Yes, I realize this is a bit late. But last week I had the chance to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in a local IMAX theater. They aren’t kidding when they say that it’s the biggest screen in the world. I have been in an IMAX theater only twice before in my entire lifetime, and not within the last eight years or so. Thus, I was still surprised at the quality of the IMAX experience.
I was reading the Wikipedia article for IMAX, which notes that many moviegoers notice a difference between watching a traditional 35mm film in a normal theater versus a 35mm film converted to IMAX using the “DMR” process. I don’t know what DMR does, but it made Harry Potter look simply awesome. Despite the fact that 35mm does not really compare with IMAX’s native 70mm format, it is truly something to behold.
To further delay myself from talking about the film, I must also mention how nice it is to not have to sit through half an hour of trailers and advertisements before getting to the main picture. Instead, we were treated (not subjected) to short previews of upcoming IMAX attractions, the most notable being an under the sea adventure, the name of which escapes me.
Finally we come to the reason why everybody was there: the movie.
Mike Newell did a great job with this film. I was hoping it would continue in the same direction that Alfonso Cuarón took for The Prisoner of Azkaban. I was pleased to see that this was the case. After the third installment of the book series, there is a marked point where things turn sinister. The directors of these films wisely tuned into this and captured the feeling of the books very well. A necessity of this is earning the film an edgier “PG-13” rating. The same thing took place with Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and it didn’t cause any commotion.
What impressed me the most about Goblet of Fire was the improvement in the quality of acting. The three central teen actors, whose increasing celebrity status in our culture have attracted a more critical eye to their individual acting ability, are displaying a wider range of emotion and are finally getting comfortable with their roles. For once it isn’t a group of kids huddled together to read a few lines off a screenplay and feign concern. Bad things happen in this movie and everyone responds appropriately, which carries the emotional impact of the scenes in a way that should make Chris Columbus sorry he ever touched the franchise. Wow, that was bitter.
So, what was wrong with the movie? It jumped around too much for its own benefit. Yes, the book is 752 pages long and the movie could only be two and a half hours long. That meant we were flying through the book material at a rate of approximately five pages per minute. At that rate the movie would be completely incomprehensible. What we get is a few things trimmed here and there, a subplot dropped entirely, and some characters moved around to make the movie its own encapsulated version of the story and not simply a direct translation of the book to the silver screen. The way this was done for Azkaban was brilliant, because it established the movies as capable of existing separately from the books (with small exceptions). This movie continues the trend, but some of the material cut from the movie leaves us wondering why it was removed. The buildup leading to the Quiddich World Cup at the beginning of the movie, for example, got the audience excited to see some professional Quidditch action. What do we see instead? The movie cuts to the events that take place directly after the match. While what happens after is obviously more significant to the story as a whole, it seems that the entire opening building up to the match is a bit of a waste.
At any rate, this movie ties with Prisoner of Azkaban as the best movie of the series. Azkaban‘s cinematography was just so well-done that it is a work of art. Goblet lacks the innovative shot framing, but deals just about everything else out in spades: excellent costuming, sets, landscapes, acting, storytelling, and most importantly, drama.
Grade: A-