Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Despite the fact that today is the official launch of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I have already watched the show yesterday at Cathay. If it is a sneak preview, the price, surprisingly, was the same as all other shows. The theatre was not fully filled, I believe, and the movie started on the dot, which surprised both my friend and I. We only went in about 5 minutes after it started, just in time to see some wizards and witches of the Order break into Harry's room (which of course is not what happened in the book).

Try squeezing the entire book into a 2-hour movie. What YZ said is right. One should neither attempt to re-read the book before the movie nor compare the two. A movie made from a book is but only to put an image to words, whether or not it is accurate is another story for different people have different interpretations of the story and conjure different images in their minds while/after reading. What we see on screen might be the producer/director's mental image. A movie's presentation of the story is but also limited by resources - available physical landscape, appropriate actors, time and money.

As such, I find myself unable to judge the movie as a movie at all, even if I were to try not to make a relation to its book because the keyword is "try". I find it extremely difficult not to think about the story when watching the movie. I am grossly aware of differences in landscape between what is shown and what is in my mind and I am very uncomfortable with that. I am also very aware of the many slight changes in storyline, the cutting out of areas, the adding of others, the change of where the event took place, the cutting out of long speeches, the shortening of the exciting chase and fight at the end. In the end, I feel as if the movie has not done the book justice. This book dwells a lot on the emotions of its characters and is as well a very dark book. To achieve the effect, there are a lot of things that cannot be cut out, a lot of actions that has to be fully elaborated on to be made understood the impact of it and a lot of speeches that has to be said. As I have said before, try squeezing the entire storyline into a 2 hour movie and this is what you would get. For some reason, I also found the acting grossly unsatisfactory.

I simply do not get the same sense of mystery, sadness and satisfaction from watching the movie as I do reading the book. However I will still catch the next Harry Potter movie until the end of the series. Much as I love the book and the image of it in my mind, I enjoy the thrill of seeing the place on screen and the magic being executed.