Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

When the editing was as bad as this, at least some blame typically accrues to the director. My two cents.[/quote]

But if the cuts happened in the script rather than in the editing room…

I’ve never read any of the books, and I though GoF was awesome, and I sure didn’t have trouble keeping up. In fact, I just re-watched Prisoner tonight, and I guess I still like it better, but not by as much as I thought. They’re almost tied.

I saw it. I have not seen any of the previous movies nor read any of the books. It was okay.

It will be interesting to see what pops up on the DVD. A lot of people expected substantial cut material from Azbakan but it turned out the Cuaron had cut almost all of the material at the script stage and there were actually very few deleted scenes.

Saw it. Like it less and less the more I think about it. Still better than the first two, with three taking the cake.

Agree re: it being a mess.

Biggest problem I had, being someone who doesn’t read the books and just sees the films, is the lack of explanation about key points.

A big deal is made about polyjuice. “You and your friends are making polyjuice!” Over and over, like it’s a still or something. I figured out what polyjuice was, since I played D&D and figured it out from “polymorph,” but my date had no idea.

Also, I guess there’s a big deal as to why V and Potter’s wands reacted the way they did at the end. I just thought it was because Harry had massive untapped potential that V didn’t just overwhelm him and blast him to atoms, but apparently there’s something more. Anyone care to enlighten me?

One of my friends who’s a big HP nerd hated 3 because of changes made. If that’s the difference between getting something like the first two movies, and getting something like Azkaban, change that shit, I say.

Tough movie to evaluate. I felt the first 45 minutes were the worst of any of the previous films; I preferred Columbus’ plodding uninspired recreations of the first books to the hurried and chopped editing of Newell’s Goblet of Fire. The current film improved tremendously right around the dance sequence, and the last 45 minutes were on a par with Azkaban.

In my opinion, Newell is stronger at directing character-driven scenes than he is action sequences. I liked the dance scene simply because it was one of the first times the movie slowed down enough to see the interaction between the three main characters. Similarly, I liked the scene with Ron & Harry whispering about the dance in Snape’s class, where Snape keeps whacking the boys because of their inattentiveness.

In my opinion, they could have cut the second challenge completely and added a few more character-building scenes. For that matter, axe the entire Quiddich World Cup sequence & incorporate the Mark of the Death Eaters into Harry’s dream. He could have a scene with Dumbledore where Albus explains the significance of the Mark, which would serve to illustrate the depth of the relationship between the two. The scene with the Dumbledore and the Pensieve is more expository than character-building.

In my opinion, Goblet of Fire should have illustrated Harry’s desire to be a normal (although magically potent) adolescent, and his growing realization that he can’t have that life, because of his special heritage. This would have added tension to the final confrontation with Voldemort as well. Viewing a realistic depiction of a Horntail dragon was neat, but secondary to the character-centered themes in the book.

My ranking:
Azkaban
Goblet of Fire
Sorcerer’s Stone = Chamber of Secrets

It’s been a while since I read GoF, and correct me if I get stuff wrong, but here’s the deal:

All wands in the Harry Potter universe contain some sort of magical element. Harry’s contains the core of a feather from a phoenix. In the first book it was pointed out, when Harry bought his wand, that Voldemort’s wand also contained a pheonix feather core - in fact, their wands both came from the very same phoenix.

When they aimed spells at each other at the end of GoF, the wands interacted, chained, and caused the “priori incantatem” effect. This basically throws out images of the last spells that were cast by the wand - in Harry’s case, not much to see, but Voldemort’s wand had been used very recently to do some killing curses. Those who were killed by the killing curse had their afterimage show up and help Harry (I don’t think it’s every truly explained how this in particular happened) - such as his parents and Cedric.

Priori Incantatem was actually introduced in the book in the aftermath of the World Ccup of Quiddich in an attempt to prove Harry himself was the one who sent up the dark mark. I think in that case, Barty Crumb Jr. was using Harry’s wand.

It’s funny how you guys talk about confusing edits in GoF when I found PoA to be really confusing at the end. I never read the book and the ending to PoA couldn’t have seemed more rushed.

All wands in the Harry Potter universe contain some sort of magical element. Harry’s contains the core of a feather from a phoenix. In the first book it was pointed out, when Harry bought his wand, that Voldemort’s wand also contained a pheonix feather core - in fact, their wands both came from the very same phoenix.

Correct, but a little interesting sidenote. The phoenix that gave the wand-maker the feathers was in fact Dumbledore’s Phoenix, Fawkes, that I believe was introduced in book 2.

This was my big complaint about PoA. If I hadn’t read the book, the magic stag would have been a mystery.

Troy

Polyjuice actually figured prominently in the second film so you didn’t need to have read the previous books to figure it out- just needed to see the previous movies.

This is another one that references a previous film. The wandmaker in the first movie talked about wands having twins and how the twin to Harry’s wand was Voldemort’s.

Yeah for all of the praise Azbakan gets I think the removal of who Mooney, Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs are and their relationship to Harry is pretty unforgivable. At the time, the producers defended by saying they were saving it for a later film but it still didn’t make its way into GoF.

You can’t expect a film series to explain every little tidbit from every other movie. You want them to stand alone, but not that alone. It’s just the nature of the beast for you to get a little lost if you come in half way through with no prior experiance of books or films.

Agreed.

But to not explain the climactic moment of a movie, like in PoA, is more than a little tidbit. It’s as if Ahab dies stuck to a whale that you haven’t heard anything about for 90 minutes.

Troy

Agreed.

But to not explain the climactic moment of a movie, like in PoA, is more than a little tidbit. It’s as if Ahab dies stuck to a whale that you haven’t heard anything about for 90 minutes.

Troy[/quote]

So what is the deal with the magic stag?

Harry’s dad was an animagus that could morph into a stag, hence his nickname “Prongs.” Harry’s Patronus charm takes a form identical to his shapeshifted father.

Thanks. I knew his father was Prongs, but I forgot why.

Thanks. I knew his father was Prongs, but I forgot why.[/quote]

To expand a little bit- Harry’s Dad (Prongs), Padfoot (Sirius), and Wormtail (Pettigrew) all learned how to become animagi (what the hell is the plural of animagus?) so that Lupin(Mooney) wouldn’t feel so alienated being a werewolf.

So the stag is signifcant because of the link to Harry’s dad, the Marauder’s Map that Harry uses so much used to belong to his Dad and friends, and the closeknit relationship of the four of them starts to become more important in the later books. So a couple minutes exposition on this in Azbakan would have given emotional resonance to the events of that movie and the later ones.

In contrast, the Priori Incantanum spell used at the end of GoF and the polyjuice stuff is really just Deus Ex Machina and photon-milk stuff.

Well, likewise I shouldn’t be expected to watch and remember every detail from the previous movies before seeing the new one.

The wand effect I could care less about, it’s magic, and his parents helped him, it was a neat effect. Likewise, I was a little thrown by why Harry thought some kind of deer was his dad, but he was near death and quite possibly hallucinating, and also wasn’t a major plot point.

But to have something like polyjuice talked about the entire film, but not tell the audience what the hell it is is just sloppy filmmaking, and sloppy storytelling. One line of exposition is all it takes. Also, the defense of “it was mentioned in a previous movie” lacks, because it was not a previous plot point that I can remember, nor could my date, who has a daughter who loves the movies.

PoA may have left many things out of the movie, but it was a good movie, well paced, action-packed, and it made sense to me. Sure I may not get all the subtle nuances, but that’s for the real fans. I just want to be entertained by the film, I got that from PoA but not so much the other movies.

Also, you can’t cut out the Quidditch Cup scene, as it also reintroduces the evil father to the audience, as they haven’t seen him since the 2nd movie, so that his reveal at the end as V’s lieutenant works. You’d have to write him in elsewhere, which would be easy enough I’d think (the dance), or some folks would be lost as to why they should care about this guy being unmasked.

One thing that confused me was why Harry didn’t bother mentioning this to anybody afterwards.

Yeah, that bugged me a bit, too. You’d think that it would be a big deal to let folks know about a highly-placed Death Eater in their midst…

Especially since that guy’s such a total dick anyway.