The books are so much better

* if you haven't seen Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, and you intend to do so, stop reading this blog (or read HP6 and want to) *

Last night Andrew and I went to go see HP5, otherwise known as HP and TOOTP. Or maybe just HP & TOP. We'll keep with HP5. As usual, my feelings are that it was only loosely based on the book. Which I know it's something like 700 plus pages and they had to turn all that into a 2 hour movie, but I really feel like that is an impossible feat, and as such, they don't do it well. So here are a few of my thoughts on the movie

* Daniel Radcliffe is hot. (it's okay to say that, I checked, he's over 18). In the earlier movies he was a cute little kid, then in the last one you could tell he would be an attractive adult. Well he's an adult now - albeit a young adult, but still. He's hot. Makes you want to be Ginny Weasly or Cho Chang.

* They did a better job with heads appearing in fires. In HP4, they had Sirius' head made up of ashes. The head is supposed to be floating above the fire, not in the ashes. They did a much better job of it this time around, but it's still not up to my standards. But a major improvement over HP4.

* They kept tying in themes from HP6. The whole "I better do this all on my own because people I care for keep getting hurt" mantra of Harry's is HP6. It's why he breaks up with Ginny Weasly. Yet it was really prominent in the movie HP5. Also, they keep using Levicorpus, which Harry doesn't learn until HP6, so the fact that it was in the HP5 movie doesn't make much sense.

* They completely left out the Sirius-is-replacing-James-with-Harry theme from the movie - which is fine, it's a theme that definitely didn't have to be in the movie. But, then, why bother having Sirius call Harry "James" right before he dies? What's the point of even throwing it in?

* Dumbledore's Army (or DA). The naming of the illicit Dark Arts group is never explained in the movie. They never even touch on in until they are caught and Harry and his friends are dragged in to Dumbledore's office and Dumbledore flees. If you hadn't read the book you would have zero idea why it was called Dumbledore's Army. And that's kind of key to the storyline.

* Nevile's mother has a butch haircut. I don't think so.

* THEY LEFT THE PROPHECY OUT OF THE FREAKING MOVIE!! I mean, come on. They had the basic gist of it, but how do leave the prophecy out of the movie??? It's only 4 lines!
"The one with the power to Vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have powers the Dark Lord knows not... And either must die at the hands of the other, for neither can live while the other survives". How hard is it to fit the entire prophecy into the movie? the Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies is huge because that's why it could be Neville. And the And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal is WHY he has the scar... and also why it ISN'T Neville. I just don't understand how you don't put such a key part of the storyline into the movie in its entirety.

All in all - a good movie, but you will not understand the story as a whole if you did not read the book. But the books are 100 times better than the movies anyway. I suspect early next week I will be reviewing HP7. I wanted to recap HP6 before, but it's only a matter of a hours until HP7 is release and I want to read it as quickly as possible because once a large amount of people know what happened, I think it might be hard not find out. Especially since the whole book is already online!