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…[/quote]
I wasn’t referring to the high-level “remove this plotline” style editing. I was referring to the very low-level “how scene 34 transitions to scene 35” type editing. Which, in my opinion, was extremely perfunctory. Just, bang, here we are in a different situation, some unspecified time after the previous scene, with no transition. It’s as if the director had never heard the phrase “establishing shot” – or perhaps just decided that he didn’t have time for more than a few of them.
Oh, I didn’t realize you were jumping subjects on me. I didn’t have a problem with the editing at all.
Although I can’t help it that Chamber of Secrets wasn’t very memorable, polyjuice potion was at the heart of a rather long sequence that had the boys disguising themselves as Slytherin members to spy on Malfoy and Hermione turned into a cat for the rest of the film. In fact, I would venture to say that polyjuice played a more prominent role in CoS than it did in GoF. It was only mentioned a few times in passing during GoF by design since the characters aren’t meant to know the significance. When you actually need to know what it does, the movie shows what it does.
It’s a series and while reading the books absolutely shouldn’t be a requirement, I don’t think expecting viewers to have seen and remembered the previous films is out of the question (again polyjuice was hardly obscure in CoS).
Although I can’t help it that Chamber of Secrets wasn’t very memorable, polyjuice potion was at the heart of a rather long sequence that had the boys disguising themselves as Slytherin members to spy on Malfoy and Hermione turned into a cat for the rest of the film. In fact, I would venture to say that polyjuice played a more prominent role in CoS than it did in GoF. It was only mentioned a few times in passing during GoF by design since the characters aren’t meant to know the significance. When you actually need to know what it does, the movie shows what it does.
It’s a series and while reading the books absolutely shouldn’t be a requirement, I don’t think expecting viewers to have seen and remembered the previous films is out of the question (again polyjuice was hardly obscure in CoS).[/quote]
Meh, I’ve seen them all, but I don’t even remember the scenes you’re talking about from CoS. A brief refresher wouldn’t have hurt.
Which is probably a testsment to CoS quality (or lack thereof).
But I stand by my point- polyjuice is just a throwaway reference in GoF until the finale and at that point the movie makes it clear what it is. Isn’t this more of a show rather than tell thing?
I agree that not at least mentioning what polyjuice does is sloppy. How hard would it have been to have Snape say something like “What, were you planning on using it to disguise yourself as a professor?” while accusing Harry in the potions closet? But really it’s not that big a deal. You SEE the guy impresonating Moody transform back to his original form. This is in the middle of a school for wizards and witches. It’s not that big a leap to assume he was taking a potion, especially with all the conspicuous slurps he’d taken from that flask.
Which is probably a testsment to CoS quality (or lack thereof).
But I stand by my point- polyjuice is just a throwaway reference in GoF until the finale and at that point the movie makes it clear what it is. Isn’t this more of a show rather than tell thing?[/quote]
Actually, I didn’t know until just now that polyjuice was what that guy was drinking all along to stay transformed. I assumed it was some kind of magical steroid.
It may not be a big leap, but it is a leap that a proper storyteller wouldn’t have forced the audience to make. In storytelling, as in interface design, my mantra is “Don’t Make Me Think”.
To put it another way, there were a lot of shotguns going off in this movie which had not been previously displayed on a mantelpiece.
[quote=“extarbags”]
One thing that confused me was why Harry didn’t bother mentioning this to anybody afterwards.[/quote]
If you hadn’t read the book I think you’d have been lost in this movie. The end reveal where V tears off the masks and names his minions means nothing, since their children, for the most part (like Crabbe and Goyle) weren’t even called by name during the movie.
I can understand if they are taking the Lord of the Rings approach and just not recapping where they have been before. If that is the case, then the director can just assume you know who the players are, that you know about stuff like polyjuice potion from previous films, etc.
Even given that, I’m not so sure about some of the references. Achio, for instance, gets used a lot, but I don’t remember anyone explaining exactly what it was, or the fact that it was apparently a fairly tough charm.
I think the above poster means “Accio”, which is the spell that Harry used to bring his Firebolt broom to him to fly around the dragon.
The Summoning Charm (Accio object) isn’t particularly difficult magic, but it is a spell that Harry has trouble learning in the book. The impressive thing about his use of it in the first challenge is that he has to summon his broom from all the way back at the castle out to the dragon’s lair.
Interesting question pointed out by a friend of mine: If he could summon the broom (and subsequently the Triwizard Cup), why didn’t he just summon the golden egg and win the round without getting anywhere near the dragon?
And personally, I rather enjoyed the chopping editing of the Quidditch World Cup scenes. I thought they captured the sudden terror of Death Eaters returning in a way that surpassed the book itself. It felt like a bunch of Nazi brownshirts had showed up at a real World Cup match - you could catch the sense of panic in the crowd at the thought that those evil days might be returning.
I do have to agree that the discovery of Crouch Sr.'s death in the forest was a mess.
On the whole, I liked it a lot.
Yeah, this is probably a plot hole, with the real answer being only “Because that would be too easy.” Heck, for that matter we could wonder why none of the contestants used it at the beginning of the hedge maze trial to just summon the cup to them instead of doing it the hard way (though it seems in all past uses of the spell the caster knows the exact location of the object). But if we wanted to conjecture about the egg, it wouldn’t be too much work to guess that it was warded against that kind of thing or that Harry had been told he had to take the egg by hand for it to count.
The thing about the World Cup was that they showed the buildup to the game and then the kids talking about it aftewards with nothing in between. The game itself wasn’t interrupted by the Death Eaters, was it?
Unless they walked to the stadium to see the preamble, walked back, and were about to return to see the game for some reason.
Yes, I think so. When the commotion from the Death Eaters starts one of the Weasleys makes a comment about how Ireland must have just scored or something. Then Mr. Weasley comes running in and tells them to run for it. What I don’t really understand is why they were in the tent and not out watching the game. Was it supposed to be an intermission?
Yes, I think so. When the commotion from the Death Eaters starts one of the Weasleys makes a comment about how Ireland must have just scored or something. Then Mr. Weasley comes running in and tells them to run for it. What I don’t really understand is why they were in the tent and not out watching the game. Was it supposed to be an intermission?[/quote]
Nah, the game was over then. Ron thought it was the Irish celebrating their win, IIRC.
Yes, the World Cup match was over and they were all partying afterwards. There wasn’t any discussion of who won, because the match itself wasn’t important to the story.
I recall reading somwhere that Chris Columbus (Director of the first movie and as such sort of the Godfather of the whole movie series) had thought about splitting the fourth book into two movies, because it was so long. I wasn’t sure how that would work. I was glad to see they kept the movie as a whole, but was worried because it was such a LONG book – how would you cram it all in?
In the end, I thought the filmmakers did a brilliant job with some really difficult source material. Huge tracts of the book were cut out but in a way that didn’t damage the story at all (well, I had one issue, but a small one.) The scene with Snape confronting Harry in the closet was a brilliant turn of the pen, because it collapsed several subplots into one brief dialogue exchange. 1. He introduces the truth serum 2. he clues us in that “polyjuice potion” ingredients are missing 3. he accuses harry of stealing the gillweed (used to breathe underwater.) The whole house-elf subplot was cut out, and replaced by this tiny scene. I thought that was very smart.
It’s hard for me – as a fan of the series and a voracious reader – to try to look at the movie without considering all my knowledge of the books, but even so, I thought the story was put together well. Even if you didn’t remember what Polyjuice was from the other movie, you didn’t really need to know what it was to know that Snape is angry about missing his X – later on you discover what X does, and even if you missed it, McGonnogal (sp?) comes right out and says “That’s who’s been raiding your stores!” to professor Snape. Even if I hadn’t been reading the books, it all would’ve made sense to me – it was pretty blatent.
I was worried that the dance scenes would be cut, because they aren’t a part of the central plot. Yet they were one of my favorite parts of the book. I was thrilled that that whole sequence was left in the movie – it’s a really critical part of their character development. More importantly, the actors all did a great job with it. Who knew that kids cast four(?) years ago could still pull off their parts?
Ray Fines: awesome.
The only thing that I felt should’ve been explained was what happened with Harry’s wand and Voldemort’s wand. Dumbledore just nods and says “Priori Incantatum,” as if that’s the answer. Had i not read the books, that wouldn’t have satisfied me. That was the only part I felt was cut too much for the story to be satisfying.
Otherwise – wow, great film. Great adaption of a difficult book.
Interesting question pointed out by a friend of mine: If he could summon the broom (and subsequently the Triwizard Cup), why didn’t he just summon the golden egg and win the round without getting anywhere near the dragon?
It wouldn’t work. There’s two problems with it:
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It doesn’t instanteously fly to you. It merely exerts a powerful force on the object to move it on your direction. This means that something large (such as, say, a dragon) lying in front of it would almost certainly block it.
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There’s almost certainly an anti-Summoning Charm spell. That’s the fun with writing fantasy. Have a plot hole? There’s a spell you can make up to cover it!
Potter lovers and haters alike should both get a kick out of the latest Order of the Stick comic. To set it up a bit, the evil counterparts to the Order, aptly called the Linear Guild, are recruiting a new wizard. Hijinx ensue :wink: .
I just saw this. The interesting thing is that the three people who went with me, all of whom have good taste in movies, thought it was the best of the series. I thought what everyone here thinks, that it was chopped to bits. Off the top of my head:
World Cup, but no Quidditch? Bah.
Dream – Ron’s – World Cup in about two minutes. Who can follow that?
Beauxbaton’s and Durmstrang show up with no explanation at all until two scenes later. WTF with the carriage and the ship, please?
Rita Skeeter not established as Animagus, nor does Hermione trap her for later plot device.
Sirius’ status not really explained.
No character interaction other than “Ron’s pissed, Hermione’s pissed, wait everyone is friends again.”
Pointlessly fleshed out dragon scene. They could have used the time for something else.
What was the Ascendio spell to get out of the water? That’s the best spell Harry knows, even taking the books into account, and they just invent it on the spot?
What’s with the expelliarmus spell knocking people around, when in the last movie it just made their wands pop out of their hands? Shouldn’t that be impedimentia?
No explanation at all for why Harry was able to match Voldemort in the duel, nor any explanation for the ghosts, except for Dumby saying “ah, priori incantato” or whatever.
No outlining of the Ministry’s stand on V.
No Hogsmeade.
In short, I can see where I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn’t read the book. I’m not going to re-read Order until I see it in the theaters, hopefully I’ll have forgotten enough to enjoy it.
H.
So, Mike Newell takes a turn at the director’s chair for this one. And he did a great job. This was a long book, and they condensed it really well. Most importantly, they kept the whole part about the ball. Harry and Ron procrastinating before asking someone out and being turned down, and then the dance itself. It was all wonderfully done.
Honestly, I’d forgotten what was going to happen in the movie when Harry and Cedric reached that cup. I did remember that Cedric was going to die somehow in that maze. Watching the movie again really brought back that feeling of surprise when I originally read the book and got to that same part. The re-emergence of Voldemort, finally after 4 books of trying to come back to life, finally succeeds. And Ralph Fiennes is really good in those last few moments of the final confrontation.
Once again, the production design was just off-the-charts incredible. The CGI was really good too, even this many years later, the dragon looks really good in this movie. And Brendan Gleeson really stole the show as Madeye Mooney. And funny enough, generic actor X who played the bad guy? I recognized him this time around! It was Dave Tennant, the guy who played the bad guy in first season Jessica Jones! (He’s also one of the Doctor Whos, but I haven’t seen him in that role, even though I’m aware of it).
Overall a really well paced and well done movie.