This is personally my biggest issue with the transition
from book to film. The Half Blood Prince was one of my favorite books in the
series, if not my favorite book overall (up for debate with The Deathly
Hallows). So of course, I couldn’t help but think going in that I would already
be harsher to judge the movie version. And I probably was, but overall it was a
good movie. Other than one thing that got left out…
So, throughout the series it is established that
Voldemort (or Tom Riddle) is Harry’s nemesis. He’s the man that killed Harry’s
parents, has made numerous attempts on Harry’s life, and proceeds to pose a
threat to Harry’s friends and classmates. He comes off simply as just a very,
very evil man. The 6th book though, The Half Blood Prince, attempts
to allow us to understand Voldemort through a series of flashbacks. Harry views
these flashes into Voldemort’s past in Dumbledor’s office. He witnesses
Dumbledor’s first encounter with Voldemort as a child, when he was inviting him
to go to Hogwarts and learn to harness magic. These flashbacks gave Harry hints
as to why he and Voldemort are connected, why they share certain thoughts and
abilities. The flashbacks delve more into Voldemort’s teenage years at the
school and expand on a major plot point involving a teacher explaining to him
the process of splitting your soul, allowing you to live for, if done right,
potentially forever.
The film delves into these explanations as well. But the
film pretty much stops there. Let me backtrack for a moment. Early in the film,
Harry begins taking a potion class where he finds the book of the Half Blood
Prince and begins to master the creation of many different potions. Among the
potions he learns about is a love potion, a potion that can create a false
sense of love within the one who consumes it. They become borderline obsessed
with the person who gave it to them, devoting themselves in a kind of sick,
false love. This happens later in the story to Ron, and Harry must help him to
overcome it. The movie just kind of drops it here though, a simple side plot.
It was meant to be so much more than that though… In the book, Harry learns
that a love potion was used on one of Voldemort’s parents. A child is not meant
to be born based on this false and forced love, and yet he was. It explains why
he doesn’t feel love, why he can’t understand love, and why love is one of the
many things that ultimately overthrow him. The movie sets up everything about
the love potion perfectly for this revelation into why Voldemort is the way he
is! And yet, they let it drop. They just never bring it up again. Why? Why even
put in the other scenes about the love potion in the first place then? It makes
me question if the people who made the movie even read the book, or did they
just personally not find this important? I think it is very important to
understand the actions of the villain, understand why things happen the way
they do. This is but one deeper example out of many in regards to the subject I
brought up in an earlier post regarding people watching the movie over reading
the book: while the movie is certainly fun to watch, even if it is well made,
key details are left out and you may be none the wiser.
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