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Jul. 17th, 2007 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cwfilmbuff40. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
As with every adaptation of a book with a rabid fan base (the four previous films in the franchise included), I’ve heard a fair share of complaining that this isn’t a 4-hour epic that includes every detail of the source material. Personally, while there were things I noticed missing, I don’t think the movie suffered for any of them,* and in fact works better as a movie without them. While Rowling’s books do a good job of exploring much of what happens to a variety of characters over the course of a school year, in order for them to work on screen they need to be pared down to the main story. Order of the Phoenix does this incredibly well, showing how far the main characters have come in five years while putting them up against the series’ best villains to date. I think it’s a toss-up between this and Prisoner of Azkaban as to my favorite movie of the series so far; Azkaban had an incredible look and feel to it, but Phoenix was probably the more fun to watch - especially the climactic battle scenes.
On a side note, I saw this in an IMAX theater, where said climactic scenes were presented in 3-D. I’d be interested in watching it again in two dimensions, because while the giant screen and high level of detail that come with IMAX are great, transferring a flat image into three dimensions is a science that is far from perfected. At times it was more of a distraction than an asset, and I think that sequence of the movie would work better presented in the same format as the rest of the film.
*Except maybe the conversation with Nearly-Headless Nick at the end, but that’s less about importance to the plot and more about it being one of the best scenes that Rowling has written.
As with every adaptation of a book with a rabid fan base (the four previous films in the franchise included), I’ve heard a fair share of complaining that this isn’t a 4-hour epic that includes every detail of the source material. Personally, while there were things I noticed missing, I don’t think the movie suffered for any of them,* and in fact works better as a movie without them. While Rowling’s books do a good job of exploring much of what happens to a variety of characters over the course of a school year, in order for them to work on screen they need to be pared down to the main story. Order of the Phoenix does this incredibly well, showing how far the main characters have come in five years while putting them up against the series’ best villains to date. I think it’s a toss-up between this and Prisoner of Azkaban as to my favorite movie of the series so far; Azkaban had an incredible look and feel to it, but Phoenix was probably the more fun to watch - especially the climactic battle scenes.
On a side note, I saw this in an IMAX theater, where said climactic scenes were presented in 3-D. I’d be interested in watching it again in two dimensions, because while the giant screen and high level of detail that come with IMAX are great, transferring a flat image into three dimensions is a science that is far from perfected. At times it was more of a distraction than an asset, and I think that sequence of the movie would work better presented in the same format as the rest of the film.
*Except maybe the conversation with Nearly-Headless Nick at the end, but that’s less about importance to the plot and more about it being one of the best scenes that Rowling has written.
