Harry Potter and the GOF-might be spoilers

Cafe Society
1

Hope this isn’t too hard on the hamsters. I did look around and didn’t find another thread.

So, I took my two teens to see the midnight showing last noc. What did you all think?

I thought it was fast paced and action packed–and also very funny (which was nice to see them having fun with the characters etc now). Rickman(Snape) has great comedic timing. Fred and George practically stole each scene they were in, And I liked the Patil sisters-they can convey exasperation and disgust quite well, nonverbally.

but.
I keep coming back to but. I do know that books and screenplays have different demands placed upon them, so that no movie is going to include all the plot details of a book.

But.

I will keep my comments general-haven’t figured out how to do those spoiler boxes yet.

I do not like the new Dumbledore. I thought with the last movie, well, it’s a change, and and adjustment–give him and it time. I detect no “lilt” in his voice this time at all–I also do not detect any wryness, irony, rue or even sarcasm. But the actor (name escapes me at the moment) sure can overact.
Couple of things: the ballroom scene. It is building well–with the nice touchs the Rowling had put in…and then Hermione basically goes off her nut. And then chastises the boys to go to bed! Huh? It jarred–took me right out of the movie.

And the maze. After they had done the dragons and the lake so well–did they just give up with the maze? How hard is a CG Sphinx to conjure up? Are they union?

Voldemort’s rise was quite well done–Finnes is gonna be great as HWMNBN. And the Deatheaters at the World Cup were frightening and well done. I also liked the interpretation of the Priori Incantatum (sp?).

but the end of the movie was disjointed and weak, IMO. Hermione makes an awkward statement about how everything has changed, now. But her tone and her expression confounded me–was she referring to their sexual developement, their academics or Voldemort being back? She says it so happily–it is really awkward and I liked Harry’s dry response. Then there are about 10 minutes of watching Beauxbatons carriage fly away.

Huh?

No Triwizard earnings-no Cedric’s mother (why do movies always cut the mother? sorry, tangent).

All that said–I am so glad it is still the main three, as well as Maggie Smith et al. And I loved that Neville got some undercurrents to his character. And overall, I did like the movie.

Ah well, enough of my opinions and thoughts–how about you? What did you think?

2

Lots of spoiler boxes ahead, so beware!

I really enjoyed the movie. It was quite well done considering that they had such a huge book to cram into a manageable movie length. Now for my rants:

The money from the Triwizard tournament… Where was it? That just leaves a thread hanging for the next movie, and how long would it have taken them to present Harry with a bag, and have him hand it over to the twins and then run? Would have been time better spent than having a three minute scene with the carriage flying off into the sunset, motivational music blaring and all.

How about

Percy, and his rift with his family? Yes, they somewhat show that Barty Crouch SR is controlled by Moody, but thats not enough. Partially because of this incident, Percy breaks off from his family. That wasn’t an important tangent, but something heartwarming.

Another scene that was cut

the veela in the World Cup. I was looking forward to how they would portray them, and harry almost throwing himself at them from the top of the stands. It would have explained Fleur’s heritage some too, besides having her stand there looking pretty, speak some french, and kiss harry on the cheek. And lose the cup.

I’l agree with Eleanorigby,

the Maze was poorly done. Instead of having the walls flip out and try and eat the contestants, they should have had harry talk with the sphinx, and both harry and cedric run from the spider. It would have been okay if Harry hadn’t gotten bitten, like in the book, but that was another scene I was looking forward to.

They also never

showed harry talking with Fudge about Voldemort being back. Doesnt Dumbledore break off from Fudge during this book? Sorry, but the scene in the office isn’t quite enough.

Plus, the

dementors never came to kiss Barty! They just left off with him and Snape… what? Does he live or does he die? AAHHH!

I don’t usually critique the acting of the actors, since it is rather hypocritical on my part, since I cant act my way out of a paper bag. But Hello! if

Your hand is cut off, aren’t you supposed to lose a lot of blood and be in extreme pain? Wormtail had the initial scream, then nothing, not even a slight shaking or quaver in his voice. WTF? I’d be unabashedly screaming like a little girl if I was him!

Once again, Eleanorigby was right. Dumbledore’s acting was… lacking. Rather wooden; no inflections, no emotions, no chuckles or anything. Yes, this movie is supposed to be sad and morose, but its Dumbledore! He stays happy no matter what!

The guy who played Barty Crouch JR was pretty good, if I may say. Cute too, when he didn’t act mad and do that tongue flick thing. That just creeped me out (as it obviously was supposed to)

Overall, it was a great movie, and I would gladly see it again. I would go into the good about the movie, but others will address that, and I have to go to class!

3

Thanks for replying, Tamryne.

I have decided that overall, it is too much to expect of the films to remain “true” to the books.

I am going to see it again Monday with my 7 year old.

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i thought they did rather well hitting the high points. snape looked less oily. he may have even combed his hair!

the def. missed the chance with the twins. could and should have fit that bit in at the end.

i’d give it 4 out of 5 stars.

5

I haven’t even seen the new one yet and I also have to agree. That new Dumbledore just isn’t very good. I really miss the late Richard Harris :frowning: He was perfect.

Sorry to here Micheal Gambon hasn’t gotten any better.

6

The scene in the third movie where the new Dumbledore starts rambling on about children and dreams exemplifies how screwed up this new Dumbledore is. I just don’t get it. How hard is it to do “kindly, whimsical old man”?

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I’ll admit unashamedly that I looked for the cameltoe, since it did get some pre-movie press.

I didn’t see it.

I liked it, any complaints really just coming back to things having to be cut because of time.

Other than that, I loved Fred and George. My only hope is that their thread being dropped doesn’t mean what will probably be my favorite scene in the next movie being dropped. Specifically, F&G’s departure.

Also, I agree on Dumbledore Mark II. Certainly they could have found someone as good as Harris - or at least close to. I’m sure Ian Mcklellan could do the part in his sleep. Over the phone. From the moon.

-Joe

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David Tennant, who also recently played Casanova.

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I haven’t seen it yet, but I want to come in and express my opinion that Harris showed a poor vitality-to-frailness ratio (IMHO) in the first two films. Gambon was satisfying to me (in PoA) because I didn’t watch his performance with anxiety that Dumbledore was about to collapse from ancientness and dry up and blow away.

Although, now that you bring it up, Gambon didn’t appear to be concerned about bringing anything of his own to the role. It’s like he copied Harris’s performance, but with sturdier materials.

I always would have preferred Sir John Gielgud in the role, anyway. Too bad he died before the books were published.

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That’s what I felt. He’s not so warm and whimsical, but he’s a much more vital presence. I’m not a big enough HP fan to have a really strong preference (I did see it at midnight Thursday, but only because it sounded like a fun outing with my friends), but I think I do like Gambon better.

The movie was good, and offhand I can’t think of any major complaints. (Alan Rickman’s slapping was a delight.) Some of the minor characters weren’t fleshed out, Hermoine was weird in a couple of scenes for no reason. Some of the evilness was over the top, but at least there wasn’t a “NOOOOOO.” :wink:

I did have this thought: does it bother anyone else a little that Harry gets by almost exclusively on luck? He shows bravery and selflessness and I’m not knocking that, but he sure does get a lot of help from his friends.

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Geilgud would have been awesome–or McClellan. Hell, Peter Ustinov would have gotten the tone of Dumbledore better.

Where is the sly twinkle in the eye that underscores most of AB’s character? I don’t see Gambon’s AB referring to a Room of Requirement re chamberpots, does anyone else? I can see him delivering some screed about the convenience of magic, instead.

It’s not a bad movie and how does one condense such a long book into a cohesive film? The director did a good job there–my criticisms have to do with the dialogue and character development.

I would never have thought that Dumbledore would have attempted to burn the bed hangings as a student. Instead, I could see him relating a self-deprecating anecdote about how he did so by mistake or wanted to set them alight, but didn’t… :confused: I don’t understand the twists that AB’s film character has taken. That’s my major sticking point.

12

May I just say I was bitterly disappointed. Yes, Dumbledore has no warmth, but that is the very least of my complaints.

Remember how delighted you felt with the first one at how much they included? And how, when you went back to read it again and noticed a few details that weren’t in the movie, you felt they weren’t needed anyway? Not so in this one.

I, too, don’t know from spoiler boxes, so I will just say they’re going to have lot explaining to do if they do the next movie right.

BTW, how I handled the scary parts with my almost 7 year old is this: I whispered spoilers to him throughout.

13

I didn’t read the book, and so didn’t know what was added or changed, but…

Dumbledore doesn’t look like the wise, old wizard he is. He has became something of a basket case…

Especially his reaction to the Goblet of Fire

And Harry…four years, and he’s still clueless? I’m not sure about how Harry is in the book, but in the movies he’s always stoned, dazed, stunned, speechless or combination of the above.

My friend commented that he felt nothing over the death of Cedric - the plot didn’t establish why the audience shall care, unless Gandalf from FoTR, he said. I thought of Cedric just as a popular guy, that’s all.

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Philosopher’s Stone was what, 250 pages? And Goblet of Fire was 700? If they couldn’t fit all of Stone into one movie, how on earth did you expect them to fit all of Goblet?

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I agree about Dumbledore. I really really miss Richard Harris. He was perfect as Dumbledore: wise, mysterious, almost-omniscient/omnipresent. Michael Gambon’s a good actor, but he just doesn’t play Dumbledore the way he’s portrayed in the book.

And I thought the movie went really fast and the cut between scenes was a bit abrupt. The scenes themselves were beautifully done. Overall, I really loved the movie and I’m a complete Harry Potter book fanatic.

16

I quite enjoyed it. There are only two things that bothered me, and overall, they aren’t huge.

  1. I wish they would have had to do more magic in the maze. In the book, the maze is the culmination of all wizarding tasks, and there are spells flying all over the place…not so here…you don’t really get a feel for the magic that Harry is capable at this level: which is actually quite a lot.

  2. I wish they had not had Mad-Eye flick his tongue when talking to Crouch. In the book, finding out that Crouch Jr. was acting as Mad-Eye was a HUGE surprise. Even though I knew it was coming, I have to feel that with all the hints being dropped, nearly everyone has to have known the big surprise well in advance. Just remove that tongue flick, and the secret would be pretty safe.

BUT, overall, I can’t complain. The actors are all doing a pretty good job now. I think that Emma Watson really did a fantastic job showing realistic emotion.

The winnings can be dealt with at the beginning of the next film…all Fred and George have to say is “Thanks again, Harry for giving us your Triwizard earnings: we now have capital for our joke shop!” I think on the whole, the film did a VERY respectable job of cramming such a huge story into a managable film length. While OotP is longer, I think it will be easier to fit more of it into the film…I though that GOF would be the hardest of all 6 currently published to bring to the screen, and I think Newell did a very good job of that.

I think it’s the best yet.

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Actually Voldy gives a NOOOOOOOOOOOO! when Harry escapes.

I loved it. The whole ball build-up his my favorite part. Who told the Wesley twins to be funny? They stole every scene they were in, unlike the last movies.

Mad-Eye was amazing. His mad-eye wasn’t quite what I expected, but it worked.

Yeah, I looked for the camel-toe too. :o

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I thought Gambon nailed Dumbledore in “Prisoner of Azkaban” (the part where he distracts the Minister of Magic and McNair from turning around is priceless), but something was definitely off in his portrayal this time around.

Overall, I thought the movie was… mediocre. Better than the first two, certainly, but nowhere near “Prisoner of Azkaban,” which I consider a fantastic Movie, completely aside from being a Harry Potter Movie.

WAAAAY UNBOXED SPOILERS BELOW

First of all, I didn’t mind the various changes to the storyline at all… I knew going in that there was no way they were going to condense the book into less than three hours without cutting out major plot points. If anything, a lot of the cuts made the story better, particularly removing the whole house elves bit. That was pointless and unnecessary in the book, and I was glad to see it go, particularly since it gives Neville something to do other than be a bumbling idiot.

No, my problems with the movie lay in its script and direction. Specifically, Steve Kloves apparently didn’t learn a thing from the Lord of the Rings movies, which are the benchmarks for condensing massive fantasy stories into taut, powerful action movies. The script for “Goblet of Fire” is riddled with expository dialogue, from start to finish- I never want to see another scene in which Harry just sits there while other character(s) explain the plot to him. And do they have to introduce every single new character by having Ron exclaim “That’s _______!!!”?

Furthermore, instead of trimming the story to the bare minimum so that the central arc forms a single cohesive unit, Kloves apparently decided to make cuts semi-randomly, without any finesse or understanding of narrative flow. As an example, the entire Quidditch World Cup scene as it plays out in the movie is completely pointless. IMHO, they should’ve either kept the whole thing or (better yet), cut it entirely. Krum’s celebrity is more than adequately explained later by the great shot of Krum exercising, followed by a gaggle of adoring fangirls, and the Death Eaters and Portkey don’t really need an introduction. It would’ve been obvious in the final scene that they were Voldemort’s minions, and the it being a magical universe, audiences would have no trouble accepting the idea of an object that warps you to a different location, particularly since it’s the Bad Guy who does it.

When I say that the directing was bad, I’m not referring to the actual blocking or angles of shots in the movie, which were fine (if nowhere near as clever or painterly as Cuaron’s). I’m talking about directing the actors. Directors like Alfonso Cuaron or Peter Jackson or Joss Whedon are actor’s directors: they take talented actors and pull the best possible performance out of them. Not so with Mike Newell, apparently. Formerly competently-acted characters like the aforementioned Dumbledore became shadows of their former selves, while the new characters, with the notable exception of Rita Skeeter, were either bland in the extreme or scenery-chewing hams. Voldemort, in particular, stopped being scary the moment he started talking: he went from the Dark Lord to Ralph Fiennes without a nose, which was more comical than frightening. What should’ve been played as controlled menace and confidence to the point of cold arrogance was instead another iteration of the Crazy Evil Villain. Even when speaking lines straight out of the book, Fiennes’ performance was so hammy that I just couldn’t take him seriously. This was a constant problem in all of the dramatic scenes… characters would be so histrionic that the scenes were stripped of actual emotion. Cuaron made his movie emotive by doing more with less (the Lupin-Harry conversations, in particular), whereas Newell takes it the other way around.

Now, all that said, I did think this movie was better than the first two, and that’s mostly due to the humorous moments. The new bits were mostly successful, particularly Snape furiously knocking heads in class, Neville’s priceless “Oh my God… I killed Harry Potter!” and the Weird Sisters as performed by Jarvis Cocker and members of Radiohead. But a few well-executed moments of levity do not make up for the failures of the “serious” scenes. “Goblet of Fire” is supposed to be the Empire Strikes Back of the series, after all- the turning point when the Dark Side is ascendant and the good guys are broken and scattered. That the movie’s best moments are its laughs means, to me at least, that it has failed in bringing the spirit of the book to the big screen.

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I thought the movie was adequate. It’s my least favorite of the books (the tournament is a clunky narrative structure and it just doesn’t seem as magic as the others), so I wasn’t really expecting too much. There was some really weird directing and pacing, but the visuals were fun and it captured a lot of mood.

That said, one thing really bothered me. In all of the books, women have been presented as full and powerful members of the wizarding community. Although most of the main characters are boys, you never doubt that Hogwart’s girls are just as powerful and of course Hermione is a much-needed role model for smart young women. There are female authority figures and females clearly play an important role in the world.

But not in this movie. The only female even using magic we see is Rita Skeeter and her magic pen. Fleur’s triumphant moments are passed by and we only see her in the context of Harry rescuing her. You get the distinct impression that she is nowhere near as powerful as Krum or Cedric. Hermione is reduced from the brains-behind-the-operation to a shrill bother whose big moments are hugging Harry Potter and wearing a pretty dress. She could have been cut out of the movie without changing a thing. All of the love interests (Cho, the Patils, etc.) have no characteristics except to be love interests. The girls of Hogwarts seem to spend their time walking around giggling while the boys do all the interesting stuff. The supporting females (Myrtle, Madame Maxine, Rita Skeeter) are only concerned with romance. The female professors are barely seen (the men teach the high level magic while the women give the dance lessons…great). Even the female death-eater was cut.

The wizarding world of HPATGOF is a man’s world. And that bothers me because this movie takes place at exactly the age that girls see a decline in things like math scores. Girls do internalize this stuff and I’d hate to see a young female Hermione fan get the impression that looking alluring and gossiping about dance dates are what females are “supposed” to do. It also bothers me because this is a classic trope (men drive the action, women react and look pretty) that we need to start moving on from, and HP books seemed like they were.

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What’s the cameltoe?