On The Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Trailer and My Beef With the Movies

Have you seen the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?

I am a huge, HUGE Harry Potter fan. You all know this. (Look what I named my car, for crying out loud.) So, in my love for all things Potter, I have gotten excited for each of the movies as they've come out. We're talking, beside-myself-jumping-up-and-down-foaming-at-the-mouth excited. So when I realized the trailer for HBP was finally out, I was pumped. I pulled it up on my computer and watched it eagerly.

Folks...I can't keep it to myself any longer...the movies make me angry. I love them because they're Harry Potter, but they're, like, a betrayal of Harry Potter at the same time. Someone other than the creator of Harry's world dares to tell the story and even goes so far as to have the audacity to add his own plot developments, visual effects, and worst of all, character traits.

My biggest complaint about the Harry Potter movies (and that's a pretty big title to give away, because there's quite a long list) is what they've done to Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore is brilliant but gentle with a penchant for corny jokes. And I don't know whether to blame Michael Gambon or the directors for vitiating Dumbledore in the movies, but they've taken one of the most powerful and beloved characters in all of literacy and turned him into a fearful, frantic, and testy old grump. For example, in Goblet of Fire, when Harry's name comes out of the goblet, Dumbledore grabs him by the shoulders and yells in his face, "DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET?!?" In Order of the Phoenix, after he saves Professor Trelawney from being sent away from the castle, he yells at the entire student body, "Don't you all have somewhere to be??"

Albus Dumbledore would never. ever. yell at a student, ESPECIALLY not Harry. In the book, when Harry's trashing Dumbledore's office, Dumbledore watches calmly, because, being the understanding and sympathetic person that he is, he understands where Harry's rage is coming from. He doesn't freak out or panic, both of which are behaviors that have been exhibited by the movie Dumbledore.

This brings me to the HBP trailer. It's all about the memory of Dumbledore's first visit with the boy Tom Riddle. They show several shots of Dumbledore looking warily at Tom, which is most likely done to create tension and suspense in the audience. But dang it all, however wary Dumbledore was of Tom Riddle in that meeting, he did not show it. The trailer continues to the climax of Tom revealing to Dumbledore that he (Tom) can talk to snakes. The movie Dumbledore stops cold and looks struck with amazement and fear. The book specifically says that Dumbledore does NOT react like that.

So, I get it, movie. Ok? I get it. You want to be scary. But to do it by weakening the most powerful character in the story? As Michael Scott says, "Offensive. And lame. So, double offensive."