BEDA 19- Re(re) Evaluating Goblet of Fire

***SPOILERS***

(sorry for any area where this sounds too ranty)

Today I finished reading Goblet of Fire for the third time and then I watched the movie.

The book is excellent. It's definitely my favorite of the series. There are tons of things going on to keep the reader interested. Theres all the mysterious things going on like Bertha Jorkins missing, you've got the world cup, the whole mystery about the dark mark and world cup attack, sirius is saying that things are starting to turn bad again, theres an apparent scandal going on with both ludo bagman and barty crouch that everyone seems to be on the hush about, hermione and the whole S.P.E.W. thing, plus on top of all that you have the triwizard tournament. There was never a time that I was bored in all 733 pages of the book.

The movie, however, is horrible. I still don't know if I would call it the worst one but it's pretty bad. I understand that they had to make cuts to fit the plot into a movie format, i'm ok with that, but they cut out too much. This led to things getting very jumbled up and someone who has not read the book (a considerable amount of people) possibly have no clue what is going on. The entire movie focuses on the triwizard tournament when the things going on in the background are equally important; if not more so because of the way things unfold near the end of the series.

First of all Ludo Bagman is not in the movie at all. Neither is winky, dobby, any of the elves and the entire SPEW thing (which sucks because I was looking forward to seeing the kitchens). I can understand reasons for cutting out anything house elf related for time constraints so no major problems here. Dobby is the one to give harry the gillyweed for the second task, since there is no dobby in the movie neville does it because of the book moody gave him. In the book, moody WANTED neville to tell harry about the gillyweed and that didnt work out so he had to clue dobby to do it. So the fact that there was a part of a plotline missing and they filled the gap with something else that was still in the novel was played off very well.

A major problem with the movie is Barty Crouch. His family plays the ENTIRE role of moody being kidnapped, impersonated, and then getting harry into the tournament in order to get him to where voldemort is. He's supposed to be sick and mysteriously not coming to the events. In the movie he's somehow at the second task and then right after is found dead which basically didnt need to be in the movie AT ALL since in the end they didnt explain ANYTHING about HOW Barty Crouch Jr. was working with voldemort.

Which leads to the horrendous ending to the movie. The whole scene where moody turns back into crouch (david tennant hey that's cool. he plays a good crazy guy)- nothing was explained as it should have been. Granted the clues along the way were not in the movie so what was there really to explain?

Then in the book you have the two scenes that are not in the movie. The first being the scene in dumbledore's office where he tells dumbledore and sirius about everything that happened in the graveyard and they talk things over. Then theres the scene in the hospital wing where harry wakes up to fudge arguing with everyone and saying that voldemort is not back. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE EVENTS TO FOLLOW! If anything they could have thrown together SOMETHING about fudge not believing voldemort is back. Instead they play it off (badly) in the next film.

Random things I noticed that were dumb for no reason:

• the seats they get at the world cup are laughed about when in the book they are considered good seats
• the world cup scene just not happening at all. HUGE anti climax
• the hungarian horntail was never supposed to break free and chase harry around. this was personified to make a better scene, visually
• this is very picky but it still bugs me that the patil twins (are they twins? i'm not sure) were both in gryffindor when one is supposed to be in ravenclaw.
• The dancing scene with mcgonagall... WHAT WAS THAT?! where did that come from? all that time could have been used to explain other things better
• the band at the yule ball was completely muggle looking/sounding and its my least favorite part of all the HP movies. its just gross
• viktor krum says ONE LINE in the whole movie, at the end, and it's a wisper and lame. fleur pretty much only has one line as well
• Voldemort's eyes are not "catlike" and red. this goes along with the rest of the movies. i just think he'd look a lot more evil if they would have stuck to that.

So the movie was all made for show to be a big hollywood movie and they didnt care that the back stories were important and only focused on the visual aspects of the tournament.

Here are some good things about the film:

• I really started to notice how rupert grint and emma watson are great actors. a lot better than daniel radcliff anyway.
• the dragon was great looking
• the scene from when harry and cedric touch the cup to when they escape back into the quidditch field, everything involving the voldemort scene was PERFECT (except his eyes). All of that was fantastic and great

so there. mysterious things should have happened and the presence of voldemort needed to be a little more dire and fudge could have popped in to say at least ONE thing about how he doesnt believe he's back.

Reading: so totally owned today

Last song scrobbled: idk what it was but it was iwrestledabearonce i can tell you that