Chief Delphi - Order of the Phoenix

Yeah...

I had to write a lot of articles for our school newspaper over the summer. One is a review on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Here's the result of it:

Quote:

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I stood in line with my friend Nick an hour before midnight on June 20th at Wegman’s to buy a copy of the fifth book in the Harry Potter series. There were relatively few people there but the line grew faster and faster, and soon, extra cashiers were stationed for midnight. The line was filled with children, teenagers, adults, and college students. It seems J. K. Rowling’s magical series about a boy wizard has truly captivated audiences of all ages - how often before her influential series have such a diverse group of people lined up at midnight to buy books?

Following the same timeline as the other books in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix begins with Harry living in seclusion with his Aunt and Uncle on Privet Drive. Dudley pretends to be at the home of friends but spends most of his time beating up little kids with his gang. When Harry and Dudley find themselves together one night, they are attacked in an alleyway by two dementors. Harry succeeds in driving them away. He’s then taken away by members of “the Order of the Phoenix”, who are wizards and witches organized together by Professor Dumbledore, to live at Sirius Black’s house, the headquarter of the Order. There are many old faces such as Lupin and the real Moody, but many new characters too. At headquarters, Harry learns of Voldemort’s plan to steal some “weapon” from the Ministry of Magic and news of the wizard world. He’s finally able to gain some closure on a topic forbidden to be discussed at the Vernon household.

Returned to school, Harry is ridiculed by many due to the ludicrous comments and articles of the wizard newspaper, The Daily Prophet. Hagrid is still missing and a new defense of the dark arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, is arguably the most horrible teacher who has taken the position. As a representative of the Ministry of Magic, she teaches nothing practical and forces detention upon anyone who finds the method unsuitable. After a certain incident, she is given the position as “High Inquisitor of Hogwarts” and acts an oppressive figure in the school, who bans a magazine due to the truth it contains and also stops Harry from playing Quidditch. Even other teachers find her actions and methods to be alarming. Harry’s other loathed teacher, Snape, seems only more abhorred of him, and when the two of them must meet to help Harry get rid of mysterious dreams of the Department of Mysteries, neither is comfortable.

Unlike the previous books in the series, the plot seems a bit less important than Harry’s maturation and struggle to fit in. Harry is 15 and very moody. He yells with very little provocation at his best friends and whines about his about all the pressures of his fame. For the first time, the word “$@#$@#$@#$@#” appears several times in the book and many of the characters’ actions are cut off by hyphens or dots (which is quite harsh considering kindergarteners are reading it). And for the first half of the book, it truly seems that the focus is with dealing with Harry’s emotional problems. When Harry is able to spend time with Cho Chang, whom he is infatuated with, he cannot understand many things that she’s gone through with the loss of Cedric, acts without consideration, and complains about the ambiguity of what girls are thinking. Harry’s hormones seem to take more precedence within him than his ability to think things through with his brain, which is uncharacteristic of members of his school house, Gryffindor. In his battles, too, Harry finds problems with the distinctions between good and evil. As his Godfather, Sirius, says, “The world isn’t split into good people and death eaters.”

But readers need not beware of the change in style. J. K. Rowling adds plenty of mischief and humor to the storyline. Fred and George, especially, play a much larger role they have in helping out Harry. One of their pranks to distract Umbridge from her office is even immortalized in a hallway by Professor Flitwik (it’s a swamp). The action in the book seemed to have lessened in the first two-thirds with the focus on Harry’s development, but the story is not lacking in plot, mystery, or strange new characters. It is J. K. Rowling’s ability to intertwine so many plot details and events in such a convincing, magical world, that she rises to the level of Dahl and Tolkien.

At 870 pages and 255,000 words, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix topples Goblet of Fire’s length by 80,000 words. The book is long, word-wise, but it passes by quickly. The final hundred and fifty pages seem to make up for all the lost action and involve more characters than ever before, and a huge setting in the Ministry of Magic. The ending of the book, continuing with the unprecedented style of the book, provides a great deal of closure to Harry and the reader. Putting the book down after reading through the night to finish it, I didn’t feel at all left out of information as I did in the first four books, nor the need to ask J. K. Rowling to have added more to the story. And perhaps this is a good thing, because readers may not be in desperation of for the release of the next book, which may give more time for Rowling to conjure up another fascinating story.

When addressing the topic of Harry Potter, it needs to be taken into account of how big the industry for it has grown. The market for Harry Potter toys and games continues to increase as more kids pick up the books and become enthralled with its world. However, perhaps the biggest market is the film industry. Yes, the Potter movies have been incredibly successful when considering the profit they’ve made, but they’ve not given justice to the books. At around three hours per movie so far, a simple questions should arise – how will Warner Brothers plan on fitting everything that has happened in Order of the Phoenix into a movie? Will they continue to botch it up and cut off even more important scenes than they have in previous films? Robert Frost once said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation”, but in the case of the films, the translation seemed to be done poorly by machine. The movie series has created a piece of work targeted at young kids while J. K. Rowling’s books have created a magical world where the target audience is ages one and way up. I hope that Warner Brothers continues to do a horrible job. I wish that they do such a horrible job that people of all ages may grow tired of it and instead find pleasure in reading, an activity which will possibly find new levels of popularity with J. K. Rowling’s spellbinding, timeless work.

[edit]Lol, I looked at my post and saw that D @ M N was readily edited out by the forum script... hilarious.[/edit]