Janet Batchler at Quoth the Maven says Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is “a disappointment” as a movie with a story to tell but “a complete triumph” as a trailer for the book.
Among her observations:
If one were to translate the 850 page book into screenplay form without any but the most obvious of cuts, my guess is the screenplay would run about 1200 pages. That’s a 20 hour movie. So if you want, think of Order of the Phoenix-The Movie as a trailer for that 20 hour movie we’ll never see.
FWIW, I have always said that the Harry Potter books ought to be adapted as a TV series — or as a series of mini-series. Each book spans a full school year, and that’s about the same as a regular season on television, right? And a regular season of American television typically lasts about 20 episodes, right?
British seasons — or “series” as they call them — tend to be shorter, as few as six episodes each. But even if each Harry Potter story was compressed to that length, it would probably still allow more time to savour the character moments that are consistently cut from the film versions of these increasingly complex tales.
True, adapting Harry Potter for television would probably be less lucrative and less spectacular — no IMAX screenings — and each installment would be less of an “event”, but letting the stories unfold this way would be truer to the spirit of the books, I think.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In