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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, how to adapt it for film?

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teiresias

Member
Of course, there will be spoilers here for anyone who hasn't read up to Goblet of Fire, fair warning. And for future reference: Prisoner of Azkhaban = PoA, Goblet of Fire = GoF

OK, I really liked the Prisoner of Azkhaban film. It also happens to be my favorite out of the books (though I haven't finished reading Order of the Phoenix yet). But after finishing Goblet of Fire, I got to thinking of how difficult an adaption that is going to be, particularly since they've decided to do it all in one film.

Now maybe there is a script review or a copy of the script online somewhere already (since they are shooting it right now I believe), but I just thought it'd be neat to hear other people's opinion on what they should keep in the film or take out. Here's my take:

GoF is also probably my least favorite of all the books (though it may tie with CoS), just because it seems so predictably structured and monotonous. We have a nice break from the "formula" (aka. "The School Year") in the beginning, but then the episodic and formulaic school-year format takes over again, but made even more episodic by the edition of the three tasks that are like a damn countdown.

So, I honestly could see them cutting out the second task altogether and having only two tasks in the tournament - the first one and the last one. Of course, IMDB lists Moaning Myrtle as being in the film, and since I only remember her being in the book to help Harry with the second task I'd guess it's still in. But the second task always seemed like a pretty worthless event in the grand scheme of things in the novel, character-wise and plot-wise.

Of course, we all know already that the Dursley segment has been cut completely - good call IMO, though the Dursley sequence is actually important in Order of the Phoenix, so they'll have to be back.

I was surprised to hear some people complain about the "Scooby-Doo"-like reveal in the Shrieking Shack in PoA. Apparently, hearing the entire mystery explained - for the most part - in the shack reminded people of that kind of scooby thing. However, in PoA I felt it was fine because the "reveal" takes place in a scene full of tension with wands drawn and Harry trying frantically to make a decision about killing Black or not, and of course that isn't the end because you have the whole time-turner thing left1.

In GoF though, the "scooby syndrome" is horribly played. You have the bad guy being unmasked - all Crouch had to do was wake up and say, "And I'd have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you damn kids!!!" - and then him explaining the entire damn thing himself. Something will definately have to be done about that, it just WILL NOT WORK done as written, IMO anyway. Sure, they could do it in flashback, but if people had issues with the reveal in PoA, the criticism would be doubly-harsh against GoF.

Of course, the confrontation with Voldemort will probably stay pretty much as is. It's really only where the story finally gets interesting in the novel, and then it stays interesting as the whole conspiracy thing plays out.

The movie will have to work extremely hard to get non-readers to give a damn about Cedric being killed though (assuming they keep that in) since they haven't really seen him at all (somewhat the case in the book too, but not quite so bad).

I could also see all of the house-elf liberation stuff cut. Rita is easy enough to work into the film though I doubt a huge deal will be made out of the mystery of how she's getting her information.

Anyway, those are things off the top of my head that I can remember.
 

Pattergen

Member
it really really SHOULD be a two parter, ala Kill Bill. There is just too much stuff that happens. If this even begins to do the book justice, I will be amazed.

Contrary to your opinion, GoF is my fav.
 

MoccaJava

Banned
I really enjoyed Order of the Phoenix the most, I think. Umbridge really was a great villain. Then, Chamber of Secrets.
 

madara

Member
Hmmm..I dont know. I personally think is over for HP films. I cant see how any real fan could have tolerated massacre that was POA anyhow. The new sets were uninspiring. Drunkin Hippy Dumbledore was a fright. It was Oliver Wood's last year as quidditch captain and he was no where be found. Cho Chang... ? Singing choir? lol Whats was this clock tower? So much of relationship between 3 stars, even their near "breakup" was missing. In fact my sister who didnt read the book could not follow it at all. Its was confusing, especially she said with all these people turning into animals.
Draco and his buddies, there looks were god awful this flick. Well I won't take it as far as HP forums that have 50 point analasis of errors but just saying I think POA got off very easy in reviews. Either most HP fans forgot book or they riveled too much in fact that was overly dark and didnt care about rest. As we all know the books get longer and longer after POA so I expect even more of slaughter. Considering how very dark 4th book ends, I guess as long as that isn't downplayed most majority of movie fans will be sated. Now if I remember right 4th movie wants start at school? Cutting over 100 pages of tournament? I guess that will be in flashback mode?
 

teiresias

Member
I preferred the new location for Hogwarts in PoA. It was definately more interesting visually. The old location was basically just a castle in a field with Hagrid's hut right outside one door and the whomping willow right outside another door. I preferred the more rustic, earthy, and hilly location used in PoA. At least it gave us some angles to look at during the exteriors.

Drunkin Hippy Dumbledore? I don't get this at all. Different, yes, no way to avoid that. But the professors don't really do much in this story anyway, Dumbledore being no exception, so I don't see how anyone could pass judgment anyway. Besides, how is Drunkin Hippy Dumbledore (if one sees that) any worse than I Sound Like I'm Gonna Die Any Second Dumbledore, which is how the original always struck me, the voice was just much frailer than how I ever imagined the character, he may as well have had cancer and was talking with one of those things you hold to your throat: "The Dementor, it's comin' right for us!!"

I had no problem with leaving out a bunch of the Moody, Prongs, Padfoot, Wormtail stuff. There's already too much passive exposition going on the Shrieking Shack scene as it is.

IMO, they took the best of the novels and translated it into a wonderful film. Whereas a more straight translation would have dreadfully dull and unwieldly.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they're purposefully finding ways to keep Draco off the screen as much as possibe, since that guy can't act worth crap.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
I'm interested how they're going to handle the violence.

Will they censor it to PG and pretend it's still a kid's series, or will the properly adapt the book properly to PG-13.

I would guess the first since it'll make more money that way, but according to Alfonso in an interview, he had complete freedom with making PoA darker.
 
mmm..I dont know. I personally think is over for HP films. I cant see how any real fan could have tolerated massacre that was POA anyhow. The new sets were uninspiring. Drunkin Hippy Dumbledore was a fright. It was Oliver Wood's last year as quidditch captain and he was no where be found. Cho Chang... ? Singing choir? lol Whats was this clock tower? So much of relationship between 3 stars, even their near "breakup" was missing. In fact my sister who didnt read the book could not follow it at all. Its was confusing, especially she said with all these people turning into animals.
Draco and his buddies, there looks were god awful this flick. Well I won't take it as far as HP forums that have 50 point analasis of errors but just saying I think POA got off very easy in reviews. Either most HP fans forgot book or they riveled too much in fact that was overly dark and didnt care about rest. As we all know the books get longer and longer after POA so I expect even more of slaughter. Considering how very dark 4th book ends, I guess as long as that isn't downplayed most majority of movie fans will be sated. Now if I remember right 4th movie wants start at school? Cutting over 100 pages of tournament? I guess that will be in flashback mode?

English, bitch.
 

Phoenix

Member
Pattergen said:
it really really SHOULD be a two parter, ala Kill Bill. There is just too much stuff that happens. If this even begins to do the book justice, I will be amazed.

Contrary to your opinion, GoF is my fav.

Its all about the bengimans baby. Potter films are doing well, but not well enough to justify splitting one book into two movies.
 
I don't think the Quidditch World Cup can be cut without a pretty big chunk of the plot being rewritten. The game itself isn't important, but the events that happen afterwards are vital to the rest of the plot, especially the confession at the very end.

The Rita Skeeter stuff isn't that important, but it still might make it in. SPEW, while I'd like it to stay in also, probably won't, at least not as much as it did in the book. It might be mentioned in passing, but who knows... Kloves is getting more confident with adapting the screenplays so we could be a lot cut out and changed around.

I've also heard that Molly Weasly won't be making an appearance, which is odd, considering she was kind of important to Harry going into the last task...
 

Tenguman

Member
GoF is also probably my least favorite of all the books (though it may tie with CoS), just because it seems so predictably structured and monotonous. We have a nice break from the "formula" (aka. "The School Year") in the beginning, but then the episodic and formulaic school-year format takes over again, but made even more episodic by the edition of the three tasks that are like a damn countdown.

Well you may like the latest book (if you haven't read it yet). That thing has almost no structure at all.
 

Pachinko

Member
I've been wondering this since I read goblet of fire last year. There is just so much in the book but on the same token the book kind of sucked compared to the other couple in the series becuase too much of the chapters in the novel were filler where very little happens.


I'm gonna say you don't have to have the dursleys, aside from a bit of comic relief they really didn't accomplish anything worthwhile plotwise with the entire opening scene. The world quidditch cup , however although being mildly pointless itself has a couple important scenes- they need to point out the Vela's being what they are quickly, show Viktor Crumb playing quidditch for a few seconds and Rons adoration of the guy and the Deatheater sign in the sky needs to be shown. All of this could be accomplished in 10-15 minutes if you rushed , considering that the whole sequence is damn near 25% of the book that would leave more time for the 3 trials and such later on in the film. After the quidditch cup they could cut almost directly to the scene with all the different schools arriving for the tri wizard tournament spend about 5-10 minutes showing all the schools , and the pivotal characters being highlighted of course. After that the next important event worth filming would be Fred and george screwing around to enter and having the plan backfire, this showcases all the safeguards on the goblet of fire to prevent first to 5th years from entering the tournament and wouldnt' take long at all. Then have a single classroom sequence for a small amount of expostion - show off mad eye moody and sum up the begining part of the book in another few minutes. AFter which, I think it'd be a good time to have harry have a nightmare , the same one he had in the book at the novels begining and showcase Voldemort meeting with wormtail in that old house, harry then wakes up and instead of writing to sirius or whatever it was in teh books that happened again he talks to ron and hermione about it going into and other defence against the black arts class where mad eye showcases all the different curses , giving note to neville longbottom visibly cringing at the sight of the crocus curse being cast. The next scene would be the goblet of fire drawing, where all the expected candidates would be pulled out and then mysteriously harry potters name would come out to much speculation. At this point in time I think you would have seen 45 minutes - 1 hour worth of movie. You could easily cram the rest of the story into an additional hour and half keeping out all the exposition. Merely showcase Harry's crush on cho change breifly , possibly have a single quidditch match , the 3 trials and the preceeding hint to each one and finally the brief scene involving maddy eye revealing he isnt' really mad eye and such, with the 3rd trial leading into the movies epilogue. 2 hours and 40 minutes Is my guess, I think it could be done and in this case the rushed pace of the film would make for a more entertaining experience then the book was.

Now order of the pheonix.. there's a tough cookie to crack...
 

Memles

Member
Adapting it may well end up being a huge problem, simply because of the length of the book and its far too strict structure.

While I agree with the above criticism of Order of the Pheonix, that it has no structure, what I think Rowling realized was that Goblet was too long for the old structure. It foreshadowed the end (The showing of the signal, and what occurs at the QWC all coming back) at the very beginning, but too much happened between them. Her old formulas were outgrown by the length of the books.

And for this reason, adapting it will be pure hell, but Order will be tougher. Goblet has the introduction at the Quidditch Cup to do first, but then can fall back into the old formula of the school year, and then right into the Twirazard Tourney. Really, the structure is there. The problem is condensing it into a 3 hour film.

I think, in my view, how they handle the Gala will be telling to where Rowling is taking Harry romantically. If they spend the time on it, Rowling must actually be working on increasing its role even further than Order did.

Dursley's are gone, and I'm expecting to see pretty well most faculty cut down greatly. I'm just hoping, beyond hope, that they keep the brilliant PoA sets.

For me, the first Hogwarts set was essentially as if there were constant spells keeping the entire campus absolutely perfectly maintained. It was like there was a magical groundskeeper spell. I doubt Hagrid could keep it that perfect. They try so hard to show that they are outcasts in the normal world, but then Hogwarts looked as if it literally stood all by itself, as if in another world. It is simply their place in ours, not their own. For this reason, I think the more lived in Hogwarts simply makes more sense. People have shortcuts, there is life in many places, and it just seems like this school has existed for centuries. Before, it looked off.

Also, who the hell puts a deadly tree that close to an entrance? Jeesh. And the new Dumbledore works better for the future...while there is always a place for Harris' elderly Grandfather Dumbledore in some moments, Dumbledore kind of has a bit more of a physical role in Order, and thus must be able to pull this off. Gambon's Dumbledore is not identical to Harris' and I like that. If some people don't (Like our "PoA ruined the series" friend above), that doesn't ruin the film in any way. It is a film, not an adaptation...finally. For people who like movies, and not just Harry Potter, it's brilliant. And for those who can learn to appreciate both, like myself, we can see that PoA combined both amazing filmmaking and a succinct, strong adaptation, only taking what would actually make a good movie.
 

Soul4ger

Member
Goblet of Fire was my favorite of the books, with PoA being second. I really don't know how they'll be able to adapt it for the movie.
 

Phoenix

Member
Cyan said:
Not splitting up Potter has nothing to do with money. Alfonso Cuaron convinced the new director that it shouldn't be split up, that it would harm the movie. And really, how would they split it up? Where could they end the first movie that would still give us some sort of satisfying end?.


I can tell you with certainty that Time Warner has absolutely no intention of splitting up any of the HP movies and that has to do with money - not cost to make, but related to rights, the contracts with actors and the schedule of movies that are in the pipeline. If you can get your hands on the SEC filings and the minutes where the discussed them you would know this with certainty as well.
 
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