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I’m going to start off by saying The Half-Blood Prince was my favorite book out of the series, so I went into the movie with high expectations, and as a result I was very critical of it.

Overall, I would rate the movie a solid 6.5… It was good, but there were too many changes that detracted from the plot to make it a really good movie. I didn’t want, and I didn’t expect everything in the book to be translated into the movie, but my issues is that they changed things that should not have been changed. I’ve got four main issues with the movie. Be warned, major spoilers ahead for the movie and for the book.

1. The redemption of Severus Snape is not supposed to happen in this movie. We are not supposed to get even a hint of Snape being a good person till the very end of book 7. Rowling devoted an entire chapter in book 7 to Snape to explain what he did, and why he did those things. Till that point we are always lead to believe that Snape is bad, and he should not be trusted especially after the event of book 6. The movie decided to include some foreshadowing to show that Snape might be good after all. When Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts, Harry hides underneath a platform (instead of his cloak). As he is hiding there, Snape see him on the way up to the tower and tells Harry to stay silent! If Snape is a Death Eater and bad (as seen in the next moment when he kills Dumbledore) why does the Harry to stay silent?!? He would have dragged Harry with him to Voldemort; my point is, Bad Snape would have done something, the redeemed Snape would have done nothing. And we see the redeemed Snape right now. This is a problem for the next movie because Harry is supposed to hate Snape to no end for what he did, but I don’t see how he can have the same level of hatred in this case. Snape is also my favorite character, so this was a really disappointing change to me.
2. The Battle for Hogwarts. Now I know the huge battle is book 7, but book6 does have the DA fighting against the Death Eaters. It’s a pretty significant battle in that we see the students and teachers fighting side by side, the DA really showing off it’s skills, and the final use of the Luck Potion. This is a smaller nitpick, but I was expecting at least one battle scene and we got nothing… Kinda of a big letdown that there’s no battle.
3. The Horcrux hints – Before Dumbledore dies, he has given Harry a decent amount of information on the rest of the Horcruxes and what they are (at least what they might be). The movie doesn’t really go into any depth about this. I know if we went through every memory that we had in the book, the movie would be closer to 5 hours long, but Harry is missing crucial information. I don’t understand how he is supposed to start/continue his quest without any of information, unless we are to assume that he knows all of it, but we just didn’t see it on screen.
4. Finally, and this is minor, but the whole romance made it into almost a comedy. This is supposed to be a pretty serious book, but they kept putting in scenes with Harry and Ginny that were just plain odd and funny. And changing the plot so that Harry and Ginny start liking each other much sooner and both of them are aware of it… not so good. At least they could have kept that part intact with Harry surprising everyone with him kissing Ginny.

So, overall it was alright; pretty disappointing when compared to the book. Before I went to the movie I was hoping it would be good enough for me to return and see it in IMAX, but after this let down, I highly doubt that is going to happen. Hopefully, next year when movie 7 (and are released, they will live up to the book.