Harry Potter and the Register of Cash

I recently finished reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and saw the movie "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". My lovely wife read "Deathly Hallows" while I was at DexCon and pressed me to read it right away so she could talk to me about it. Then, since she was already in Potter mode, she wanted to go to see the movie.

Regarding "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", a number of reviews I'd read said that the critic was impressed by how J. K. Rowling had neatly tied up a number of long term threads in the last book. I wasn't as impressed, frankly. I felt that there were some elements that turned up in the last book for which the groundwork hadn't truly been established. The peculiarities of wands certainly weren't developed very much in the earlier books, then became of critical importance in this one. There were a few emotional reactions from some of the characters (primarily Harry's sudden and over-the-top anger with Lupin in one scene) that made little sense to me, and the ending included doing something with a powerful magical item that strikes me as flat out stupid and obviously dangerous.

Don't misunderstand me; I didn't hate the book. I just didn't like it as much as several of the previous books and felt that it was logically weak in spots. On the plus side, it did tie up some of the loose ends in very cool ways, including some elements I'd almost entirely forgotten. I really enjoyed the reappearance of characters from the very beginning. The final fate of virtually every character worked well for me, and I'm sure will more than satisfy the age group for which the series was written. My wife had come up with a far darker ending that I preferred to the one in the book, but I believe that ending would've been too much for the audience that's grown up with Harry. I can't see how they can possibly fit all of this into a cohesive movie, but of course they're going to have to try.

As for "Order of the Phoenix", they did a good job of condensing this one down to movie size. I really missed the deeper characterizations of the individual members of the Order, but that's the sort of thing that naturally had to give in to the time constraint. In fact, I'd say that the movie version was better in that Harry doesn't come off as being as whiny as he did in the book, which became annoying to me after a while. Big points to Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. I hated the character in the book, but there was exactly enough of her in the movie, and the actress nailed the part. It would've been very easy for her to go too far or not far enough with this character, and she did neither. Gamers may find it amusing to note that I read somewhere that she'd make a great voice for the Computer in a Paranoia game. I have to agree.

The ending of the movie makes sense if you've read the book (though the look of it differs significantly from the book in some respects), but I suspect that someone unfamiliar with the books and only trying to follow the story from the content of the films would be confused about what was going on in the end. I don't think someone only watching the films will have a clue about what Harry and his friends are actually doing in the Ministry of Magic toward the end (though I love the look the director gave those scenes). I found myself reminded of a night I spent watching David Lynch's movie version of "Dune" with two friends, explaining everything as we watched so they'd understand what was going on. Normally I'd consider it rude for someone to talk through an entire film we were watching as a group, but they kept asking questions and I kept answering them, and finally just gave running commentary. Afterwards, they both said that without my ongoing commentary, they'd have had no idea of what was happening and would've just given up and turned it off.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the Harry Potter books, and might even re-read them one of these days. Time will tell if they're actually the classics some say they are. And I'll definitely go the theater to see the remaining movies, if only to see how they adapt the books. The movies have been well executed, on the whole. I'll predict that these stories get re-made about 10-15 years after the last movie is released, probably in the form of a TV series or miniseries rather than movies. The actors playing the kids in the current movies will do at least cameo appearances in adult roles.