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Or at least that's what Rowling's accountants are probably calling it, particularly in light of the fact that it made its debut right before Thanksgiving weekend. The rest of the world knows this movie as "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," and I finally got to see it today. Twice. (Well, I had two different sets of friends I wanted to see it with, and the logistics worked out that they wanted to see it on the same day.)
Contrary to the critics whose reviews of the movie I've read thus far, I thought that "Goblet of Fire" was better than the first two movies, but not quite as good as "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." A large part of the reason is that there are several very disparate plot threads going on in "Goblet of Fire", and despite all the cutting the scriptwriter did it remains difficult to weave the threads into a unified whole. On the other hand, Newell and company handle the dawning of our heroes' sexual maturity very convincingly and sensitively, and the visual effects and casting (there are several new characters here) continue to be first-rate.
Because I can't say more without giving away details unique to the movie, I'll put the rest of my comments under an lj-cut.
The World Cup sequence is chopped down into an entertaining but interesting set piece that occurs at the very beginning and that isn't (unless you know the book) obviously connected to the Death Eaters' plotting to use Harry in Voldemort's rebirth. Dumbledore does say at one point in the movie that the World Cup disaster and the subsequent strangeness surrounding the Triwizarding Tournament are connected, but unless you've read the books it's hard to see that as more than a throw-away line.
The other two elements in the movie are the Triwizarding Tournament itself, culminating in Voldemort's resurrection, and the Yule Ball. Both are presented well, though the pacing drags a little in spots. I only have two complaints of any significance. One is the cutting of the little speech in which Dumbledore explains to Harry why his wand and Voldemort's connected and why, as a consequence, Voldemort was unable to kill him. That speech would have added all of 3 to 5 minutes to the movie; it would have fit in fine with what we actually see of that duel, and it would have added to the credibility of Harry's survival for audiences unfamiliar with the book. Why on earth did they cut it?
My other problem is the very last scene, which merely shows the foreign students saying goodbye to Hogwarts. The very end of that scene shows our three heroes talking. Hermione says, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" And Harry puts a hand on her shoulder, looks into her eyes, smiling just a bit, and says "Yes." End of movie. Huh? It struck me as a very lame ending for what had been an otherwise satisfying movie.
Overall, I thought the movie was very true to the book despite all the plot cutting and some changes in scene details. What David Yates will make of "Order of the Phoenix," which has an even choppier plot, is a good question.
Contrary to the critics whose reviews of the movie I've read thus far, I thought that "Goblet of Fire" was better than the first two movies, but not quite as good as "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." A large part of the reason is that there are several very disparate plot threads going on in "Goblet of Fire", and despite all the cutting the scriptwriter did it remains difficult to weave the threads into a unified whole. On the other hand, Newell and company handle the dawning of our heroes' sexual maturity very convincingly and sensitively, and the visual effects and casting (there are several new characters here) continue to be first-rate.
Because I can't say more without giving away details unique to the movie, I'll put the rest of my comments under an lj-cut.
The World Cup sequence is chopped down into an entertaining but interesting set piece that occurs at the very beginning and that isn't (unless you know the book) obviously connected to the Death Eaters' plotting to use Harry in Voldemort's rebirth. Dumbledore does say at one point in the movie that the World Cup disaster and the subsequent strangeness surrounding the Triwizarding Tournament are connected, but unless you've read the books it's hard to see that as more than a throw-away line.
The other two elements in the movie are the Triwizarding Tournament itself, culminating in Voldemort's resurrection, and the Yule Ball. Both are presented well, though the pacing drags a little in spots. I only have two complaints of any significance. One is the cutting of the little speech in which Dumbledore explains to Harry why his wand and Voldemort's connected and why, as a consequence, Voldemort was unable to kill him. That speech would have added all of 3 to 5 minutes to the movie; it would have fit in fine with what we actually see of that duel, and it would have added to the credibility of Harry's survival for audiences unfamiliar with the book. Why on earth did they cut it?
My other problem is the very last scene, which merely shows the foreign students saying goodbye to Hogwarts. The very end of that scene shows our three heroes talking. Hermione says, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" And Harry puts a hand on her shoulder, looks into her eyes, smiling just a bit, and says "Yes." End of movie. Huh? It struck me as a very lame ending for what had been an otherwise satisfying movie.
Overall, I thought the movie was very true to the book despite all the plot cutting and some changes in scene details. What David Yates will make of "Order of the Phoenix," which has an even choppier plot, is a good question.
satisfied
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My wife,
That said, however, I did like the movie quite a bit. (And, it's quite fresh in my mind, since I just finished seeing it 30 minutes ago. :-) )
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You're absolutely right. Most of the rest of OotP *is* irrelevant to the climax--and the climax itself does surprisingly little to advance the overall story, in my opinion. I think that will make it harder to assemble an Order of the Phoenix movie in a way that tells a coherent and interesting story in its own right. I assume your theory is that it will make the task easier because the filmmakers will have more freedom to cut or even invent details. Am I correct?
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They can pick from many different themes to make this work:
Etc., etc.
If I have to guess, they'll pick option 2; it offers an irresistable hope of smearing President Bush by way of sideways implications.
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They didn't make Fleur stand out from the Beauxbatons crowd enough. In the book they make a big deal about her part-veelaness, but in the movie she's one more blonde face in the crowd. Crum stood out from _his_ crowd, but Fleur didn't. I expected airbrushing or some such, but they didn't even do a single old star-trek style cheesecloth shot. (Yeah, cute actress. But the girl who plays Hermione has way more screen presence.)
I once again had a "So wait, if Harry hadn't rescued Fleur's sister the teachers organizing the tournament would have let her drown?" moment, but that was in the book. (Then again in the book they made much more of the "magical contract" aspect, the traditions of the tournament seemed something _they_ were magically bound to as well...)
At the end I expected something like "as opposed to?" or "what else is new?" In response to the line about change.
Generally an excellent adaptation, though. (Yeah, they cut out all the house elves but that was for time and substituting Nigel instead worked just fine.) And Mad Eye Bart did a _marvelous_ job with the part. :)
The Drafthouse _ran_out_ of butterbeer (Sam's club apparently ran out of butterscotch syrup) and gave us Pumkin Juice instead (quite possibly by accident, they had it going in three theatres at once but apparently didn't expect to be quite so mobbed for the noon matinee.) However, this year's version of chocolate frogs was large frog-shaped shortbread cookies (onna stick) and a molten chocolate fountain they dipped them in right in front of you before handing you this _mess_ in a basket on waxed paper. It was marvelous.
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They could still have mentioned it even if they hadn't put in the World Cup. In fact, it might have been nice (she says with sarcastic understatement) if they had done this INSTEAD of the sappy dance-trot into Hogwarts for Beauxbatons. If they can completely screw up the Patronus business in Askaban (can you tell how much of a Potter geek I am?), they could fudge (pardon the pun) how/what they knew about Veela.
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That's okay--I don't mind. (It's not as though I post often enough to forget what I've written several months ago.)
I am much less a Potter geek than you, obviously, since I missed the Veela issue as I'd admitted.
By the way, we have enough common friends in our LJ's that I'm sure I know you--can you give me a hint as to who you are?
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I would tell yoou outright, but I have Usenet stalkers (isn't that special?).
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I think I've tagged you from the Pax Romana reference (we weren't in the original running of Diamond Jubilee) though I'll confirm that when Eric gets up in the morning. Good to hear from you!
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I see your point about the scene where the Death Eaters join Voldemort, but in fact their numbers were not complete, and there never were very many Death Eaters to start with. To have added more people to the circle would, I think, have been less true to the book and given a different sort of misleading impression.
What they might have done was added in Voldemort's speech about why the missing Death Eaters are missing, but Newall and the scriptwriter seemed to go on the theory that the true fans will mentally read in that kind of detail and the rest of the potential audience doesn't need it.
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You misunderstand. I'm saying they appeared more destructive in the movie than they did in the book. In the book, they played with some Muggles and caused a bit of a stampeede, while in the movie they blasted their way through wizards and left ruin in their wake. The result is the impression in the movie that the Death Eaters were already organized and a serious threat without Voldemort. And that lessens the impact and importance of Voldemort's return; if the Death Eaters can already take on Ministry security head-on and wreak devastation, why do they need the Dark Lord to return?
To have added more people to the circle would, I think, have been less true to the book and given a different sort of misleading impression.
There were more Death Eaters in the scene in the book than I recall in the movie. The movie (IIRC) only had the Death Eaters that Voldemort specifically named, the ones he talked to in the book. However, in the book, there were not just those -- to quote it, "Some of the Death Eaters he passed in silence, but he paused before others and spoke to them." So I think the movie made the wrong choice both in visual drama and in faithfulness to the text by having so few Death Eaters show up.
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Re: the number of Death Eaters at Voldemort's resurrection. I cannot find the line you quote above. I am sitting here typing with a copy of "Goblet of Fire" on my lap, and as I reread the scene I notice that Rowling never tells us exactly how many Death Eaters show up. All we really know are the ones Voldemort specifically names, as you state above. I do not share your perception of there being a significantly larger number than the 7 or so the movie showed, though I'll concede that it was inept of the filmmaker to show them to us in an aerial view so that they appeared even fewer than they were.
One speech they omitted, which I think would have added to the overall drama of the scene and corrected the error in "visual drama" that you perceive, was the speech in which Voldemort enumerates the Death Eaters that are missing:
"And here we have six missing Death Eaters... three dead in my service. One too cowardly to return...he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever...he will be killed, of course...and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already reentered my service."
It becomes clear from V's next words that the "most faithful servant" is Crouch Jr.
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"The Lestranges should stand here," said Voldemort quietly. "But they are entombed in Azkaban. They were fatihful. They went to Azkaban rather than renounce me . . . When Azkaban is broken open, the Lestranges will be honored beyond their dreams. The Dementors will join us . . . they are our natural allies . . . we will recall the banished giants . . . I shall have all my devoted servants returned to me, and an army of creatures all will fear . . ."
He walked on. Some of the Death Eaters he passed in silence, but he paused before other and spoke to them.
"Macnair . . . destorying dangerous beasts for the Ministry of Magic now, Wormtail tells me? You shall have better victims than that soon, Macnair. Lord Voldemort will provide. . . ."
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Checking Order of the Phoenix, the number is specified by Harry as a "dozen-odd", on p. 566 of the U.S. first printing hardback. Based on that, ten more DEs at the movie scene would have been a stretch, but the seven-or-so shown were about half of those that should have shown up.
(Just from curiosity how many DEs would there have been at the time of Voldemort's downfall? Ten broken out of Azkaban in Phoenix, a "dozen-odd" at the summons in Goblet and numbered in Phoenix, three named dead in Goblet, and Karkaroff, Snape, and Crouch . . . 28 at least.)
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Also, I liked the ending. The line "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" summed up how this movie contrasted with the others. Sure, there was some "change" in all the other films, but I knew what Hermione was talking about. People got upset about the characer who died in this film, despite the fact that deaths used to form a ubiquitous background for Hogwarts: the headless ghost, the girl in the bathroom, etc. People died a lot and somehow nobody disbanded the school; in this film it suddenly started to matter. Also, Voldemot constantly threatened to return in previous films and now he actually did it. This is the film about adolescence, death, the actual for-real resurrection of Voldemort and other PG-thirteenessess. The series grew up.
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That's the reason he survives Voldemort's original attempt to kill him while he's still an infant (more specifically, he survives because his mother gives her life for him) but it doesn't explain why he survives Voldemort's attempt to kill him during "Goblet of Fire" itself. In essence, the reason he survives the duel is that his wand and Voldemort's wand contain magickal elements--in this case, a phoenix feather--from the same phoenix. When that happens, a kind of magickal interference takes place, and one wand will end up "forcing the other to reguritate spells it has performed--in reverse." That's why you see the ghosts of people Voldemort has killed; the death curse was prominent in the last few spells he actually cast with his wand.
As for this being a film about adolescence, and the "series" growing up, I agree with you completely; the same themes emerge in the book, and the filmmakers have done well in making them live on the screen as well.
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Maybe I need to re-read GoF; a co-worker of mine thinks that the strange interaction between brother wands IS mentioned earlier in the book. But I don't remember it.
When the reader is wondering, "How will our hero survive this?", having the answer be "Because of something you could never have guessed!" is cheating.
Frankly, I feel this way about the first book too. "He couldn't touch you because of the power of LUV." And the second. Just unsatisfying endings.
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I can't remember if the "brother wand" theme came up in the earlier books, but the friend I saw the movie with claims that he remembers the concept from the first movie (he has made a point of never reading any of the books). So it may well have been mentioned in an earlier book in the series, if not in "Goblet of Fire" itself.
I don't, by the way, have a problem with the "power of LUV" theme (as you put it) because it's not inconsistent with Rowling's obvious objectives--to write a kid's adventure story with psychological depth and attention to genuine moral issues. You're certainly entitled not to like what Rowling has chosen to do, but I don't think it's quite fair to slam her for not doing something (i.e. write a perfectly consistent magickal system) that she's not interested in doing.
Although much (not all) of Rowling's world-building is pretty good, the HP books aren't really fantasy in the classic sense, or technology of magic stories. That's why I was surprised when "Goblet of Fire" won a Hugo. The book moved me deeply, but I can't pretend that it has unusual merit from a literary standpoint, and as far as I'm concerned it barely meets the technical definitions of "fantasy" in the WSFS rules.
On the other hand, she really does have a hard time with endings--and the movie managed to underscore this heavily. :-)
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In her defense, it's hard to end things when you're not really ending them - it *is* a series....
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Which makes me wonder how she is going to end Book 7. Yes, of course Voldemort is going to have to die, but is that going to be the last scene in the book? I would have guessed that Harry's graduation would be the last scene, but since he's sworn to devote himself to tracking down Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes and killing him, maybe that won't be the case--especially since Dumbledore's no longer around to talk him out of doing so.