Days late, Galleons short ...
Dec. 3rd, 2005 12:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherWell, as one of the last few Harry Potter fans in the world not to have seen Goblet of Fire yet, I finally got around to it ... Now I can post a few impressions and then read all those other flist comments on the subject I've been avoiding. :)
OK, general impressions first: it's about what you would expect, really, given that they had to chop a long book down into 150 minutes or so of screenplay -- i.e. focusing on a few spectacular scenes and the actual storytelling and characterisation mostly got lost somewhere along the way. That's why Chamber of Secrets is still my favourite of the films -- the book was short enough to do justice to and to allow the scenes and plot to develop at a sensible pace. (The first film spent too much time sort of going "oh wow, it's a film of Harry Potter!", and the book itself is very episodic anyway.)
To be fair, generally speaking Steve Kloves did a solid job with writing linkage to cover the bits cut out, but the Shrieking Shack Problem raised its head again: too many scenes were rushed through to the point of incomprehensibility (the whole World Cup sequence, for example). And the acting suffered as well -- rather too much scenery-chewing from Gambon and Fiennes in particular. This is a real peeve of mine with some recent films -- the directors/scriptwriters/thesps (pick your target for blame) seem to think it's enough to rattle off a few lines quickly and call it development. No. Development involves scenes that sound like ... well, actual conversations and events rather than statements for the record. At least when Alan Rickman had a few lines about Polyjuice, he throttled it back slowly enough to make the pacing of the scene credible.
Oh well. Some piece by piece things I remember:
Harry's the central character this time! Not Hermione! Who-hoo! (Yes, that's a dig at how PoA turned out.)
Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson all did pretty darn well here -- Grint in particular actually got some lines for once, and nailed them. Watson isn't really quite my idea of Hermione, but she can certainly act. Radcliffe wasn't bad either, although ironically he's maybe the weakest of the three? One obvious problem though: they're already starting to look a bit old for the ages they're supposed to be. I think JKR had better write in Harry with a goatee in Book 7. :)
A line that made me laugh out loud (and probably got me funny looks) -- just after Barty Crouch Junior disappears at the campsite and someone says "Who was it?". Don't know if that was intentional or not!
The Beauxbatons Academy Dance Troupe sashaying into the Great Hall -- W. T. F?!!! Suddenly all those essays on Why Harry Potter Is A Feminist Disaster actually began to seem almost reasonable. I mean, I'm not denying they looked damn good(!), but it even struck me as odd.
Mind you, Clemence Poesy -- OK, I've changed my mind. Yep, she really is cute, a lot more so onscreen than in the stills. Not quarter-Veela-cute, maybe, not many actresses could bring off being quite that sultry, but definitely cute. (What, you thought I'd write about how hawt ... er, whatshisname who played Cedric was? Yeah, right. :D) And they sensibly cut out the Veela-heritage aspect, although that also lost a lot of her characterisation -- the arrogance just disappeared. But given the minimal lines she had (acted just fine), it didn't make a lot of difference, and makes me suspect the Bill/Fleur subplot might not even make it into HBP. (No Bill here, you notice.)
Hermione was back to something resembling book!Hermione. She was actually shown reading something again! Better. Much better.
Karkaroff -- Rasputin's twin brother or what?
The Harry/Ron falling out scenes were short but at least they put them in. And incidentally, Ron saying "piss off" really does show how little people bother about swearing nowadays (in Britain). It's a 12A certificate -- i.e. kids younger than 12 are allowed in with an adult. Martin Clunes' comment a while back that in a few years kids' TV presenters will be saying "fuck" may not be that far out!
Sirius in the fire -- um, okay. Special effects given primacy over storytelling again.
Miranda Richardson as Rita. Excellent. Pity they didn't have time to do much with her articles in the film.
Dragon scene exciting but made even less sense than .. well, in the book. :) A vicious dragon breaks its chains and starts clawing chunks out of the castle walls, and everybody just waits around inside the stadium to see whether it eats Harry or not?
Jarvis Cocker as a Weird Sister. Cool.
Yule Ball actually quite well adapted in general, I thought. Like many scenes, I'm not sure if they entirely made sense if you hadn't read the book, but they were fun, and even McGonagall giving dance lessons was a respectable filmic way to introduce the Ball. And the way all the girls jumped up to dance and the boys cringed back was a nice moment.
StrictlyComeDancing!Neville? Um, OK. Safe to say that wasn't quite JKR's characterisation. :) The hint of Neville/Ginny might cause a small problem come the next two films for anyone who hasn't read the books -- if they remember, which I suppose is unlikely. (And if they even remember who Ginny was supposed to be.)
Cho with a Scottish accent. Left me slightly taken aback even though I'd heard about it. No reason why not, obviously, but in my Anglocentricity my!Cho's accent was just everyday English. :)
Second task spectacular but not as interesting as the book (because rushed). Excellent use of Neville to get Harry the information about Gillyweed, though. The end with the grindylows attacking Harry was one of those things they seem to put in films to make it More Exciting but which actually to me just seem clichéd. You know, like Ticking Clocks Which Stop With A Second To Go in Bond films.
Third Task -- very different in concept from the book, but actually not a bad idea, I thought. The maze scenes in the book -- up until the bit where Harry and Cedric are near the Cup -- were actually rather corny and among the weaker things JKR's written. It was a pity though that they lost the most effective bit -- Harry telling Cedric to take the Cup with him because he thought it was the right thing to do, not just because mad shrubbery was after them.
Ah yes, the graveyard scene. That was one of the most edge-of-the-seat scenes of the books, one where I was reading on tenterhooks thinking "oh shit, how the bloody hell does he get out of THIS one?" In the film -- well, maybe it's me that's unimpressed, but it just wasn't at all creepy. Even Voldemort wasn't that scary here -- in the book he's cold and cruel and genuinely chilling, here Ralph Fiennes just flounces about overacting. Another scene which was the key, central scene in the book but here felt rushed through.
Conversely, I thought the Moody-is-actually-Crouch-Junior scene was adapted and truncated well. Since they'd already brought him into the story from the start, it worked fine not to have him give a long explanation. On that topic, the courtroom scenes were adapted excellently too, I thought, with Rasputin -- sorry, Karkaroff -- naming him and having him caught then and there. (Looks like Bella isn't going to get much screentime then.)
The ending -- very ... quiet. It felt much like the ending of the other films; even though Hermione has her "this will make a difference, won't it?" speech, there wasn't the same impression that everything really had changed that the end of the book version had. But then the films are bound to get more loosely connected to the books as they go along.
Oh well, so that was more than just a few impressions. :D
OK, general impressions first: it's about what you would expect, really, given that they had to chop a long book down into 150 minutes or so of screenplay -- i.e. focusing on a few spectacular scenes and the actual storytelling and characterisation mostly got lost somewhere along the way. That's why Chamber of Secrets is still my favourite of the films -- the book was short enough to do justice to and to allow the scenes and plot to develop at a sensible pace. (The first film spent too much time sort of going "oh wow, it's a film of Harry Potter!", and the book itself is very episodic anyway.)
To be fair, generally speaking Steve Kloves did a solid job with writing linkage to cover the bits cut out, but the Shrieking Shack Problem raised its head again: too many scenes were rushed through to the point of incomprehensibility (the whole World Cup sequence, for example). And the acting suffered as well -- rather too much scenery-chewing from Gambon and Fiennes in particular. This is a real peeve of mine with some recent films -- the directors/scriptwriters/thesps (pick your target for blame) seem to think it's enough to rattle off a few lines quickly and call it development. No. Development involves scenes that sound like ... well, actual conversations and events rather than statements for the record. At least when Alan Rickman had a few lines about Polyjuice, he throttled it back slowly enough to make the pacing of the scene credible.
Oh well. Some piece by piece things I remember:
Harry's the central character this time! Not Hermione! Who-hoo! (Yes, that's a dig at how PoA turned out.)
Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson all did pretty darn well here -- Grint in particular actually got some lines for once, and nailed them. Watson isn't really quite my idea of Hermione, but she can certainly act. Radcliffe wasn't bad either, although ironically he's maybe the weakest of the three? One obvious problem though: they're already starting to look a bit old for the ages they're supposed to be. I think JKR had better write in Harry with a goatee in Book 7. :)
A line that made me laugh out loud (and probably got me funny looks) -- just after Barty Crouch Junior disappears at the campsite and someone says "Who was it?". Don't know if that was intentional or not!
The Beauxbatons Academy Dance Troupe sashaying into the Great Hall -- W. T. F?!!! Suddenly all those essays on Why Harry Potter Is A Feminist Disaster actually began to seem almost reasonable. I mean, I'm not denying they looked damn good(!), but it even struck me as odd.
Mind you, Clemence Poesy -- OK, I've changed my mind. Yep, she really is cute, a lot more so onscreen than in the stills. Not quarter-Veela-cute, maybe, not many actresses could bring off being quite that sultry, but definitely cute. (What, you thought I'd write about how hawt ... er, whatshisname who played Cedric was? Yeah, right. :D) And they sensibly cut out the Veela-heritage aspect, although that also lost a lot of her characterisation -- the arrogance just disappeared. But given the minimal lines she had (acted just fine), it didn't make a lot of difference, and makes me suspect the Bill/Fleur subplot might not even make it into HBP. (No Bill here, you notice.)
Hermione was back to something resembling book!Hermione. She was actually shown reading something again! Better. Much better.
Karkaroff -- Rasputin's twin brother or what?
The Harry/Ron falling out scenes were short but at least they put them in. And incidentally, Ron saying "piss off" really does show how little people bother about swearing nowadays (in Britain). It's a 12A certificate -- i.e. kids younger than 12 are allowed in with an adult. Martin Clunes' comment a while back that in a few years kids' TV presenters will be saying "fuck" may not be that far out!
Sirius in the fire -- um, okay. Special effects given primacy over storytelling again.
Miranda Richardson as Rita. Excellent. Pity they didn't have time to do much with her articles in the film.
Dragon scene exciting but made even less sense than .. well, in the book. :) A vicious dragon breaks its chains and starts clawing chunks out of the castle walls, and everybody just waits around inside the stadium to see whether it eats Harry or not?
Jarvis Cocker as a Weird Sister. Cool.
Yule Ball actually quite well adapted in general, I thought. Like many scenes, I'm not sure if they entirely made sense if you hadn't read the book, but they were fun, and even McGonagall giving dance lessons was a respectable filmic way to introduce the Ball. And the way all the girls jumped up to dance and the boys cringed back was a nice moment.
StrictlyComeDancing!Neville? Um, OK. Safe to say that wasn't quite JKR's characterisation. :) The hint of Neville/Ginny might cause a small problem come the next two films for anyone who hasn't read the books -- if they remember, which I suppose is unlikely. (And if they even remember who Ginny was supposed to be.)
Cho with a Scottish accent. Left me slightly taken aback even though I'd heard about it. No reason why not, obviously, but in my Anglocentricity my!Cho's accent was just everyday English. :)
Second task spectacular but not as interesting as the book (because rushed). Excellent use of Neville to get Harry the information about Gillyweed, though. The end with the grindylows attacking Harry was one of those things they seem to put in films to make it More Exciting but which actually to me just seem clichéd. You know, like Ticking Clocks Which Stop With A Second To Go in Bond films.
Third Task -- very different in concept from the book, but actually not a bad idea, I thought. The maze scenes in the book -- up until the bit where Harry and Cedric are near the Cup -- were actually rather corny and among the weaker things JKR's written. It was a pity though that they lost the most effective bit -- Harry telling Cedric to take the Cup with him because he thought it was the right thing to do, not just because mad shrubbery was after them.
Ah yes, the graveyard scene. That was one of the most edge-of-the-seat scenes of the books, one where I was reading on tenterhooks thinking "oh shit, how the bloody hell does he get out of THIS one?" In the film -- well, maybe it's me that's unimpressed, but it just wasn't at all creepy. Even Voldemort wasn't that scary here -- in the book he's cold and cruel and genuinely chilling, here Ralph Fiennes just flounces about overacting. Another scene which was the key, central scene in the book but here felt rushed through.
Conversely, I thought the Moody-is-actually-Crouch-Junior scene was adapted and truncated well. Since they'd already brought him into the story from the start, it worked fine not to have him give a long explanation. On that topic, the courtroom scenes were adapted excellently too, I thought, with Rasputin -- sorry, Karkaroff -- naming him and having him caught then and there. (Looks like Bella isn't going to get much screentime then.)
The ending -- very ... quiet. It felt much like the ending of the other films; even though Hermione has her "this will make a difference, won't it?" speech, there wasn't the same impression that everything really had changed that the end of the book version had. But then the films are bound to get more loosely connected to the books as they go along.
Oh well, so that was more than just a few impressions. :D
