though only Prisoner Of Azkaban has thus far been a truly successful adaptation of Potter’s exploits from page to screen, Order Of The Phoenix is the first to really fail; Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (both making their series debut) have mercilessly hacked their way through the fifth installment’s dark, rich corridors and emerged with what amounts to a poorly-compiled Greatest Hits, relegating most of its surviving characters and subplots to clumsy cameos and asides that may as well have joined the other half of the book on the cutting room floor. abridgement is, of course, a sad reality of adaptation (especially for works as wonderfully, deceptively dense as J.K. Rowling’s) but Goldenberg’s unfocused stabs deal just as much damage to the central narrative, from the negligent muddling of the book’s angsty Dark Side Of The Force themes to the inexplicable excision of crucial events and information, not the least of which being the poignant resolution of Order’s central MacGuffin. (sorry, Neville.) even the climactic Ministry Of Magic sequence, which should have played better on the screen than on the page, is rushed and diminished, most egregiously in the case of a key casualty, robbed by cliché of its devastation. all that said, the film isn’t bad, or, given Chris Columbus’ bloodless initial entries, even necessarily the series’ weakest; its young stars continue to grow as actors, the additions to the cast are characteristically spot-on, and for all the new holes Rowling’s story doesn’t falter in its intrigue. but without the mystery infrastructure of the previous films to prop up the narrative, Yates would have done well to put a little more faith in the intricacies of his source material, and as it stands there’s no excuse for the longest book producing the shortest film.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
david yates’ HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (2007)
though only Prisoner Of Azkaban has thus far been a truly successful adaptation of Potter’s exploits from page to screen, Order Of The Phoenix is the first to really fail; Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (both making their series debut) have mercilessly hacked their way through the fifth installment’s dark, rich corridors and emerged with what amounts to a poorly-compiled Greatest Hits, relegating most of its surviving characters and subplots to clumsy cameos and asides that may as well have joined the other half of the book on the cutting room floor. abridgement is, of course, a sad reality of adaptation (especially for works as wonderfully, deceptively dense as J.K. Rowling’s) but Goldenberg’s unfocused stabs deal just as much damage to the central narrative, from the negligent muddling of the book’s angsty Dark Side Of The Force themes to the inexplicable excision of crucial events and information, not the least of which being the poignant resolution of Order’s central MacGuffin. (sorry, Neville.) even the climactic Ministry Of Magic sequence, which should have played better on the screen than on the page, is rushed and diminished, most egregiously in the case of a key casualty, robbed by cliché of its devastation. all that said, the film isn’t bad, or, given Chris Columbus’ bloodless initial entries, even necessarily the series’ weakest; its young stars continue to grow as actors, the additions to the cast are characteristically spot-on, and for all the new holes Rowling’s story doesn’t falter in its intrigue. but without the mystery infrastructure of the previous films to prop up the narrative, Yates would have done well to put a little more faith in the intricacies of his source material, and as it stands there’s no excuse for the longest book producing the shortest film.
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