« Extras | Main | Ideas for blog posts »
December 17, 2005
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - ludicrous magic sequel.
The producers, being handed a terrible forth installment of the Harry Potter franchise by J.K. Rowling, rightly decided to spice it up a bit, and also make it more scary, to try and attract the cinema-going audience.
So we have death-eaters (a scary name for ordinary people who follow Voldemort, the bad wizard); we have a man cutting his own hand off; and far more girls than usual either strutting around, crying or giggling, and one even wears a swimsuit. The whole premise of this story is so fatally flawed, and the ending so predictable, that only these elements and big flashy effects can attempt to save it. By the way, they fail, and what you are left with is simply a filler. Like most music albums contain filler tracks, this film server the same purpose in the Potter pantheon. The story is just a transition piece.
Anyway, back to the story itself. If you had some really good trainee wizards, would you resurrect a contest in which one or all of them were likely to be killed horribly? Would you create a big arena and get all the younger students to sit and watch the massacre? And yet this is exactly what the Tri-Wizard contest is all about. And yes, one of the contestants does get killed. Pure nonsense, just a bad excuse to get Harry into some avoidable peril - to set up some bad challenges that can only be completed successfully through mostly luck, and also a good amount of cheating. There aren't even any good morality points for kids to pick up in this film.
Why girls still like the Harry Potter stories is also a complete mystery. Boys perhaps see an underdog hero always succeeding even though he has no idea why. But the felmale characters like Hermoine and Cho-Chin are either victims or hopeless love fools. They don't even get to wave a wand at all this time. One girl is actually in the Tri-Wizard contest, but she has to be rescued repeatedly by Harry, who even get's extra points for losing. The boys don't really do a whole lot better with Ron hating everyone and making you wonder why anyone would want to be his friend, never mind girlfriend. And yet we're supposed to think that the hyper-intelligent Hermoine is desperately in love with him. Well, maybe it does happen, but I prefer to believe in flying broomsticks.
As a stand-alone film this one is the worst of the bunch. It beggars belief that it has made so much money, but then, I suppose I did buy four tickets myself, having given in to pester power.
Posted by se71 at December 17, 2005 01:50 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)