Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix

The movie was good, as its own movie. However, a lot of stuff was missing. I understand that they need to cut things in order to keep the movie from being 8 hours long. However, it pisses me off when they cut things but then ADD stuff that wasn't even in the books.

• You never see Ron and Hermione get their prefects badges - there's no mention of them being prefects at all.
• You don't see Fred and George have their big blowout, where they create a swamp in the hallway before they leave school. They have a blowout, but it's not nearly the same.
• Cho is the one who squeals on Dumbledore's Army rather than the girl from the book (can't remember her name). And it's done with Veritaserum rather than the spell that Hermione or Ginny does. (Again, can't remember - I'm re-reading the book right now - I'll have to look it up.)
• The opening scene is weird. In the book, Harry's at a park that's got a fence around it. In my head, it was a park in the town, with trees and stuff. In the movie, it was in the middle of a cornfield. It was bizarre, like something out of a horror movie. And Harry and Dudley met the dementors in a tunnel thing rather than an alley. It was unnecessarily scary. Like they wanted to up the fear quotient.
• Grimmauld Place (I LOVE the name of that, btw. Great pun.) was in a swanky town house rather than in a run down part of town, as described in the book. When they were flying there, they flew right thru London and didn't try to hide themselves - I thought that was against the rules. It looked cool, but it wasn't true to the whole separation of magic and Muggle world.
• There was no Howler sent to Petunia after the dementors attacked Harry and Dudley, either, which is a HUGE part of the story line and we still don't know why he said "Remember My Last."
  

• Those things aside, the movie had some great stuff in it. The Ministry Of Magic wasn't quite how I'd pictured it, but the fountain in the middle was impressive. The fight scene in the Ministry was good, although again, not quite as I'd pictured it. The Ministry was more modern than I'd imagined, but it was good.
  
• Bellatrix LeStrange was friggin' creepy. Dolores Umbridge wasn't quite as I'd imagined, either, but the actress playing her did a great job. She was vile.
  
• The girl who played Luna was fantastic. She just about stole the movie.
  
• The scene in The Hog's Head, when they convince Harry to form Dubledore's Army, was great - although they left out the coins bit, which is a bummer. I liked that.
  
• I liked the movie, but I'm still trying to divorce the movie from the book and it's not easy. TCBIM and I talked about it last night and agreed that it would have been better if they'd left more original stuff in and made it longer. It was 138 minutes, including previews and it felt a bit rushed. When you consider how many people sat thru 3.5 hours of each LOTR movie, I'm sure people would do the same for these last three HP movies. It should have been longer and they should have included more detail from the book.

Edited to add this link from Salon.com about the screenwriting process for OOTP, with thanks to my friend Timna for the heads up on it.