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Tonight I caught Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a do-over from attempting to see it on Friday, which outing was ruined by a melted IMAX film. I’m so glad I saw this movie. Enough people have accused me of being unable to suspend disbelief recently, as I’ve vocally expressed my distaste for Transformers. A small corner of my mind was afraid maybe I had, in fact, lost touch with the common audience member. Perhaps I don’t know how to appreciate spectacle, and let myself go, be swallowed up in a movie.

Nope.

It’s just that Transformers sucks. That’s all.  Plenty of stuff blew up in HP5. There was much spectacle to be had (especially for those of us who saw it on the huge screen, with the third reel in 3-D…) And not once did the visual splendor come at the price of sacrificed plot.

[...teeny-tiny spoiler warning...] If you wish to know nothing, turn away now.

Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite of the books, but my favorite of the films. Harry’s teenager-ness, while masterfully written, made him an unlikeable protagonist at points in the novel. The movie tempers that.

Writing and directing for this movie was on par with the Azkaban film. Certainly this fifth film did the best job of adapting from novel to screenplay.

The one thing missing was the complexity of Harry’s relationship with Cho. In the book, we could see why Cho and Harry didn’t quite work together, partly because of each one’s emotional issues at this point in their lives. We could see how Harry botched things with her, and how, for all his skills, Harry has a lot to learn about girls. In the movie there was just the much talked-of kiss. It felt tacked-on.

But that was the only major story beat that felt mishandled. Otherwise, the film managed a more concise rendition of its book’s story than the others, all while remaining truer. Sure, there was no quidditch, but we didn’t miss it. Yes, the actual Order of the Phoenix was a bit thin, but that’s worth it for the movie’s masterful pacing. Subplots for Ron and Hermione were cut, but that didn’t leave their roles seeming empty, as it did for me in the Goblet of Fire adaptation. Writer and director utilized plenty of filmic shorthand to get to the spirit of the story, replacing entire scenes with a visual image, to masterful effect. Perhaps there were too many newspaper headlines feeding us story, but that was a necessary evil in telling the longest of the books as the shortest of the movies. As well, there were plenty of subtle nods that readers of the series would appreciate, none of which was essential to the understanding of the movie for non-readers. Michael Goldenberg is to be commended on his adaptation.

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