I guess I shouldn't be surprised. As you know, Warner Brothers has officially announced the Ultimate Editions of years 5 and 6. The product descriptions are quite wordy. There's a lot of talk about how fans should be excited about these new releases. But there are two words missing from the descriptions of both these products: Extended Cut.What sold me and so many other fans was the extended cuts. And so I began collecting the Ultimate Editions. And what excited me even more was the idea of more extended cuts to come, especially for The Order of the Phoenix.
Then Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblit of fire Ultimate Editions came out, and of course, there were no extended cuts. And Warner Bros. spun us a tale of directors and their creative preferences. And so, we all said "fair enough" (although I, for one, never quite bought that explanation). Still, I had hopes for Order of the phonex and Half blood prince. Director David Yates is on record talking about having to cut 45 minutes from The Order of the Phoenix. And yet, here we are again with no extended cut to speak of. I'm sure the studio will spin us a tale of how busy Yates has been with the final installment of the franchise, thus making it impossible to return to these previous films and give the fans what they want,AN EXTENDED CUT.
I understand Warner Bros. desire to get these editions on the shelves before the final film hits theaters. As for me, I would gladly wait a year for these editions if it meant getting to see extended cuts of the films. But this is not about the fans. This is about the bottom line. If the WB can get a half-@$$ product onto the shelves sooner, and therefore presumably make more money in the final season of Potter movie mania, then who cares what the fans want? We will buy anything with the word Ultimate in front of it. Or maybe not.
When last we left our hero, Harry fell victim to a trap to bring back Lord Voldermort, which cost Cedric Diggory his life. The Ministry of Magic wants things hushed up, but Dumbledore tells the students at Hogwarts that Diggory was murdered and Lord Voldermort murdered him. As this fifth film opens Harry and his wicked cousin Dudley are attacked by Dementors. Harry uses his wand to defend them and is summarily expelled from Hogwarts for using magic in front of a muggle. The good news is that Harry gets reinstated, but the bad news is that the Ministry of Magic uses the opportunity to appoint Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary at the Ministry, as the school's new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. However, Umbridge teaches only the theory and not the practice because she insists Harry is a liar and there is nothing the students need to learn to defend themselves from. Then things get progressively worse.
"The Order of the Phoenix" was the most maddening book to read, not because it was the longest, but because I detest Dolores Umbridge. As far as I am concerned she makes Voldermort look good, because he knows he is evil, wicked, bad, mean and nasty inside, while Umbridge thinks the ends justify the means. She is puritanical, sadistic and hypocritical. If there were not going to be children reading this review I would tell you what I really think of her. Suffice it to say, she makes me sick and I do not even take pleasure in loving to hate her, which is why my only requirement going into the film is that the Weasley Twins get their moment of glory when they become the disloyal opposition to the new order at Hogwarts.
Daniel Radcliffe continues to have the tote the heavy load in these films as Harry, with Rupert Grint's Ron Weasley being reduced more and more often to reaction shots while Emma Watson's Hermione Granger remains the Mistress of Exposition in these films. Alan Rickman as Snape remains pitch perfect casting and Gary Oldman as Sirius Black is also a joy to watch, but I discovered in this film that I really like Michael Gambon's performance as Dumbledore, mainly because he always plays up the character's intelligence and I find I prefer his interpretation to that of the late Richard Harris, forgive my heresy. Imelda Staunton does not look as much like a toad as Umbridge does in the book, but she captures the character's detestability from start to finish. We are always painfully aware how dangerous she is, whether she smiles or not. Also, Evanna Lynch steals more scenes as Luna Lovegood than Katie Leung does as Cho Chang, and it is certainly interesting to see Neville (Matthew Lewis) towering over everybody, with Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) in the silent but strong role for the pivotal sextet.
After seeing this film I raced home and got out my copy of the book and starting cataloguing things that had been cut. Such comparisons are, as I suggested up top, inevitable for anyone who has read the book. At this point what I missed the most were some of the conversations between Maggie Smith's Professor McGonagall and Umbridge where Minerva verbally flaws the Inquisitor. The omission that I am focusing on the most is the whole bit about why Neville's family was a target of Voldermort (I agree with Harry: always say his name and thereby reduce its power), since that suggests implications for what will happen in the final book, which gets released in just ten more days. I also would have liked to have seen an over reaction to Harry discovering his father bullied Snape at Hogwarts. My favorite part ends up being the impressive wizard's duel between Voldermort and Dumbledore. Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg does a good job of whittling down Rowling's book and director David Yates does a competent job, but fans will simply want more. Also, we know what happens in the next book and all of the bad things that happen in this film cannot help but seem inconsequential in comparison. Plus, fans will be distracted by mining this film for clues as to what will happen in the last book. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. As you know, Warner Brothers has officially announced the Ultimate Editions of years 5 and 6. The product descriptions are quite wordy. There's a lot of talk about how fans should be excited about these new releases. But there are two words missing from the descriptions of both these products: Extended. Cut.
These are the words that sold me in the beginning. The promise of seeing extended cuts of the HP films was enough for me (and many, MANY other fans) to double dip and get the Ultimate SS and CoS Blu-rays. And you know what? There were worth it. Not because of the endless array of worthless swag packed into over-size boxes. I mean, seriously... Anybody out there framing their lenticular cards and hanging them over their mantles? I didn't think so. But I digress...
What sold me and so many other fans was the extended cuts. And so I began collecting the Ultimate Editions. And what excited me even more was the idea of more extended cuts to come, especially for The Order of the Phoenix.
Then PoA and GoF Ultimate Editions came out, and of course, there were no extended cuts. And Warner Bros. spun us a tale of directors and their creative preferences. And so, we all said "fair enough" (although I, for one, never quite bought that explanation). Still, I had hopes for OotP and HBP. Director David Yates is on record talking about having to cut 45 minutes from The Order of the Phoenix. And yet, here we are again with no extended cut to speak of. I'm sure the studio will spin us a tale of how busy Yates has been with the final installment of the franchise, thus making it impossible to return to these previous films and give the fans what they want: An official ultimate collector's replica of a square of Hogwart's Toilet Paper.
Oh, I meant AN EXTENDED CUT.
Now, I understand Warner Bros. desire to get these editions on the shelves before the final film hits theaters. As for me, I would gladly wait a year for these editions if it meant getting to see extended cuts of the films. But this is not about the fans. This is about the bottom line. If the WB can get a half-@$$ product onto the shelves sooner, and therefore presumably make more money in the final season of Potter movie mania, then who cares what the fans want? We will buy anything with the word Ultimate in front of it. Or maybe not.If you already have Order of the Phoenix in the two disc set as originally released, then why buy this edition. Oh, yeah, there's the third disc. Not a good enough reason. I'm a musician, so I bought the Ultimate edition of Goblet of Fire to get words from the composers, but neither Hooper nor Desplat have lived up to the level of music set by Williams and Doyle in the first four movies.
What made the first two Ultimate Editions wonderful was the presence of the "Extended cut". I bought them specifically for that. As witnessed on ABC Family, the added footed from the "Deleted Scenes" doesn't add much, but it makes scenes have a firmer pace. In the theatrical cut, particularly in Order of the Phoenix, the pace was juttery, totally lacking in the flow it needed. It may not have been just the script that reeked. I'm thinking David Yates was just getting used to directing a big movie. Just because it's in the middle of the series doesn't mean fans don't realize how wonderful every scrap of action is.
The argument that "Director's Cut" is somehow sacred hasn't kept WB and many other companies from issuing extended cuts, alternate versions, and even extensive revisions in the theater. Not all of them came from the directors in charge either think Superman 2 and The Three Musketeers (with Michael York, etc.) Besides the "Director's cut" usually comes about because WB says the movie must not exceed X amount of minutes.
I will try to record every movie from Prisoner of Azkaban on from ABC Family and hope I get extra footage. But even they aren't showing 45 minutes in Order of the Phoenix. In the Deleted Scenes, I've yet to see a DVD with more than 15 minutes in deleted scenes, and some of them are only alternate (more interesting) versions of existing scenes. Look at the Draco/Lucius scene in Borgin and Burkes in Chamber of Secrets. It was about 6 minutes long, some of which duplicated what was in the theatrical release. It added so much to the understanding of Draco and the dimension of his family. Yet, they cut it.
Who knows? Maybe those 45 minutes in Order of the Phoenix included the line from Umbrage that she send the dementors. I give four stars to the movie, but I have to knock it down one just because there is no extended cut. Shame on WB!I love Harry Potter, OK? So before you freak out, let me get that out of the way. The book version "Order of the Phoenix" was oustanding. I also think that previous directors have done pretty good to great jobs of translating the books to film (though I must say things went a little downhill once Chris Columbus left.)
All that being said, here's the kicker:
The movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" played like a Cliff's Notes adaptation of the book.
It lopped off a lot of the charm and romance and heartfelt pathos of the book--as well as a lot of the pure creative touches--in order to get the main arc of the story down. On top of that, it made "adaptations" to the book in order to get the story moving along--yet all these "compromises" were actually worse than what JK Rowling originally wrote!
Don't believe me? Here is only SOME of what is wrong with this movie:
--Poor devlopment of the Harry/Cho Chang arc (The kiss is about all you get. No real feeling behind it at all. No devlopement of Harry's crush. No final break up argument on Valentine's Day.)
--Making Cho into an evil snitch (which is why she and Harry broke up in the movie.) In the movie SHE is the one who betrays Harry. Stupid.
--No hospital scenes. No meeting of Neville's parents.
--Perfunctory explanation of Grimmaud Place
--Perfunctory development of Occlumency
--Harry gets to hear the prophecy while standing in the Department of Mysteries rather than later with Dumbledore. On top of this, he gets to hear the prophecy just by holding it in his hand. That makes no logical sense at all!
--The Department of Mysteries itself is compressed down into one room (the room with the prophecies.) All the cool rooms (with the blue lights, the 12 doors, the clocks, the brains, and so on) are all just ignored. Those were such tremendous inventions by JK Rowling--perhaps some of the most creative stuff in all the books-that I can't believe they just cut them!
--The room with the arch is made into a really boring place.
--The battle scene is really short and rather stupid.
--Snape's memory of being tortured by James Potter and his argument with Lily Potter is compressed into literally a total of 4 seconds of film. That scence is so PIVOTAL to the rest of the book series that I can't believe they got away with not fully developing the scene.
On top of all these plot issues, the WORST part about this movie is that there was really no FEELING in it. The whole range of emotional arcs that are so well-developed in the book are done absolutely terribly in the movie. Yeah, Sirius dies. In the book, it is a devatating moment. In the movie, it's like "Oh, well." Harry, Ron and Hermione don't have many moments together. There is no laughing in the movie. We don't get to feel pathos for Neville because his parents are insane. We don't get to feel the gratefulness of the Weasleys when Harry saves Mr Weasley. There are no lighthearted moments. Almost every scene except one or two that could have developed the emotional attachment we feel to the characters has been summarily excluded.
Like one other reviewer said: The movie is too short, yet it feels too long.
That is, sorry to say, a perfect description of a hack job.
I am quite disappointed.
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