The funniest entry into the Harry Potter franchise is also quite often regarded as the weakest. It takes on a unique filming style and color scheme that gives it a darker, hazier appearance than the rest of the series, but it does make it quite unique.
Something pretty non-unique about the film is its tendency to miss out on fixing a few continuity errors. There are quite a few in The Half-Blood Prince, ranging from simple mistakes in characterization, all the way to very obvious filming issues.
‘Weasley Is Our King!’
In the books, the song ‘Weasley is our king’ becomes quite prominent. They chose, in the end, not to include it and its creation in the film. However, when Ron is having a particularly good game of quidditch, you can see students chanting ‘Weasley Is Our King’ over and over again.
For it to make sense, they had to dub this with a chant that just repeats the name, rather than showing the students having learned a chant off-screen. The problem is, as they’ve had to change this in post-production, their mouths are all very clearly still chanting the song.
Harry’s Glasses Don’t Always Have A Lens
In order to stop the lenses reflecting light on camera (or reflecting the camera crew), there are many scenes in which Harry doesn’t have any lens at all in his glasses. I suppose this one makes a lot of sense, but they should have tried to keep it a little more consistent. As soon as you start picking up on this, you can pretty much tell in every scene and it really takes you out of the moment.
Why Haven’t Hermione And Cormac Met?
Cormac is a Gryffindor we’re introduced to for the first time in this film. He’s pretty sleazy and arrogant, so we don’t like him very much. It seems pretty weird that we’d never seen him before, even if he isn’t in the same year as Harry and Ron, but we can let that slide. What seems even weirder is that Ron had to introduce him to Hermione.
Surely at some point in their five years at school their paths have crossed? Especially considering the school has a weirdly small number of students and a very small common room, which Hermione and Cormac must have been in at the same time.
Why Doesn’t Bellatrix Just Take Harry?
At the end of the film, Snape is exposed for who he really is (or isn’t, as we eventually find out) and he and Bellatrix run away to leave Harry struggling on the ground. They aren’t exactly getting much assault from elsewhere, so you’d think they could pretty easily just go over and take Harry straight to Voldemort, bringing us to the end of the story two films early. Obviously, given Snape’s endgame, he wouldn’t want to do this, but surely Bellatrix would at least suggest it?
The Half-Blood Prince’s Signature Moves
In Harry’s new favorite book, he reads the signature ‘property of The Half-Blood Prince’. The main problem that is seldom discussed, really, is that the concept of ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ doesn’t really end up having much relevance to the plot of the film. But that’s beside the point. When Harry sees the signature, it is on the very first page. When he shows Ginny, she flips the book all the way to the end and reads it from there. They should probably have told her where to look before filming this one.
There Are A Few Timeline Errors
Every Harry Potter film has its own issues with timeline consistency. Given that they film many scenes out in public areas, there are a few unavoidable inconsistencies between the mid-90s setting and the mid-2000s filming time. The opening of this film focuses on the Millennium Bridge, which wasn’t finished until the year 2000.
On top of this, the bridge is shown to have people on it, obviously seconds away from imminent death. When shown from above, there isn’t anyone on it at all. We can assume they were all muggles, so can’t have apparated away…
A Conveniently Disappearing Railing
When Dumbledore dies, he has been hit with the killing curse and had no hope of survival unless he was able to pull a big baby-Harry move. His body falls off of the top of the astronomy tower and onto the courtyard below, allowing everyone to gather around his corpse. For some reason, there isn’t a barrier on this incredibly tall, dangerous tower. Except, there actually is. It can be seen in the background of a few previous shots, and then suddenly isn’t present when Dumbledore needs to fall off of it.
You Can Tell Hagrid Was Filmed Separately
The sheer size of Hagrid in the books meant the filmmakers really had to struggle to keep him huge and consistent. They pretty much fail in regards to consistency the entire way through the series. Sometimes he’s just a big guy, but others he really seems like the part-giant he’s supposed to be.
In this film, they must have had to edit in Robbie Coltrane separately in order to make him look big. Then while Slughorn and Hagrid are speaking, we see Slughorn’s hand literally disappear into Hagrid.
Cups Can Move
When Hagrid and Slughorn are drinking together a few moments later, we see the two drinking from specially made cups that emphasize how big Hagrid is. Pretty quickly, the cups have become the same size once more. On top of this, the cups switch around in position throughout the scene, and Slughorn’s goblet appears next to Hagrid’s, despite having been on the opposite side of the table for a while. They should have definitely paid more attention during these scenes
Do They Really Not Have Dentists?
Cast your mind all the way back to Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets and the magical clock on the wall of the Weasley house. Now move back to this film and the scene set in the Slug Club, where Hermione has to explain what a dentist is.
On the magical clock, one of the options for the family’s location is ‘dentist’, which suggests that wizards do have dentists, so the members of the Slug Club should definitely not be confused by this whole issue. Unless they’ve never been to the dentist before…
