Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
As I read the series, this book was my favorite until the latest. It gets away from the schooling and more into the fighting. The film version does the same.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the series’s Empire Strikes Back. While sitting through it you are somewhat shocked at all that is going on. Maybe too much story is being told. The book was around 900 pages so the job by Michael Goldenberg condensing it was amazing. It’s dark, fitting in with the mood of Harry Potter who knows what death is and who will taste its bitterness yet again. Faced to face with Voldemort and with the wizarding community not believing it, a challenge is put upon the boy who lived to unmask Voldemort’s lies and show wizarding world that he really is back.
Like The Empire Strikes Back, this story is at the middle of the tale. In a normal action movie, this is about where the action team kicks start their program to getting ready to kick ass. Bad to the Bone should’ve been playing as Dumbledore’s Army assembles and practices their charms, hexes and spells. Expelliarmus!
And like Empire it was moody. Too much so that it was hard to believe the audience enjoyed it. They left in silence. Yet, as the book finishes and the films are done, we’ll look back at this film and see how good a movie it was. We’ll appreciate it much more in the context of the whole. It brings us to the beginning of the end. The stakes are raised and witches and muggles will die, but Harry Potter will stand tall with his friends. They’re what helps him in the end.
4 of 5 stars.
PS. Saw this at the out of the way place of Towson Commons 12. More adults than kids in the audience. Or rather the adults were just as awed as if they were 12 years old again.
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I’m gonna be like a little nerdy schoolgirl around 12 years old when that last book comes out this weekend. No one will hear from me while I read it..although as excited as I am for it to come out, I also don’t want it to end. What else will there be to look forward to, now that I have the iPhone and the last Potter book?
Oh, the deep, dark, impending doom of the end.