Movie adaptations tend to share a weird relationship with the books they spring from. Most movies don't live up to whatever hype the book created (The Chronicles of Narnia or The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, for example) and others are better (Jackie Brown, Adaptation, Howl's Moving Castle). Yet there always seems to exist some tension and animosity between the two mediums.

Most of this tension can be attributed to fear from the fans of the book. Even little changes to plot or character will cause an uproar. Fans don't like to think that the script writer or filmmaker were showing up their beloved author in any way. Then there are the fears that the movie will suck and people who see the movie will judge the book the same way. Perhaps even greater than that are the fears that people will love the movie and become "Johnny-come-lately" fans. For example, take Pirates of the Caribbean. There was a small group of people who really loved and enjoyed pirates before the Disney movie. Then all of a sudden everyone loves pirates and the market gets flooded with cheap, gimmicky paraphernalia.

Oddly enough, movies one through four of the Harry Potter series are rather harmonious with the books. Sure, there are changes in all of them, but the greatest crimes the movies commit is the act of omission. Since the books are rather long and detailed it would be impossible to include everything, so fans have been happy with what the screen has offered them so far.

Being a pretty big fan of the Harry Potter books, I bought my midnight showing tickets of the Order of the Phoenix weeks ago. I hopped on eBay and purchased the two coolest-looking shirts I could find, boosting my Harry Potter shirt collection to two. One was of Lord Voldemort, the other of the Death Eaters. Now, I am no fan of the dark side but several things influenced my decision. These two shirts were rare promo shirts, decreasing the likelihood that anyone else would wear either of them. Also, they just looked really awesome. The designs were a lot more artistic than the usual, boring photograph plastered on a shirt.

In my showing there were only a handful of people seriously dressed up, but regardless the atmosphere was quite festive. The crowd was healthy in over-excited high school and middle school aged girls who were constantly trying to start chants of "I say Harry, you say Potter" and trying to get the wave going. Thankfully they desisted once the movie actually started. Their presence could still be felt whenever Harry and Cho interacted or when Ron and Hermione looked at each other.

The novel is chock full of essential details and many subplots that make it a lot harder to translate into film than the prior books. As a result the movie is very streamlined, much more so than the prior movies. If I had not read the books I would have had a lot less things to keep track of. Yet it didn't seem like they did a good job of explaining what plot there was. I would need to talk to someone who hadn't read the book to see how they were able to follow it, though, to know for sure.