:19
It reveals the truth behind long-standing mysteries, lays the groundwork for future character relationships
0:25
and sets up the main plot of the last two movies. And it's also the worst film in the franchise
0:30
Professor Slughorn is going to try to collect you, Harry. You would be his crowning jewel
0:36
When the Harry Potter movie adaptations first started to apparate out of Warner Brothers in the early 2000s
0:41
the fandom ballooned to new and seemingly impossible heights. By 2009, when Half-Blood Prince was released in theaters, the franchise could do no wrong
0:50
Through the magic of hype and box office success, the movie was largely shielded from criticism
0:55
But we've cast Oculus Reparo on our rose-tinted glasses, and now our hindsight is 20-20
1:01
While a bad adaptation does not necessarily equal a bad movie, Half-Blood Prince manages to be both
1:08
Was it a total trash fire that will go down with the likes of Gotti and Baby Geniuses 2
1:12
No. Was it good? Also no. We can point out the stiff dialogue, the awkward acting, the odd structure of several key scenes
1:20
and the fact that they had Tom Felton in that terrible suit the whole time. But at the end of the day, there's a level of charm to the film and a handful of genuinely great moments
1:29
Still, several things can be true at once. While all those aforementioned quirks and qualities are worth mentioning
1:35
the real problem lies in how Half-Blood Prince decided to use, abuse, or ignore its source material
1:41
and how the quality of the movie suffers for it. David Yates was our director for this particular adaptation after taking over the series for 2007's Order of the Phoenix
1:50
The screenplay was written by Steve Kloves, who was also responsible for every other script aside from Phoenix
1:56
The core cast also remained the same. Why is it when something happens, it is always you three
2:03
Believe me, Professor, I've been asking myself the same question for six years
2:07
So, with all this returning talent, you'd think the movie would be an easy ten points for Gryffindor
2:12
But as we know, it went wrong. And it went wrong fast. The mountain of problems are apparent from the first few minutes of its runtime
2:19
After a quick flash of Daily Prophet journalists hounding Harry, we watch Death Eaters wreak havoc on both the magical and Muggle worlds in a scene that meant to evoke the opening of the book In the book the muggle prime minister worries over an increase in inexplainable crimes
2:34
Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge appears to explain everything. While very little is done with this idea in practice
2:41
it at least sets up a new and interesting political dynamic between muggles and magic folk
2:46
The muggle government being aware of magic is a pretty big status quo change
2:50
The opening of the movie chooses not to include this. It completely ignores the politics and underlying complexities in favor of showing us the more overt destruction
2:59
and then immediately follows that with a scene of Harry awkwardly flirting with a girl at the train station
3:04
Who's Harry Potter? Oh, no one. Bit of a tussle, really. And that's kind of the issue with the whole movie
3:14
Important contextual details are inexplicably left out or skimmed over to make more room for action and teen drama
3:20
It looks great on the big screen and it plays well to a teenage audience, but there's so little to ground us in what is supposed to be an important pivot
3:28
in the overarching narrative of the Harry Potter series. To make matters worse, many of the scenes feel disjointed and tonally dissonant from one another
3:36
leaving you to feel like you're watching two distinctly different movies. The infamously awkward shoelace moment
3:41
is followed immediately by the supposedly tragic burning of the burrow, which was an invention for the movie
3:48
Presumably, the studio was afraid people would fall asleep in their seats if we didn't get a fight scene at the halfway mark
3:53
Having Death Eaters show up at the Weasleys' home seems horrifying on its face
3:57
but it makes very little sense from a story perspective, and it works to degrade the narrative that's been set up so far
4:03
We have to ask ourselves why the Death Eaters didn't show up to the burrow sooner
4:07
if it was so easy for them to do. And if the answer is a protective enchantment
4:12
then when did they learn how to break it? We don't get these answers to these questions
4:15
outside of a single conversation directly after that scene. It's so easy for them to get to you
4:20
You're bloody lucky you weren't killed. None of our characters ever talks about it again
4:25
There's no lasting impact. Nobody dies or is injured. The burrow isn't even irreparably damaged
4:30
It's restored by the time the next movie rolls around. So the Death Eaters aren't terrifying villains
4:35
hellbent on destroying Harry and those closest to him. They're roughly equivalent to kids throwing eggs at houses
4:41
And our characters react accordingly. None of this would be especially grievous
4:44
if the rest of the movie was focused on moving the plot forward and giving us details to build
4:49
out that world but that isn the case Half Prince skips over so much critical material that it difficult to fit it all into a single video Instead we focus on the biggest offenders That being the literal title of the movie and everything that has to do with Voldemort
5:04
So who is the titular Half-Blood Prince? It's Snape. But why is Snape called the Half-Blood Prince
5:11
If you've never read the books, you have no idea because the movie never told you. The twist is revealed to audiences in a single line
5:18
I'm the Half-Blood Prince. It makes absolutely no difference to the plot and it's never explained or further discussed
5:26
The book, at least, gives us an explanation and some kind of emotional resonance
5:31
Snape's neglectful father was muggle-born and his mother, Eileen Prince, was a full-blooded witch, making Snape a half-blood
5:38
In an attempt to honor his mother and simultaneously make himself sound cooler than he actually was, he created the title of the Half-Blood Prince himself
5:46
The book makes it much more explicit that Harry idolizes the mysterious prince and finds himself empathizing with him throughout the story, so finding out that it was Snape the whole time is poignant, especially considering his high-level position in Voldemort's war on blood purity
6:01
None of this is made into the movie because we were too busy watching teenagers miscommunicate about their feelings
6:07
This problem continues through to the actual plot of the movie, which doesn't get going until about two-thirds of the way through when we finally learn what a horcrux is and why Voldemort made seven of them
6:18
In the book, we're privy to several important moments in Voldemort's life with the use of Dumbledore's pensive
6:23
We do get a few pensive memories in the movie, but they are strictly from Dumbledore and Slughorn's perspectives
6:29
The book gives us more of Voldemort's inner world. We learn of the tragic way Tom Riddle was conceived, his terrible home life as a child
6:36
and his early affinity for violence. We're given insight into the complex politics of both belonging to a once powerful wizarding
6:43
family and also being half-muggle and living in squalor. Most importantly, these flashbacks give us important information on each of Voldemort's horcruxes
6:52
We learn why the objects are significant and how he obtained them. None of this is present in the movie either, and it's baffling
6:58
This isn't just story filler. It's the main emotional drive behind a massive part of the villain's plot
7:04
It's necessary information, especially when finding and destroying the Horcruxes becomes the main focus of the story moving forward
7:11
When we're lucky, we get a single line referencing several chapters worth of information
7:16
as we did with Voldemort's family ring. And the ring? But I'm Voldemort's mother
7:21
Difficult to find Even more difficult to destroy But that about as far as we go This makes the Horcruxes and Voldemort himself feel shallow and uninteresting These deeply symbolic and emotionally
7:33
significant objects become nothing but meaningless MacGuffins for the character to hunt down like
7:38
video game achievements. The context clues for where the trio should look for them are simply
7:43
not present, which forces the last two movies in the series to sit in place and spin their wheels
7:48
waiting for Harry to have convenient visions. He knows. You know who
7:54
He knows we broke into Gringotts. He knows what we took. And he knows we're hunting hall crisis
7:59
Instead of actually working to solve a mystery. And what do we get in place of this pertinent information
8:04
Stuff like this. How about you? Lovely. There's nothing inherently wrong with making a movie
8:14
that focuses on interpersonal relationships of teenagers with several big action set pieces peppered in for good measure
8:21
plenty of worthwhile stories can and have been made within that framework
8:26
Half-Blood Prince just wasn't one of them. It's the last movie before the start of the Deathly Hallows arc
8:31
It has a big job to do, and it doesn't do it effectively, which makes the franchise languish in the homestretch
8:37
Now, we've been pretty harsh so far. This whole video is basically a howler. I am absolutely disgusted
8:43
But we also have to do what this movie didn't and give you some context
8:48
The Half-Blood Prince book came out in July of 2005 and shocked readers with the revelation that Harry was romantically interested in Ginny
8:56
Doubly confusing was the budding relationship between Ron and Hermione. All of this came out of absolutely nowhere
9:02
It felt completely unnatural, and it's still a major sticking point for fans
9:06
At that point, three movies had already been released, and a fourth was scheduled to premiere just a few months later
9:11
so it wasn't like Steve Clothes was able to retroactively add in any content
9:16
that might hint at these changes in the relationship dynamics, especially since he didn't write Order of the Phoenix
9:22
It's safe to say J.K. Rowling probably didn't give him any insight either, no matter how many times she has insisted she knew for years
9:29
that Harry and Ginny would end up together. The movie was effectively stuck justifying these relationships to its audience
9:35
which hobbled its chances of being narratively satisfying. Of course, that doesn't excuse everything we've talked about today
9:41
When adapting a book to the screen, it's a foregone conclusion that some level of nuance is going to be left out
9:47
That makes it all the more imperative that you include the most necessary information
9:52
The Half-Blood Prince adaptation didn't do that