Monday, November 21, 2005
Harry Potter's on fire!
Wooo hoooo! Got to see "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" last night! SPOILER WARNING: if you plan to see the movie and haven't read the book, you may want to skip this entry.
The guy who directed "Four Weddings and a Funeral" directed this one. I was suitably impressed. This was a massive undertaking, condensing a 700 plus page book into a two and a half hour film without totally mangling the story. As much as I really enjoyed Part 3, it fell apart during the Whomping Willow scene because they left too much of the story out, and unless you had read the book, you would have no idea what was going on. So naturally I feared this would happen again. It didn't. Amazingly, they were able to leave out some characters, consolidate several events but produce the same outcome, and still have a story emerge out of it. Major props for that.
They completely left the Dursleys out of the movie. It would have been good for some comic relief, but the story really didn't suffer with their removal. It was a little unsettling at first to have Hermione waking Harry up at the beginning until you realize she and Harry are visiting the Weasleys on the eve of the Quidditch World Cup. They left in the part where they use an old boot as a portkey because it is important to the story later on.
The World Cup stadium was a fantastic piece of CG, regrettably brief. Reminded me a bit of my local football stadium (similar odd shape), but the stands curve outward and then upward so that the upper seats seem practically on top of the field. The inside of the stadium functioned like a Jumbotron, flashing Viktor Krum's picture when he flies in. They left out the leprechans and the veelas for brevity's sake, and they completely excised the whole business of the house elves, so when the Mark of Voldemort is launched after the game, they show who actually did it but made sure Harry didn't know who it was.
The setup of the Triwizard Tournament was shortened considerably. They did show the other schools' modes of transportation but kept the rest of the fanfare pretty short. Mad-Eye Moody was pretty much exactly as I envisioned him except he had a metallic leg instead of a wooden one. He's seen sipping from a flask containing what everyone assumes is booze. His introductory Defense Against the Dark Arts class scene was pretty much intact, demonstrating three unforgivable curses on a spider, much to the dismay of Ron of course.
The primary storyline in the movie is the Triwizard Tournament. One champion from each of the three competing schools is selected by an enchanted goblet. The entrants must be 17 years old, which should exclude Harry as he's only 14. Yet the goblet selects Harry as a fourth competitor. This causes an uproar amongst the younger students who are jealous (especially Ron) and amongst the teachers who fear for Harry's safety. Yet they abide by the bidding of the goblet and allow Harry to compete. Ron rejects Harry's friendship, and most of the rest of the school rejects Harry too. There is one great moment, however, when Draco Malfoy, Harry's classmate and enemy, gets exactly what he deserves. He is turned into a ferret and bounced around the schoolyard. I was almost sorry to see him return to human form.
Harry finds out ahead of time that his first challenge will be to evade a dragon. Each competitor in the tournament draws which specific dragon he/she will face, and of course Harry gets the fiercest one, a Hungarian ridgeback. He looks very small as he goes in search of a golden egg he must steal from the spiky, ill-tempered dragon. His only weapon is his wand, which he uses to call his broomstick to him. He then attempts to outrun the dragon, which inflicts quite a lot of damage on the school and the surrounding area and at one point sets Harry's broomstick on fire. But after several scary moments, he does succeed in capturing the egg. Ron, who witnesses Harry's narrow victory, decides he would rather not be in Harry's place after all.
What a challenge it must have been to keep the three principal characters looking only 14 when I believe they are actually 16. The kid who plays Ron luckily didn't change very much. Harry does look older, but not excessively so, because when he's in the tournament with the 17 year olds, they made sure the other boys were taller. Hermione was probably the biggest challenge. She was supposed to look more grown up for the Yule dance, but not as mature as the 17 year olds, so they put Hermione in a purple dress with sleeves with her hair pinned up slightly and the "older" girls in strapless or spaghetti strap evening gowns with more mature hairstyles. It worked.
The other thing that made the characters' ages more believable is the romance angle. When the Yule Ball is announced, the 14 year old girls are thrilled, but the 14 year old boys are mortified. Harry and Ron are old enough to notice girls, but not mature enough to know that waiting until the last minute to ask one to a dance is a very bad idea. They don't realize how important the dance is to the girls and are totally shocked that not only does Hermione want to go, she accepts Viktor Krum's invitation. Harry finally gathers the guts to ask the beautiful Cho Chang to the dance, but Cedric Diggory, the other Triwizard competitor from Harry's school, beat him to it. Harry and Ron get dates with two beautiful sisters but insult them by not dancing with them. It is their eternally clumsy classmate Neville who is the savvy one. He asks Ron's little sister to the ball and dances all night. As an interesting sideline, Hagrid meets his match in the statuesque Madam Maxime, who is at least 10 feet tall.
The golden egg that Harry captured from the dragon contains the clue to the second challenge. But every time Harry opens the egg, it merely shrieks. Finally, Cedric helps him out because Harry had given him a heads up about the dragons. Harry is instructed to take a bath and bring the egg with him. Harry gets further assistance from Myrtle, a teenaged ghost who haunts the bathrooms (and who seems most anxious to peek at Harry under the water). Harry discovers that the egg contains a mermaid song and that the next trial will be underwater in the lake on the school grounds. Neville helps him to an herb called gillyweed, which basically turns Harry into a fish underwater. But he is not prepared for the "treasure" he is supposed to retrieve from the lake. Turns out the PERSON each competitor values most has been enchanted and bound underwater! Hermione is in the lake for Viktor to rescue, Cho for Cedric, the French girl Fleur's little sister is there, and Harry is supposed to rescue Ron. Harry wants to save them all because he believes they will drown if he doesn't. Viktor and Cedric do show up and retrieve Hermione and Cho, but Fleur is injured and doesn't reach her sister, so Harry tries to bring both Ron and the girl to the surface as the gillyweed is wearing off. He nearly drowns in the process.
I think I need a Pensieve. The headmaster of the school owns a device where he stores old memories so his brain doesn't get overwhelmed with too many thoughts. Harry could use one of his own as well, with all he has had to endure.
The last challenge differs greatly from the book. It is a huge maze with the Triwizard Cup hidden in the center. In the book, there are various creatures and other obstacles to get around, but for brevity's sake, in the movie, it is the maze itself that is the obstacle. It bewitches Viktor, devours Fleur and nearly swallows Cedric until Harry has a change of heart and rescues him. By rights, Harry has won and can claim the Cup for himself, but being the decent fellow he is, he agrees to share the victory with Cedric, and they both reach for the Cup at the same time. Unbeknownst to them, the Cup is a portkey like the boot was earlier. This transports them to a graveyard that Cedric has never seen but Harry has dreamed about. They are not alone. Cedric is struck with an undoable death curse. Harry is captured and bound to a gravestone. Voldemort now receives what he needs to regain human form: a bone from his ancestor, the right hand from his right hand man, and blood from Harry. But even his human form somewhat resembles a snake. He calls his old followers back to him. One of them is Lucius Malfoy, Draco's dad. Voldemort is all set to finish Harry off and challenges the boy to a wizard's duel. But Voldemort doesn't know that Harry's wand has a bond with his own, and when they try to cast simultaneous spells, the ghosts of the people Voldemort killed come to Harry's aid. Harry is given a chance to escape. He grabs Cedric's body and the Cup and is teleported back to the Triwizard Tournament.
The most agonizing part of the movie is when Harry returns. The crowd watching the Tournament is cheering wildly, not realizing Harry is guarding the body of a dead boy. And then cheering turns to screams as it is discovered that something is horribly wrong. Professor Moody drags the grieving Harry back to the school, supposedly to console him. But actually it is not Moody at all, but a supporter of Voldemort who had been drinking Polyjuice Potion out of a flask all school year to impersonate the professor. He's all set to kill Harry, but the headmaster intervenes.
There's a somber end to the movie as the result of Cedric's murder, but it seems appropriate. Harry and Hermione are realizing that growing up is both frightening and exciting (Ron's a little slow in catching on). A fitting conclusion to the best of the Potter series of movies so far.
Anyone know where I can find a Pensieve??
The guy who directed "Four Weddings and a Funeral" directed this one. I was suitably impressed. This was a massive undertaking, condensing a 700 plus page book into a two and a half hour film without totally mangling the story. As much as I really enjoyed Part 3, it fell apart during the Whomping Willow scene because they left too much of the story out, and unless you had read the book, you would have no idea what was going on. So naturally I feared this would happen again. It didn't. Amazingly, they were able to leave out some characters, consolidate several events but produce the same outcome, and still have a story emerge out of it. Major props for that.
They completely left the Dursleys out of the movie. It would have been good for some comic relief, but the story really didn't suffer with their removal. It was a little unsettling at first to have Hermione waking Harry up at the beginning until you realize she and Harry are visiting the Weasleys on the eve of the Quidditch World Cup. They left in the part where they use an old boot as a portkey because it is important to the story later on.
The World Cup stadium was a fantastic piece of CG, regrettably brief. Reminded me a bit of my local football stadium (similar odd shape), but the stands curve outward and then upward so that the upper seats seem practically on top of the field. The inside of the stadium functioned like a Jumbotron, flashing Viktor Krum's picture when he flies in. They left out the leprechans and the veelas for brevity's sake, and they completely excised the whole business of the house elves, so when the Mark of Voldemort is launched after the game, they show who actually did it but made sure Harry didn't know who it was.
The setup of the Triwizard Tournament was shortened considerably. They did show the other schools' modes of transportation but kept the rest of the fanfare pretty short. Mad-Eye Moody was pretty much exactly as I envisioned him except he had a metallic leg instead of a wooden one. He's seen sipping from a flask containing what everyone assumes is booze. His introductory Defense Against the Dark Arts class scene was pretty much intact, demonstrating three unforgivable curses on a spider, much to the dismay of Ron of course.
The primary storyline in the movie is the Triwizard Tournament. One champion from each of the three competing schools is selected by an enchanted goblet. The entrants must be 17 years old, which should exclude Harry as he's only 14. Yet the goblet selects Harry as a fourth competitor. This causes an uproar amongst the younger students who are jealous (especially Ron) and amongst the teachers who fear for Harry's safety. Yet they abide by the bidding of the goblet and allow Harry to compete. Ron rejects Harry's friendship, and most of the rest of the school rejects Harry too. There is one great moment, however, when Draco Malfoy, Harry's classmate and enemy, gets exactly what he deserves. He is turned into a ferret and bounced around the schoolyard. I was almost sorry to see him return to human form.
Harry finds out ahead of time that his first challenge will be to evade a dragon. Each competitor in the tournament draws which specific dragon he/she will face, and of course Harry gets the fiercest one, a Hungarian ridgeback. He looks very small as he goes in search of a golden egg he must steal from the spiky, ill-tempered dragon. His only weapon is his wand, which he uses to call his broomstick to him. He then attempts to outrun the dragon, which inflicts quite a lot of damage on the school and the surrounding area and at one point sets Harry's broomstick on fire. But after several scary moments, he does succeed in capturing the egg. Ron, who witnesses Harry's narrow victory, decides he would rather not be in Harry's place after all.
What a challenge it must have been to keep the three principal characters looking only 14 when I believe they are actually 16. The kid who plays Ron luckily didn't change very much. Harry does look older, but not excessively so, because when he's in the tournament with the 17 year olds, they made sure the other boys were taller. Hermione was probably the biggest challenge. She was supposed to look more grown up for the Yule dance, but not as mature as the 17 year olds, so they put Hermione in a purple dress with sleeves with her hair pinned up slightly and the "older" girls in strapless or spaghetti strap evening gowns with more mature hairstyles. It worked.
The other thing that made the characters' ages more believable is the romance angle. When the Yule Ball is announced, the 14 year old girls are thrilled, but the 14 year old boys are mortified. Harry and Ron are old enough to notice girls, but not mature enough to know that waiting until the last minute to ask one to a dance is a very bad idea. They don't realize how important the dance is to the girls and are totally shocked that not only does Hermione want to go, she accepts Viktor Krum's invitation. Harry finally gathers the guts to ask the beautiful Cho Chang to the dance, but Cedric Diggory, the other Triwizard competitor from Harry's school, beat him to it. Harry and Ron get dates with two beautiful sisters but insult them by not dancing with them. It is their eternally clumsy classmate Neville who is the savvy one. He asks Ron's little sister to the ball and dances all night. As an interesting sideline, Hagrid meets his match in the statuesque Madam Maxime, who is at least 10 feet tall.
The golden egg that Harry captured from the dragon contains the clue to the second challenge. But every time Harry opens the egg, it merely shrieks. Finally, Cedric helps him out because Harry had given him a heads up about the dragons. Harry is instructed to take a bath and bring the egg with him. Harry gets further assistance from Myrtle, a teenaged ghost who haunts the bathrooms (and who seems most anxious to peek at Harry under the water). Harry discovers that the egg contains a mermaid song and that the next trial will be underwater in the lake on the school grounds. Neville helps him to an herb called gillyweed, which basically turns Harry into a fish underwater. But he is not prepared for the "treasure" he is supposed to retrieve from the lake. Turns out the PERSON each competitor values most has been enchanted and bound underwater! Hermione is in the lake for Viktor to rescue, Cho for Cedric, the French girl Fleur's little sister is there, and Harry is supposed to rescue Ron. Harry wants to save them all because he believes they will drown if he doesn't. Viktor and Cedric do show up and retrieve Hermione and Cho, but Fleur is injured and doesn't reach her sister, so Harry tries to bring both Ron and the girl to the surface as the gillyweed is wearing off. He nearly drowns in the process.
I think I need a Pensieve. The headmaster of the school owns a device where he stores old memories so his brain doesn't get overwhelmed with too many thoughts. Harry could use one of his own as well, with all he has had to endure.
The last challenge differs greatly from the book. It is a huge maze with the Triwizard Cup hidden in the center. In the book, there are various creatures and other obstacles to get around, but for brevity's sake, in the movie, it is the maze itself that is the obstacle. It bewitches Viktor, devours Fleur and nearly swallows Cedric until Harry has a change of heart and rescues him. By rights, Harry has won and can claim the Cup for himself, but being the decent fellow he is, he agrees to share the victory with Cedric, and they both reach for the Cup at the same time. Unbeknownst to them, the Cup is a portkey like the boot was earlier. This transports them to a graveyard that Cedric has never seen but Harry has dreamed about. They are not alone. Cedric is struck with an undoable death curse. Harry is captured and bound to a gravestone. Voldemort now receives what he needs to regain human form: a bone from his ancestor, the right hand from his right hand man, and blood from Harry. But even his human form somewhat resembles a snake. He calls his old followers back to him. One of them is Lucius Malfoy, Draco's dad. Voldemort is all set to finish Harry off and challenges the boy to a wizard's duel. But Voldemort doesn't know that Harry's wand has a bond with his own, and when they try to cast simultaneous spells, the ghosts of the people Voldemort killed come to Harry's aid. Harry is given a chance to escape. He grabs Cedric's body and the Cup and is teleported back to the Triwizard Tournament.
The most agonizing part of the movie is when Harry returns. The crowd watching the Tournament is cheering wildly, not realizing Harry is guarding the body of a dead boy. And then cheering turns to screams as it is discovered that something is horribly wrong. Professor Moody drags the grieving Harry back to the school, supposedly to console him. But actually it is not Moody at all, but a supporter of Voldemort who had been drinking Polyjuice Potion out of a flask all school year to impersonate the professor. He's all set to kill Harry, but the headmaster intervenes.
There's a somber end to the movie as the result of Cedric's murder, but it seems appropriate. Harry and Hermione are realizing that growing up is both frightening and exciting (Ron's a little slow in catching on). A fitting conclusion to the best of the Potter series of movies so far.
Anyone know where I can find a Pensieve??
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