I think you’all are being too hard on Gambon. Thinking it over, I believe the issues are more directorial than actor-caused. You’ll note that Gambon seemed fairly warm and almost jocular in HP3. It’s no shame to say you didn’t perform at your best in HP; I don’t think anyone did, except Alan Rickman.
I wonder who the big wizarding DJ is.
Thank god they cut SPEW and Krum throwing the Quidditch World Cup.
Cho + Scottish accent = hot. And so are the Patel girls.
I thought the Sirius in the fireplace was an improvement over the book.
The Crouch stuff could’ve been done better. Same with the Longbottom info. the Rita Skeeter stuff should have been fleshed out a bit more.
Why are the winnings considered so crucial? Seems like a minor point to me.
The Weasley twins seem to have been taking acting classes.
I agree with whoever said the Triwizard tournament is a rather clunky plot device. This is one of the weaker books in the series. The next two are much better.
I think I still like POA the best, but this one is close. It did seem somewhat rushed, but that can’t really be helped, can it?
I finally saw the movie tonight, and some of the posts here have been hilarious – it’s funny the way people pick up on the same things (Barty Crouch’s Hitler 'stache, for example). Overall I enjoyed it, but the pacing was much, much too quick – for a book with this much going on, they really could have made a longer movie. Even if they had to include an intermission with music (ala “Ben Hur”) it would have been alright. I’m amazed that anyone who hasn’t read the book could really understand everything that was going on. Everyone keeps saying that hopefully they’ll release an extended cut that fills in some blanks, but it may well be that they didn’t actually film much of the rest of it.
I did not like the new Dumbledore, at least in the first half of the movie. The way he screamed at everyone to be quiet, and then shoving Harry against the wall and shaking him??? Uh-uh.
I’ll agree with the person who said Fleur should have been waaay hotter. Not to sound like a perv, but I had pictured her as being way more, uh, “curvaceous.” Speaking of pervs, Moaning Myrtle should have to be put on a registration list somewhere, spying on little boys like that.
Cedric and Krum didn’t look much like I’d imagined them either. Cedric was kind of foppish – good looking like he was supposed to be, but almost a pretty-boy, which he wasn’t. Krum looked like a 28 year old Mexican dude, not a sulky teenage Bulgarian. He didn’t even walk duck-footed, or say “Her-me-own.” I didn’t like the entrance of the new students – whoever said it was “Broadway style” had it right on the money.
Cho’s (Glaswegian?) accent made me do a double take. No offense to all the great Weegies out there, but Cho’s character doesn’t fit with that accent – a soft BBC accent would have suited her much better. She was pretty cute though.
I hate Hagrid. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate him. Maybe I’ll start a pit thread about it. Thank God he only had a minor role here.
Is Voldemort not supposed to have a nose in the book? I know the book talked about long slits for nostrils, but I thought it just meant that he had a very thin, angular nose – not that there wasn’t one there at all. Isn’t he supposed to be really handsome and haughty?
The graveyard scene was just too rushed. As someone else said, it’s the emotional high point of the whole series up to this point – the ghosts should have taken more time coming out of the wand, Harry should have talked to his parents a bit more, etc.
Daniel Radcliffe still can’t act much. His only trick is to tighten the muscles around his mouth and look really intense – kinda like GWB. Of the three, Hermione’s the best, then Ron, then Harry.
I’m surprised that a couple people have said this is their least favorite HP book. It’s my favorite – 1-3 aren’t fully developed yet (esp. 1 and 2), Harry’s too whiny in 5, and 6 wasn’t quite there. Having said that, there’s a major plot gap I haven’t seen addressed: why go to all the trouble of making the TriWizard trophy the portkey? Think of all the headaches it caused – rigging things over the course of the entire year, ensuring that he’d win so that he’d be the one to touch it, etc. Why not just turn, I dunno, one of Harry’s socks into a portkey? He’d wake up in the morning, go to put it on, and whammo – he’s in the graveyard.
As a movie fan, I would just like to argue that movies adapted from books aren’t the best films to judge the entire medium. Adaptations always lose something; you wouldn’t judge literature by reading a book adapted from a movie screenplay. The written word isn’t inherently superior to visual media; words could never replicate, for example, the experience of seeing a movie like “Citizen Kane,” or “Sunrise,” or any number of classics.
I agree, but will add that I don’t see the feyness, the odd sense of the ridiculous in this Dumbledore–I saw a pale version of it in Harris. I do think that Harris was too frail for the part–I want Ian McKlelland (or however you spell his last name)–he could do this so well. Perhaps he dreads being typecast as wizards, though.
I have to disagree with the notion that Radcliffe cannot act. He has some good moments throughout the films–I loved his rock star bit in the common room after the first trial, for example. And I think he is better in the quieter, more intimate bits. Let’s face it-there are limited ways to express stark terror. I think he is developing a wry and dry sense of humor and his phsyiognomy does convey intelligence and thinking(something Columbus was looking for originally). Of the main three, Watson is most consistently good, until this movie, IMO. She was shrill and harsh in this movie, when she wasn’t being mawkish and un-Hermione-ish. Grint has improved no end–but the miracle is the twins. Bring on the twins!
Well, while the Tournament was The Big Deal, the whole point of the exercise was to do a big old AFS-like thing. You know, meet your peers from other countries and all that.
-Joe
If this is a problem, it’s the kind of thing that’s a problem with the entire series. The subject of magic, how it works and its practical limitations, was entered into by Rowling lightly rather than heavily. Instead of meticulously banging out some principles and setting them into a hierarchy, a wizarding-world branch of the laws of physics if you will, she just went for the entertaining-fiction path. And instead of wizards being circumscribed in their powers by the intrinsic limits of their magic, they’re most often bitten in the butt by humorous unintended consequences of their magic, or by the well-intentioned magic of their friends and colleagues. As with the TV series “Bewitched” back in the 60s, there’s pretty much nothing Rowling could come up with as a new magical capability that could prompt any of us to say “Hey, but wait, you can’t do that with magic!” based on any general law. The only laws are highly specific and easy to sidestep with an equally specific reason why they would not apply, if she wanted to write in an exception (e.g., Voldemort can’t touch Harry because of how his Mom died for him but Voldy can now touch Harry as a consequence of the spell by which he was reembodied)
If you let it bug you, you end up coming up against absolute plot-chasms, not just minor plot-holes. If the owls can find anyone, they can find Sirius or Voldemort. Heck, if you can “accio broom”, you can not only “accio egg”, you can “accio Voldemort”. If you can make the triwizard cup into a portkey, you can make Harry’s sock into a portkey with less hassle, or make yourself into a portkey and transport Voldemort into the Sirius-Black mirror of no return when he goes to touch you. If you’ve got a time-turner, you can go back to the time when Voldy was born and have a dementor suck his soul out preemptively. Or avada kedavra him and be done with it.
Or, for each of the above, you can construct counterarguments, based on phrases and explanatory riffs hither and yon, to argue why you could not do those things, but any structure of limitations on magic that can be performed is tangential and after-the-fact. A tightly defined self-consistent universe containing magic this is not. Really, the magic stuff is mostly a macguffin around which stories of bravery and cameraderie and good-vs-evil are being woven.
I enjoyed the movie, although I thought it could have seriously used editing. It seemed to me that there were several superfluous scenes and plot threads that never really went anywhere. But though I’ve seen all the movies I haven’t read any of the books, so I might be missing some important references and context.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that the schools of wizardry are mismanaged to the point of criminal incompetence, and guilty of depraved indifference with respect to the safety of their students. I suspect this is a natural result of the secret nature of the entire wizard world, lacking any true public oversight or accountability. It also bothers me that, as AHunter3 pointed out, there doesn’t seem to be any logical framework or rules to what magic can do; it’s just made up as needed for the story.
Oh, I’m pretty certain they cut out things they had filmed (though whether they did the effects on them cannot be certain). In fact, that was really the sense you got watching the movie. Someone scripted and filmed this stuff… and then they sliced and diced to get the film down to size. You REALLY get this sense when they show us none of the World Cup. Or when you never see anyone get out of the carriage.
The problem is that in the past, the Harry Potter DVDs have come out with deleted scenes, but not with those scenes tied in as an extended edition (and maddeningly they’ve in past hid these scenes in some irritating DVD menu puzzle). That prevents the movie from truly being able to breathe and grow like the Lord of the Rings extended editions.
About Voldemort’s face (and thanks for answering my question about Ralph Fiennes’ nose). There are two things about it:
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He is supposed to look snakelike; snakes are the familiars of dark wizards. And snake’s don’t have much in the way of noses, not even very thin, pointy ones.
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In the sixth book, Rowling catches on to the Lord of the Rings thing about people who meddle with dark magic becoming “stretched thin”–Dumbledore actually observes that Voldemort’s face got weirder and weirder as time went on, and the nose eventually flattened out. He speculates that it’s because of the horcruxes, which each take a piece of him away.
So Voldemort really is supposed to have a flat nose.
I would say that this is a rather serious flaw.
I thought it was explained in the book, fairly weakly, that the fake-Moody couldn’t nab Harry inside of Hogwarts, either because of the protections that are built-in to the castle or because of something special Dumbledore had done. I think I remember some comment about the Tri-Wizard tournament being a good opportunity to get Harry because spells are put in place during the Tasks to prevent anyone from interfering with the champions. I guess those spells would counteract the protections.
The fourth is my favorite of the books too, Rodgers01.
Unless you grant that Harry’s socks are under the protection of Hogwarts/Dursley’s in general. I don’t know if the books mention where the TWCup was before it arrives at Hogwarts. Perhaps wherever this is, the death eaters had better access to it.
Harry Potter and the GOF - amusing thread title, to me anyway.
“GOF” is shorthand for the Duran Duran song Girls on Film in Duranie circles. Now, I can’t help but picture the Harry Potter cast mudwrestling. :eek:
Eeh, I’m just not buying …
that the Death Eaters could get at the highly coveted, and presumably quite valuable and well-guarded, Tri-Wizard’s Cup more easily than they could get at Harry or his socks. When you consider the amount of work they had to do - kidnap the real Mad-Eye Moody, impersonate him for months on end, trick the Goblet of fire into spitting out his name when he himself hadn’t entered and wasn’t even quallified, then arrange for him to win it - it just seems like a vastly overcomplicated and needlessly difficult plan. It would be like deciding to assassinate someone by forcing them to enter the Olympics, rigging the games so they win, and then planting a bomb in the gold medal. There are far, far easier ways to do it, and a million ways your plan can fail. All Harry needed to do was decline to actually compete, or deliberatly let the other competitiors win - after all, he wasn’t supposed to be competeing anyway - and the whole plan falls apart.
It definately remains one of Rowlings biggest unexplained plot holes, especially becaues it basically undergirds the purpose behind the ENTIRE YEARS events… and it doesn’t make a lick of sense. No, the book make little attempt if any to justify or explain it. This is not to say that Rowling couldn’t come up with an explanation for it pretty easily. But she failed to do so in the context of GoF and has so far continued to fail to do so, in the books or out.
I understood that Harry couldn’t refuse to participate–why, I am not sure. The main why is that there would have been no book and then no movie, of course.
I don’t disagree that Harry could have been gotten at lots of different ways–but I think it’s irrelevant. If Rowling had wanted to, she would have written it differently.
IOW, this is the way the story goes-it is up to the reader to decide whether or not to suspend disbelief. I think that there was a bit of James Bond in there (the ridiculously complicated methods of death that allow Bond to have chances to escape) and also a bit of feeding Voldemort’s image of himself. I doubt he would want to do things the easy way-witness his command to his Deatheaters that none of them touch the boy-he is to be left for Voldemort alone.
Practically speaking, it would have been much more efficent to have anyone of them kill off Harry at any time–but that is not how the story goes.
Magical binding contract.
Here’s the explanation I would have used for the Triwizard plot, were I JKR(as I’m not, this isn’t canon). It’s convoluted and you have to change GoF and OotP around a bit to account for this explanation, but at least it makes some semblance of sense:
Portkeys are monitored and controlled by the Ministry of Magic’s Department of Magical Transportation. Any use of an unauthorized portkey would be detected, and the Magical Law Enforcement Squad would be dispatched to investigate. That explains why Moody couldn’t turn a piece of Harry’s homework into a portkey, because he’d be rescued by the MLE. The other part of the explanation is that the Triwizard Cup was supposed to be a portkey back to the entrance of the maze. The fake Moody merely had to change the portkey spell so that it went to the graveyard, instead of the entrance. This was the only way to get Harry to touch an authorized portkey on his own.
Make of it what you will.
No no: they can’t kill Harry at any time, because Harry’s blood is needed (and needs to be forcibly taken no less) for raise Voldemort without the flaw that doomed him previously. That much makes sense, or is at least explained in the book. No, the real problem is the EXTREMELY elaborate scheme (a year’s worth of events) that culminate only in Harry touching a particular object that, as we are previously informed, could just as easily have been ANY object. And given Moody’s complete and total access to Harry, there’s no reason he couldn’t have pulled this trick anytime he wanted.
Now, Rowling could easily have explained that the cup itself is special: that it’s free from the protections that prevent disapparation or portkey travel in and out of Hogwarts, that the goal line was the only place Dumbledore’s protection could not reach. But she never explains any of that. In fact, the cup is never really explained as being anything other than a trophy anyway… just another random object as far as making portkeys is concerned.
So why the elaborate scheme? Why NOT have Harry pick up a portkey just about anywhere. Heck, why not simply portkey or disapparate Harry when he went to the town for sweets?
We are never told. Again: Rowling could easily have come up with some pat magical explanation. This is, after all, a world in which we discover there is a magic that protects sons from death curses if their mothers sacrifice themselves to protect them.
But she never has. And that means one of two things. Either there is some as of yet plot aspect we’ve yet to discover, or it’s just poor writing. Don’t know which. Rowling DID, however, correct an error in later editions where she confused the death order of Lily and James. She COULD have added in an explanation to the flaw then. But she didn’t.
I liked the film, even if I was increasingly distracted by how attractive Daniel Radcliffe is becoming. He even had cute little chest hairs in the bathtub… bad thoughts, bad… he’s 16.
Otherwise… I liked the film. I didn’t reread the book recently, but I will before book 7 comes out. All in all, I think the actors have gotten better, particularly Radcliffe. The editing was choppy at the beginning, but I thought the last half flowed fairly well.
I never read any of the books and I liked the new movie, I thought it was close to the third one in quality(maybe slightly better). I didn’t enjoy the change in the principal score and the quidditch soundtrack(I really liked the ones in the first two movies). Don’t really have much of a hatred for the new AD - he seems to get the job done.
I must say however that I find the second film to be the best so far - not as childish or long as the first one, yet not afraid to take its sweet time to make the plot coherent to a non-reader. I do enjoy the darker tone of the new movies but I wish they would “stop and smell the magic” for a second and not rush forward like a locomotive.