There aren’t spoilers in this post, so if you’ve been on Harry alert in your recent web browsing, you’re safe here. I don’t ruin anything, at least not as bad as the screenwriters did.

Sorry if there are a few things missing from the title of this post, but I saw the new Harry Potter movie, and I think it should be renamed to reflect all the stuff they didn’t include from the book. In fact, maybe it should be called H.P. O’ PHX. All of the movies have been shortened versions of the books, and I’ve been okay with that, since I think they’ve produced acceptable entertaining re-enactments of some of the storylines. (Goblet of Fire was a bit disappointing, but still exciting on its own.) I don’t think this movie reflects the novel, to the point that if you haven’t read the book, nothing is going to make sense. (If you haven’t read the books but are following the movies, *cough* Aaron *cough*, go flog yourself, and then watch the 5th movie and tell me if it made sense to you.) They made really questionable decisions on what to cut, what to include, and what to fabricate to make what they did include relate to other things. And they missed the point of the book.

When I finished re-reading Order of the Phoenix last week, it was clear to me what the major themes from the story were, where the conflict was rooted, why the angst was important, etc. I didn’t get any of that from the movie. Worse than that, I didn’t get ANY themes or conflicts or resolutions from the movie version and that’s empty and disappointing. (I would say more about the differences in the resolutions of the movie and the novel, but I promised no spoilers.)

So, yeah, I didn’t like this movie. If you’d like to discuss it with me sometime, feel free. But not this week, since I’ve got to finish rereading the 6th book so I can be ready for the 7th on Friday. Wheeee!!!