Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Last Saturday I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Number four's significant other got tickets through her employer for four people to go so she invited me, number seven, and (duh??) number four. That morning I got up to go do a church cleaning assignment and then raced over to number sevens house to pick him up and ferry him up to the theater where the movie was being shown. We were told to be there as close to 11 a.m. for a 12:25 showing.
After finding food, standing in line, and waiting amidst a group of people I didn't know to get into the theater, we were seated and got to wait about thirty minutes for the movie to actually begin. There are things that bother me about movies, these days, and part of the problem is shoving as many trailers and as much crap in front of a movie as possible. With that said, I got to see, for the second time, the trailer for the new Superman movie, Superman Returns. There was nothing there that made me want to go and watch the movie outside of Superman being one of those movie franchises I enjoyed as a child and would like to see the follow-up on. The trailer was not good. There were others, as well, but for the most part, they are not worth mentioning - with the exception of an CG animated penguins movie that is being released next year and sounds like it has the voice of Robin Williams.
Then the Harry Potter movie begins. I have to tell you, this one was my favorite of the lot. Love the books, hate the movies. For the most part, I feel that they spend way too much energy on being too true to the books and lose the plot and the elemements of the books that made the story great. In a book you can add a lot of easter eggs and extras because the written word does not require a direct translation to physical imagery and pace. You can add easter eggs into a movie to enhance the movie, the moving pictures in the Harry Potter movies is a good example of that kind of an easter egg; however, to take the nuances of writing and put them directly on the screen. There are differences between story and plot and both are necessary to good storytelling, one is more important to writing than the other, while the other is more important to movie making. (Hint: plot is key to movie making.)
The movie follows what I remember about the books rather well. It drops a lot of the extras the fanatics want, and makes the plot of the book central to the flow of the movie. What this means is that you add elements to a movie that are not, necessarilly, in the books. In Prisoner of Azkaban the talking shrunken heads were an addition that J.K. Rowling wished she would've come up with.
So, the movie dealt with friendship troubles, burgeoning relationships, crushes, and high adventure with the mix of darker elements growing and the whole tembre of the movie being much darker than any of the previous. This is the movie where Voldemort returns. He is back, the whole movie is getting him back, and by the end Harry has struggled with the process of competing for the coveted Goblet of Fire. Dangerous, we are told, with dragons and merfolk and a maze that maliciously changes as the competitors wandered through.
I've got to say that the director did a superb job of reimagining the imagery of the story and directed the action rather admirably. He told Goblet of Fire without including the entire story. The movie was dark and the imagery, I felt, was appropriate to the nature of the book. J.K. Rowling stopped writing children's stories at about book three and the change in movie making is definitely suggestive of the realization that these books aren't all meant for 12 year olds. Hence the PG-13 rating the movie got. I would imagine that this will be the hardest rating any of these movies get.
On top of the directing being right on, I also felt that the actors were definitely growing into themselves as actors. There were scenes where, according to the emotional intensity within the film, I felt that I could react to the movie as the character was reacting to the action in the scenes. I don't feel that way very often. This movie moved me.
Granted, I am very picky about books, movies, music, talent shows, people in general and the movie had its flaws, I won't go into them, but at the same time suspension of belief set in and I enjoyed the romp. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was worth watching and, for the first time in a while, I am willing to go and watch it again.