Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Was disappointing.

Although I dunno whether to blame the storywriters or not, since they are quite obviously under major pressure not to churn out a script for an 8-hour movie. It's just too much to shove down to two hours. Given the fans who are watching it, and how it would give storywriters a chance to leave more stuff in that would help smoothen plot progression, I wonder if Warner Brothers would have allowed another hour to the movie. Or was it the director who decided that? If it was then I think he should know better than to attempt the impossible. What happened to looking up to Cecil B. DeMille man? If you need 4.5 hours and 4 VCDs then 4.5 hours and 4 VCDs it is la! Why cut here cut there tuck here tuck there?

Of course if it was a profit-driven decision by WB, then well... fuck you, I guess.

Right, so as I said, the plot was rather choppy to me. But keep in mind here that I'm a fan (or ex-fan, just because I'm not queuing for the 7th book doesn't mean I don't care about the movie keeping true to the book). So my mind is totally aligned to the book, which I've roughly memorized already. Oh don't give that look. I can't recite the book to you. There are people who can. These are normally the ones who carry a replica of Harry's wand inside their shirt and get it broken when they try to do a Stunning spell to the neighbourhood bully making fun of them.

Anyways, I was amazed at the number of parts they chopped out. It was barely coherent to me. But I appreciated the special effects this time, at least it didn't have stupid 'wuing' sounds everytime a wand was used some way or the other. The final battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore was impressive, but really short. And as with all battle sequences nowadays, things just happen too fast for our eyes to handle. You just see blue flash red flash then Voldemort screams and all the glass around him shatters and you're like... what happened again?

Ah yes, another thing about cutting so many parts out - support characters are getting less and less time. We hardly saw Malfoy or McGonagall this time.

There were people saying that Daniel Radcliffe was quite awkward playing the dark angsty teen characteristic of OotP. I actually thought he did that quite well. What he looked like he had trouble playing was the confused, low-confidence boy who slowly realises and mulls over the implications of being remotely connected to Voldemort's mind.

So there you have a fan's report. I found Kenny/spaceactionhero's non-reader report rather good, so if you want to see both sides of the coin, check it out right there.