The Order of the Phoenix
August 2, 2007
Order of the Phoenix was the least filmable of the books: there’s not much action, the mystery at the end is contrived, the climax takes place entirely within Harry’s mind, and a good chunk of the plot occurs off-screen.
We spend about six hundred pages moving chess pieces around the board to set up the final two books. It’s a good read because of the skill with which JK Rowling can add little details and make you care about the characters, but the story is remarkably weak.
Given the length of the book, there was an obvious need to cut stuff out in order to get the movie down to a reasonable running time. Unfortunately, they cut too much: the movie often felt like a greatest-hits summary of the book, a scene-by-scene overview. Dementors attack Harry: check. Harry on trial: check. Harry and Cho kiss: check. Fred and George set off fireworks: check. Big fight at the end: check.
Because the movie focuses on the weak story, instead of the very good character development, there’s no time to do anything but jump from one scene to the next. There’s nothing like the jellybean scene at the beginning of Prisoner of Azkaban, which was no longer than two minutes, but which helped set the mood for the whole movie.
Order of the Phoenix was a book that almost begged for a movie that could linger over school scenes — the rising tension between Umbridge and the faculty, the students banding together, a sense that the stakes were high — and we got felt like a missed opportunity. We never see the teachers quietly condoning the revolt against Umbridge. We never see Harry trying to be a leader. We never see the unspoken battle between Harry and Umbridge, or her efforts to keep control (and even her search for the DA meeting room was given to Filtch, and played for laughs; no sense of risk or suspense). There’s no hand in the fire, no enchanted coins, and surprising little screen time for Sirius. The latter, in particular, robs the ending of most of its poignancy, and the emotional punch it does carry comes from smuggling in what you remember from reading the book.
Hagrid has become an absolute bore, and the scene with him and Grawp was interminable. I don’t have much patience for over-the-top action sequences in movies which are otherwise played straight. People hanging onto the doors of a flying car, or dodging an attack by a retarded giant, or the Collapsing Staircase of Khazad-Dum: these things never create a true sense of danger or peril. They slow down the plot without compensating for the slowdown by adding depth to the movie. (The weakest part of Goblet of Fire was the pointless scene in which the dragon chased Harry around Hogwarts.) Oh, to have replaced Grawp with longer and deeper scenes elsewhere.
The revelation that Aunt Petunia knew a lot more about the magical world than she had ever let on, is missing entirely, which was a shame. Harry’s discovery of that fact carried the first part of the book. It’s missing entirely from the opening scene of the movie, which makes the scene pointless, except as an exercise in getting to the next scene. Harry needs to get arrested so he can stand trial. The show must go on.
I’m being more negative than the movie deserves. In spite of everything, Order of the Phoenix is a good movie. If it’s not quite on par with the excellent Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s good enough to rank with Goblet of Fire and Chamber of Secrets as solid, above-average entries in the series.
To some extent, the director can get away with a plot-by-numbers movie, since we’re already familiar with the characters from the books, and the four previous movies. And lots of quiet details helped make up for the film’s structural weaknesses. A few of them:
- Percy wearing a suit and tie when everyone arrives at the ministry in the middle of the night, trying in his devotion to the minister to out-Herod Herod. Fudge was wearing his pajamas.
- Aberforth shooing a goat out of his bar, nicely foreshadowing his appearance in the Deathly Hallows.
- Umbridge climbing the stairs to look down on Professor McGonagall when pulling rank in their hallway argument.
- Umbridge putting three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee, as all the china plate kittens mew in the background.
- Sirius’s understated affection for Harry: the winks and slight smiles.
- The attack flight into London on the thestrals echoing the retreat into the city at the beginning of the movie.
- Crookshanks toying with the Extensible Ear, reminding you of every cat you’ve ever seen.
I enjoyed the film, although the trend away from characterization and towards pure plot advancement bodes ill for the Half-Blood Prince, which really needs to be about Harry, and his image of his father, and his relationship with Dumbledore and Snape, and not about dead zombies in lakes.