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The first thing you notice about Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire is how the filmakers managed to compress the first 250 pages to fifteen minutes. The Dursleys are out, Mrs. Weasley and the elder out-of-Hogwarts Weasley offspring are as well. The Quidditch World Cup sequence through the massive hovering Death's Head is edited fairly, um, extremely.
The second thing you notice is that every female in the audience makes a deep sighing noise every time Ron, Harry, or Neville (yes, Neville) is on screen. Particularly when Harry is, uh, not clad entirely. There's some sexual suggestivity in his scene with Myrtle in the Prefect's Bathroom, plus a tracking shot of the Beauxbatons hotties tends to focus on their asses (not that I'm complaining).
As the plot goes, in addition to the cuttings made above, none of the house-elves related plot points make it into the movie. Doby isn't around, and Hermoine isn't crusading for a labor union for Hogwart's House Elves. Winky never "accidently" gave Barty Crouch Jr. a wand, and for that matter, the circumstances surrounding his escape from Azkaban are never explained. The producers rely on the audiences' understanding of the book to compensate for missed plot points -- sloppy, but perhaps a trade-off worth making if it keeps the story moving.
As a movie, it's far superior to Prisoner of Azkaban. That said, many key characters are given the cold shoulder -- Snape, Hagrid, and McGonagall could almost be extras for as much screen time as they get. Forget about Draco, he's pretty much only in one scene and he's a ferret for half of it. The death of Cedric Diggory has considerably less emotional impact than it did in the book -- which is very dissapointing since Dumbledore's speech about why the death of Diggory should illustrate to everyone at Hogwarts the importance of opposing Voldemort is such an emotional climax to the book, and in the movie just rings hollow (I think they changed the speech -- it's much better in the book).
I don't think there's really any way to do a book justice when bringing it to the screen, particularly books of these lengths with the amount of audience involvement in the characters and plot. The movie can be painful to watch since the absence of many things - notably in my mind the Dursely sequence, a staple of the books and of the films, too, (should be anyway) - seems to illustrate that the filmakers need to think "outside the box" in translating the books to film or lose the 'magic' that made them so popular in the first place.
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It was crap. It was so heavily cut down that little of it made sense (unless you know the story), and who's weak idea was it to make Neville a substitute Dobby?
The dialouge was forced, the acting was pony, and the re-writing of it left a feeble plot with more holes in it that a mesh fence.
Luckily I went to see 'Ducktastic' the night before, so I had something to keep my mind off the drivel on screen.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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Gee, I liked it! It's my favorite of all the movies. Of course, I never read any of the books (I tried the first one, but couldn't get through it).
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Registered: Oct 1999
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Harry Pottter and the Gibletts of the Phoinex.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I think it was a decent movie - the brutal fact is that they simply aren't going to spend the money and time to make a full adaptation of a 700+ page book.
S.P.E.W. was best left out IMHO.
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Registered: Oct 2000
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As far as the story went, I thought it made sense to cut from the book where they did. I'm glad they condensed the Quidditch World Cup. I'm glad they cut out the house-elves (although I would've enjoyed seeing the kitchen).
I didn't think the exposition about the Triwizard contest was done particularly well; I think a better job could have done explaining Barty Crouch Jr.'s role in setting up Harry, as well as how he escaped from Azkaban; I wish some of the characters had gotten more to do -- i.e., Hagrid & Snape.
posted
I liked it. Definatly the best yet, with some surprisingly funny moments and it even managed to tighten the plot up a bit. I found that the earlier films had a habit of meandering a little too much, especially in the case of "Chamber of Secrets".
Some very intellegent story editing I thought, especially when it comes to Neville Longbottom getting an expanded role. Those who've read the next book know (Spoiler alert!) that he'll have a more significant role in the next movie, so it's good that they're giving the character some foundation to build on here. The whole house elf bit was best left out, not just because it would have been a distracting and somewhat pointless story element in a movie but imagine how expensive it would have been to have show a kitchen full of house elves interacting with live actors. Money better spent on the trials sequence.
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