The row with Harry reaches a resolution, but Hermione’s hurt feelings are forgotten. Rupert Grint has a lot to soldier through in this one, being a git to his two best friends alternately throughout. It also throws up one of the film’s loose ends, Ron and Hermione have a blazing row when he jealously offends her about her partner, and one of Harry’s rivals in the tournament, Viktor Krum. On a repeat viewing, it’s unfortunate to note that the Yule Ball sequence should lift right out of the main plot. Gone are Hermione’s campaign for house-elf civil rights, the character of Ludo Bagman and his dealings with Fred and George Weasley, and Hagrid’s dalliance with Blast-Ended Skrewts.īut for those in the know, it actually makes it seem weirder that they didn’t excise more. To his credit, screenwriter Steve Kloves takes most of the extraneous subplots right out of the film. No sooner are we informed that Ireland won when the masked Death Eaters, Voldemort’s followers, lay siege to the jubilant spectators and chaos reigns. But rather than actually show the match, we skip forward to the aftermath. We begin at the Quidditch World Cup final, seeing all of the anticipation and build up for this huge wizarding event. Newell was right to say that The Goblet Of Fire could be done in one film, but this version is more than a little clumsy and jumpy, the atmosphere seeming to stumble over the gaps where missing plots from the novel have been excised. It definitely shows that this one was adapted from a much longer book than the previous stories. But on the pedestrian-o-meter, if we may call it that, Newell’s film is much closer to his reverent approach than to Cuarón’s more radical adaptations. It’s easy to imagine director Chris Columbus acceding to the studio’s wishes, and so, if he’d stayed on this long, we’d probably have been looking at that three-hour Azkaban, as well as The Goblet Of Fire Parts 1 and 2. It does, however, feel somehow more pedestrian than its immediate predecessor. However, this film is more tonally rampant than you’d be led to expect from Newell’s attitude.
#Harry potter and the goblet of fire series#
To hear Newell speak of his approach to the material, there’s something of a discrepancy between his intent to make the story as a classic paranoid thriller, such as The Parallax View, and the film we actually got.Ĭertainly, it’s the most action-packed film of the series to date, although the final film looks set to knock it into a cocked hat with its Hogwarts battle royal. Harry has three tasks to overcome, each more deadly than the last, while dark forces gather and bring his nightmares into reality. But hey, the excitement of a Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts, uniting three of the world’s best wizarding schools in a test of mettle and skill, might just be enough to distract him from his nightmares.īut nope, because Harry’s name is drawn out of the hat, or rather the Goblet of Fire, and he’s illegally entered into the competition, despite being way under the minimum age to compete. Harry is plagued by bad dreams about Wormtail returning to the enfeebled Lord Voldemort, and planning his return to power. That’s a really good, strong thriller shape.” And so he gets more and more suspicious, until there is a shoot-out between him and the bad guy. “But there is, of course, a malign intelligence which is manipulating things.