It is more than a story of an orphan boy turning into a powerful wizard. When Alfonso Cuaron made the third installment a little bit darker and thematic, I set my benchmark – that is how the movie should look like! He efficiently played on the idea of time and its effect on growing teenagers who faced not-so-ordinary challenges. He took off from the shimmer of magic and set the tone of coming-of-age struggles. I felt their humanity, making The Prisoner of Azkaban one of the best adaptations for me. This made my expectations for the Goblet of Fire a bit higher.

There is a lot of fuzz before I saw the latest film. In an interview with its new director Mike Newell, he summarized the plot wherein “the good guy, the innocent at the center of it, knows absolutely nothing at the beginning and the bad guy knows everything and has a plan. The shape of the film would be that the good guy catches up bit by bit as you go through the story, until to his horror he finds himself absolutely at the center of the bad man’s machinations.” That makes up a good thriller. After watching it myself this weekend, I had to concur. It succeeded in giving me thrills.

The fast pacing of scenes helped. The Quidditch World Cup up until the Triwizard Tournament ran superb.  Some details were obviously not included in the film. Dobby helped Harry to breathe underwater by giving him gillyweed (Neville replaced him in the film), while Winky had great role as Crouch Jr.’s loyal servant (posing as Moody Eye).  Both house elves were absent in the adaptation.  Dursleys are never mentioned too and some others. But the screenplay fitted well with all the minor revisions as the film’s “narrative economy” eliminated the novel’s tendency to be superfluous. 

It was also visually stunning. The flight of the Beauxbaton’s carriage and the surfacing of the Durmstrang’s galleon put me in awe. I love the Hungarian Horntail’s chase scene (first task), the Great Hall’s decorations for the Yule Ball and Lord Voldemort’s full transformation into a mortal. My imaginations when I was still reading the book were surpassed by what I saw in the film. They chose great casts too. Cedric Diggory was perfect (Rob Pattinson), my fave character in the book, where his unlikely friendship with Harry in short time just before his death was shown better. Ralph Fiennes as the Dark Lord brought out the fury with his portrayal. Rita Skeeter and Madam Maxine (and her loveteam Hagrid) both provided the giggles. But what I adore much was Moaning Myrtle’s bath scene with Harry. She was a total flirt to the nth degree. (chuckles)

 On the other hand, I felt the Goblet lacks in artistic sense. I was biased towards Cuaron’s style where he achieved chiaroscuro – the effective play of light and shadows – in most scenes. Harry’s flight with Buckbeak in the lake (in the Prisoner), even in bright cuts, there’s the lovely playing of reflections which exhibited grandeur. Here in the Goblet, some of the scenes looked flat especially his encounter with the merpeople (I expected good mixture of surface light that can be seen underwater) and his navigating through the third task’s maze (what can be seen was foggy ambience, yet I think it can be improved with controlled smoke and the penetrated effect for the background light).

But taken as a whole, the film is spell-bindingly good. As of this time, many Filipinos agree with me since it sets the local box office on fire with the record breaking P 105M opening weekend. It represents the “highest debut ever for a Warner Bros. title and the all-time biggest November opening in history … also breaking the opening gross of this year’s biggest Star Wars Episode III’s P 49.8M mark.”   It also was shown in an unprecedented 267 screens across the country.

I can’t wait to have a DVD copy of the film. I assumed it will be darker and more introspection-centered characters for the succeeding films. As one article said, “desire (eros) and death (thematos) are what Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is about.” The rise of the Dark Lord promises to be the start of the intensified battle, however, there is always love and friendship among the main characters which can win it through. And there is always a Muggle like me who will feast on the magic of it all. (Pol Perocho)