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I went to see Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix at the cinema on Sunday, and while I was impressed with the film as a whole, my girlfriend was very disappointed with how the film rewrote and bastardised the book. So I asked her to write a post detailing what was missing and modified for the film.

Order Of The Phoenix Review by Cloudy

Overall the film was a decent effort at retelling the epic story told by J.K. Rowling but I thought the acting in the early stages of the film was a bit wooden. Harry, Ron and Hermione didn’t seem to have their usual rapport going on until part way into the story. I did, however, like the portrayal of Dudley Dursley to be a moronic scally buffoon, it fitted in very well with my idea of an adolescent Dudley and gang.

I was severely distressed by the amount of scenes that had gone missing as Order of the Phoenix under went it’s transformation from book to film. In some cases extra scenes had been added to cover up the missing parts, but why bother doing that when the original scene would have worked just as well, if not better.

Some examples of missing or modified scenes:

Mundungus Fletcher and his stolen cauldrons, actually he wasn’t in the film at all, even though he had orders from Dumbledore to watch over Harry in Little Whinging;

Mr Weasley shares his office with Perkins. Perkins informed Mr Weasley that Harry’s trial had been moved to the department of mysteries at short notice and they hurried to courtroom 10 as Harry was already late for his trial, where as in the film Kingsley Shacklebolt told Mr Weasley in the lift and they calmly went to courtroom 10 where Mr Weasley stood for what felt like an age outside the lift before sending harry off cheerfully into his trial;

Grimauld Place and the cleaning of the noble and most ancient house of Black, or not as the case may be. There were no doxies for Fred & George to steal for their skiving snackbox experiments. No bogart to distress Mrs Weasley when it turned itself into a dead version each of the Weasley family members. No Buckbeak. No jokes about Kreacher snogging Mrs Black’s knickers, though I think Kreacher’s sinister presence on the whole was done very well;

No Quidditch and no confiscation of Harry’s Firebolt by Umbridge;

St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies. Who, what, how, why, where? Where indeed! That whole section where Mr Weasley was in St Mungo’s after the snake attack forseen by Harry in one of his many dreams about the department of mysteries seemed to be covered with an invisibility cloak.

In that section of the story we meet Gilderoy Lockheart as he struggles with his own memory charm (see chamber of secrets), Neville Longbottom and his parents who went mad after being tortured by Bellatrix Lestrange, and an Auror whose mind had been fuddled by the Imperius curse was delivered a plant that would kill him only days later;

Cho Chang didn’t grass on the members of the D.A. it was her friend Marietta;

The Weasley twins create a diversion for Harry so he can break into Umbridge’s office to use her fireplace. They set off a “Weasley’s Wizarding Weazes Portable Swamp” which none of the teachers would remove while Umbridge was at Hogwarts, and Professer Flitwick only shrank and cordoned off as a tribute to the Weasley’s excellent charmwork after she’d left;

Harry breaks into Umbridge’s office to contact Sirius. He speaks to Kreacher who misleads Harry into believing Siruis to be captured by Voldemort when really he’s upstairs feeding Buckbeak. In the film we see nothing of this;

Umbridge and Fudge confront Dumbledore over the discovery of the D.A. Originally Marietta’s memory was quickly modified by Kingsley Shacklebolt, who also hexed the Auror Dawlish as Dumbledore escaped from his office at Hogwarts. The Ministry employees awoke thinking Dumbledore had hexed them all and escaped in style;

The Ministry of Magic rescue mission. There was so much missing from this section I can’t think where to begin. Where was the time room with the unhatching and rehatching hummingbird? Where was the room with the brains in which Ron gets tangled up with a brain and can’t stop himself laughing? Where was the revolving room full of doors? Harry never passes the prophecy to Lucius malfoy because Harry’s friends never got captured by the Death Eaters, why cut out all the scenes as Harry and pals journey to the hall of prophecy just to replace it with a scene with less action and adventure.

Despite the missing parts and the additions of parts that shouldn’t have been there, the fight scene was a spectacular combination of quality acting and great effects. I especially liked the way the Death Eaters moved as though they were half made of dense black smoke, and the Aurors as if they were wisps of purest white;

Well that’s just some of the missing bits that really shouldn’t have been left out or changed. Though I was slightly disappointed by the film I guess that’s all to the credit of Rowling’s writing talent. ‘Order of the Phoenix’ is one of the most compelling books in the Harry Potter series for me so it makes sense to me that the film version couldn’t best it or even equal it.

So do you agree with the above and think too much was ripped out of the film? Would you rather have had a longer film with all the missing parts included? If you’ve seen the film, did you notice any other missing or altered scenes? Let me know in the comments box.

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