Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix **** (2007, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Helena Bonham Carter, Imelda Staunton) – Classic Movie Review 1130

The 2007 fifth Harry Potter film, directed by David Yates and written by Michael Goldenberg, follows Harry’s fifth year at Hogwarts as the Ministry of Magic is in denial of Lord Voldemort’s return. It’s satisfyingly dark toned, entertaining and action packed.

As ever, Daniel Radcliffe plays the now 15-year-old Harry Potter and Rupert Grint and Emma Watson are his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The noticeably superior and mature performances by the three young stars improve with each film. Imelda Staunton’s performance as Dolores Umbridge and Helena Bonham Carter’s as Bellatrix Lestrange are exceptionally bright and jolly.

Exterior  filming took place in England and Scotland and as usual at Leavesden Film Studios in Watford for interior locations from February to November 2006. Post-production continued for several months to add visual effects. The film’s budget was between $150million and $200million.

Produced by David Heyman and David Barron, it is the first Potter film to be released in IMAX 3D.

British television director David Yates was chosen to direct the film after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) director Mike Newell, as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillermo del Toro, Matthew Vaughn and Mira Nair turned down offers. Yates says he was asked because the studio saw him fit to handle an edgy and emotional film with a political backstory. Goldenberg replaced Steve Kloves, the screenwriter of the first four Potter films, who was working on other projects.

The 23rd highest-grossing film of all time, it was acclaimed as ‘the best one yet’ by source author J K Rowling.

It grossed nearly $940 million total, second in 2007 only to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

Evanna Lynch won the role of Luna Lovegood over 15,000 other girls who attended the open casting call, waiting in a line of hopefuls that stretched a mile long.

Stuart Craig returns as set designer for the fifth time. There are a number of notable new sets: the atrium in the Ministry of Magic is over 200 feet in length, the largest and most expensive set built for the Potter film series to date. Craig was inspired by the ceramic tile fake classical architecture of early London Underground stations and the Burger King building by Tottenham Court Road station in London, where he said the Victorian façade ’embodies the age’.

Leavesden Film Studios in Watford was again used for the interior scenes, including the Great Hall, Privet Drive and Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place were shot. Filming at Platform 9¾ took place at London’s King’s Cross Station, as it has in the past.

A phone booth near Scotland Yard in Victoria was used for Harry and Arthur Weasley to enter the Ministry, while Westminster tube station was shut on 22 October 2006 to allow for filming of Arthur Weasley accompanying Harry to his trial at the Ministry of Magic. This scene is about seven seconds long and cost £250,000 to film.

(To close a tube station for filming costs between £2,000 and £500,000 per hour, depending on station, time and number of people.) Other scenes were filmed in and around Oxford and at nearby Blenheim Palace in Woodstock.

Yates originally shot a three-hour film that had to be cut back to 138 minutes, so several locations were used for various scenes do not appear in the final cut.

The film required over 1,400 visual effects shots, and the London-based company Double Negative created more than 950 of them.  Nicholas Hooper is the composer following John Williams, who scored the first three films, and Patrick Doyle, who did the fourth.

At 766 pages in the British edition and 870 in the American edition, Order of the Phoenix is the longest book in the Harry Potter series, giving screenwriter Goldenberg a challenge: ‘My job was to stay true to the spirit of the book, rather than to the letter.’ Sadly, he dumps the Quidditch stuff’ that Grinch had been looking forward to performing.

Next up: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009).

British actor Robert Hardy, fondly remembered for his role as the Minister For Magic Cornelius Fudge in four Harry Potter films and as Siegfried Farnon in TV’s All Creatures Great and Small, died on 3 August 2017, aged 91. The four Harry Potter films are 2002’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2005’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1130

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Handprints, footprints and wand prints of (from left to right) Watson, Radcliffe and Grint.

Filming of aerial and backdrop shots took place at Glen Etive, Scotland.

Some Order of the Phoenix members in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix film adaptation, from left to right: Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Albus Dumbledore.

The Potters as illustrated by Mary GrandPré.