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Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire..Reviews (2 Viewers)

DavidPla

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While I agree about the end, I don't know if you have to be a reader of the book to get the point of him summoning his broom. It's pretty clear he's calling something with his wand and when the broom shows up you just sort of put two and two together. Explaining the meaning behind the spell just seems redundant.
 

Adam Lenhardt

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This is an instance when booke readers confuse non-readers more than they would have been to begin with by assuming stuff doesn't make sense out of the book's context.
Dumbledore didn't summon the spirits. Remember back in the first movie when the wand maker told Harry that the other wand made from that phoenix's feathers was Voldemort's? Well, two wands from the same source aren't supposed to be used against each other. The result of doing so is Priori Incantatum, when the spells of one of the wands are puked back out. The reason the spirits come out of Voldemort's wand is because they are all of the people he killed with Avada Kavadra[sic].
 

Chris Atkins

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As a nonreader, I just assumed that, since both wands were made from the same source, and both Harry and Voldemort were powerful, that it was a stand off sort of thing. I didn't find out about prior incantium (sic) until later.
 

Adam_S

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No, Dumbledore didn't 'summon' those spirits. they were there as a result of a priori incantantum effect that Dumbledore recognized (hence the muttering) from Harry's description.

Priori Incantatum is a spell cast from one wand onto another wand (they need to be 'firing' at each other) that reveals the last spell(s) that wand has cast. When Harry and Voldemort, both with the only two wands with phoenix feathers from the same phoenix (Fawkes) attacked each other at the same instant the spells connected and backfired into the wands creating a weirdly powerful magical connection between them that became a priori incantatum spell, it may have done this unconsciously on Harry's part (like the reflexive/uncontrolled magic small children display and was written about in the first book) because Voldemort's spell was so strong harry compensated without realizing it. Also the connection may have resulted because of possible other magical links between Harry and Voldemort due to Harry's scar/survival.

In the book, after Moody tells Harry to play to his strengths he spends a short, really great scene with Hermione and Neville (I think) practicing summoning charms over and over and over again--in the books magic is difficult for Harry and he really has to work hard at it and often fails.
 

David Williams

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I finally got a chance to see at a second run theatre (the holiday season was very busy for me). I liked it more than Azkaban, but I feel like the movie has very serious problems that the first two didn't have.

What was the freaking point of even having Rita Skeeter in the movie if they aren't going to follow through on her storyline? If TPTB's intention is laying the groundwork for Phoenix, then they are going to have introduce the rest of her plotline in that movie, which creates even more to be done. Karkull & Maxime are also just walking stand-ins for future storylines, since neither one of their most important scenes in the book are in the movie. Maxime's reduced storyline leads me to believe she will be totally excised from Phoenix.

I feel like the resolution of the Moody/Crouch, Jr. storyline was botched... why was the foe glass even in the film if they weren't going to use it in it's most important scene? By leaving out the foe glass they make Harry even more stupid that he really is*, because in the book he keeps Crouch going on because he knows that Dumbledore is on his way by the fact that he appears in the glass (unbeknownst to Crouch). I think they did a good job streamlining the Barty Crouch, Sr. storyline & the excising of Winky but they should have made explicit how Jr. escaped Azkaban and the fact that Sr. was responsible.

I am less and less enchanted by Michael Gambon's portrayal of Dumbledore with every movie. His physical accosting of Harry Potter was extremely uncharacteristic to the point of being laughable. What on earth was the director thinking?

* As the books and, especially, the movies continue, the flaws in Harry's character are greatly magnified. This movie made it more obvious than the book the fact that Harry isn't especially bright or clever, that he relies on the strengths of others too much to get by and about the only skill he has is in riding broomsticks & his greater-than-average courage in the face of adversity.
 

Holadem

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Timothy, forgive that poorly worded passage of mine, I hope subsequent explanations cleared that up.

--
H
 

Vickie_M

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FWIW, in the advanced screening I saw, there was a scene with the foe glass. Harry glances over and sees Dumbledore, McGonagall and Snape coming prior to their bursting into the room. I don't know why it was cut out of the final version, it was only a few seconds long.

Even though I understand the problems book-readers have with Gambon, I love him as Dumbledore and hope he continues.
 

Timothy Alexander

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Holadem, no it's not your fault. Just me being too obvious a noob to the world of Harry Potter, having just seen the four movies and reading none of the books :).
 

JonZ

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I thought the Accio Firebolt was pretty clearly said and heard. Im suprised people missed it.
 

Chris Farmer

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I still haven't seen an onscreen portrayal of Dumbledore that I've liked. Harris' DD was far too weak to be the slightly mad, slightly crazy, utterly brilliant DD of the first two books. Gambon's DD in PoA came close, but lacked in screen time to really make an impact, but he's still the closest to the book that we've seen. Gambon in GoF though was nothing like the character of the books. He was far to frail, far to worried about his decisions (one of DD's notable characteristics is that he can make a decision and go through with it, he doesn't fret over decisions after he's made them), and getting angry and shaking Harry was far out of character.

The biggest weakness of GoF though was its short running time. 2 1/2 hours for a 750 page book that couldn't, even with the most stringent editing, lose more than about 100 pages is far to short. Realistically, to fully get more than the barest essentials of GoF onto the screen you needed about 3 1/2 hours, with 4 or even 4 1/2 being preferable. As it was, too many important plot elements/characters (Rita Skeeter, Madame Maxine, Cornelius Fudge) were cut down or even eliminated. The biggest problem with these is that you can't just get rid of them either. They're key elements for future books that will have to be explained at some point in the future or you'll just keep adding to the list of deus ex machinas in a movie series that's fast getting riddled with them. That's a shame, because in the books Rowling is very very careful to lay out everything far in advance, even before you know its important, so that when the big revelation comes it may be shocking but it's never unfair.

Fortunately I think OotP and HBP after it can help clear up a lot of these. Plot wise far less happens in those books compared to GoF and more time is spent on exposition and laying the groundwork for book 7, plus there's a lot more flavor scenes that are there to flesh out the characters and their relationships that can be sacrificed, so hopefully some of that time can be devoted to cleaning up all the plot holes left from a lack of exposition in the first four movies.
 

Adam_S

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Um I'd say that plot-wise the most happens in OotP because harry has to be shifted to so many different locales as well as dealing with a plot intense DAtDA teacher. So apart from umbridge the book is very weblike, I just hope they don't lose too much and try to hang the whole movie on Harry/Umbridge.

I really can't see how OotP can be under three hours, HBP can definitely make it because, like GOF, it has a really strong straightforward plot/mission, (and laying all the exposition for the seventh book) whereas OotP had the requirement of exploring the world, maturing/training the characters and planting and developing how wizarding world politics impact hogwarts.

I thought Goblet of Fire was a brilliant adaptation, and the loss of the Spew and Skeeter subplots was well done, I don't see Maxine as anymore necessary than a certain character that occupies Hagrid for the first part of OOTP, both are relatively extraneous and unimportant, otherwise said character wouldn't have been conveniently forgotten about for the entirety of HBP (two or three asides do not count).
 

DavidPla

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I agree. What's important, for the movies, is to keep Harry's story MOVING forward. Sure it sucks to see favourite scenes and characters go but in the end it's Harry's story that is most important to be told.
 

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