Harry Potter
Disclaimer: I like Harry Potter and I have read all the books. With the just released 5th movie and the new book arriving this weekend there will be an iPhone-like crazyness of Harry Potter related items in your feed reader. If you don't care for all that, just skip this post.
Like announced previously I was to the new Harry Potter movie Order of the Phonix, yesterday. Did I enjoy it? Hell, yes. Do I think it was the best Harry Potter movie ever? No. In fact it might be the worst so far.
But lets start with the good things. The actors are really great. The book characters of Dolores Umbridge and Luna Lovegood matched perfectly with their movie counterparts. The kids being grown up now was no show-stopper at all. Scenery, lighting, music, special effects, everything you expect from a modern blockbuster was great. It could have been a perfect movie. Or maybe two.
And that's exactly the problem of the film. It was no short one, but still everything felt rushed. Nothing took long enough to sink in, it was just a run from scene to scene. I saw the previous four movies with Kaddi during the last week and those did a better job in this regard.
Sure, trying to fit a 870 page book into an 138 minute movie is no easy task. Especially not with a target group where probably 70% have read the book. You can't easily adopt such a book to the big screen by leaving out or changing too many things without making the book lovers angry. So with the given time frame it was possibly the best movie they could make.
Still, I'm not happy with it. I would have loved to see two movies per book. I would have been happy with going to the cinema twice. I would have been happy to pay entrance fees, nachos and beer for two movies. They could have made easily twice the amount of the shitload of money they made already. But for some reason they did not do that. Instead they produced 5 movies which are incomprehensible for those who haven't read the book and crammed, detailless to the ones who did.
Anyway I'm looking forward to the new book and yes, to the next movie as well.