Harry Potter and the Goblet of Bad Direction
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
I've heard a lot about the ending of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and must say that it lived up to expectations of being horrific - Ralph Fiennes looks to be a very promising He Who Must Not Be Named (or, presumably, blogged) and the scene itself did a great job of finally introducing the major villain of the Potterverse. However, I must confess the film itself didn't live up to expectations. After Alfonso Cuar�n's outstanding job on the previous film, Mike "Four Weddings and a Funeral" Newell seemed an odd choice for Goblet and seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the size of the source material (the book, in all fairness, is rather large). However, the choices Newell made diminished the depth of almost every character and simply did away with some of the key sub-plots; I was really disappointed to have barely no Rita Skeeter, even though Miranda Richardson was excellent in her almost non-existent screen time. The story was rushed along, but without reading the books closely and recently, I suspect the characterisation would leave many people feeling like even Ron, Harry and Hermione were cardboard cutouts who only had personal depth due to the previous films. I was also annoyed that Hermione's feisty independence which had grown over the first three films is completely ignored in this one, while almost all the female characters were far more ineffective than in past films - even Cl�mence Po�sy's Fleur Delacour ends up being rather ineffective, despite being a TriWizard competitor.The film did have some stunning visuals and the end left you hanging for the next films where the Dark Lord finally starts getting down to business, but I do hope a more creative and adventurous director comes on board for The Order of the Phoenix (200 pages of Harry's teen angst does not lead well to a direct book-as-script adaptation!).
[Tags: harrypotter | gobletoffire | mikenewell | alfonsocuaron | director]
[Posted by Unknown] [11:48 am]
2 Comments:
Not much to go on Tama,
David Yates...fresh from (British?) TV by the looks of it..
and HNY!
Mmmmmm, the fact that he has only produced made-for-TV stuff is a little bit of a worry!
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