In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry returns for his fifth year of study at Hogwarts and discovers that much of the wizarding community has been denied the truth about the teenager's recent encounter with the evil Lord Voldemort. Fearing that Hogwarts' venerable Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is lying about Voldemort's return in order to undermine his power and take his job, the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, appoints a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher to keep watch over Dumbledore and the Hogwarts students. But Professor Dolores Umbridge's Ministry-approved course of defensive magic leaves the young wizards woefully unprepared to defend themselves against the dark forces threatening them and the entire wizarding community, so at the prompting of his friends Hermione and Ron, Harry takes matters into his own hands. Meeting secretly with a small group of students who name themselves "Dumbledore's Army," Harry teaches them how to defend themselves against the Dark Arts, preparing the courageous young wizards for the extraordinary battle that lies ahead.
I had read a couple of reviews before going to see this and they all kept saying that anyone who hadn't read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies wouldn't really like this movie. Seriously? Who in the blue hell decides to start with Harry Potter by randomly seeing the FIFTH movie!?! Anyone who does that deserves not to get what is going on. However, after having seen the movie - I think I can identify a little bit more with those reviews because even for those of you that have read the books and seen the movies, you would think that you had missed the first twenty minutes of the movie if you showed up twenty seconds late. This is due to the fact that this Harry Potter hits the ground running. Unlike the previous four movies, there is no slow build up. The movie starts pretty much right where Goblet Of Fire left off and this movie is all about the main storyline. There wasn't any time wasted on subplots and what not. While some of the die hard fans might be mad that it left out chunks of the book, I loved it. There were NO dead spots at all and the bottom line is that this book (as well as the sixth book) were much different than the previous four. The previous four books each had more of a stand alone story to it with Goblet Of Fire ending with the return of Voldemort. To make more sense in a Star Wars parallel, books 1 - 4 were like Star Wars and books 5 - 6 are like The Empire Strikes Back. This movie definitely had that feel that you were watching part of a whole instead of a seperate movie. Regardless - I thought that the movie was well done and was kind of glad that there weren't the useless 40 minutes of fluff that were in the other Harry Potter movies. This movie franchise also deserves major kudos for still being amazing five movies in. What other franchise has ever done that?
I very strongly recommend that everyone check this out. Even if you haven't entered the world of Harry Potter by now - go watch the other four and check this one out asap, people!
