Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It's pretty much a given that anything as successful as the Harry Potter books will have movies made out of them. And, for books 1 and 2, those movies are pretty good. The books are simple and straightforward enough that most of the important plot points can be included without the movie getting out of control.

The third movie--Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban--was pretty good, for the most part, and did a really good job of capturing the darker mood of the book. I harbor a slight grudge against the movie, mostly because it left out the part of the book that always brings tears to my eyes (the part where Dumbledore tells Harry, "Prongs rode again last night."), but overall, the movie stays very true to the book.

Movie number four--Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire--was faced with the enormous challenge of fitting so many different events into one book. The Quidditch World Cup, the Triwizard Tournament, and Voldemort's return being the three biggest ones. Add to this the extreme shifts in the book from excitement and youthful exuberance to sheer terror and overwhelming responsibility, and you have a near-impossible movie to make. And to be honest, it showed. Many of the individual scenes were done quite well with very cool special effects, but the movie lacked continuity and flow. I felt as if I were watching several different stories that had all stumbled into the same theater and couldn't find anything in common except their characters all have wands.

Given these problems in the fourth movie, I was a little concerned about movie number 5--Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That book is as long as Goblet of Fire, and it seems that since a little bit gets left out every movie, having things make sense in the later movies is going to be difficult.

But, after viewing the trailer for the movie, I have hope:



The trailer presents a movie that is consistently dark, even during scenes like Harry and Cho's kiss. Lots of swirling smoke, lots of darkness around the edges of scenes, lots of half-lit characters' faces. And, especially for this movie, I think that if director David Yates is able to capture the edginess and near-constant feeling of imminent death--which the trailer suggests that he will--it will convey the overall message of the book.

The other thing that gave me hope as I viewed the trailer was that I realized that I remember the books much better than I remember the movies. I honestly don't remember the specific details that were left out of Goblet of Fire. Yes, there are certainly people who have never read the books and just see the movies, but the majority of the rabid Harry Potter fans are ones who have devoured the books and reread them multiple times. The details of the books will stick with them, and give the movie series continuity, even if certain details get left out of individual movies. Not something that movie makes can usually rely on, but in this case, particularly given the huge number of details in the books, it can work as a handy shortcut for more manageable movies.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is released nationwide on July 13, 2007.