Phoenix pick a part

It’s the longest Potter book… and the second shortest of the Potter films.

So that bodes well.

After Mike Newell bid the Potter series goodbye, David Yates was hired, and proceeded to direct the rest of the Potter series. And while the cohesion is much appreciated, I’d argue that this film stumbles for the fact that Yates is clearly finding his footing in the world. Order of the Phoenix is also the only Potter film that wasn’t penned by Steve Kloves. This time around it was Michael Goldenberg, who had previously written screenplays for Contact and Peter Pan (yay!) and would go on to write the script for Green Lantern (oh dear). This film also came out about a week-and-a-half before the final Potter book, muddying its position in the legacy. I recall enjoying this film very much the first time around, but I don’t think I was in much of a position to pick it apart–the Deathly Hallows was looming too close.

The opening of the film is actually one of its strongest points; we can perceive Harry’s isolation because the setting informs it, and the colors are all washed out to convey his depression. Harry Melling thankfully filled out exactly as the role of Dudley required, making his part as heavyweight boxing bully come off perfectly. (He lost too much weight between this film and Deathly Hallows, so they pad him out with prosthetics for the final go-around.) The appearance of the dementors ups the ante instantly and gets the movie going at a healthy clip. The arrival of the Order members is great, mostly because the flight sequence across London is one of the better ones we’ve had in the series. Then Harry gets to Grimmauld Place and sees his godfather cuddling Remus Lupin like so:

Whatever, I always keep my arm around old friends during tense war meetings.

This is supposed to be the movie featuring emo!Harry, and maybe it’s because you can’t render spoken words in ALL CAPS as a human (yelling or harsh tones just don’t do the same thing to your brain that reading all caps does, I can’t explain it), but Daniel Radcliffe’s angst comes off as entirely reasonable in this film. And because Steve Kloves didn’t write the script, Ron is given better dialogue all the way around, and Rupert Grint finally gets the chance to show that he can do more than mug a camera and get his voice to crack on cue. The odd combativeness in Hermione that I noted in the previous film is missing in this film, where it would have been more appropriate. She just super sunny and sweet for the majority of the film… in fact, I might go so far as to say that she seems out of character.

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