Now that a solid handful of Harry Potter adaptations have made it to the big screen, I’m going to offer a theory. Any Trekkie knows that until, say movie number seven, that it inarguably held true that as far as feature Star Trek films were concerned, the good movies were the even-numbered ones [i.e. The Wrath of Khan (II), the one with the whales in San Francisco (IV), and the one with the Borg Queen (VI)]. The opposite, I announce, holds true for the Harry Potter series of movies: it seems that it is the odd-numbered movies that fare better. The first movie had a certain magic of seeing Hogwarts on the big screen for the first time; the third movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban, set the bar to a new height that still hasn’t been matched; and now the fifth installment, The Order of the Phoenix, recovers nicely from the schmaltzy and ponderous fourth chapter.
Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is now fifteen, and dare I say, is turning out kinda hunky. Raise your hand if you saw those shirtless Daniel pictures from his stage performance of Equus. Rrroowwwrr! But though Daniel was 17 when he made this movie, we have to remember his character is still 15… so, girls and boys, shelve your dirty thoughts for another couple years. Anyway, as a 15-year-old, Harry is going through lots of angst. But, dare I say, he has it a little bit more difficult than the rest of his peers. For instance, in the opening scene Harry and his dreadful cousin are attacked in a suburban field by… (checking notes) Dementors! These are the scarily evil floaty spirits that try to suck your soul from your face. To save himself and his dreadful cousin, Harry whips out his wand (which apparently he always carries in his back pocket) and zaps away these awful creatures. But since it is a common rule of wizardry that you are NOT supposed to perform any such card tricks in front of Muggles (regular folks), Harry gets expelled from Hogwarts via quickly-delivered owl-mail.
After contesting his expulsion one short trial later, Harry is back at Hogwarts for a new school year. But everyone is shunning Harry, students AND teachers. No one believes the story about how a popular student athlete was killed in Harry’s presence by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (aka Voldemort, aka creepy Ralph Fiennes sans nose). If you have no idea what they are talking about we are treated to flashbacks (via Harry’s nightmares) to the previous film. This is an odd trick that all the other Harry Potter films have so far managed to avoid. Harry, in fact, has LOTS of nightmares (and thusly flashbacks) in the first half hour of the film. This, in my opinion, is a cheap explanatory plot device. But I was told that Harry spends a lot of time in the book having nightmares. You heard me right. I was TOLD about the book. Be patient, folks! I’m one of those going into the movie cold, which explains why I had about half an hour of questions for my friend after the credits rolled. But getting back to the movie…
While everyone is worrying about whether Voldemort is really back in town, the Bush Administration sends their crony, Professor Dolores Umbridge (the wickedly perky and pink Imelda Staunton), to keep a close eye on the school. It is not long before several popular teachers are in trouble, including my cinematic girlfriend Emma Thompson (who plays Professor Trelawney with her Coke-bottle glasses and frizzy hair). Dumbeldore (Michael Gambon) gets reprimanded, allowing Umbridge to take over as headmaster of the school. One Patriot Act later, the students and staff are banned from this and banned from that, and are being watched very very carefully by Umbridge’s cronies. The kids are no longer taught comprehensive sex education—I mean Defense Against the Dark Arts skills—are no longer allowed to meet in groups, and are given ancient, out-of-date text books. Umbridge has them all in her control….
But wait! In the meantime the students secretly ARE meeting. The more that is banned, the more the students are interested. Slowly, Harry’s peers start to realize that there is something sinister going on, and they turn to Harry to learn how to defend themselves in what may indeed be an impending war of good and evil. Dubbing themselves “Dumbledore’s Army”, the students band together to educate themselves on defensive magic when it is obvious that the Administration, I mean the Ministry, won’t. Their new skills inevitably come handy when a premonition of doom arrives in the form of Harry’s vision of a close friend in grave danger… from the evil Voldemort!
After the film, I proclaimed The Order of the Phoenix to be the Empire Strikes Back of the series thus far. The film is quite dark, and doesn’t waste time on the cutesy humorous scenes of the previous movies (except for one outlandish scene of the Weasley twins sabotaging an exam with an indoor fireworks display). Other than the scene where he gets to make out with a girl for the first time, our hero spends the film suffering—he wants to be a regular kid, but has this burden of being Very Important in the big scheme of things (and in this film, he finds out just how important). The film also assumes that you know what is going on, so it doesn’t bother introducing the characters to any extent. This is one movie that doesn’t stand alone, but proves to be a strong chapter that will bridge the lighter earlier films to the later series climax. (Oh, and there is a pretty impressive final showdown in Phoenix that is more than a little Star-Wars-y, if you ask me.)
[NOTE: I just happened to see Phoenix in IMAX, which showed the final 20-minute climax in 3-D. Yes, it was a little gimmicky, and didn’t really add a whole lot to the scenes (except for the thrill of waiting for the flashing green glasses on the screen that prompted you to finally don the glasses). But, I for one, am not going to complain since luckily “Luscious” Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) appeared prominently in the climax. The only thing that would have made that better is a Luscious vs. Snape (Alan Rickman) smackdown. But unfortunately I can’t rewrite the books, now, can I?]
