HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE - PREVIEW 

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe,  .... Harry Potter
Emma Watson .... Hermione Granger
Rupert Grint .... Ron Weasley
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Afshan Azad .... Padma Patil
Tiana Benjamin .... Angelina Johnson
Predrag Bjelac

Director: Mike Newell
Rated: Unrated
Opening Date: Nov 18, 2005

 

There seems to be no end to Pottermania: 2005 sees the release of the fourth big screen Harry Potter movie as well as the publication of the much anticipated sixth book by author J.K. Rowling (titled Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which sounds like something out of a treatise on the Aryan race or something).

However, with the Harry Potter movies becoming an almost annual institution, the trick is to keep things fresh I suppose. Let’s be honest here: the novels do follow a kind of pattern here. They always kick off with Harry at his abusive muggle “adoptive parents” and somewhere along the line there’ll be a quidditch match and so forth.

So the creative personnel keep being shuffled round. The first two movies had Chris (Gremlins, Mrs. Doubtfire) Columbus as director whilst the third movie had Y Tu Mamá También director Alfonso Cuarón. (The main cast stayed more or less the same though).

The fourth instalment has Mike Newell of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame in the director’s chair.

One question remains: as the books being adopted for the screen get thicker and thicker, will the movies get longer and longer? Really testing the endurance of a generation turned into attention deficit syndrome cases by computer games and TV, the movies each clocked in at almost two and a half hours each: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) was 142 minutes long, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) a whopping 161 minutes and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) was 141 minutes.

Goblet is thicker than the previous books which have been made into films. Does that mean that it will be even longer than them? Are talking a new Lord of the Rings sore butt fest here? (The three Rings movies clocked in at 165, 179 and 200 minutes each respectively.)

Don’t get me wrong here: the Potter books are great page-turning entertainment and I wished they were around when I was a kid (instead kids my age had to make do with The Hardy Boys!), but I do kinda feel sorry for the kids who have to read the past few doorstops of novels.

After all, these are just books intended for children, aren’t they?

Note: They’d better get a move on with these movies, because the three kids playing Harry and his pals are sure growing up quickly judging from the publicity photos on this page!

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Plot Summary

It's the summer holidays before Harry's fourth year in Hogwarts. The Weasley family invites Harry to stay with them for the last two weeks of the holidays and accompany them to the crowning event of the summer: The Quidditch World Cup Final between Ireland and Bulgaria. Everything could be so great, if there weren't mysterious events taking place in the magic world, foreshadowing the comeback of the evil Lord Voldemort. Meanwhile Hogwarts is looking forward for another great event: The Triwizard Tournament, an international magic competition between Hogwarts and two foreign schools: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. All students being over 17 are allowed to apply and a goblet of fire picks a champion from each school who will fight the dangerous competition. To everybody's surprise, the goblet of fire picks four champions: Fleur Delacour for Beauxbatons, Viktor Krum for Durmstrang, Cedric Diggory for Hogwarts and, to everybody's surprise, Harry Potter! Facing his new, unpleasant popularity, a bad discussion with Ron, his first love and many dangers, Harry takes the challenge and stands up to fight: For his school, against the evil and always with Lord Voldemort in mind who wants to kill Harry and to rise to new power again.

— Some sources: Amazon.com

Trivia

• Alfonso Cuarón was offered the chance to direct this installment in the series, but declined as he would still be working on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004).

• Over 3,000 girls turned up at the auditions for the role of Cho Chang, in London on 7 February 2004.

• The Dursleys were cut from the film due to time constraints.

• Mike Newell is the first British director the film series has had.

• According to rumors that circulated the Internet, both Rowan Atkinson and John Malkovich were considered for the role of Lord Voldemort. Both rumors were proven to be untrue.

• Rumors on the Internet of a Scottish actor being cast as Viktor Krum were halted when it was announced that, as originally planned by the producers, a Bulgarian would in fact play the part. Perhaps these rumors arose because the Bulgarian was discovered in England and not in Sofia, where there was a casting call for the part of the International Quidditch Champion. Stanislav Ianevski, a Bulgarian student living in London, has been cast in the role.

• Mike Newell decided against the studio's original idea of adapting the 636 page book into two separate films to be released several months apart, figuring that he could cut enough of the book's bulky subplots to make a workable film.

• Mike Newell only received $1 million to direct (whereas Chris Columbus received $10 million plus a percentage of the gross to direct _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001).

• During the underwater filming, Daniel Radcliffe, a couple of the cast members, and all of the underwater crew posed for a photo which he later sent out as a Christmas card with Rudolph noses and antlers Photoshopped on everyone's faces.

— Some sources: Amazon.com

Photo Gallery

(Click on pictures to download larger versions)