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By Steve Daly
Steve Daly
Steve Daly
Steve Daly is a senior writer at EW, and also author of EW.com's Money Shot column

To keep 'Phoenix' at a trim 138 minutes, filmmakers had to sacrifice some characters and details. Dobby fans, you have our condolences.

At 870 Pages, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the longest book in the series. But director David Yates thought previous Potter movies ran too long — "I know the fans will hate that," he confesses — and was determined to keep it the shortest Potter movie. So what got snipped? Not Kreacher, the ugly old house elf, who survived the cut after J.K. Rowling warned the filmmakers they'd be in trouble in later movies if they didn't introduce the nasty servant. (Guess that means Kreacher figures big in The Deathly Hallows.) Here are a few things the film did forgo:

QUIDDITCH WITH RON
We feel for Rupert Grint. The bigger the books have gotten, the harder it's been to shoehorn in any Ron Weasley subplots. So, out went his Quidditch triumph against the Ravenclaw team.

DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF
Anybody miss him?

RITA SKEETER
The tabloid reporter so amusingly embodied by Miranda Richardson in Goblet of Fire just wasn't central enough here, so we don't see Hermione shrewdly blackmailing Rita into writing pro-Harry articles.

THE FLYING BRAIN
In order to make Harry's Ministry of Magic showdown with Lord Voldemort feel like the movie's proper emotional climax, lots of action leading up to that had to get cut. Ixnay, then, on the sentient brain that flies out of a tank of green liquid and tries to suffocate Ron. Rupert Grint, snubbed again.


Posted Jul 13, 2007 | Published in issue #944 Jul 20, 2007 | Order Article Reprints