Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

July 11th, 2007 by James Cook | Source: The Moving Picture

Directed by: David Yates
Written by: Michael Goldenberg, based on the novel by J.K. Rowling
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Maggie Smith, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon, Imelda Staunton, Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman

Score: 5/10

Its time to cross another Potter movie off the list and begin waiting for the next one. I really wish I could get excited about this series, but I just can’t. The movies have never really done it for me and they probably never will, and I’ve accepted the fact that you’re either a Potter fan or you’re not, I guess I’m not. It’s not that I hate this series, because I don’t. I would have liked nothing more for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to blow me away, unfortunately it didn’t.

The movie starts off much the same as the rest, with Harry in the muggle world awaiting his return for another year at Hogwarts, and when we last left Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) he had just come face to face with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and witnessed the death of one of his friends. The impact of this has left Harry in an awkward place. It’s now year five at Hogwarts and everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that Lord Voldemort has returned.

As per usual Harry is joined by Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint). It’s much of the same old stuff with Hermione and Ron bickering back and forth as they help Harry try and get through another year at Hogwarts. Hermione and Ron spent the summer with the Order of the phoenix, a group that Harry’s parents once were apart of and is made up of witches and wizards bent on taking down Voldemort.

The ministry of magic refuses to believe Harry and Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) about Voldemort, and as a result have sent in Dolores Humbridge (Imelda Staunton) to straighten up the school. With Humbridge over seeing Hogwarts, and the students feeling like they aren’t learning anything Harry is forced to train his friends in secrecy.

There wasn’t that much action in the movie, and the lack of it left the movie feeling very stale and boring. The movie feels like it is building to this great battle as we spend most of the time watching Harry train his army, but then you realize that this is only movie five of seven and were not going to be getting any great battle. There is a fight scene at the end and we once again get to see Voldemort appear, fight Harry for a bit, say something very menacing and then he leaves.

It’s very discouraging when you leave a theatre knowing that you probably could have skipped the whole movie and be just fine when part six rolls around.

A big problem that I have always had with this series is that the action scenes just don’t do it for me. Wizards fighting wizards just doesn’t seem to work on the screen. You take a movie like the Lord of the Rings where you have people fighting with swords and huge choreographed action scenes and you can sit back and just be amazed. With Harry potter you have replaced the swords with wands and the action is two characters pointing at each other with special effects knocking them down. It just doesn’t work.

Overall, my main problem with this movie and the franchise in general, is the fact that it’s seven movies deep. Are seven movies really necessary? It seems like this is an epic story and I’m sure it’s far more epic in book form then on the screen. In the books you have a lot more room to develop each character. In the movies it’s always the same, it seems like nothing is ever being fully developed, and when things begin to come around and you can see the growth of the characters beginning to form - the movie ends. This series is like a house of cards, each movie is an attempt at making the perfect house, but at the end it falls down and the next movie will be just another attempt at trying to build it back up.