This is it, the last entry of my Swedile at the Movies series for the summer (most likely; I hardly think I will waste money to watch a Simpsons movie), and what a movie; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! With excitement over the final novel in the series reaching Sci-Fi Convention proportions, the hype over this film was massive. Was it worth the hype? Can anyone other than the most obnoxious Potter fanatic enjoy it? Is the reverse true, can only the true fan hate it? Do wizards endorse slavery? All that I know for sure is this; after we're done, I'm going to have to start thinking of something of consequence to say, besides the "Oh, that scene was so trite, [Enter Character] would NEVER do [Enter Action]!" bullshit I've been spewing lately.
Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale. Got it? Learn it. Good.
Story:
Well, the shit has hit the fan since the last movie; the Dark Lord himself, the badass Tom "I am Lord Voldemort" Riddle is back, and the wizarding world is losing it's shit over it. You've got the Right Wing Conservative Wizards (yes, I just wrote those words) going so far as to deny the Dark Lord's return. So the Department of Magic sends this pink sow of a witch, Dolores Umbridge, to Hogwart's to use psychological warfare to keep Harry Potter from squealing.
Then, in the middle of that, is a lot of stuff about the adults in Harry's life (an organized group known as the Order of the Phoenix, because yes, being in Harry's life is a unionized position) debating over things like the Ministry and the Death Eaters and other magic doings, Voldemort's minions organizing and going to search for some prophecy, and Harry starting up his own class where he teaches kids how to kill people because the school won't anymore. It gets a little muddled at times, and that prophecy thing came right out of left field in the quarter of the 9th, but overall it stayed pretty on focus.
The only real issue story-wise is the fact that the whole movie seems like exposition between book four and book six. It's like a 2-hour/800-page epilogue for The Goblet of Fire. The whole movie is like, "Nah nah nah nah NA! He Who Must Not Be Mentioned isn't back! I am not LIST-EN-ING!" until the end, when the bigwig wizard in the British government sees him, and then everyone's on the same page. I'm sure the movie has several key scenes that are super important to the end of the series that is given about a second of screen time, but all the other movies did this and also were stories in their own right. But this is hardly the fault of the filmmakers, which brings me to my next section...
Adaptation:
Honestly, I have no idea. My grandmother got me Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (fuck you, dumbed-down American terminology) when it came out years ago, and I try reading it, and after 15 chapters about owls delivering letters, I being young and lacking in attention span, said "nuts to this" and went and watched Spider-Man for the millionth time. And that so far has been my entire experience with the Harry Potter books. The fans really love them, and every movie after the first one has suggested there's actually something cool about these books, so the series has value, but I have never been inclined to read them.
That said, from what I've heard about all the Potter freaks out there that are just another facet of society I have excluded myself from, this movie is the least faithful to the book. Not so much due to change. Besides the way Sirius Black is killed (fuck you, I don't give you spoiler warnings in THIS review series!), complaints have been exclusive to how much they left out. Ron playing Quiddich, Doby saying something, you name it. It's left out so much! ...Oh no?
See, being a comic fan who's not a fanatic of Harry Potter as well, I see how the casual observer sees the stuff I love. I'll sit in a movie about Ant Man and groan internally, "Pym Particles don't work that way! Martin Scorsese (because he'd so totally direct Ant Man) is such a hack who doesn't care about the fans!" but anyone else who doesn't spend at least $20 a month on pulp fiction will go, "Wee, he's shrinking!" This is how I feel about Harry Potter. I'll hear a fan go "Where's Doby the house elf? His brief cameo appearance either is or may be integral to the series!" and I'll go, "so what?" I get the gist of it. The Order of the Phoenix is a 257,045-word, 870-page monster of an in between story. We have two and a half hours tops in the theatre. Let's shave some of it down. All of you are clearly more blessed by reading the books and being privy to more info than I, the lowly muggle, am.
Character Development:
I have little to nothing to say about Harry and his cohorts. They almost never change. Harry is more moody because he watched a classmate die, Nevil Longbottom finally has some interesting back story, and Snape was one the subject of magic bullying. Fine, whatever. No worse or better than any other installment.
We did not see as much as Voldemort as I had expected or would have liked. Most of what we see is in the trailers. However, we see a great deal of his invisible hand sweeping over the magical world. Voldemort comes back and suddenly shit starts happening. If only Canadian politics could be so motivated. We also get to see how he loves fucking with Harry's head, which is also cool. Voldemort, in a word, is awesome. End of discussion.
Dolores Umbridge is fucking awesome. This fuzzy nightmare is easily the best aspect of this whole film, including the Dark Lord himself. She seems innocent enough at first glance, wearing selections from Jackie O's wardrobe and decorating her office with china plates with (moving) cat pictures on them. But this witch is fucking sadistic. She's like Big Brother if Big Brother were your bitchy fourth-grade substitute teacher. She uses cruel, Draconian measures as punishment for speaking out in class, employs truth serum and torture curses to extract information from students, and all sorts of other fun stuff. She's a villain you love to hate. There wasn't any development of character per se, but she's too awesome not to mention. Go to the movie to see her. Seriously.
Music:
You've got hints of the original theme. The rest isn't memorable enough to mention.
Action/Graphics:
Like most Potter films, not a whole lot of outright boom bam kablam movie magic, but the end scene is spectacular. Though short. But realistically, a fight between experienced minions of the Dark Lord vs. Whiny 15-year-old British kids wouldn't last too long. But a lot of the spells and monsters and stuff look better, save Hagrid's trainable brother. Even the lighting and stuff made everything look more sinister. Pretty cool stuff. But of course these movies aren't CGI Juggernauts like the superhero movies are, so I wasn't expecting too much. It's the suspense and the mystery you go for. That said, The Goblet of Fire was still far more exciting.
The Use of Slavery:
This isn't a commentary on the films so much as the world in which they're set, but Wizards employ a sub race of elves as slaves. The fuck? Exactly what the hell is with that? Wizards are super intuitive, have this whole advanced society where one can use a boot to transport to Scotland or turn pimples into Lovecraftian gods of chaos, but they've yet to move into the twenty-first century in regards to labor laws? I don't know, maybe it's a commentary on something. Maybe it's a literary device to show how even the good guys have darkness in them. Maybe slavery is legal in England and I just don't know any better. But all I do know is when I see Sirius outright demean and humiliate his House Elf for grumbling under his breath and then go on to talk about it to Harry like, "Oh, slaves, they're always like that. Teehee!", my brain shuts down for a minute or two.
Direction:
Eh, nothing really horrible or noteworthy to say, save for one. The moving newspapers are used in this film as a sort of odd, bizarre cinematic device as a transition, like the spinning newspaper but with surround sound. I thought it was pretty cheesy, and it was likely my least favorite aspect of the film. Which, when you think of it, ain't bad at all. My least favorite aspect of the last movie I reviewed was leud, inappropriate, constant and lastly UNFUNNY humor. This thing came up a few times, and was silly. We're not doing too bad.
This David Yates guy did a damn good job motivating his actors to acting their parts, especially the villains, and he was able to purvey an almost constant sense of dread. I LOVE an almost constant sense of dread! I bet I'd even get a geekgasm if I were a Harry Potter geek.
It's a shame that the book fanatics will eat him alive though.
FINAL SCORE:
0/4
Yep, a perfect score. It's a critical 0/4, pushing the boundaries of the definition of "near-perfect." But it's probably not the film's fault.
These movies are almost verbatim recreations of books. How good a film like this is depends a fair deal on how good the author made it in the book. The story itself, I will say right now, was ho-hum. Besides Umbridge and the growth of Voldemort's army, this story was way too long for what it was. There's nothing inherently bad with the story, but there's nothing setting it apart from the others. If this were "Swedile at the Bookstore," I would probably give this a lower rating, probably a 1/4.
However, Mr. Yates made good with what he had to work with. Besides the newspaper thing, none of my complaints are about the actual film itself and it's representation of the story. It was a dark, foreboding tale that will probably be a precursor to the rest of the series. And if the last two are great because of it, then I will be cool with the Order of the Phoenix. One thing this movie has definitely done, coupled with the hype of the final novel, is get me interested in trying to read the series again. Maybe I can finally get to chapter 16 of The Philosopher's Stone, and maybe that's the chapter where things pick up. Who knows, I may even become a Harry Potter geek. But I say if a movie gets me interested in reading for all the right reasons, then it's a winner in my book.
- Silent G (Abracadabra!)
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