Nate and I just got back from watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I was going to write this sorta long, sorta involved bit about my thoughts and feelings and how I have a difficult time looking at Daniel Radcliffe now without picturing him totally nude standing seductively in front of a horse...however I've thankfully thought better of it and instead will just say this much:
It's become increasingly clear that the books are way too long to be condensed into a two hour long movie, thus the experience is a bit scattershot and confusing for those who never read the book, and those of us who have read the book are left thinking, "Wow! What a great movie trailer! I can't wait to see the actual film now!!"
But none of this movie business means that I'm not totally, ridiculously, can-I-possibly-be-a-bigger-nerd-ily excited for when the postman delivers Deathly Hallows to my door. I've been celebrating its arrival with watching clips of Harry and the Potters on YouTube, and I'm thinking that you really should join me. Unless you, like Voldemort, hate music and laughter and unicorns and fun. If that's the case, you could skip it I guess...
(Okay. I'm going to go now to re-read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and play the Legend of Zelda until the wee hours. You know, because I'm cool like that.)
6 Comments:
Ok, as I was just hours behind you in seeing this, I have to say I really kind of dug it. First off, I thought it was visually awesome. I know that you can never fit everything into one book, and part of my problem probably is that I don't remember the book all that well (I need to bone up on Half Blood Prince before this weekend). I would've liked to have seen more with Order ideally, but I didn't really miss Quidditch or anything.
Gary Oldman rocks, and Alan Rickman is good as always. And Imelda Staunton was seriously awesome as Umbridge. And those kids have grown up into good actors, which is convenient to the whole movie making process.
Oh, and thanks to you, the scene where Harry and Cho Chang "snogged"? The Human Hosepipe was playing in my head the whole time. :)
It's not that I didn't like the movie, I did. I thought the acting was great (Thank God Malfoy hardly had any lines. That kid's a shit actor.), as was the visual effect and the direction. But I was watching it with Nate who hasn't read a book past #2 (I think), so I could anticipate and empathize with the threadbare moments that he noticed in the plot.
To list: Luna Lovegood's character wasn't very well developed, the Order of the Phoenix (the bloody name of the movie) was barely mentioned, and Bellatrix Lestrange (awesomely played by Helena Bonham Carter) wasn't given nearly enough screen time. Plus, Sirius's death didn't have nearly the emotional impact that it should/could have had. (I cried when I read that scene. Cried. Me.)
But, again, such is the predicament when you try to cram 800 pages into a movie of this length. You can do your best, but things are bound to to feel a bit skimmed over.
(Oh, and "Woh, oh, woh oh oh, we'll spend our Christmas playing wizard chess. Woh, oh, woh oh oh we'll play wizard chess this Christmas..." :)
Ok, I do agree with you. Like I mentioned before, I definitely wanted more with the Order - I was all "Hey, it's Tonks!" and then she was in 2 scenes. I didn't have many complaints with Luna - I didn't love her character in the book, and so I thought she was better conceptualized than I expected her to be.
Sirius's death was sketchy. Paul and I had listened to Mark Kermode's podcast this weekend, and he was all complaining that he didn't even realize what had happened (hasn't read the books). I can see why he reacted that way, but I think I was expecting that scene to be worse, so I didn't think it was that bad. And I kinda hated Bellatrix- all she did was stand around and hiss and make crazy eyes.
Anyway, another plot point I remembered they dropped - wasn't there something about how the prophecy could have applied to Harry or Neville? Or am I remembering wrong? That seems like a big thing to drop.
Despite all this, I thought the new director did some awesome stuff with it, enough to make me kinda love it. I guess it's just so much more adult than any of the other films.
Did you hear how they didn't want to put Kreacher in this film, but then Rowling sent them a memo saying they better include him? What does he do? That has got my curiousity so peaked! We'll find out soon, I guess.
And that's another thing, it's like they never even mentioned needing to get the prophecy until they were already in the room with it in hand. Had I not read the book I would have been totally confused.
But you're right about Neville. Since they were born right around the same time, the prophecy linking a child to Voldemort could be about either him or Harry, and no one really knows which. Voldemort assumes it's Harry because he's a half-blood like he is and Neville's a bit of a sniveling pansy most days, or something like that. Nonetheless, that seems to be an important detail that maybe shouldn't have been left out of the film...
I'm thinking Neville's going to be pretty important in the last book. He might even be the one who fells Voldemort, but dies in the process. I'm also anticipating that Kreacher will be a key Malfoy spy, Harry won't die but Ron will, and Dumbledore will somehow be communicating with folks from beyond the grave. And also that peace will ultimately be restored, hurrah, hurrah.
Your Kreacher prediction might be right on, at least in terms of how involved he'll be in the last book. In EW it said that the filmmakers originally didn't include Kreacher at all in this movie and Rowling told them that they "may regret" not introducing the character. Seeing as she's one of like three people in the universe who knows the story of Deathly Hallows that could be telling, right?
Ahh, an evening with Harry. My favorite part of the movie was the post-snogging analysis (which was also my favorite part of the book). My favorite part of watching the movie with Carrie was her leaning over to me and saying, "Put a shirt on, Sirius, Geez!"
And I'm glad I'm not the only one practically drooling for the upcoming book.
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