Harry Potter Review: Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Brief:

This is the longest book in the series and it is full of action, Fred-and-George style humour, and troubles for Harry. The Order of the Phoenix starts off at the Dursleys as usual and, like that summer before Harry's second year, he again finds himself annoyed by the lack of communication from his friends. They write to him, but for some reason aren't saying anything useful, although Harry is eager to hear news of Voldemort.

The book is centered around Harry's struggle to convince the Wizarding world that what he witnessed at the end of the fourth book really did come to pass. He is disbelieved and ostracized for telling his story both within Hogwarts and in the outside world. And it's not just Harry who suffers; Dumbledore too is facing pressure from the Ministry of Magic, which does not bode well for the students and staff of Hogwarts.

Many things go wrong for Harry in this book, and the new Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor turns Hogwarts upside down. Dumbledore is distant with Harry and the teachers have their own worries as they deal with the Ministry's interference, but the students of Hogwarts do not go down quietly. Many characters come to prominence in this book, including Neville and a new character Luna Lovegood. The students band together and stand up for what they believe, and Fred and George reveal their talent for cheering everyone up with a little mischief.

If you watched this movie please ignore it and erase it from your memory and go read the book. Although the fifth book was the longest, rich in detail that later becomes crucial to the series' unfolding events, the movie adaptation was the shortest one so far. It can accurately be described as a badly-done summary of the book. A summary created by someone who seemed to have missed the point. I find it difficult to understand why the director, David Yates, hung around for so long after butchering this story. If any book deserved to be split into two it was this, and even without being split into two it certainly deserved more than it got. As with Goblet of Fire, people who come to this without knowing the books will find it difficult to comprehend.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Movie Bonuses:

The only bonuses in this movie were performances by new actors. Imelda Staunton as Umbridge was perfectly detestably awesome, even though she looked nothing like what I imagined when first reading the book!

Evanna Lynch proved that in the hands of a fan these books can be wonderfully portrayed. She did an amazing job with Luna Lovegood's character, even though theychanged her scenes and lines around.

Bellatrix Lestrange was also wonderfully portrayed and McGonagall ruled in the scenes that they kept in.

Movie regrets:

The movie regrets are numerous for this one. Many key aspects of the book did not even get a vague nod in the movie. Here are some of the main ones that are important to the developing plot of the whole series:

-         The locket Horcrux, which they come across while cleaning up Grimmauld Place, is not even mentioned.

-         We don't get to hear the actual Prophecy!

-         Rita Skeeter is gone, although they built up her role in the last movie, and Harry does not do the Quibbler Interview to share his story.

-         The memory of James tormenting Severus and Lily standing up to him is reduced to a three second long blurry flash. If you blinked you missed it, and even if you didn’t miss it, it was laughable compared to the real thing. Also, Harry supposedly invaded Severus's mind to see it, instead of seeing it in the Pensieve, which completely undermines the fact that Harry is supposed to be terrible at Occlumency in general.

-         St. Mungo's is completely absent, again reducing Neville's role, and robbing the storyline of those few moments when Harry doubts himself and believes he is possessed by Voldemort.

-         The Department of Mysteries action is cut down to near nothingness. This means that the other students don't do anything of importance, except being held hostage, when in the book they fought the Death Eaters bravely and competently.

-         Dobby is against absent, which means that when he comes back in Deathly Hallows we haven't seen him at all since Chamber of Secrets and viewers will not understand his importance (nor will they understand the Elf rights speech he gives in the scene at Malfoy Manor because they never got to see SPEW).

-         No Prefects, no Careers Advice, not one second of classes that isn't in Umbridge's class or being supervised by Umbridge. And they took out half the supervised classes too. Are these events taking place in a magic school or not?

-         Fred and George's pranks are also reduced almost beyond recognition. Yes, the firework dragon was cool, but the miniature swamp and the swearing, multiplying fireworks, and Umbridge running around at the beck and call of the other teachers to vanish them, would have been way cooler.

-         Quidditch is gone. This takes about a quarter of the significant events in the book with it, including Ron finally coming into his own and his doubts and anxieties, and Weasley is our King. It also means we don't see Malfoy getting beat up and we don't get to see the Quidditch ban.

I will stop there, although there are dozens of other minor things that were taken out of the movie, and dozens of scenes that were changed in annoying ways. The point is that this movie, whatever it claims to be, cannot honestly claim to be a portrayal of the Order of the Phoenix book.

I apologize if this was too much of a rant; I admit this movie was the only Potter movie to actually make me furious.

 World-Building Meter:

The book receives the highest rating on the world-building meter. Whatever Rowling did before now to create the world, she stepped it up several notches in this volume, giving us a wide view of the Wizarding world, from the largest political goings on to moments of friendship and self-reflection, to the smallest gum-wrapper. There were new spells, creatures we hadn't seen before, and many new characters that came into prominence.

The movie, however, scores very low. Not only did it fail to portray the book, but it was also too disjointed to really set a mood. It was a very dark movie, literally speaking, to a point where I was, during several scenes, sitting there wondering what was happening and why I wasn't being allowed to see the whole scene. The fact that we didn't see the prophecy, which was a key revelation in the story, leads me to give this movie a rating of Shoddy.