With Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald coming out this November, I figured this was as good a time as any to revisit the Harry Potter films. And it’s the 20th anniversary of the release of Sorcerer’s Stone the book, so even more reason. I’ll be looking at the original eight one at a time, before finishing with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. These won’t be regular reviews per se, but more of a review/reflection combination.
The review and subsequent rating will be based on the movie by itself; I won’t take into account how it compares to or differs from the accompanying book. But if there are notable people, scenes, etc. left out of the movie, I might make mention of those as more of something that I wish had been included simply due to my personal opinions.
And in the spirit of honesty, these look-backs won’t necessarily have the same structure. Some might be long and in depth. Others might be shorter and more light-hearted. Whatever I feel the day(s) I’m writing will be what comes out. Should make it fun. Keep it spicy, I like to say.
I don’t have any sort of release schedule planned for these. Just know that I will be done before Crimes of Grindelwald is released on November 16. These are also not in conjunction with Chris’s revisiting of the Harry Potter book series (as of this blog being published, he has written about Sorcerer’s Stone , Chamber of Secrets, and Prisoner of Azkaban).
Rest of the movies
Sorcerer’s Stone
Chamber of Secrets
Prisoner of Azkaban
Order of the Phoenix
Half-Blood Prince
Deathly Hallows Part 1
Deathly Hallows Part 2
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
*It shouldn’t be necessary given how long the movie has been out, but this will contain spoilers.*
When Goblet of Fire came out, it was instantly my favorite of the first four movies. While Prisoner of Azkaban was – and still is – a slightly better movie, the scope and scale of Goblet of Fire made it a more fun and and enjoyable experience, even given some of the darker themes. It plays at some more personal themes as well. We see how Harry really has no desire to be in the spotlight; he still wants to be “just Harry.” This has been hinted at here and there throughout the earlier movies (meeting Lockhart at Flourish and Blotts, for example) but it hasn’t been anything as high-profile or intense as becoming the unintentional fourth participant in the Triwizard Tournament.
So let’s start at the (near) beginning as Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys are heading out to the Quidditch World Cup. First, the portkey. They really left Harry out to dry here, didn’t they? Everyone else gathers around the boot and grabs on, as Harry just dumbly looks on. Arthur notices at the last minute and Harry grasps the boot just before it leaves. Does everyone forget that Harry grew up completely sheltered from wizarding life? And that he for sure hasn’t done any extensive reading like Hermione may have? Sure, Harry probably should have realized from context that he should have just followed suit and grabbed the boot like everyone else. But if the floo powder incident from Chamber of Secrets is any indication, magical travel (sans broomsticks of course) isn’t exactly a strong suit of Harry’s.
Then there’s the World Cup itself. Okay, that’s enough of that. Now that it’s over the real meat of the movie begins with the Death Eater attack. We see the the first appearance of Voldemort’s Dark Mark, which immediately tells the viewers we should prepare for some serious stuff to go down.
(Admittedly not from the movie, but it’s just a dope picture.)
Barty Crouch Jr/Mad-Eye Moody
The intensity and pacing of the movie help gloss over a few issues with this character. First and foremost, there’s the issue of his escaping (or avoiding) Azkaban. We see in the pensieve that Junior had been arrested years ago for being a Death Eater – not to mention he was also involved in the capture and torture of Neville’s parents. That clearly would have bought him a nice, lengthy stay in an Azkaban cell. But the idea of how he got out is never addressed at all.
Junior was also able to perfectly imitate someone as unique as Alastor Moody. I don’t mean just in voice and mannerisms and the like. But in behavior. It’s one thing to pretend to be two lug-heads like Crabbe and Goyle for an hour, as Harry and Ron did in Chamber of Secrets. But it’s quite another to take on the life of another for an entire school year and flawlessly keep up the charade.
There are two moments that stick out in that regard. In one scene we see Junior transform Malfoy into a ferret. And there’s of course the famous scene of him demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses in class, knowing, strictly speaking, he’s not supposed to. Now maybe he knows Mad-Eye so well that he’s confident these are decisions the real one would be likely to make. However, you might think Junior would want to be somewhat careful to not draw unwanted attention to himself.
On the other hand, though, had he not done those things, that might have stood out just the same. I find it fascinating to think about. Junior had to walk an incredibly fine line here. It was vital to his plan to act as closely as possible to the real Mad-Eye while being careful not to go too far. Either way could have caused someone (Dumbledore? Snape?) to go snooping.
Going back to the Unforgivable Curse demonstration for a second. That scene does something that doesn’t get talked about as often as it should. We see that Neville is having a harder time than most watching the spiders being tortured. On the surface it might seem like that’s simply how you would expect Neville to react. And while that might be partly true, what it really does is set up Neville’s larger story arch. We find out later on his parents were tortured by means of the Cruciatus Curse. In Order of the Phoenix we see him use this as motivation for continuing on with Dumbledore’s Army. Neville has one of the better character arcs in the series and this is an early look, as unassuming as it might be, at Neville beginning that process.
That gets even more interesting when you take into account the fact that it was Junior himself who tortured Neville’s parents. He surely had his own twisted reasons for singling out Neville here. He’s effectively checking in on one of his victims. But in doing so, he may have inadvertently started one of Voldemort’s eventual staunchest opponents on the path to become the man he was meant to be.
Can we all agree that Crouch’s plan was needlessly complicated? Think of all that had to break his way for it to work. First he had to successfully bewitch the Goblet of Fire to spit out Harry’s name as the fourth participant. While I’m sure he was confident that his father would stick to the “buy the book” rules and would want to force Harry to compete, if there’s one wizard who could convince him otherwise – whether by a civilized discussion or sheer force of will – it’s Dumbledore. He could have stepped in and put a stop to it all.
Then he had to hope that Harry literally wouldn’t die during any of the tasks. We know Harry is a fine wizard, but he’s no savant. And on top of that, Harry had to win the tournament. I don’t know what the gambling lines were, but Harry had to have been at about +10,000.
Surely there was something else he could have done, even in the Maze. Think about the end game here. He was trying to transport one of the most famous wizards in the world away from his school. No matter how he did it, that wasn’t going to go unnoticed. Yeah, he might have wanted to use the cover of the maze as a scapegoat, but in the end it wouldn’t really matter. Once Harry goes to the graveyard, the plan is (or should have been) complete. Crouch’s presence clearly wasn’t needed there. Even there was specific timing he had to account for, he is very obviously a highly talented wizard. He could have figured something else out.
The Triwizard Tournament makes absolutely zero sense
I’m sorry, J.K. You’re amazing, but no. Along with Quidditch being a complete mess, the Triwizard Tournament is the next example of possibly the thing she’s worst at: creating functioning and logical games and competitions. First, let’s talk about this quote, from Barty Crouch after Harry became the 4th Triwizard Champion.
“The rules are absolute. The Goblet of Fire constitutes a binding magical contract. Mr. Potter has no choice.”
What? Why? Can a “binding magical contract” be broken? What would happen to Harry if the Ministry or Dumbledore just flat-out refused to let him compete? I don’t need some deep, in-depth explanation. Just a simple throwaway line would suffice.
But that’s a minor detail compared to how nonsensical the setup of the tournament itself is. On the surface it sounds simple enough. There are three tasks, and judges award 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place for each task. You might think that makes enough sense, there must be some sort of scoring system where each place earns a set number of points, or you earn points based on your performance in each task, and most points when it’s all said and done wins. Right? Right?
Well said, Dr. Cox, well said. But yes, that logical thought process would turn out to be completely wrong. As we see, your performance in the first two tasks meant diddly-squat to the end results of the tournament. The final task was the Maze, with the Cup hidden somewhere deep within. Whoever got the Cup first would be the winner. What kind of nonsense is that? Someone could place 4th in the first two tasks, but if that person gets to the Cup first, they’re the Triwizard Champion? Ridiculous. Taking it further, you wouldn’t even have to finish the first two tasks. We know Fleur defaulted in the second task in the lake, and nothing happened.
Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t necessarily a huge deal to the overall story. It’s just lazy writing. The basic problems of the Tournament would have been easy to fix. There wouldn’t even need to be a complete explanation of the scoring. Just show a scoreboard in the background with some random point totals. That’s all you need. And then obviously don’t have the winner decided by whoever gets to the Cup first. You might be saying that this would have changed how Harry and Cedric get transported to the cemetery. You would be wrong.
The Cup, or a replica, or literally any other object, could have still been in the Maze. Whoever reaches it first wins the Maze task. This might have put less weight on Harry and Cedric’s decision to go for the Cup together. But that would still be wrong. They were tied for the lead entering the Maze. So in that case, if either made it to the Cup first, that person would still win. So the two of them going for it together would still result in a tie.
Anyway, that was probably too long to spend on that one small topic. But it’s like I said with Quidditch in the Sorcerer’s Stone post. I’m competitive. I love competing. I love games and sports. When I see them used in movies (and books and TV shows…) I want them to be well thought out and make sense, especially when it’s such a major plot device like the Triwizard Tournament.
The Tournament scenes were still pretty great
Even though the tournament details – scoring, placing, and all that – is terrible, each of the three tasks provides some of the movie’s best scenes and action. The dragon task is incredibly fun and is always a joy to watch. The lake task with the Merpeople is another chance to show off and emphasize Harry’s true character. And the Maze does a fantastic job of bringing the intensity and fear to life. And that’s why I don’t knock many points off for the Tournament. The actual Tournament scenes, and the accompanying visuals and emotions, make up for what the it’s lacking in function.
Speaking of the Maze…
The Maze, the final task, leads us to what the movie, the first four movies really, have been leading up to. And that is the official return of none other than Lord Voldemort. Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets had their own version of the Dark Lord. But neither was a “real” form of him. Neither was completely back.
But first, real quick, the graveyard also has the tragic murder of Cedric Diggory. My problem here is, why are we supposed to care? Cedric is painted as a nice, popular student, but that’s about all we get. Of course nobody was cheering for Cedric’s death. but it was a pretty emotionless moment, especially with what follows.
And what follows is Voldemort’s return, one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. You know it’s coming; you know the series has been building to this point. But it still manages to be so dark and tense gripping. It’s a watershed moment.
Not included from the book
S.P.E.W. (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare)
Like most things I’ve mentioned in these sections, I get why this wasn’t included. It was a fun subplot in the book but there just wasn’t time in the movie. Goblet of Fire is the second longest in the series – at 2 hours 37 minutes – so they were already somewhat crunched for time. This would have been something that would need a decent amount of screen time to properly work within the movie. Screen time that the movie didn’t have. It would have been fun, but not a huge loss.
Quidditch World Cup
There is zero actual gameplay shown from the World Cup. We see the teams fly in and that’s it. But just like with S.P.E.W., there simply wasn’t enough screen time to show any of the match itself. As fun of a scene as it might have been, it ultimately would have only served to bloat the movie’s run time. The only real plot point the World Cup needed to set up was Krum’s character. And because he wasn’t majorly involved in the rest of the movie, it succeeded in doing a good enough job of establishing Krum.
Veela
To repeat myself yet again, it makes sense that the Veela were cut from the movie. Though when the students from Beauxbatons enter, they have an effect on the male students that is quite similar to the Veela effect described in the book. Sure it could be easily explained as teenage boys infatuated with beautiful girls; that sounds about right. But then there is the later scene with the aftermath of Ron (out of nowhere, mind you) asking Fleur to the Yule Ball.
“You know how I like it when they walk,” he says. It makes it seem like there might have been some brief mention of the Veela somewhere in an earlier cut of the film. Either way, not a big loss for the movie or the series as a whole.
Winky
Winky, for those that may not remember, was Barty Crouch Sr’s house elf. She actually played a vital role in the larger events of the movie. She was left to monitor Barty Crouch Jr at the World Cup, but of course ultimately failed as he managed to steal Harry’s wand and use it to cast the Dark Mark, before escaping. As I mentioned earlier, the movie completely skips the part of how Barty Crouch Jr got out of – or avoided – Azkaban. Including this, even in less detail, would have provided some interesting emotional depth.
Dumbledore’s Calmness
This is honestly one of the most annoying things people complain about and I can’t stand it. Who cares? You can argue it was a better decision to have Dumbledore freak. He is someone who is calm and reasonable; he thinks before he acts. So for him to fly off the handle like he does here, it tells the audience that the Triwizard Tournament is something not to be taken lightly; it might even be something to fear. Either way, it’s been 13 years. It’s time to move on.
Well, I’m at almost 3,000 words so I’d say it’s time to wrap it up. Order of the Phoenix coming soon…
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J.K. should have hired a consultant when figuring out Quidditch and the events for the Tri-Wizard Tournament. She is clearly a brilliant writer, and not so much a competitor.