As a
film, The Goblet of Fire is probably
in my top 2 or 3 of the series, but as an adaptation, it’s more of a mixed
bag. The first adaptation of one of the
longer books, it has the tough job of cutting the story down to a more
manageable length, and while it mostly does well, there are definitely places
where certain plots/characters get the short shrift (spoilers.)
There is
just a lot of book in this book, and
the movie’s streamlining is pretty reasonable.
Cutting Ludo Bagman isn’t much of a loss, nor is the whole plot about
Hermione and S.P.E.W. – the latter loses that dimension on house elves, which
is an important continuing demonstration of the wizarding world’s relationship
with non-humans, but the S.P.E.W. stuff is so much more annoying than I
remember, so I don’t miss it too much (more on that another day.) It would’ve been nice to see the scenes with
Sirius sneaking back into England and hiding out, but it’s not a must; the same
goes for Rita Skeeter being a secret Animagus.
Different cuts necessitate certain plot changes – the twins running bets
on the Triwizard Tournament instead of betting on the Quidditch World Cup,
Harry getting the gillyweed from Neville instead of Dobby – and it mostly works
well.
Inevitably,
though, there are some cuts that I feel much more strongly about. That’s a hard problem to avoid, since pretty
much every scene is going to feel essential to someone. I know mine aren’t
necessarily vital to the story, but that doesn’t make me want them any
less. Personally, I miss the more
complex story about Barty Crouch and his son, as well as Percy’s involvement in
that plot – virtually everything about Percy is excised from the later films,
and that begins here. I also wish we
could’ve gotten more with Viktor Krum/him liking Hermione. He’s an interesting character to me, and he’s
a virtual non-entity in the movie (so is Fleur for that matter, but I like Krum
better, so I feel his shortchanging more keenly.) I would’ve liked to see the stuff about Rita
Skeeter’s exposé on Hagrid being half-Giant (again, it shows the wizarding
world’s prejudice,) and, since I enjoy Bill and Charlie Weasley, I wish we’d at
least gotten to meet them here.
Some nice
standout scenes in this film, with pride of place going of course to the
graveyard scene. I also really like some
of the scenes with Moody (especially teaching the Unforgivable Curses and
turning Malfoy into a ferret,) and the Yule Ball drama is probably some of the
best teen-romance stuff in the series.
Besides that, I just enjoy the relatively-breezy feel that much of the
film has, with the script and Mike Newell’s direction playing up some good
humor, especially with the twins.
The usual
strong additions to the cast. Ralph
Fiennes is just fantastically evil as Lord Voldemort – so, so good – and Brendan
Gleeson is pitch-perfect as Mad-Eye Moody, covering the very different sides of
the character well. (Side note: I’m not sure if it was him, David Tennant, or
Nichols who came up with Barty Crouch Jr.’s weird tongue-flicking thing, but it
cracks me up.) Additionally, Miranda
Richardson, who’s awesome as Rita Skeeter, is clearly having a ball.
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