Order of the Phoenix - thoughts

[erastes]

First off - the Trailer for The Golden Compass looks - .... INCREDIBLE. There are no words other than wow. I can't wait for that!

OK - Thoughts:

Things I liked

Thestrals
Umbridge - brilliant and perfect
Dursleys - they are so good.
Luna - how wonderful is she?
Fred and George (get better and better)
Swashbuckling Sirius
The Black Family Tree
The Umbridge abduction/rape
The tiny tiny maruaders scene (how beautiful is little snape?) (Very. Lucius)
Lucius and the Death Eaters, really bloody scary
Bellatrix (she's not my vision of Bella, that would be someone more like Nigella Lawson but she did a bloody good job - and if she's not the beauty that Bella is supposed to be, well then, we only have to look to Sirius as he's not the handsome beast he's supposed to be either
The room of requirement


Things I didn't

Grawp. Why bother with the moronic lump?
No mention of Regulus
No mention of Narcissa being related - hence no explanation of what Kreacher did
Invisible Ron
Nigel. Who the HELL is Nigel?
No DADA OWL
Swooping Aurors and DE's and really... black de's and white aurors? ick
A very muddly to watch DE and Auror fight
Harry giving Lucius the prophecy? In which universe did this happen?
And Lucius dropping it? (Excuse me, but I would NEVER drop anything. One isn't Tonks.)
Sirius' death being deliberately made final to snuff out the final bit of hope any of us had for his ressurection.

The whole film made me remember why I loathe and despise DD though, he failed everyone. EVERYONE. As bloody usual. Hope he dies. Oh yes. HURRAH! (Hoorah)


There's probably lots more I could say but everyone's probably already said it, but all in all I did enjoy it, but I won't bother with it until the DVD.

I'll say something though - WB's could easily leave a lot of stuff in and have two films, a four hour film for the fans (which they would go and see over and over) and a 2 hour film for everyone else.

Comments

[ceciliatan.livejournal.com]

I am mostly in accord with you regarding the film. I saw it twice on opening day, once in a 5pm preview showing for Harvard folks (I went with a friend who works for the university) and then a midnight show.

The one thing I sort of liked about all the swooping in the Ministry battle -- although it was ridiculous that DEs were black and Aurors white when Sirius *just* gave a speech about how the world isn't divided into...well anyway...-- is that JKR has never given a decent explanation of how wizards would fight. My own fanfics delve into this subject somewhat, and there *must* be Apparition while in combat or it simply doesn't work. But that's hard to describe in fiction. Easy to show on film though, and as the smoky swoopiness matches what the Death Eaters did to appear in the cemetery at the end of GOF, it seems that the filmmakers have incorporated that possibility.

Or maybe they just though it looked cool.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I suppose so, I'd never really thought about it, I always just considered that hexes were fired and if you were quick enough to counterhex or sheild you were protected - never understood why everyone didn't just use Avada Kedavra anyway, I mean the DE's don't exactly care how illegal it is and there's no counterhex.

But yes, a lot to like too. And there's nothing sexier than a Lucius with his wand out. *G*

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

I thought Umbridge was brilliant as well. And Luna. She irritated me in the book, but I thought she was much more sympathetic and dignified in the movie.

I liked the battle between the Aurors and the Death Eaters. It left me with a feeling of strong distinction between the experts and the kids who were fiddling around with magic in the room of requirement. It made the battle seem more dire to me, as it didn't look like even Harry could just pull a spell out of his arse and save the day.

There were a lot of points in the movie where I understood a reference, but knew that if I hadn't read the book, it would have been a WTF moment. And if they weren't going to go into the subplot, I really thought Grawp was unnecessary.

But why did they cut out so much of the Snapeage? ::cries::

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I liked the battle in the bits I could see, but it was quite muddly and dofficult to follow, I was expecting more, specially having seen some of the background stuff about them learning to fight with wands - it just didn't come over as impressive enough for me.

I just worry that Grawp is going to be vital in some way which is a horrible thought.

And I know - I would have liked to have seen the Sirius-Snape-Harry argument, which wouldn't have taken long. There was no indication in the book as to just how much Snape hates Sirius

LOL homicidal Nigella

[dubaiyan.livejournal.com]

Missed Narcissa.

Re: LOL homicidal Nigella

[erastes.livejournal.com]

And there was hardly any Draco either, but I suppose he does get more of a part in the next film.

[divinereverie.livejournal.com]

Nigel is apparently what one gets when one doesn't want to convince the kid who played Colin Creevey in COS to come back...because apparently he's gone goth?

Nigel = Colin Creevey + Dennis Creevey + random name. Stir and serve over ice!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Silly really - no-one would have minded if Colin had been another actor - and they could have made him Dennis, instead. *grrrrr*

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Nigel sounds oh, so very English. Dennis? Could be from Iowa. They're just fixing up JKR's poor naming. I hear for movie 6, they're changing Ron's name to Basil Rupert. *snorts*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I never thought of Dennis as being an American name, I have to admit, it seems very English to me. but then I assume that all americans are called Rock and Brad and Jim-Bob.

*G*

[rosie-red73.livejournal.com]

Didn't you think Lucius' speech to Harry when he was trying to persuade him to give him prophecy was just GORGEOUS? BE MORE SQUEEFUL! I totally melted over that. They were MUCH more scary though weren't they? It wasn't so much the kids managing to hold them off with stupid spells, it was more the DEs toying with them until the bit in the veil room where they just sweep in and GRAB. And then the Order comes in and then you see that the kids didn't have a hope in hell really, with all the fabulous (as you put it) swashbuckling. JKR should have done it more like that.

And yes, the black/white swooshing was stupid. What, did they all sit in an order meeting and say to Snape 'Most important: Find out what colour their swooshing is going to be so we can be different. Try and get them to go for black - fits in better with the whole good/evil thing.'

[erastes.livejournal.com]

in the film it was much more believable - it was obvious (to me) that LUcius was controlling the DE's that they were under orders not to fire in the prophecy room, just to scare them out where - as you say - they could grab them.

I found LUcius' voice gorgeous of course but I went off the Harry-Lu after I got Green Lights out of my system I think - if it was Lizard's Harry I could see it more, but I can't see my Lucius snogging EMO Dan.

But I hope there's more on the DVD.

[eternalism.livejournal.com]

As soon as I heard that little "Hem hem," I knew I was going to want to smackabitch.

And Luna was wonderful. I really liked her portrayal there. There should have been more Tonks, though. My first reaction to seeing Tonks was, "Holy crap, she's hot!"