The Harry Potter Retrospective: Part IV

The Goblet of Fire – Mike Newell

On to the next one and now the series starts to pick up steam, and punches you directly in the fucking face. FUCK YEAH! The Goblet of Fire, the hardcore adventure picture of the franchise where it sees Potter face off in a dangerous wizard tournament where death almost seems realistic. But it never is seeing as they are wizards who like 15, that would seem really cruel, oh wait, a kid does die, and it’s not just any fucking wizard, it’s Robert Pattinson he gets killed, it’s Edward Cullen coming into the world of wizard’s and getting done in. I love that scene, i could watch it over and over again, i know it’s meant to be sentimental and you feel sorry for what’s going on, but i loved every second, seeing Pattinson’s face as he got killed by none other than the shittest person in the whole franchise, Wormtail. Ron’s rat kills Edward Cullen. I would seriously have that on a t-shirt if i had the money, and have a picture of Wormtail and Cullen face to face or have a massive photo of Cedric Diggory’s face as he dies. FTW! The film is one of the coolest with fight scenes, dragons, underwater creatures, killer mazes, a bit of sexy loving, and a band. It’s the middle years of Hogwarts, where the hormones take control, and now you get to see the real teenagers as they act like normal people. Plus there’s even a weird paedophile like character in Mad Eye Moody who appears every so often to make the rest of the characters feel really uncomfortable. The acting has gotten better, it doesn’t detract away from the story or the plot, in fact, compared to past three films, the acting is a step above in Goblet, but it had to get better at some point. Sure the artistic style isn’t the same considering it is different directors with Mike Newell takes reign. You may know Mike Newell from directing Four Weddings and A Funeral. Yeah weird isn’t it, Newell directing this, he doesn’t seem have to have a back catalogue that really connected with the Potter films. But recently he did direct Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time which shows he loves a bit of money.

So the Goblet of Fire is pretty self contained, there are no massive cliff-hangers or changes to the characters, sure you have more Sirius Black and you have the full return of Lord Voldemort who we haven’t seen or heard of since good old Tom Riddle, but it wasn’t a game changer like Prisoner of Azkaban. The twist that the whole tournament was a way of getting Potter in the same place as Voldemort was really clever and you don’t realise it until right at the end, and i found it was one secret that worked really well and you never knew this was going to happen. The whole tournament was fun and entertaining, it felt like a canon film instead of being standalone, they really took what happened in the last film and amplified it. Like the relationships between Harry and Sirius, Harry and Dumbledore, Ron and Hermione, the interesting relationships we want to see more of. Having three wizards or four in this case battle it out in a tri-wizard tournament involving three different schools is great, having Victor Krum from the school of Viking wizards, Fleur Delacour who is from a French school of witches, who make the guys go hard, and the lovely Hogwarts. Cedric Diggory, the arrogant, smug bastard who has his hair in a certain way. He gets his later on, don’t you worry. And that’s pretty much the plot, having different challenges for these wizards to face leading to a standoff with Potter and Lord V.

It’s a great film, and it shows the right progression from Prisoner of Azkaban into a good place where the films are entertaining but at the same time tell the sad story where at some point either Harry Potter or Lord Voldemort will die. It’s going to happen sooner rather than later, but it’s the journey to that place that matters. The next film is the somewhat subdued The Order of the Phoenix which you can read all about next week!

Simon Childs