Editor’s Note: The “official” AOL release of the trailer is not embeddable, and the MTV player isn’t working for us, so we’ve embedded a lesser quality version above with the first couple of shots missing. Watch the trailer full quality here.
After watching the new teaser for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I personally had no comment. Having stopped reading the series somewhere in the center of the previous book, I didn’t feel I had any authority on the matter. The only thing I thought while watching the clip was that it seemed more like one of those annoying prequels that comes after a series to humanize that series’ villain with an origin story (y’know, like the Star Wars prequels and Young Hott Hannibal (wait, that’s not what it was titled?). And until I read an interesting trailer analysis on MTV Movies Blog this morning, I thought that couldn’t actually be the case.
Actually, MTV’s look at the teaser began last night with a frame by frame analysis, in which Shawn Adler reveals his expert knowledge of J.K. Rowling’s text by pointing out the myriad ways that David Yates’ film is different from the book, from a previously reported added-in scene to little changes within adapted sequences. My favorite observation:
0:43: Our first glimpse at young Tom Riddle, the boy wizard who would grow up to be Voldemort. Surprisingly, I’m more interested here in Dumbledore, who is costumed differently than in the novel, where he was described as wearing “flamboyantly plum velvet.”
