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• A smear campaign tries to discredit The Boy Who Lived as “The Boy Who Lied” when the wizarding world casts doubt on the assertion by Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) that the Dark Lord has returned and killed his classmate Cedric Diggory.
• Harry’s foe, Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), dominates his dreams and even begins to reach into Harry’s mind from afar.
• Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), other leaders of the resistance, and even Harry’s friends seem to be isolating him.
• A new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), orchestrates a coup at Hogwarts, making the academy “safe” for students while endangering learning.
• And Harry’s long-hidden feelings for Cho Chang (Katie Leung) finally lead to the boy wizard’s first kiss.

Although the timing of the film and book is the height of marketing synergy, The Order of the Phoenix represents the first Harry Potter film to actually fare better in its medium than its written counterpart did in print. While novels usually provide better characterization than their on-screen counterparts, The Order of the Phoenix retains much of the richness of characters while capturing the essence of what was a relatively thin plot in the written text, especially compared with its predecessors. It results in an entertaining film with a good mix of action, special effects, and the strong moral outlook that has made Rowling the highest-earning novelist in literary history.

The fantasy genre has always carried powerful messages applicable to the issues of the day as viewers of the Lord of the Rings films noted on their release just after the 9/11 attacks. And The Order of the Phoenix perhaps speaks more directly to contemporary concerns than the four preceding Harry Potter films.

“What if I’m becoming bad?” Harry asks.

“Fear makes people do terrible things,” a former teacher tells Harry, who is wrestling with anger and his own fears. “What if I’m becoming bad?” Harry asks.

“You’re a very good person, who bad things have happened to,” Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) tells Harry. “Besides, the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we chose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

Sirius Black: "We have all got both light and dark inside us."

Throughout the Harry Potter series, our hero is confronted with choices about the kind of person he is to become. Although tortured, he never becomes the torturer, choosing instead to discover (as his parents before him) that love has a power that evil cannot begin to imagine.

Dolores Umbridge, a kind of Pinochet in Pink

In contrast, some of the best on-screen moments involve Dolores Umbridge, a kind of Pinochet in Pink, whose ruthlessness is exceeded only by her usually saccharine disposition. She serves as a loyalist willing to go above the law in a Ministry of Magic administration that continues to deny the reality of what is evident to all.

Although rated PG-13, The Order of the Phoenix is neither as frightening nor violent for pre-teen fans of the book as was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Yet it successfully sets the stage for the series’ climax with a prophecy, whose answer will only be fully explained by the release of the last Harry Potter book on July 21. The Order of the Phoenix may draw movie crowds that surpass other summer blockbusters. But Hollywood still will be overshadowed by next weekend as fans, who have set pre-order records, descend upon booksellers’ midnight celebrations to catch a piece of the magic.