Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (film)

[Lady Pi Phi]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Maybe. But that's an argument about choice once the decision has made to deviate from the book, not an argument about whether the deviation from the book was "necessary" to begin with, which is what I was responding to.

But then you still have the problem of Harry and Cho. If Marietta Edgecombe is the tattler, then how does the filmmaker tell why Harry and Cho don't work out after the mistletoe kiss? That was a pretty big moment, so it can't just get dropped or sloughed off.

In the book, we see Harry and Cho growing a little closer and we follow Harry's butterflies about it all, but then after the disastrous Valentine's Day date at Madame Puddifoot's, Cho is very hurt and she and Harry basically break up. If the filmmaker puts the Madame Puddifoot scene in, then he also has to give Harry a reason to have to leave and go meet Hermione elsewhere, thereby making Cho hurt and angry. In the book, the reason that Hermione wanted Harry to meet her was so that he could give an interview to Rita Skeeter, which brings in the whole Quibbler story, also not in the movie. Perhaps that story line was left out since the movie version of GoF didn't mention that Skeeter was an illegal animagus, so the filmmaker would have had to come up with reasons why she's no longer working for the daily Prophet as well as why Hermione could get her to write a sympathetic story. You see how it's not hard to get a snowball going.

Under circumstances like these, a filmmaker may find it works much better to let Cho be the tattler and let that betrayal provide the motivation for Harry and Cho to part ways.

Ok, I see your point. But I think it could have worked if we had seen Cho at the DA meetings with Marietta, and then Marietta in the scene with Umbridge and the Veritaserum, and again with Umbridge and when she breaks up the DA meetings. She wouldn't necessarily have to be a major character, but the audience would see she was a friend of Cho's (but not necessarily know that her Character's name was Marietta - because for the non-reader of the books it wouldn't matter), and because of this, Harry no longer likes Cho.

We all know teenagers are illogical, so it would make sense for Harry to no longer like Cho because of what her friend did.

I can see why the writers would have done it that way, but I think my way would make sense as well, and be more true (can I say that?) to the book.