Harry Potter And The Order Of the Phoenix Essay

J. K. Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter books series that began with the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while Warner Bros. owns the rights to produce the movies based upon the book series. The latest outing of the movie version of the book series is the adventure filled â€Å"Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix†, movie number 5 of a 7 series film outing. Released in the year 2007, the CGI heavy film stars Daniel Radcliffe in the titular role together with Emma Watson and Rupert Grint portraying the highly important support characters of Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley respectively. The now more light colored movie setting, when compared to the previous directorial jobs of Chris Colombus and Alfonso Cuaron, was imagined and crafted by the imagination of first time Harry Potter director David Yates. In order to be able to follow the story as it unfolds throughout the movie, one must be an avid Harry Potter book or movie follower for the storyline of the movie is not for the uninitiated and will leave any viewer without a background in the story series feeling frustrated and left out of some of the seemingly inside jokes being thrown around in the movie (e. g.  Who are you and what have you done with Hermione Granger? ) The film picks up the story from where the prior movie, â€Å"Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire† left off. Harry is coming to terms with the death of Cedric Diggory at the end of the previous movie while also trying to figure out who he really is as a person. Is he a bad person trying to be good or, as his Godfather Sirius Black told him â€Å"just a good person to whom bad things happen? † All of his personal doubts make him choose isolate himself from even his closest friends because of the way most of the school views him as a liar. As a character, Harry develops like any normal teenage boy. He dabbles in the typical first love, first kiss, and often rebellious streak that his main nemesis, Lord Voldemort, portrayed in the film by the superb British actor Ralphe Fiennes, often takes advantage of. I observed this particular movie to be, in a a way, the coming of age for the students of Hogwart’s School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although the screenplay writer Michael Goldenberg took tremendous amounts of liberties in the retelling of the book, the main plot and lessons from the book still managed to translate well to the big screen. After all, it is no joke trying to translate an 870 page book to the big screen with a running time of almost 3 hours. Die hard fans of the book will probably scream â€Å"Sacrilege! † at the way certain key elements that were perceived in the book, such as the magic mirror Sirius gave to Harry on Christmas Day, or the jinxed DA coins that Hermione gave to the member of their little organization in order to prevent the members from telling about what they were up to in the Room Of Requirement. But I guess that one will realize that all the key elements were retained within in one way or another. The fans will also most likely not appreciate the way certain duties in the book seemed to have gotten reassigned in the movie. For example, in the book, it was a member of the DA who told Prof. Umbridge about where their organization meets, not Cho Chang. What did help the story to move along quite well on film is the total cutting out of the minor subplots in the book that really had no place in the movie version. The real magic of the Harry Potter movie series seems to lie in the way that author J. K.  Rowling has managed to write a book series that mirrors the problems facing teenagers in such a way that the readers and the movie viewers who grew up with the story will be experiencing the same things almost simultaneously in real life. The movie has real lessons to teach, such as standing up and fighting for what one believes in, believing in yourself and accepting the consequences of your actions, and finally, knowing that there is always an easier way out of things but that may not always be the right path to take.