My biggest issue with scene cutting came about when I saw the fifth movie. The scene where Dumbledore is ment to tell Harry the prophecy and Harry has a shit fit and trashes his office, I felt, was an extremely important part of the books and they decided to fuck it over.

 

The broom thing didnt really bother me, it didnt detract from anything. Most people seem to hate the third film, but I think its the best one

 

I completely agree that Harry destroying D'dore's office was crucial to the series. All that fear and worry and self-loathing and self-blame all coming out at once... It should have been in there, and at least as, if not more vivid than in the book. Imagine having just lost your godfather, being played for a fool by possibly the most powerful sociopath in the world (remember, GW Bush was still just a governor then), being the very reason all of your firends were nearly killed, and *then* having gool ol' D'dore drop that prophecy on you. I think anyone would have lost it at that point.

I got the OotP DVD as a present, and have re-watched it a couple times. It seemed to me that the writers/director were trying to show Harry's frustration and anger all at once, when he yells at D'dore to "look at me!" right after Harry's vision of Nagini biting Arthur Weasley. I got the impression the people making the movie either (a) thought that was enough anger/angst/whatever for one film, or (b) they took the easy way out and assumed that anyone watching the film would have read the books at least a couple times, and the movie producers could leave out just about anything they liked and their target audience would know/infer the other tidbits and details. Oh, and they also seemed to figure they could do whatever because all the fans would just be so glad to have a Harry Potter movie that they'd rave about it no matter what.

Personally, I thought the OotP movie was pretty weak, and it's only saving grace was the visually kick-ass duel between D'dore and Voldemort. Not as good as described in the book, but still pretty cool. Ralph Fiennes (spelling?) is a truly awesome Voldemort and pretty damn scary with the way he speaks and glides around.

 

He ran into my knife, he ran into my knife 10 times!!!