Here is me being Roger Ebert.
Of course I was at the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night.
This book is my favorite, so I was excited to see what the film adaptation would look like. I was worried, however, that it wouldn’t be a very good movie. The book does not exactly lend itself to be made into a film. It is like 800 pages and a lot of character development and emotional awakenings, as opposed to the action-packed blockbuster stuff of the first 4 books.
Sadly, my worries were realized. It was the worst film so far, in my opinion. Now, don’t get me wrong. It was a pretty good movie, & David Yates did a great job with it. It’s just that the only way to do the book justice would be to turn it into two movies or one 6 hour long movie. Obviously, that is not really feasible.
The cinematography, on the other hand, was absolutely magnificent. The visualizations were extraordinary. The special effects were amazing. The fight scene at the end with Voldemort was awesome.
There was so much they left out, though, that they had to change some things in the movie for them to make sense. Also, they just got rid of a lot of the minor characters (again, understandably so). For instance, Cho ratted on the DA instead of her friend. Luna told Harry about the flying black horse things instead of Hagrid. There was no quidditch at all. Rita Skeeter was left out completely. Lots and lots of little things like that.
I understand their streamlining of it for time’s sake, and I don’t really have that big of a problem with what they did. I am very disappointed, however, by the under use of all the amazing actors they had in this film. Helena Bonham Carter absolutely stole the movie, but appeared for probably a grand total of 60 seconds. She was an absolutely pitch-perfect casting of Bellatrix Lestrange, by the way, not that anyone had any doubts. I was most excited about seeing Gary Oldman as Sirius Black. He, too, had an extremely minimal role in this movie, which was disappointing because he had such a large role in this book, and finally as the godfather, as opposed to the believed ravaging murder he was portrayed as in Prisoner of Azkaban. Also, Snape had about two scenes. One was occlumency lessons & the other was before the kids left for the Dept. of Ministries when Harry said “Padfoot is in the place where it’s hidden,” & Umbridge asked Snape what Harry meant.
They did a pretty good job of getting across that Umbridge is a terrible Hitler-like oppressor, but she is just so evil of a character, there is no way they did her complete justice. Luna was used sparingly, and I think it was for the best. She only served one purpose in the book, and that was to get Harry’s story into her dad’s newspaper. That element was eliminated from the movie, so she needed no more screen time, especially when they were shorting people like Professor McGonagall and Lupin.
I am very glad I just got done rereading Order before seeing it, though, because I don’t know if I would have been able to follow it completely without it being so fresh in my mind. I don’t even want to think about the people who have never read them and just saw the movie. For example, when the kids were trying to get to the Dept. of Ministries, they were just like, “Geeze, how are we gonna get there?” But at no point in the film did they acknowledge that their brooms were chained up in the basement or that they had their wands taken away from them.
All in all, it was a pretty good movie. So, if I were forced to give it a grade (I don’t know who would force me to give it a grade, but I just say that because I don’t usually grade movies), I would give it a B+ compared to all movies in general, but compared to the rest of the Harry Potter series, I would give it a D+. (That is telling you how awesome I think the HP movies are.)
One last thing. There was a little snippet of a scene that was shown in the trailers and in the film where Harry sees Voldemort at the end of the train station, just standing there in a black suit, and he rolls his neck. Can I just say that shot is one of the most fantastic shots in film history? Yeah, I just said that. Because they cut so much out about the connection between Harry & Voldemort, they had to get the point across in a lot less time. Also, since the book is narrated by an all-knowing 3rd person, these connections were made by saying things like “Harry was sure he was happier than he had been in a long time,” etc., basically telling Harry’s thoughts. You can’t do that with film. This element really filled that role, but it did so much more than that. First of all, it is an extremely memorable shot & every great film has at least one shot that will never leave one’s consciousness. Second, it encapsulated exactly what Voldemort is: pure evil, but secure in his confidence that he will kill Harry. Third, they used that snippet multiple times during Harry’s occlumency lessons and whatnot. Fourth, Harry was shown making the exact same motion with his neck, showing the connection between the two of them. And lastly, (warning: this one is really superficial & girly) it makes Voldemort seem sort of sexy. Yeah, sorry about that last one. Don’t let that one negate the relevance of the other 4 points.