The Harry Potter franchise is known for its ability to transcend age. It can be loved by children (who weren’t even born when the series concluded) and adults alike, and is loved and unfathomably successful all around the world.
How good it is has been widely contended, and while things like its poor quality child actors, weak plots and incredible similarities to The Lord Of The Rings have all been quoted as reasons. Its continuity errors are rarely quoted, however, but that isn’t to say there aren’t any. Here are ten mistakes you may have missed from The Order Of The Phoenix.
There Are Fair Few Time Travel Moments
This error isn’t specific to one moment in the film, though it does present itself pretty early on. Aunt Petunia is seen finding about the current heatwave on a weather channel on her flat-screen TV. Given this film should be set in 1995, it seems weird that a mid-2000s invention should be on her wall.
Similarly, later in the film, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ by The Ordinary Boys is playing in the background. That song (and, to be honest, music of that style) didn’t show up until 2005, so who knows what sort of magical radio they have access to in Hogwarts.
Neville Isn’t Afraid To Lie
Late on in the film, Neville states that he has never performed Expelliarmus before. It seems pretty understandable, considering we all know that Neville isn’t exactly the most promising wizard around. However, it’s hard to take him seriously when we’ve seen him perform the spell earlier in the film when he’s taking part in Harry’s defence against the dark arts class. On top of this, it’s a basic spell we’ve seen from very early on in the franchise. You’d think this spell would have been one of the first things Neville learnt in class.
Magical Gifts
We all know that many wizards are quite gifted at transfiguration. We’ve seen McGonagall turn an animal into a goblet, and apparently Cedric Diggory could ‘turn a whistle into a pocket watch and have it sing you the time’.
However, when Sirius is given his Christmas present, he holds onto it for a while, until the shot changes and he’s holding a glass of wine. Either he can perform an impressively quick transfiguration, or they forgot to keep an eye on the continuity of this particular scene.
Why Don’t They Extract Memories More Often?
The pensive is a plot device that became pretty important to Harry’s journey quite early on in The Goblet Of Fire. We’ve found out that memories can be viewed (and, admittedly, tampered with) by others, so why doesn’t this crop up more often in the series? If someone is wrongly accused of a crime, why don’t they check their memory for an alibi? In particular, when Harry is at his hearing early on in the film, why doesn’t he just suggest they take a look in his memory? Then they’d be able to see that he was just acting in self-defence.
Harry Should Have Seen The Thestrals Years Ago
This is a classic Harry Potter issue. It might even be the biggest issue in continuity in the series aside from the creators’ lack of attempt to make Lily and Harry have similar eyes despite this being central to Snape’s entire storyline.
JK Rowling has attempted to clear it up by saying that Harry was too young to remember his parents’ deaths (she seems to be clutching at straws there), but he had also seen Professor Quirrell die right in front of him in his first year. That means he shouldn’t be at all surprised when the creatures are suddenly visible to him.
Why Doesn’t Expelliarmus Change Everyone’s Wand Allegiance?
When Harry is teaching everyone Defence Against The Dark Arts, there are Expelliarmus spells flying about left right and centre. The purpose of the spell is still pretty unclear in the film series, given that its purpose is to disarm, yet half the time the recipient goes flying across the room, but its power is made very clear a couple of films later. Olivander tells Harry that Draco Malfoy’s wand has changed allegiance due to Harry having disarmed him (during The Deathly Hallows Part 2). This suggests that during this entire session, everyone’s wands should have been changing allegiance every few seconds, which would have been hectic.
Bellatrix Can Speak Without Moving Her Mouth
When we first see Bellatrix emerge from behind Lucius Malfoy in the Department Of Mysteries, we can hear her laughing maniacally and talking. It’s dark, but if you look carefully at her mouth it becomes pretty clear that its barely moving, and her expression is very neutral, not as twisted as it should be from the laughter we hear.
When she says, ‘he knows how to play’, her mouth doesn’t start moving until the sentence is completely finished, suggesting they either had to move the audio around or re-record the line entirely.
Mrs Figg Has Her Timeline Confused
When Harry finds out that Mrs Figg has been talking to Dumbledore about Harry’s time at Privet Drive for years, she reveals a few things about the wizarding world in order to convince him of her allegiance. One thing she explains is that Cedric Diggory died ‘last year’. While that is sort of true and gives the audience a bit of context, he actually died in the last academic year, not calendar year. While this would be the case to Harry, to Mrs Figg, this description wouldn’t really make any sense. It would have been a lot more realistic for her to have just said ‘a couple of weeks ago’.
Harry’s Quick-Change
On his first night back at school, Harry has a dream/vision about Voldemort. We see him lying in bed before this, wearing a stripy light blue T-shirt, then when he sits up, he’s wearing a dark blue button-up shirt. Unless we’re supposed to believe that Harry got changed in his sleep, they obviously had to inter-cut some unrelated scenes in order to finish this one, hence the inconsistency.
This isn’t the only clothing error in the film either, as we very briefly see Snape in his full robe during an occlumency lesson, despite the fact that he isn’t wearing this in the scene.
The Tapestry Changes
In Grimmauld Place, there is a huge family tree tapestry up on the wall. As this is a real prop, I imagine there was a lot of hard work and detail put into creating the final product. Bellatrix is shown on this tree next to Andromeda, with a portrait of her face shown above her name. When the shot changes, her face is gone. This must mean they either used two different versions of the tapestry when filming (for some reason) or they filmed the second scene before the tapestry was finished. Either way, they’ve made a particularly strange decision there.
