10.Jun.2008 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

I said a while back that I was a bit put off by the thickness of the book before I started. But after a few chapters, the book didn’t seem so thick anymore. You know how when you read one book your mind often wander around thinking about another book? Well it didn’t happen when I read this book. I just want to keep reading it and nothing else.

I watched the movie a long time ago. I only remembered there was some contest with swimming and maze, then someone died. I watched the movie again after I read this book on weekend, and thought it just sucked. There are so many little details in the book that they just had to take out to squeeze everything in into a couple of hours. No wonder I didn’t remember much about the movie. It just isn’t that good. The effects weren’t easy to make as well, so they took out a lot of stuff, otherwise the movie would be too expensive to make. I wish (and partly predict) that in 10 years time they would work on remake of Potter movies, and this time longer, including many more details, containing a lot more magical effects. For example, in 10 years time it’d probably easier to make Dobby the house-elf so they don’t have to take him out.

So let me see, the things they took out in Goblet of Fire are: Dobby and Winky the house-elves, Ludo Bagman, Sirius, Hogwart’s kitchen (I’d love to see this one!), the whole SPEW subplot – I love this one too, Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts, the Sphinx in the maze (I wanna see this one!), and heaps of other details like names of books they read, Rita Skeeter’s news, the whole Ron and Hermione’s fights – which I found very endearing, Hagrid’s and Madame Maxime’s love story and giant identity, and so on.

I found that the movie always reveals the identity of the bad guy far too quickly. I guess it’s sort of understandable. If they put it off too long, nobody would know what’s going on since they took out a lot of things out. Like in this movie they revealed Barty Crouch’s son from the first minutes, all the way through until the end. In Prisoner of Azkaban, they revealed Peter Pettigrew somewhere in the middle of the movie. That just ruins everything! The thing that make HP interesting is that it works like a wondrous jigsaw puzzle from beginning til the end, and they all fit only at the very end. I always think that the climax is very satisfying, when everything comes together in unpredictable result.

Well looks like this review is more about the comparison of the book and the movie..
Anyway, before I forgot, in Chamber of Secrets, the movie took out degnoming of the Burrow’s garden and DeathDay (I want this!). In Prisoner of Azkaban, they took out Crookshanks’ role completely (I wish there’s more of him in the movie, including Ron and Hermione’s fight for Scabber and Crookshank).

For the characters, Snape is portrayed much nicer in the movie than in the book. And I don’t really like some of Hermione’s reactions in the movie, like crying when she fought with Ron. She’s not supposed to cry! That’s like missing the whole point!

Pages: 786
Rating: 5 out of 5 [Masterpiece]
I love love love the book. Best Harry Potter by far. Can’t wait to read more.

First line

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it ‘the Riddle House’, even thought it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.

Last line

As Hagrid had said, what would come, would come … and he would have to meet it when it did.