Harry Potter Fans Were Disappointed The Movies Rushed One Key Storyline
Boasting eight blockbuster films and a global box office take of nearly $1 billion (per Forbes), the original "Harry Potter" franchise was pretty much the gold standard in Hollywood during its decade-long run. And save for the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe, few franchises since have come close to the Potter-verse in terms of world-building and crowd-pleasing.
"Harry Potter" also had the luxury of leaning heavily on the sprawling, immaculately detailed, and utterly beloved book series that inspired it. That series was written by now controversial author J.K. Rowling (via Glamour) and helped shape the imaginations of an entire generation of young readers — and so did the films. However, even spread over so many super-sized chapters, the movies still left out countless characters and narratives from Rowling's books. Even many of the narrative arcs that did make it into the films didn't do so completely intact.
That includes one pivotal arc from the "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" novel that many franchise fans felt was frustratingly rushed in the adaptation.
Harry Potter fans think The Prince's Tale deserved more screen time
The storyline some fans felt the "Harry Potter" franchised rushed was recently discussed in a lively Reddit thread begun by a mystery user with the title, "Does anyone else think that 'The Prince's Tale' was glossed over in the movie?" "The Prince's Tale" is the 33rd chapter in the book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." If you've read that sprawling tome, you know said chapter brings into sharp, heartbreaking focus the life and times of one Severus Snape, portrayed by the late-great Alan Rickman in the big screen adaptations. And according to the original poster, there's enough story in that lone chapter to merit an entire film, "I feel like that chapter deserves a movie of its own. A prequel."
The mystery user is far from alone in bemoaning how that story was approached in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" — which condenses pages of interactions between young Snape and Lily Evans (who'd become Harry Potter's mother) into roughly four minutes of screen time. And in the eyes of Reddit user leese216, the condensed version also dramatically alters the original narrative as it omits Snape's cruelty towards Lily, "That was the ENTIRE reason Snape lost Lily as a friend and steered him down the path he ended up on. His worst memory was not James and Sirius bullying him, FFS. So annoying."
Though most of the comments agree "The Prince's Tale" deserved more time, Redditor Whatsongwasthat1 provided some intriguing insight into why the filmmakers likely condensed it, offering, "It's a huge time-wise scene in the book, and you don't need to know the specifics of every thing. It would kill the momentum of the battle of Hogwarts and Harry's trip to the forest."
The Prince himself has proven to be a fan-favorite
Whatever led filmmakers to shorten "The Prince's Tale," "Harry Potter" fans seem to universally agree it deserved far more screen time in the two-part adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Still, they also seem to concur that, even in its condensed state, the scene brilliantly helps round out the complex character of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). And yes, many among the Potter-loving masses agree that Snape may well be the best character in the series. If you doubt that statement, we'd point you toward a 2011 poll in The Guardian as proof of the fact as Snape surprised many by topping the list of fans' favorite "Harry Potter" characters.
He did so by claiming a whopping 13,000 of the 70,000 votes cast, outpacing more obvious favorites like Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris and Michael Gambon), and even Harry Potter himself (Daniel Radcliffe). Alan Rickman is a big part of that, thanks to his scene-stealing work as the sneering, emotionally-confounded Snape, which proved to be one of the franchise's legit highlights. So too did the many humanizing, late-in-the-game reveals involving his character, several of which come post-mortem as Harry bares witness to the highs and lows of Snape's life via Dumbledore's memory-collecting Pensieve.
What Harry witnesses in the Pensieve are more or less the events collected in "The Prince's Tale." As in the source material, they are the very definition of game-changing. And even if they aren't depicted as a beat-for-beat re-telling from the books, those scenes — particularly Rickman's reading of the iconic line "Always" — pack just as visceral an emotional punch.