Directed by:
Mike Newell
Starring:
Daniel Radcliffe ………. Harry Potter
Rupert Grint ………. Ronald Weasley
Emma Watson ………. Hermione Granger
Robert Pattinson ………. Cedric Diggory
Stanislav Ianevski ………. Viktor Krum
Clémence Poésy ………. Fleur Delacour
James Phelps ………. Fred Weasley
Oliver Phelps ………. George Weasley
Jason Isaacs ………. Lucius Malfoy
Michael Gambon ………. Albus Dumbledore
Brendan Gleeson ………. Alastor ‘MadEye’ Moody
Robbie Coltrane ………. Rubeus Hagrid
Miranda Richardson ………. Rita Skeeter
Alan Rickman ………. Severus Snape
Maggie Smith ………. Minerva McGonagall
Gary Oldman ………. Sirius Black
Katie Leung ………. Cho Chang
Timothy Spall ………. Wormtail
Ralph Fiennes ………. Lord Voldemort
Tom Felton ………. Draco Malfoy
The Movie
The Harry Potter book series has sold millions upon millions of books around the world being printed in over thirty languages, has collected billions of dollars at the box office and has rekindled the love of reading for a whole new generation of young children (and adults). To say this is a series loved by many would be possibly the largest understatement ever made, it’s more than that. So as the movies have progressed there has been a sort of split between readers, those who demand versions that are damn near verbatim and those who understand that novels and film are two different mediums requiring some alteration in order for them to translate as best as possible. If you’re in the first group, you probably won’t like this new instalment as much as the rest of us.
What made the first two films such favorites among fans is because they were so faithful to the books, which is easy to adapt in to a screenplay when they’re both slightly over 300 pages long. Prisoner of Azkaban the third book was around 100 pages longer and when adapted was forced to tighten up the story dropping some plots and re working them in to other stages of the story to make up for their loss. The Goblet of Fire is a massive 734 pages, it can easily be used as a door stop if you ever need one. To expect it to be adapted with every single scene intact is simply naive. It’s essentially two books in length with a story just as deep and quite frankly that’s an impossible task with only two and a half hours to tell it in.
It’s hard to review a movie like Harry Potter because you don’t want to ruin the magic for those who haven’t seen it, even the ones who read every book time and time again get a new experience seeing it brought to life before them on screen. This year begins with Harry, Hermione, Ron and the rest of Rons family heading to the Quidditch World Cup, a tournament very similar to something like the Super Bowl centered around the sport that has been mentioned in the previous three movies that Harry also plays. They aren’t around for long before followers of Lord Voldemort named death eaters come to the camp ground and wrech havoc sending out a message that things are about to change.
Things don’t let up when Harry and the gang get back to Hogwards either as it is announced to them and the rest of their school that Hogwarts has been chosen to host the Triwizard Tournament. That tournament is about three schools competing with three representatives in three task with only one champion walking away with the triwizard cup. Due to accidents in prior events there is a new rule that no one under seventeen can enter. Simple right? Well not this time with Harry Potter around, he finds himself mysteriously included as a fourth competitor. Something that has never happened before in the history of the tournament. Even more suspicious seeing as he’s only fourteen.
He also has a new defense against the dark arts teacher in Alastor ‘MadEye’ Moody, a former Aurora for the Ministry of Magic who helped take down wizards gone bad. As a long time companion to Dumbledore he’s asked to come to the school and help teach, also to help keep an eye on young Mr. Potter. With a resume like that you’d be crazy to think anything wrong could happen, but that specific class has a track record for poorly chosen professors.
Year four expands the world in which the characters live in far greater than it ever seemed in the books. All the familiar faces make a return in the movie even if some are just small appearance with one or two lines. The large section of the movie focuses on all of the new faces. While the three new students in the tournament are important, the two key characters introduced in the movie are ‘MadEye’ Moody and Lord Voldemort personified by Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, two actors who manage to add even more class to the ever growing list of big name stars in the series. Especially with Fiennes as the past three films have been building up to Voldemort’s confrontation with young Harry Potter and finally after all these years we get to see it on screen and better than imagined. Thanks in large part to what Fiennes brings to the table.
The Goblet of Fire is slightly disappointing for such a veteran director like Mike Newell, Newall is a man who knows his craft, it seems as if he can do no wrong behind the camera. He isn’t restricted to specific genres and isn’t afraid to branch out and attempt his fate at something new. After initially turning down the opportunity to direct the first Potter film he finally took a shot at sitting in the directors chair for book four. It just doesn’t seem that he puts his stamp on the series here as much as Cuarón or Columbus did before him with their films. If anything it feels more like he tried to bridge a gap to the first two movies and tried to cover up the extreme makeover Cuarón did.
While the movies seem to continue in compacting the books leaving somethings out and combining others it doesn’t seem to phase Goblet as much as I assumed it would. Granted, reading the novel would have broadened and enlightened your viewing experience but it’s not a requirement that I imagined it would have been. The two and a half hour runtime puts in as much of the book it needs but this movie really changed the way in which to look at the Potter films as adaptations. Instead of doing a word for word retelling Newell has taken the core stories of the book and combined them in a way that best translates to making a film work.
Unlike other films in the series, little time is wasted to get to the heart of the story rushing through a large portion of the first quarter of the book as well as the middle. If you’re a fan of the books you’ll understand everything going on because you already know the back stories, however if you haven’t read the book or seen the previous movies, many things will get lost to the viewer. As has happened with the other Potter films Goblet seems to have surpassed its predecessors proving the series only gets better with each passing film. The same can be said for the mood, Goblet is much darker, scarier, deeper and more engrossing than any of the previous films in the series.
Score: 8.5/10
The Video
(Presented in 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen)
The transfer is sharp and clear with no physical damage to the print, but there does seem to be some occasional digital problems such as edge enhancement in several scenes. Goblet of Fire is a very richly detailed film and only several scenes impair that picture as they come off slightly blurry or soft. There also seems to be some type of blue haze in some scenes hampering the pictures contrast, but I believe those effects are purposely added.
The Audio
(English and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound)
With a movie as big as The Goblet of Fire the audio does a wonderful job to match it. With a rumbling bass and very ambient surround effect from the side and rear speakers the audio will pull you in to Harry’s world from start to finish. Also, when dealing with a film as large as this with all of the sounds required, the sound editor does a wonderful job of making it all present without taking focus off of the main dialogue.
The Extras
Lets face facts, the extra features from the Harry Potter DVDs have always been light on content. And in the beginning you needed a doctorate to be able to get through the games in order to actually watch the filler special features, making the effort to watch them even more tedious. Things changed this time around with slightly more indepth features and the disc no longer requires you to navigate through games to get to the good stuff. Sadly this DVD follows in the foot steps of the previous three as it includes no commentary track what so ever.
(There is no bonus material on disc one, all the added content is only available on disc two.)
Harry vs. the Horntail: The First Task (6:03) – The effects team talks about how the dragon sequence was the biggest shot in the movie and the one that required to most preparation. A 14 foot wing span maquette was created and then scanned in to computer for as a model for all of the CGI. There’s no denying that the dragon in the film is one of, if not the best dragon to ever be used in a movie (sorry Dragonheart and Reign of Fire). The effects crew finish up the piece by talking about how they wanted to up the ante when it came to the scene by altering the books story and making it as intense as they could.
In Too Deep: The Second Task (9:45) – In place of digitally shooting the close ups they chose to instead go with shooting naturally with Radcliffe in a large water tank to shoot the second task. The tank used to film the scene held half a million gallons of water, it’s massive. it’s basically a glass square with blue screen walls with a few practical sea weed props. No shot was longer than 8-11 seconds so that no bubbles would appear as well as for Daniels safety. He spent nearly fourty-two hours in the tank filming over to coarse of three weeks. The rest of the feature looks at how they designed the underwater world and the creatures that inhabit it.
The Maze: The Third Task (6:45) – The hedges used on set to film the scene were twenty-five feet high walls and as you’d imagine it was rather claustrophobic for the cast. The effects team once again discuss how they created the tone and mood of the maze, along with the effects. They seem to be glowing over this even though it’s the least entertaining moment of the movie. The last thing in the short piece is a look at how they developed the vine effects for the end of the scene.
Additional scenes (10:03) – Don’t let the inflated length fool you, a large portion of this is an extended musical number featuring the rock band from the Yule Ball. There are around eight scenes in all. Most of these are throw aways but there are one or two that could have been left in the film. Much like any other deleted scene section there are more filler scenes than actual content here.
Conversations with the cast (30:24) – Here we have a thirty minute piece that’s has Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione) answering soft ball questions by host Richard Curtis. The questions aren’t earth shattering and not much is revealed that will leave you more enlightened than before you watched it, but it’s a nice intimate personal talk between the child stars. Also featured in this are five kids that won a contest to visit the set who each get to ask the stars one question. It’s kind of sad that the questions by the fans are more compelling than the guy running the Q&A offered.
Preparing for the Yule Ball (8:58) – All of the kids in the movie and by all I mean just about all of the main and secondary kids from the past four films talk about preparing for the dance.
Reflections on the Fourth Film (14:07) – The actors playing the kids in the movie begin the piece by talking about how they feel about the series over the past four years and them growing up over the coarse of the four films. Everyone mentions how much they love coming back each time to film the movies because they’ve grown so close to their co-stars. They share what aspirations they have in the movie business outside of acting, there are some very interesting choices by the cast. It’s a slightly EPK style featurette but it’s nice hearing the cast so enthusiastic about making the movies.
Meet the Champions (12:58) – Here is a short featurette that follows Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory), Stanislav Ianevski (Viktor Krum), and Clémence Poésy (Fleur Delacour) the three new cast members who played the three Triwizard Champions. Not running very long it takes a look at how they start their day, what they do during their down time on set and how they got used to being the new kids on the block. It’s what you would expect for a feature that’s much like a “day in the life of…” type of piece.
He Who Must Not Be Named (11:02) – The last thing on the disc is what many have been looking forward to, it shows Ralph Fiennes and how he got in to the character of Lord Voldemort. Running a lot shorter than I personally would have liked they talk about getting his effects done while he discusses what it was like getting in to the mind of Voldemort and how he saw the character. It’s very facinating his interpretation on how he sees the villain and the series in general. The more interesting part here is how they instead of using practical effects they digitally removed his nose with CGI to restructure the characters face.
And lastly there are four interactive games you can play with your remote control, these are mostly designed for a younger audience. Even if for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to get them to work. Also included is the trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it’s listed as the theatrical trailer but is actually the teaser.
Score: 6.5/10
