DVD Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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I would hate to be the person charged with putting together a special edition DVD for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The film is magnificent, the best Harry Potter yet, but there’s only so much you can do with DVDs for this series, now five films long. In previous Harry Potter DVD releases, we’ve experienced interviews with J.K. Rowling, Hogwart’s classroom tours, interviews with the principal actors, and featurette after featurette about the making of the individual films. It all comes down to “What hasn’t been covered?” for the fifth disc in the series.

The obvious answer would have been a director commentary, which has never been featured on a Harry Potter disc. Instead of hearing what David Yates, a director of political dramas for the BBC and HBO, has to say about the underlying politics of the Ministry of Magic, we get a fun, but ultimately disposable studio tour from Natalia Tena. (She plays Tonks in the film.)

The closest we get to hearing David Yates describe his work is when he and editor Mark Day introduce an editing featurette. This special feature gives kids the ability to edit their own scene from The Order of the Phoenix.

Pandering to an audience of children seems to be the biggest flaw of the disc. The people who started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when they were 10-years-old are now 20. The kids who first experienced The Sorcerer’s Stone as a film when they we 10 are now 16. By 2007, the franchise has matured into the epic cinematic spectacle with a harrowing personal journey. I have a feeling most of the audience is past studio tours and learning how to edit.

Still, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the darkest, most daring film in the series. (Click here for the complete movie review.) As the Ministry of Magic denies Potter’s claims that Lord Voldemort has returned and smears both Potter and Hogwarts Headmaster Dumbledore using a complicit media (The Daily Prophet), there’s a sense that the fifth Harry Potter film has not only matured emotionally, but also intellectually. That’s a grand feeling, even if it’s not recognized by the guys who made the special features disc.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, directed by David Yates, is available on DVD Tuesday, Dec. 11.