Wow… Ryan, I really tried to relate to you on my own blog, but how much more blatantly racist can you get? It may come as a surprise to you, but that the majority of Christians are in the southern hemisphere.

Ryan, I am unpleasantly surprised, though always respectful of your viewpoint, at your assessment of the 5th movie. I personally enjoyed it a lot, but mostly because the 5th book is my favorite of the 6 so far. Now the reason I like it, and this may be a shallow reason that has nothing to do with the writing quality but my own personal beliefs, is the underdog-political repression aspect of it, which I felt was a very timeless struggle that any society that had witnessed a silencing of its collective voice–or any small group of people for that matter-could relate to. Considering your political reading of Transformers (which I haven’t seen, but I liked the review about Optimus Prime and am now interested to see it) I am simply surprised and curious about why you would not read the same level of passion and political significance into Order of the Phoenix. I will address your criticisms based on your wall post:

If you are attacking the book and not the movie, your post confuses me. You seem to be attacking all 7 books in general because they are “episodic.” Yet all television shows, movie trilogies, and book series that last more than a few books have to be episodic in some sense while also developing a broader arc for the opus as a whole. Although nothing appears to change in Phoenix, many things do; a collective consciousness about Voldemort’s return changes, for one thing, which is HUGE. Just because Dumbledore is rehired after he was fired doesn’t mean nothing happened; his firing was a key event in establishing the opposition to the truth that the Ministry of Magic displayed. The fact that the Ministry of Magic is now an ally to Hogwarts presents a huge difference at the end of the text from the beginning. Also the ball may not have actually been stolen, but Harry Potter has now HEARD the prophecy about himself. That is also huge. It is one of the key aspects of mysteries that keeps them suspenseful, the slow trickle of information. If he could find everything out in the first book, no one would have kept reading, and considering this is fantasy, there are all sorts of magical rules of poetic license that believably allow his finding out the truth to be delayed. If you can’t believe that only the subject of the prophecy can pick up the ball, then why would you believe any of the rest of it with flying hippogriffs and talking dead headmasters in portrait frames? Give the fantasy writer a little bit of a break there.

In my opinion, though the changes have been subtle, they have been critical by the end of the movie and paved the way for the continued fight against Voldemort while also knowing that it is now going to be even more serious than Harry once thought, considering one of them definitely has to die and he feels dreadfully certain that it might be him, considering Voldemort’s increase in power with the Death Eaters still following him. If you are going to complain about something, I would compain about extraneous characters: (spoilers ahead) such as the uselessness of Nymphadora/Tonks in the movie (in the book, she is not that important either but in the movie she is even less so–just a punk with multicolored hair who could have been any other character; just develop her a little more for God’s sake! Also the death of Sirius is kind of meaningless. I agree with critics of that in that it could have been much more meaningful and significant and for a good REASON. Sirius should have a lasted a bit longer and had more of a developed character in that he should have sacrificed himself in an attempt at redemption and to save Harry or had some sort of more meaningful death in another way. As it stands, his death seemed forced, just as a plot device in order to make us more sympathetic to poor orphaned Harry yet again. Most readers get the picture and while sad about Black’s death, recognize that his story might have been prematurely cut off.

So those are MY criticisms of the film, but as far as plot, I enjoyed it a lot. Please tell me what you think about my assessment and whether I have made you appreciate the political side of the story just a little bit.