Transcript – Episode 77
[Show music begins]
Caleb Graves: This is Episode 77 of Alohomora! for March 29, 2014.
[Show music continues]
Caleb: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our live Goblet of Fire watch party and talk and whatever else we want to call it. I’m Caleb Graves.
Laura Reilly: I’m Laura Reilly.
Michael Harle: I’m Michael Harle.
Kat Miller: And I’m Kat Miller. And our guest today – guess what? – is going to be all of you. So there are two ways that you can get a hold of us. First, by phone. Give us a call at 1-206-GO-ALBUS – that’s 206 462-5287. The second way you can contact us – and this may work for most of you, especially our international listeners – is on Skype. You can reach us at alohomoramn, and if you don’t get through the first time, keep trying because there are a lot of people trying to call us right now. So get those calls in.
Michael: And just make sure after you’ve listened to our live show that you take a listen to our book wrap discussion and international cover discussion that we just had in our last episode. It was just released yesterday and we were joined by Kazu Kibuishi, the designer of the covers of the US fifteenth anniversary editions. We had a really great conversation with him about all the covers for Goblet of Fire from all over the world. So make sure and listen in to that on the Alohomora! main site.
Kat: And everybody keeps asking who the special guest is today, so we’ve given it away a few times, but I will remind you. His name is Bryn Court and he is the lead sculptor from the Harry Potter films and also the lead sculptor for the Diagon Alley at Wizarding World of Harry Potter Expansion in Orlando. So he’s going to be joining us in about a half an hour. So get your questions ready for him. In the meantime, I think we’re going to talk about the movie, right? Woo!
Caleb: We are indeed. So we all just finished watching Goblet of Fire. Hopefully, you all did too and didn’t watch another movie because then, you won’t be talking about the same thing we did.
Kat: [laughs] Right.
Caleb: And that would be interesting, but not necessarily conducive. Okay, so some things about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, filming the end in early 2004 and the scenes of Hogwarts took place at the Leavsden Film Studios. [coughs] Wow, sorry, guys. So before we start, keep going, some of us have been to Leavsden. It’s a really awesome place, wouldn’t you agree, Kat?
Kat: Yeah, pretty much my favorite place on the planet. So…
Caleb: If you ever are in London, it is an absolute must.
Kat: Couldn’t agree more.
[Laura laughs]
Caleb: Five days after its release, the film had grossed over $102 million US dollars at the North American box office, which is the third highest first weekend tally for a Harry Potter film behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2. Goblet of Fire enjoyed an immensely successful run at the box office earning just under $900 million dollars worldwide, which made it the highest grossing film of 2005 and the eighth highest grossing film of all time at that time. It was the third highest grossing film in the US for 2005, making $209 million dollars. And as of January 2014, it is the unadjusted 29th highest grossing film of all time and the sixth highest grossing film in the Harry Potter series. So it made a ton of money.
Kat: That is so surprising because this movie sucks.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Laura: Okay, we’ll debate on that.
Kat: It’s so bad. I think you’re the only one who enjoys it, Laura, but yeah…
Michael: I’m glad you enjoy it, Laura, so that we don’t have universal hate going on here. [laughs]
Laura: Yeah, I was…
Caleb: One of the really interesting things about that is it was the eighth highest grossing film at that time, but at this point, it’s the 29th highest, so that just shows how many huge movies have come out since then.
Michael: Including other Harry Potter movies.
Caleb: Yeah, right?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: God.
Caleb: So it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction and it won the BAFTA Award for Best Production Design, so we will definitely be talking about some of those things later. So it was pretty successful with awards, I mean at least compared to some other movies in the Harry Potter series.
Kat: Again, so surprising! But whatever.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Laura: If you look at the stuff it won, it made sense. It wasn’t like, “Didn’t win best book adaptation.”�
Caleb: Right.
[Michael laughs]
Laura: The stuff it won I think is good.
Caleb: No, that was saved for Prisoner.
Kat: Ugh!
Caleb: [laughs] Sarcasm, ugh. But, that is in the past.
Kat: That is in the past. [laughs] Let’s not get back on Prisoner.
Kat: I think its fair for it to win. I really like it winning Best Production Design – the BAFTA – I think that makes sense.
Michael: Eh. [laughs]
Laura: It was beautiful!
Michael: Prisoner was prettier in my opinion, but I’m…
Kat: Well…
Caleb: I think the cinematography in Prisoner was better.
Michael: Yeah, but the set design I think… I mean, it was nice and it… for what it was with Goblet because Goblet‘s just so all over the place and then, it extends Hogwarts a little bit more.
Laura: To be fair, the set that was made in Prisoner carried over for the rest of the films. I mean, there are obviously different things, but the Hogwarts that was in Prisoner is the Hogwarts that carried it for the rest of the films. So Production Design, well yeah, maybe Prisoner had it nice, it’s not that it still was present in the following films.
Caleb: Also, my… guys in the chat, stop talking about Half-Blood Prince and Order of the Phoenix! We’re talking about Goblet of Fire today!
Kat: It’s because everybody hates it, that’s why they’re talking about the other books!
[Michael laughs]
Laura: Okay, we all have universal agreement that you’ve got to wait ten years…
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: I promise we will get to those movies, but we’ve got to focus on Goblet today! Or else we’re going to get sidetracked too, which is very easy.
Kat: Yeah, it is very easy. No, but… and I’m not just saying this because he’s our guest later, but some of, actually, my favorite set pieces are in this movie. For instance, the grave. Pretty much when I went to Leavesden the first time, I stood in front of it for – I don’t know – a half hour. I just think it’s absolutely beautiful.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: So things like that in this film are some of my, not my absolute favorite, but some of my favorite.
Michael: Well, the graveyard scene is such a highlight in the film. I think most people site it as the… where the film starts to get back on track after two hours.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: What the heck is going on? And the thing, too, is that when they get to the graveyard, there really is such a drastic… not only do you get the drastic change in tone, but this set design really changes drastically. It’s a lot more angular and a lot darker and really great way to change the tone really quickly without having to explain too much.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Right. So a big thing about this movie is we get a lot of new cast members because, obviously, a lot of new people are coming into this story. You have Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and all these other players. We get our first look at Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. We meet David Tennant, Brendon Gleeson, Miranda Richardson, Frances de la Tour, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Robert Pattinson, Clemence Poesy, and so many others. We get a ton of new cast members, which I do really love about this movie. Some of them are better than others for their roles, but I think it’s great to have so many.
Laura: It definitely increases the scope.
Caleb: What?
Laura: I said it definitely widens the scope of the world.
Caleb: Oh, yeah, definitely.
Laura: They get that across really well.
Kat: There was a lot of love during the movie watch for the Doctor there, Mr. Tennant.
Caleb: Of course.
Kat: So I mean, obviously.
Caleb: Always the fan favorite.
Kat: Yeah, how could there not be? But and… I know people really hate his character, but I’m a giant fan of Roger Lloyd-Pack – I was, rest in peace – and I just think I really like the casting for that role and also, Miranda Richardson was just brilliant, right?
Laura: Yeah, she really is.
Caleb: She is.
Michael: I think the most egregious thing about Goblet is that it does bring on all these amazing actors and actresses and does not use very many of them very well.
Kat: I know.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: David Tennant and Miranda Richardson are really wasted in this film because their plots go nowhere. And I mean, at least Ralph Fiennes gets a great big moment at the end and really, I do think this is his best moment as Voldemort probably because he has the most meatiest script to work with and he was really allowed by Mike Newell to really take it where he wanted to.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: But yeah, everybody else so wasted. I mean, the champions, Viktor Krum and Fleur Delacour barely even talk.
Kat: Krum has one line, right?
Michael: “Write to me.”
Laura: I don’t think Fleur has any lines. She just says, “Thank you” and “You saved that one,” so she probably has one, too.
Kat: [in Fleur’s French accent] “Bye, Ron!”
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Yeah.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Yeah, very few lines. Yeah, lots of love in the chat for Brendan Gleeson, too.
Michael: Yes.
Kat: That’s a brilliant casting. He’s amazing.
Caleb: Yeah, it really is.
Laura: I have a lot of difficulty picturing Moody in my head while I was reading, probably above all other characters just because he was described looking so strangely that, especially when I was young, I had such a hard time creating a strong picture like I would with other characters that I wasn’t going into the film being like, “Oh, he doesn’t look like Moody,” so therefore I just loved the interpretation of him and then when I read the books now, that’s who I picture.
Kat: Right. We actually have a caller. Hi caller.
Caller: Hello! Is it me?
Kat: Hi! It is you! What’s your name? Where are you from?
Caller: Hey, I’m Rebecca. I’m from Jacksonville, Florida.
Kat: Ah, welcome, welcome.
Michael: Hi, Rebecca.
Caller: Hey. [laughs]
Kat: Go ahead.
Caller: What’s up? No, you go ahead.
Kat: I was going to ask you who’s your favorite character? Who do you like? Who do you dislike?
Caller: In this book?
Kat: Yeah, in the movie.
Laura: The film.
Caller: Well, of course, Hermione because she’s so smart and she’s a strong woman. These days, they make a lot of movies about that so I love it.
Kat: That’s true. Did you have a comment for us? Question?
Caller: Yes. Actually, I just wanted to address that during the party scene, during the Yule Ball, I heard a rumor that the band was actually a Harry Potter band that they made, that they auditioned with and everything, so…
Kat: So an actual Wizard Rock band, you’re saying?
Rebecca: Yes. I’m sorry.
Kat: No, that’s all right. That’s cool.
Caleb: I didn’t know that.
Michael: No.
Caleb: I wonder who it was.
Michael: They… they’re… the members of the band, The Weird Sisters, who they’re never named in the film because I believe there was an issue with a Canadian band…
Laura: Yeah.
Michael: … called The Weird Sisters and they wouldn’t let them use the name.
Laura: Right.
Michael: It was actually… all those guys are from a bunch of different popular British bands. I don’t know all the names because I don’t keep up with that stuff, but they’re all different pieces of different bands that they cobbled together.
Caleb: Someone in the chat said the band is headed by Jarvis Cocker from Pulp.
Michael: Yes! Yes, that is correct. So, but they’re all from different bands. That’s how they put that. And, the thing is, if you check out the deleted scenes on your Goblet of Fire DVD or Blu-ray, you’ll find that they filmed the entire singing sequence of them singing that first song.
Kat: They did.
Michael: The whole song is in there.
Laura: And Flitwick introduces them.
Michael: So…
Kat: Mhm.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, speaking of just bringing up The Weird Sisters, I guess I’ll just talk, I really know those songs divide a lot of people and they think they’re pretty cheesy, but I genuinely do listen to those two songs on my iPod regularly. I love them.
Kat: I do, too. [laughs]
Laura: I absolutely love them and I think it was just perfectly gotten across that these were teenagers and they listened to this type of music and they’re having fun. And it was really the first – I don’t know if I would say the first – that we get a good idea that they’re just teenagers. And I don’t know. I thought that was done brilliantly.
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: So also, we haven’t talked about Robert Pattinson just because…
Kat: Oh.
[Caleb laughs]
Laura: … he’s so dividing based on what he’s done for the rest of his career.
Caleb: Is he a big deal or something? I don’t…
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: I just like the theory that Cedric dies and comes back as Edward. I just think that is brilliant. I mean, obviously, it’s a pretty obvious theory to make, but I just really like it.
Laura: Now, I’m sorry, for any hatred Robert Pattinson gets for the rest of his career, I absolutely, positively love him in this movie. I think he is perfect as Cedric.
Kat: I do, too.
Caleb: Yeah, I agree.
Kat: I have no hatred for him. I just think that…
Laura: Oh, me either. I love him still even, but…
Kat: Yeah. Me too.
Laura: I know people are not… don’t necessarily…
Michael: I’ll be quiet. [laughs]
Kat: Right, exactly. And we actually have another caller. Hello, Caller, can you hear us?
Caller: Yes. Can you hear me?
Michael: Mhm.
Kat: Absolutely. What’s your name? Where are you from?
Caller: I’m Sanji. I’m from India.
Kat: Oh!
Michael: Oh, wow! Hi Sanji.
Kat: Well, thank you so much for calling.
Caleb: What time is it in India?
Caller: It’s like 10 p.m.
Caleb: Oh, okay.
Kat: Not too late, then.
Caller: Yeah, it’s a pretty comfortable time.
Laura: So you can eat popcorn and everything since it’s nighttime.
Caller: Yep! I’m all prepared with a bowl of popcorn and…
Kat: [laughs] Lovely.
[Michael laughs]
Caller: I have a couple of questions.
Kat: Sure.
Caller: Okay, my first one is, obviously, in the movie… this is in movie canon, I don’t know if it’s book canon, but the maze did show a bias towards Harry, come on.
Kat: Mhm.
Laura: Yeah.
Michael: Of course.
Caller: So if Harry had just stood in one place, do you think he would have… the maze would have bended itself towards him?
[Michael laughs]
Laura: Yeah. I think… because you know how at one point where the maze is chasing Cedric and Harry and it leads them pretty much directly? Yeah, at that point they’re not having to find their way anymore because they’re just running away and by running away they find the Cup. So if Cedric wasn’t there and it was just Harry, I think that still would have happened.
Kat: Yeah, I agree. It would’ve pushed him towards the middle.
Caller: And the second one’s more of a sugar rush. My brain came up with it. What if – I don’t know how this would happen, just imagine – you would a one-year-old’s name would have been called out by the Goblet of Fire? What would have happened?
Kat: I don’t know how they would have entered.
Caleb: Yeah.
Caller: Well, how Harry did it. I mean come on, Harry wasn’t exactly seventeen. So if someone had put a one-year-old kid’s name in the Goblet of Fire, would he still be forced to enter?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: That person would be cruel and should go to Azkaban right now.
[Caleb and Caller laugh]
Laura: Yeah. I think it might come down to the fact that the cup just wouldn’t have chosen him, whereas Harry…
Caller: [unintelligible] Well, yeah.
Michael: Well, Crouch Sr. says in the movie, “Binding magical contract… rules… blabidy blah.” So yeah, I guess so. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Right. Hmm. And speaking of that, should we get into the hot topics of the film, things that were brought up from the chat?
Caleb: Yes. So there may have been something that came earlier, but the first one that I know we talked about a lot was when we first meet the Diggorys. We just talked about Cedric a little bit, but a lot of people found it really funny and I had not really thought about this since I saw it last, but Cedric dropping out of the tree?
Kat: [laughs] Yeah.
Laura: I love it.
Caleb: What is the purpose of that? [laughs]
Laura: Because he’s just swooping down like, “Look how amazing I look,” and he’s really the first guy that you see the girls are interested in and if he had just walked up, it wouldn’t be as dramatic as, “Ooh, look at me. I’m so sexy.”
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: They could have! They could have, because… oh, I guess this came before Twilight. I was going to say they could have made him sparkle or something. I don’t know. I’m just being stupid.
Laura: No, I… yeah, I… personally, I was in because he drops in and you’re like, “Woah, pretty face.”
[Kat laughs]
Laura: So many feelings immediately. But the galloping out of the portkey…
Caleb: Yes.
Kat: It’s pretty funny.
Caleb: Classic.
[Lauren laughs]
Kat: We have another caller. Hello, Caller.
Caleb: Hello.
Caller: Hello.
Kat and Laura: Hello!
Caller: Hi. I have a question for you guys.
Kat: Sure. What’s your name and where are you from, first?
Caller: My name is Amber and I am from St. Louis, Missouri.
Kat: Great, go ahead and ask your question.
Michael: Hi, Amber.
Caller: Hi. I was just wondering, out of all of the scenes that got cut from the book, what’s the one scene that you guys would have chosen to have in the movie?
Michael: Ugh.
Caleb: Hmm.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: A second movie?
[Michael laughs]
Laura: No. Go around in a circle.
Caleb: I have to think about this.
Laura: Okay, for me, I’m definitely going to go with this even though this is hypothetically because I wanted to see it made so much, but it would not have necessarily… it would have messed up the whole pacing of the movie, but the beginning stuff with the Dursleys when the Weasleys barge in and there’s that great Weasley twin scene with Dudley’s tongue. It’s such a fantastic scene in the book, that I remember reading it being like, “I cannot wait to see this in the movie.”
Caleb: Mhm. Yeah.
Laura: But at the same time I respect their decision to leave it out because it would have been a whole separate thing.
Kat: For me, I think the whole house-elf, Winky, Dobby subplot. Dobby is my favorite character, as you guys know. I’m a sucker for…
Laura: Those house-elves are expensive.
Kat: They’re expensive, but cut out ninety percent of that dragon crap and you could have put in two little house elves.
Laura: That’s fair.
Kat: So that’s what I miss because then that also would have lead into more of a subplot with everything else, so…
Caleb: Yeah. Mine would probably be… well, it involves more Winky, but it’s the actual fleshed-out scene of forest by the World Cup.
Kat: Mhm.
Like that whole scene more drawn out, like actually see everything that happens, like Harry getting lost, the Dark Mark going up, Winky being apprehended, then blasting everyone, Winky getting caught, Crouch having to release Winky. That was just really an awesome scene for me in the book. I would have liked to have seen it all fleshed out in the movie.
Kat: Yeah. Plus with the bone… maybe the way Crouch dies. That would have been… that as well. That would have been cooler.
Laura: [sneezes] Excuse me.
Kat and Michael: Bless you.
Michael: Mine definitely would have been all the bits and pieces that were left out of the Crouch story. I think you could still make it work possibly without Winky and Dobby… I mean, they’d be the second thing I would like most of all, but if we’re just thinking of one thing, specifically I would like the scene where Crouch shows up when Victor Krum and Harry are at the forest, and…
Caleb: Oh, yeah.
Michael: … Crouch is going crazy because the thing is – and we talked about that on the episode where that chapter came up – that is written in such a cinematic way. She wrote it practically like a movie script, and it would have made a great tense scene. For all of Goblet‘s moments of action, until the last twenty minutes or so, for me it lacks a lot of tension.
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: Because it forgets about what’s important for so long in the movie that there’s really nothing that builds up, and I feel that scene would have been a great build-up of, “Ooh, back to the mystery.”
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: Because we also just don’t get any inclination that Crouch is sick or that there’s really any drama with him. It’s just like he’s there and then he’s dead.
Michael: And then he’s dead, yep. [laughs]
Kat: What about any of the listeners out there? What scenes would you have liked to see make it back into the film?
Laura: We’ll talk about something that you put in the chat. I’m seeing a lot of people are talking about the Rita Skeeter plot fleshed out.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: And what happened to Barty in Azkaban.
Caleb: A lot of people agreed with Winky.
Kat: Right.
Laura: Young Barty Crouch.
Kat: Exactly.
Michael: The funny thing with Rita is that it is introduced, and then it literally goes nowhere.
Kat: Right.
Michael: She’s in the movie and she’s present for the whole thing, but she serves no purpose.
Kat: We have a caller on the line.
Caleb: Oh.
Kat: It’s Terri, hello.
Caller: Hi!
Michael: Hi, Terri.
Kat: Hi, do you have a question or comment for us?
Caller: Yes, I actually have a couple of questions.
Kat: Go for it.
Caller: My first question was how did you feel about Hermione’s dress not being periwinkle blue?
Michael: Ugh!
Kat: I don’t care.
Laura: I don’t care either.
Caleb: It didn’t bother me that much.
Laura: She looked pretty.
Michael: I care.
[Kat laughs]
Michael: I care more about the fact that she always looks pretty. And that scene where she comes down the stairs doesn’t matter, because she always looks like that throughout the entire film.
Laura: I will say that yes, that’s true. But at the same time that scene to me is more about the fact that she’s coming down to meet Viktor Krum.
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: And Viktor Krum looks great, she looks great, and it’s just like, “Yeah, Hermione!” It’s such a perfect scene for me. Her dress doesn’t matter.
Michael: What was your other question, Terri?
Caller: My other question was, how did you feel about not seeing the wand weighing ceremony before the task?
Michael: Oh, with Ollivander?
Caller: Yes.
Kat: I kind of forgot about that.
Caller: That’s such a key point, and I figured they should have it.
Laura: I mean…
Caleb: Yeah, I see that it’s important, but I also think… I’m not surprised, and I guess I’m not too upset that it was cut at the expense of some other things.
Kat: I think that if they had known, because… wait, Goblet came out when?
Michael: 2005.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Okay, so Deathly Hallows wasn’t written yet.
Caleb: No.
Kat: If they had known the importance of wands and all of that stuff, I feel like they might have tried to keep that in.
Michael: Yeah.
Laura: Well, they made up for it, I think, by explaining the whole wand business a little bit with [Ollivander]. It’s a great scene and there’s a million great scenes in the books. But prioritizing, the removal of that scene doesn’t bother me as much, especially since we do get Ollivander back for Deathly Hallows.
Kat: True.
Michael: Yeah.
Laura: If I never saw him again I’d be heartbroken, but we do get him back.
Kat: Right.
Michael: It was a frustrating scene to lose especially because there was… I think John Hurt had actually said very early on in the process that he was going to come back for Goblet, and then that scene got put on the cutting room floor. But I think… yeah, the big thing is that – and this is the unfortunate thing about the Potter series as films – the book series just wasn’t finished yet, so they didn’t really know the importance of that. I think the reason people have problems with Goblet more than any other film is because it does totally ignore everything that’s coming up that’s going to be important and kind of goes for the… and that’s one of those.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: The film could have… I mean, even if the film did have other important key points, I think it could have survived without that particular one.
Kat: Yeah.
Caleb: Another really big important part of the movie was the opening feast where we finally meet the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students. A lot of people were talking about that while we were watching because it’s our first introduction to these two schools – we also get an introduction to Moody. What were some of our thoughts on that scene?
Laura: I’m going to be honest, when I was little I remember my girl scout troop reenacting the Durmstrang dance with the sticks. I always loved it so much! [laughs] But rewatching it, in actuality it would be awkward. But I think… have you guys…? I’m sure you guys have [seen] the deleted scene where Hogwarts gets to perform.
Michael: Yes, I love that scene. I wish they’d kept it in.
Laura: Because that’s a great scene.
Kat: Yeah, that was great.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: So, we have another caller on the line. Hello, caller.
Caller: Hello, Kat, this is S.D. I am actually DolphinPatronus on the site McWands.
Kat: Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Michael: Oh, it’s nice to finally talk to you, DolphinPatronus. [laughs]
Caller: Yes! You, too.
[Michael laughs]
Caller: My question, since none of you really like this movie very much with the exception of one…
[Laura and Michael laugh]
Caller: … I wanted to know everyone’s favorite scene, because I’m sure even though you don’t like it, you still have to have a favorite scene, I assume.
Kat: Voldemort’s rebirth, for me. For sure.
Caleb: Yeah. I’d say the graveyard as a whole is pretty baller.
Kat: Just the whole moment where he stands up and you have that “Waah, waah…” like that weird music. And it’s just that…
Laura: [unintelligible]
[Caleb laughs]
Kat: … “Waah, waah…” Yeah, you guys know what I’m talking about! That one particular moment for me is it. It just gives me chills. Oh, and Amos [Diggory] screaming, because that is bone chilling.
Caleb: It’s so sad.
Caller: Oh, I get goosebumps.
Laura: Me, I have to agree on a serious level that it’s generally the graveyard and the whole Cedric death and whatnot. But on a less serious note, the added scene where they’re learning how to dance is perfection to me.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Kat: Yeah, that is pretty great.
Laura: I’m a big, big fan of that scene.
Kat: Ustreamer_643486 agrees with you.
Laura: Thank you.
Caleb: McGonagall, my homegirl.
Kat: That’s right. [laughs]
Laura: There’s so many great parts in it, it’s perfect. Neville, Ron, everything is great.
Caleb and Kat: Yeah.
Laura: Oh, people are mentioning the ferret scene. That was also pretty great.
Kat: That was pretty great.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Did you say yours, Michael?
Michael: No. Mine is a tie between the full graveyard sequence because it is very well done – not just because it’s close to the book, but it’s a very well done scene – and the classroom scene with Moody, because it’s very well acted on everybody’s part. Because it’s another one of those moments in this movie where the movie does take itself seriously and remembers what’s important. It’s one of the few times in the movie too where there’s a really effective tone change – it’s not sudden.
Laura: Right.
Michael: It makes sense…
Kat: It does.
Michael: … the way it goes from this giggly scene to suddenly being really morose, and it works really well.
Kat: And people in the chat are also saying the Myrtle scene, which is so true. I love Moaning Myrtle.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: The Myrtle scene is fun.
Kat: Yeah, it is very fun.
Laura: I hate it so much. [laughs]
Kat: I love it.
Caleb: Probably the most talked about scene of this movie after it aired was that moment – we all know it…
Kat: It was.
Caleb: … after Harry’s name gets pulled out of the Goblet, and Dumbledore tries to tackle and kill Harry.
Laura: [unintelligible] Snape together.
Kat: Yeah. Exactly.
Caleb: We won’t talk about it too much, but… it never gets old!
[Everyone laughs]
Caleb: Everytime I watch it… it’s just always so wrong! So good because it’s so wrong.
Kat: Yeah. We have another caller on the line. Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hi. [laughs]
Caller: I was just wondering what you guys thought about Moody drinking from a flask. Like no teacher thought that that was a little inappropriate? It could have been alcohol.
Laura: I mentioned that in the chat.
[Caleb laughs]
Laura: I said if I was a… what are they, fourteen? I don’t remember how… well, I guess that’s like freshman year. No matter what, if there was a teacher knocking back drinks in the middle of class, there’d be some issues.
Michael: Yeah.
Laura: But Hogwarts is never one for rules.
Kat: I mean, yeah, that’s…
Laura: What was her name?
Caller: I always thought it was a little weird.
Kat: It is weird, but that’s the wizarding world.
Caleb: Everybody drinks a little bit more. I mean, Hagrid’s drunk every day!
Kat: [laughs] He is, that’s true.
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: Another really defining part of this movie is the teenage drama and fights. It starts off with Harry and Ron fighting because Ron is mad at Harry – he thinks Harry put his name in the Goblet – and then later between Ron and Hermione when Ron finds out that Krum is her date. Do we think that the movie did a good job of portraying this teenage drama, however you want to call it?
Laura: Thanks.
Kat: Yes. As I said in the chat, somebody always cries at the ball. There’s always a crier at the school dance.
Laura: Mhm.
Caleb: Right.
Kat: We can all relate to that. I have been that girl before.
Laura: Aww!
Kat: Aw whatever, it was fine. I was like twelve; it didn’t matter.
[Laura laughs]
Kat: I mean, at the time it did.
Michael: I think the interesting thing about how it’s done in Goblet of Fire is that – and I saw this in the chat, you guys – a lot of people bash on Half-Blood Prince because it’s kind of all that in their eyes. I personally love Half-Blood Prince, but I think Goblet of Fire ramps it up a little more. And Half-Blood Prince does it because it’s in the book – most of that’s in there.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: Goblet kind of goes a little overboard, because the thing is, the teenage angst stuff isn’t really important plotwise, because the Yule Ball they almost filmed practically in full and they really didn’t need to. I loved the scene where Harry goes and talks to Cho, [laughs] but I think it’s done well for the scenes. I think the cast really stepped up and did great for the scenes that they had to do. It’s just that again, it’s another one of those things that doesn’t go anywhere because Ron and Hermione don’t have anything to do by the last part of the movie. You kind of forget they’re there, because they’re out of the film so much. And then they just pop in at the end for the cheesy goodbye.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: [as Movie Hermione] “Aww, you’ll write every day?”
[Michael laughs]
Kat: [as Movie Harry] “Yes, every day.”
Laura: It doesn’t surprise me that they harp so much on it just because – especially for a young audience when you think of every sitcom-like TV show – up until this point they didn’t have any of that material to work with and now they had a little bit and they’re like, “Aww, great! Kids love all that drama thing.” I mean, for all the important stuff that was there that they cut out, it probably… I like that it was there. It just could have been cut down significantly.
Michael: Yes.
Laura: But it certainly doesn’t surprise me that it was left in there. Which is also why the Half-Blood Prince movie harps so much on that. It’s just because it can.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Yeah.
Caleb: So we finally get to the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, which of course is dragons. I wish we could have seen glimpses of the other dragons, but I know that would have cost a lot of money.
Laura: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, they don’t even show the little small Swedish Short-Snout because they’re like, “That’s expensive.” [laughs]
Kat: I want one of those. Can I just say, I want all those little dragons?
Michael: Yes.
Laura: I want a Chinese Fireball.
Kat: Right. To live on my nightstand or… I don’t know…
Michael: [laughs] Make it happen, Warner Bros.
Kat: Yes, make it happen.
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: A lot of people in the chat during the movie were not too happy about the dragon chasing Harry, that scene taking so long and it going away and what does the audience do? Did you guys feel the same?
Laura: I think we don’t get Quidditch in this, and this is the first movie where we don’t get Quidditch, and I think the film loves Quidditch…
[Michael laughs]
Laura: Which is kind of ridiculous considering we did have the Quidditch World Cup and they just didn’t do anything about that. But they have this flying sequence and everything, and I think they…
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: True.
Michael: Yeah, well…
Laura: … wanted to do that.
Michael: I think the thing with the dragon is that – and we even commented on this when we were reading the book – but that scene goes really fast in the book. Harry gets the golden egg really quickly and it’s actually more of a strategic-based event in the book than here where it’s just more action packed. And I think for film it works, especially because they’ve got this big CGI dragon. You might as well show it off rather than use it for all of ten seconds. But I do think, though… I do agree with Laura in that I think the Quidditch World Cup would have been more of a spectacle “Wow!” factor scene. That would have been fun to see.
Kat: Right.
Laura: Because we could see expert Quidditch players.
Michael: Yeah, it would have been really exciting to see. Again that’s one of the cuts that I do see why they did it, because it…
Laura: Mhm.
Michael: It’s one of the few things that was cut that actually does not really contribute to the plot since they didn’t bother to develop Viktor Krum at all.
Caleb: Right.
Michael: But at the same time, since the whole dragon task is just a bunch of “Wow!” factor after a while, you might as well exchange it for the Quidditch World Cup and you probably get something a little more awesome.
Caleb: Yeah, the trade-off doesn’t really make sense, like you said.
Michael: No.
Kat: Josh, our caller, hello. Welcome back.
Caller: Hello.
Kat: Hi.
Caller: Can you hear?
Kat: We can.
Michael: Yes.
Caller: I’m Josh, also known as ArchdukeSeverus. I also got… [unintelligible]
Michael: Oh, you’re ArchdukeSeverus? [laughs]
Caller: Yep.
Kat: Welcome. You have a question? Comment?
Caller: Oh yeah. I was just thinking about Moody and the hints they drop in the movie as to who he really is, like that stupid tongue flick thing.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: My favorite little hint – and I commented on this in the chat – is when he is doing Crucio on the spider and he is so into it…
Michael: Yeah.
Kat: … he loses himself in that. And I just never picked up on it before until actually this time and I absolutely loved it. I thought it was great.
Michael: That’s a very good touch. I think the… I don’t like the tongue flick. To me the tongue flick is the movie’s way of saying, “We wanted to just delete the really complicated part of this plot, so tongue flick.”
[Caleb and Kat laugh]
Michael: Lazy writing, lazy writing, lazy writing.
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: And the thing that I do like is that they found new ways to hint at the Polyjuice Potion. They do kind of beat you over the head with it because – and this is a thing that a lot of big Hollywood movies will do; luckily, we’re getting more movies these days that don’t do this – but there are a lot of movies out there that assume their audiences are extremely stupid. And I really wish that some of the Potter films, especially the more elaborately plotted ones, did not do that.
Kat: Mhm.
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: And Goblet really assumes its audience is stupid. [laughs]
Caleb: Mhm.
Michael: It just throws hints in your face and it’s not really… I think, Kat, the one you sided with Moody in the classroom scene is one of the actually more subtle [hints], and I wish they had gone more on that track.
Kat: Yeah, me too. Me too.
Laura: It would have paid off cinematically because they would have been, “Oh, it’s Barty Crouch! Who knew?”
Michael: Yes.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Right.
Michael: Yeah. Because I think there are… I found more and more that there really were a lot of people going to the movies at this time that had not read the book, but I don’t think that they deserved to be bashed over the head with clues. I think they deserved a good movie that made them think a little and
Laura: Right.
Kat: I just want to remind everybody that our special guest, Bryn Court, who’s the lead sculptor from the Potter films and Diagon Alley at Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is going to be joining us in just a few minutes. So if you have some questions for him, get the queue going. Get ready and once you hear him on the call, you can start calling and he’ll answer your questions. So…
Caleb: Awesome. Well, maybe right before he comes on we can move on to the second task where we meet the merpeople, which… I thought they were done really well. I thought they were so, so scary when I saw it the first time. And creepy and just really well designed.
Kat: Yeah, they’re scary as hell.
Laura: That scene where… I think it’s not the mermaids; it’s the grindylows that are dragging him down. That was a scene from my nightmares.
Caleb and Kat: Yeah.
Kat: I can agree.
Michael: The second task, I would say, is out of the three… if we’re going to pick a winner as far as best adapted, the second task wins it in my eyes.
Caleb: Yeah, totally.
Michael: It’s the closest, and I think it was the most intensive as far as training because they were actually swimming underwater. I know a lot of people were wondering, “How is this going to be filmed?” I think they were wondering that pretty much right up to the beginning of filming. And they…
Caleb: And the hostages are done so hauntingly, too.
Michael: Yeah, those are great.
Laura: Can I harp on a tiny detail?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Of course.
Laura: Yeah. It always bothers me – and I don’t believe this is in the book; correct me if I’m wrong – when Harry flips out of the water like a dolphin, and I’m always like, “Well, isn’t that losing because they weren’t allowed to… are they not allowed to come up?” If you come up, then you’re forfeiting?
Caleb: Oh yeah, that’s definitely not in the book.
Laura: Yeah. It always bothers me.
Michael: Yeah, that’s the king-of-the-world moment. There’s…
Laura: But we do get “I [killed] Harry Potter.”
Michael: Yeah. That’s pretty funny. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, that’s a good… I mean, and again, I said this so many times during the chat, but this movie… if you take so much of it out of the context of the movie, it’s really funny. It’s so dirty. [laughs] I don’t know. Just…
Michael: No, no, I think that’s fair to say. Actually, I think, because Goblet does a lot of things that I don’t think it realizes it’s doing, by accident, that are unintentionally hilarious, so… because I’ve always seen Goblet as the campiest of the movies.
Kat: Right.
Michael: It’s pretty over the top, and there are just so many quotable… “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Caleb: Whoops.
Kat: And that whole scene with Harry and Ron in the dormitory is just…
Caleb: Yes!
Kat: I love it.
Caleb: It’s majorly homoerotic.
Kat: I know; I love it. I absolutely love it, so…
Laura: Well, I also think it’s interesting… I just want to quickly say, “I remember the director always said that he wanted to be making almost a Bollywood movie? In scale?”
Kat: That’s right. I remember reading that.
Laura: I remember I heard that. It was like, “Huh?” But…
Caleb: Someone in the chat just said “sexual Wednesday.”
[Caleb and Kat laugh]
Caleb: It was really funny.
Micahel: Well, and the funny thing, too, about Goblet… for being so as maligned as it is in the fandom, it’s the first of the movies to have a British director. And I think a lot of people were pretty excited about that because they were like, “Oh, finally, some real British Britishness in these films.” And it’s like he made a British school, but he forgot about the magical part. [laughs]
Kat: Right. True. Hello, Caller.
Caller: Hello there.
Kat: Hello. What’s your name? Where are you from?
Caller: I’m Megan. I am from Sonoma County. Santa Rosa. Woohoo.
Michael: Woo! [laughs] I’m not from there, but “woo” anyway.
[Kat laughs]
Caller: Yay.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: You have a question or a comment?
Caller: I think my stream was behind. My comment is basically [that] everybody’s talking about how this is a terrible adaptation. Terrible. Not the greatest movie that they made. And I just came at it from the… when I saw this movie, I hadn’t read any of the books, yet. I was one of those people. And just all the things, all the hit-you-on-the-head [things] with all the clues and everything. I like to think I’m intelligent, but I missed those clues.
[Michael laughs]
Caller: I noticed the tongue thing, but I didn’t make the connection.
Kat: I didn’t either, so you’re not…
Caller: Yeah.
Kat: Yeah.
Caller: So not exactly the best hints either.
Michael: No.
Caller: But it was one of those things where I really and still… I completely enjoyed it my first time through, and I still enjoy watching it. Yes, it’s not the best adaptation, but I just wanted to defend Goblet a little bit because it’s not a horrible movie. It’s just not a great adaptation.
Michael: No, no, I think that’s a good point. I think the thing we’re saying about Goblet.. because as silly as it is adaptation-wise, it’s probably the most blockbuster popcorn movie of the Harry Potter films.
Kat: That’s true. I’ll give you that.
Michael: It’s an easy, turn-off-your-brain-and-watch-it movie.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure we’ll get to our overall scoping thoughts of it toward the end, but I’ll quickly say, “What I find interesting about my own opinion, if that makes sense, is that Goblet of Fire is one of my favorite books, and Goblet of Fire is one of my favorite movies.” And usually the people who really like Goblet of Fire‘s book hate the movie, but I’m someone who separates them pretty much. And I just find Goblet of Fire was such an entertaining book to me, and the Goblet of Fire movie was so entertaining. So as an adaptation, yes, there'[re] things that are off, but as far as the movie, of all of the movies, the one that I can sit down and watch the most is Goblet of Fire just because I find it the most entertaining.
Michael: Yeah. That makes total sense to me. That’s my…
Laura: Like you said, it is a popcorn movie.
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Laura: I just love watching it. I don’t necessarily love watching it as an adaptation, but I do feel like it captured the spirit of the book, of just being… it is a very different book.
Michael: Mhm. Definitely.
Kat: Hello, caller.
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hi.
Michael: Hi! [laughs]
Caller: Oh my goodness. How are you?
Michael: What’s your name?
Caller: My name is Bella. I’m from California.
Michael: Nice to meet you.
Caleb: Do you live anywhere near where the earthquake happened yesterday?
Caller: No, I don’t. I live up in northern California, but my…
Caleb: Oh, okay.
Kat: Okay, good.
Michael: Good place to be.
Caller: I follow Andrew Sims and [unintelligible] on Twitter, and they were freaking out, and I was like, “Oh, well, that’s nice to know, I guess.”
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: What’s your question for us?
Caller: I have a comment and a question for you.
Michael: Ooh, double whammy.
Caller: My comment was… I’m written that way on the chat. I said it during the movie, that I feel like this is the only movie where Voldemort fights Harry. After this, it’s all “Nyahh!” and…
[Caleb, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Caller: … it’s just impossible, to a point. And it’s kind of sad because…
Michael: That was an excellent Voldemort from Deathly Hallows impression, by the way.
Kat: It was. Eric would be very proud.
Caller: Ah, speaking of Eric…
Michael: You said you had a question, too, right?
Caller: Oh, yeah. It was, “What is your least favorite part that’s in the movie?” Not something they missed but something that’s in the movie that you see it, and it just drives you up a wall.
Caleb: Ooh.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Can I say “the entire middle of the movie”?
Laura: No, you may not.
[Caleb, Caller, and Michael laugh]
Kat: No, the entire “middle” of the movie. No.
Michael: Ehh.
Caller: No, I’m with Kat. My mom walked in, and she goes, “Oh, is it over?” I’m all, “Yes, thank God.”
[Caleb, Kat, Laura, and Michael laugh]
Caleb: Oh, wow.
Laura: I want to actually… I’m trying to give some thought to this. I don’t want to say the wrong answer. I think… all right, someone else first.
Michael: I… just something that bothers us. The thing that I always think is really silly is that moment right after Harry has the bad dream after the Yule Ball, and then Neville comes in, and he’s all like, “[unintelligible]” And then right before that, after Hermione’s crying on the steps, and then suddenly you see the big bell tower, and it’s like, “Ding! Tone change. Time to go back to the movie now,” and [laughs] I hate that part just because there’s no smooth transition. It literally just is like, “Okay, well, we had fun with those 20 minutes of the Yule Ball. Now back to plot.” So…
Kat: Hmm. I’m having a hard time picking a single part.
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, because my thought is, “I don’t know if I can think of a good answer for this.” There are things that I’m not a huge fan of because they [were] changed or left out. But as far as the way this question was asked, I can’t think of a single thing that I’m very mad at.
Laura: I’m… all right, I think I’m going to have to say… see, I have opinions, and I don’t want to say them because I feel like I’m going to lose every fan that I have, which is bad.
Michael: No, you will not lose me, Laura. [laughs]
Laura: I am not the biggest David Tennant fan. [laughs]
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Oh, yeah, careful.
Caleb: Wow, yeah. Whoops.
Kat: Yeah, that’s a bold statement.
Laura: Yeah, I don’t want to say it [unintelligible] myself. I just…I don’t know.
Kat: [unintelligible] the chat?
Laura: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, everybody. I just don’t… I think it’s because I didn’t really like stuff like the tongue-flicking and the mannerisms. I felt like it was so much… a little overdone. I like David Tennant outside of this movie. I certainly do.
Michael: No. Laura…
Kat: You’re getting a lot of crap in the chat right now.
Laura: I really do like David Tennant outside of this movie. I’m just not a fan, necessarily, of the way… the character. And I don’t think it was his fault. I think it’s the script, honestly, and what they gave him. Of with his different mannerisms.
Michael: No, Laura. I totally stand behind you with that. As a Tennant fan.
Laura: Thank you, Michael.
Michael: I agree completely. He is totally wasted on this movie. This movie does not use him to his fullest.
Laura: Yeah, I feel like the script made him almost just… the character seemed more like a caricature of just… kind of crazy, and [he] didn’t have as much depth as he did in the books.
Michael: Mhm. Oh, yeah. I think even if they had just… what I was hoping was that at least they would show that unexpected transition where he is just the pitiful “Oh, God, I’m just your kid. Why are you sending your kid to jail?” And then suddenly it’s “Oh, snap! He’s actually the villain.” I would have actually liked that, and I think Tennant could have done it. He’s definitely capable of that.
Laura: Yeah.
Michael: I think he can play a more layered crazy than that, [laughs] so…
Laura: Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at. Okay. So…
Michael: Yeah, yeah.
Laura: Do I still… are people still okay with me?
Kat: Yeah, a lot of people are agreeing with you, so… but also hating on you, so you got a good mix. It’s cool.
Laura: I’m sorry, everybody.
Kat: [laughs] It’s okay.
Michael: They’re still talking about bacon, so it’s all good.
Kat: Well, and Noah just popped up in the chat, too.
Michael: I saw that, yes.
Kat: But he doesn’t have a microphone with him, so…
Michael: Oh, sad times.
Kat: Yeah. So… all right, we’re going to take another caller here.
Michael: Yay.
Kat: Helloo, Caller.
Caller: Hey.
Kat: Lucas, hi. What’s up?
Caller: Hey. I have a question.
Kat: Go for it.
Michael: We might have answers.
Kat: Might.
[Caller laughs]
Michael: No promises.
[Caleb laughs]
Michael: What’s your question, Lucas?
Caller: Hey. My question… I have a couple. My first one was, “Many people find David Tennant and Miranda Richardson’s talents underused in this film and the rest of the series, and so how do you feel about this, and how do you think they could have been included in the plot more?”
Michael: Uhh, for me, that’s easy. Write them in more. [laughs]
Caleb and Kat: Yeah.
Michael: Use their parts from the books more. I think the Rita Skeeter… the unfortunate thing is, the biggest plots that get cut are the ones that have to do with Hermione. Poor Hermione.
Kat: I know.
Michael: Everything that’s related to her gets cut. And they even said… they were like “Oh, the house-elf thing is really cool and everything, but it doesn’t matter.” And I’m like, “But it does.” I feel that issue with Richardson and Tenant extends to a lot of the adults in the Harry Potter series, unfortunately. They are all very underutilized considering who they got.
Kat: Right.
Michael: I mean, not every… the one thing I will say about the Harry Potter series as a whole is, “We as a fandom were very spoiled.” A lot of why a series [doesn’t] get so lucky…
Kat: Oh, God.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: I know, we had..
Caleb: It’s true.
Kat: … the best of the best of the best, really.
Michael: Yeah, we really did. So…
Laura: Yeah, I think… I mean, I already spoke about Tenant, but as far as Miranda Richardson, I think what makes Rita as a character so interesting is that she’s not a nice person to people like Hermione and stuff, and she’s so devious, whereas like I said in the chat, the one scene she has really screen time in, she sounds like she is hitting on Harry. That’s how they wrote her, and that’s how…
Kat: But I actually totally dig that about her. I love it.
Caleb: Yeah, because there’s this scene…
Laura: It’s crazy. We don’t get Rita as this evil… not evil – she isn’t – but just such a mess of a person and just all the trouble she creates. You just see her as being “Oh, journalist.”
Caleb: There’s a similar scene when they’re in the tent before the first task, and a cannon goes off early, and it’s almost like Cedric almost falls toward her, and she is so enjoying that moment.
Kat: Yeah.
Michael: [laughs] I remember that. Yeah.
Laura: These boys are 14. Oh, God.
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: Cougar!
[Michael laughs]
Kat: [laughs] I mean, she has the nails and everything for it, right?
Caleb: Yes!
Laura: But I just love her look in it, too. I’ve always wanted to cosplay Rita. But alas, I probably…
Kat: I have, too, actually.
[Laura laughs]
Kat: But yeah. So we have one of our favorites on the line here, Ali Wood. Hello.
Michael: Hi, Ali.
Laura: Hey.
Caller: You guys are sweet. Hey, guys.
Michael: How are you?
Caller: How’s it going? Good. So yeah, the thing I was just thinking about just now was, “This was the first book they were considered splitting into two movies,” right?
Michael: Yes.
Laura: Oh, right.
Caller: Do you guys think that should have been done?
Caleb: No.
[Michael laughs]
Caller: And where do you think they would have/should have cut it in half?
Michael: Ooh, those are big questions. [strong>[laughs]
Caller: Okay.
Caleb: I did not think it should have been split. But…
Laura: Yeah, I agree. I just think because it’s just such a bottle story, almost, whereas Deathly Hallows… that stuff does continue. I appreciated the Deathly Hallows split. Goblet of Fire is such a different story, and the tournament is such a bottle plot that splitting it into two would have just felt so strange.
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: Hmm.
Laura: But if they had split it, I feel like it could have been ended with the reveal of Barty Crouch being in Azkaban, that whole Pensieve part, possibly. But that’s assuming that a lot more would have been put into the beginning…
Caleb: Yeah, you would have needed to expand the World Cup. You would have need[ed] to add the Crouches’ backstory…
Caleb and Laura: … the Dursleys.
Caleb: A lot of things.
Laura: Right.
Michael: Yeah. It would be hard to split, I think, because I mean… and I don’t agree where Deathly Hallows was split. I don’t like where it was split. But it still functions, and it works because it was the end. And because we haven’t seen a series do this before, I think that’s kind of alien to us, but yeah, it’s hard for me to picture splitting just right in the middle. And I feel…
Laura: And now it’s every series do[ing] it.
Michael: [laughs] Yeah, no, exactly. If it started doing it then, we’d have Catching Fire Part 1 and Part 2 and so on and so on.
Laura: God.
Michael: [laughs] So New Moon Part 1 and Part 2.
Caleb: I think this trend is finally stopping, though, because…
Kat: It better.
Laura: It’s driving me mad.
Michael: Please.
Caleb: Because the Divergent series is probably the next big YA that’s actually going to be able to be made all the way through. And they pretty much decided that – well, at least, I guess, for now – Allegiant is not going be made into two movies. So I think that trend might actually finally stop.
Michael: Give it a few years, Caleb. [laughs] We got time.
Caleb: Yeah, we’ll see.
Michael: [laughs] But yeah, no, as far as Goblet goes, I think maybe back then since it was such a new thing, they could have. But like you guys said, we would have gotten, I think, a more straightforward adaptation. I don’t know if Mike Newell would have been the one to head it, though, because he wasn’t really interested in all that stuff. So I don’t know how the film would have turned out with him at the helm.
Kat: I would have been okay with a different director.
Laura: Me, too.
Caleb: Yeah, same. [laughs]
Kat: Cool. Noah, stop talking about Deathly Hallows – Part 1. I know you can hear me.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Stop it.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Stop it.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: All right, what’s up next, Caleb?
Caleb: So well, before they get to the third task, a really important part is meeting the Pensieve and going to the trial of Karkaroff, where we find out about Barty Crouch, Jr.
Michael: You mean diving into the “magical silver toilet,” as everybody was saying?
Caleb: Right, right.
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Caleb: Yeah, I mean, this, for me, did not reach the level of the book because this is one of my favorite couple of sequences in the book, is seeing those trials, and they’re just… [they’re] so elaborately described, and you get the history of the Ministry there. It’s just so well done. It doesn’t really reach that level in the movie, but I still liked it. I thought they did it pretty well for what they could do.
Kat: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Michael: It’s tough because the scenes in the Pensieve – and they continually had problems with them, forever – so it’s tough when you have your main character being quiet for more than ten minutes. You’re really not supposed to do that, in a film.
Kat: Right.
Michael: But that’s what the Pensieve scenes require. And this is the most… and I said this in the chat because somebody asked, “Do you prefer these Pensieve scenes or the ones in Half-Blood?” Cinematically I prefer the ones in Half-Blood. They’re more interesting…
Kat: Mhm.
Michael: … but this is a more straight-up adaptation. I appreciate that this is more of the straight up this is what was in the book, but I think – for a movie – I think Half-Blood made better choices with its Pensieve scenes.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Yeah, I agree.
Kat: And…
Michael: I hear a caller.
Kat: We do have a caller. [laughs]
Caller: Hi.
Kat: Hello.
Caleb: Hi.
Caller: First of all, I agree with that Pensieve comment, Michael. [laughs]
Michael: Oh, thank you. What is your name? I like you.
[Everyone laughs]
Caller: This is Ellendawn from the forums. I’m up in Canada. [laughs]
Kat: Oh, welcome.
Michael: Oh, nice to meet you.
Caller: Thank you! Nice to meet you guys, too.
Kat: You have a quick question?
Michael: What’s your question?
Caller: I do, yeah. So basically, the very first caller was talking about – Rebecca, I think her name was – was talking about strong female characters. This is along a similar line.
Michael: Yes.
Caller: J.K. is a pretty big female activist, right, so do you guys think that she would have approved or disapproved of how Fleur is portrayed in the movie? Because I think they make her a little bit more… I don’t know… more pathetic, almost, and it definitely takes away from her strong character. That she comes from a school of only females, so that takes a little bit away from her.
Caleb: Hmm. So…
Laura: I totally forgot about the fact that Fleur’s character – as far as her personality in the books, and it’s such a large personality – like you said, she doesn’t have a line.
Caller: Yeah.
Laura: She’s just demure.
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: And then she is always getting last place in every task and not finishing two tasks and stuff…
[Caleb laughs]
Laura: … and it’s like…
Caller: Exactly. I think she is a lot more fierce in the book than she is in the movies. It’s like they almost downplay it.
Caleb: Well…
Laura: And then it’s almost like… in Deathly Hallows when she is like, “Oh, I’m getting married,” it comes out of nowhere because you’re like, “Wait, you speak words?”
[Caller and Kat laugh]
Kat: Right, right.
Michael: Yeah.
Caleb: Well, you also have to think about… I think you’re right that Jo does a great job of showing different kinds of strong females, but she also does the whole spectrum of female characters very well, which is really important for the purpose of having both genders represented very well, for lack of a better word. But also, Fleur does have some weak moments in the movies… excuse me, in the books. She doesn’t handle the second task well, she is really worried that Gabrielle is not going to make it out. That’s why she is so thankful for Harry saving her. So I don’t know, I feel like… obviously her role is diminished compared to the book, but I, in the book, did not [unintelligible] as one of the more… I don’t want to step into stereotypes, but fierce females as far as…
Laura: Yeah, I agree.
Caleb: She’s not a Katniss, for lack of a better comparison.
Michael: Oh. [laughs] No, she is not.
Laura: No, I think her more strong traits come through in Half-Blood Prince…
Michael: Yeah.
Laura: … but I would agree in Goblet of Fire she is not… exactly what you said.
Michael: Yeah, no, I think you’re right on the mark, Caleb. I don’t think Fleur… I think the thing is we know – knowing Fleur now, and knowing the whole series – we know Fleur is a strong character because of Half-Blood and Deathly Hallows, but – and we talked about this in the episodes where she turned up in the chapters – but yeah, Fleur really is not that particularly great at the tasks in the book, either. She places just the same as she does in the movie. She is not… it gets into a bit of murky territory when you start talking about defining a strong character and what that really means, because I think that means different things to different people. There’s a [unintelligible] talk about that with Frozen but I’ll try not to go into that, but it’s kind of the same issue here. It depends on how you want to define it, and how deeply you want to examine these characters. Fleur’s not… unfortunately in the movie Fleur’s not meant really to be a character. She is more of a set piece, sadly. She is just there because she has to be.
Laura: Yeah. Very valid.
Michael: Silence?
[Caleb, Laura, and Michael laugh]
Michael: A moment of mourning for Fleur’s character. [laughs]
Kat: Oh, is that what that was? Is that what that was?
Michael: I guess it was.
[Caleb, Kat, and Michael laugh]
Kat: Uh-huh. Okay. Our special guest is going to be calling any minute now, guys, so ramp up those questions. He was just having some technical difficulties.
Caleb: So maybe we can briefly… while we’re waiting for him…
Kat: He’s right here.
Caleb: Oh, great.
Kat: Hold on.
Michael: By the way, everybody in the chat, yes I do want to build a snowman.
Kat: [laughs] Okay.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Caleb: [sings] Do you want to build a snowman?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Hello, Bryn. Are you there?
Bryn Court: Yeah, I’m here. Finally. I made it.
Kat: Excellent. Welcome, welcome.
Laura: Hello.
Caleb: Hey.
Bryn: How are you doing?
Kat: Excellent. How are you? Thanks for joining us.
Bryn: No, not a problem at all. So are you finished watching the movie, or are you still watching it?
Kat: No, we watched it this morning and now we’re chatting with our listeners from all over the world. We’ve had calls from India and Canada…
Bryn: Oh, wow, okay.
Kat: Yeah, it’s been great.
Bryn: Oh, excellent, excellent. And did you all enjoy it again? I’m sure you’ve seen it about a hundred times. [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, we all, actually – with the exception of Laura here – are not giant fans of this movie, so… [laughs]
Laura: I love it.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: She does love it, that’s true.
Bryn: Why are you not giant fans of the movie? I’d be interested to know why, actually.
Kat: [sighs] Who wants to go first?
Laura: I was just about to say that it simply is just the problems – I think – come from the adaptation aspects of it.
Kat: Right.
Caleb: Yeah, my big problem is the script doesn’t really capture the mood of Goblet of Fire as well as I wanted it to, until, probably, the graveyard scene.
Kat: Right, right.
Michael: It’s not adaptation for me so much as I feel the movie is tonally confused, compared to the other Potter films. It’s just – for me, personally – it’s a little all over the place, so…
Bryn: Yeah.
Caleb: But I think it’s a really pretty film.
Kat: It is. It’s absolutely beautiful.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I would agree with that.
Bryn: I would agree, I think, yeah.
Kat: So, callers out there, it looks like we might have a question here. Let’s answer. Hello?
Caller: Hello?
Kat: Hi.
Caller: This is Olivia [unintelligible].
[Computer background noises]
Kat: Can you just mute your computer, Olivia?
Caller: Yeah, sure. Sorry.
Kat: It’s all right. All right, go ahead, you have a question or comment for Bryn here?
Caller: Yeah, it’s just about the film in general because you guys have been talking about the pros and cons and how a lot of you don’t really like the film adaptation. And I was thinking that, of course, Mike Newell only directed one film, so do you think that if there had been a different director – say, David Yates or Alfonso Cuarón, or indeed, any other director – do you think that would have… how do you think it would have turned out?
Michael: Oh, that’s actually a really good question for Bryn…
Kat: It is.
Michael: … because he saw some of the other directors.
Kat: He did.
Bryn [laughs] Okay. I mean, I’ve got to… I do apologize for my memory. We’re talking about Mike Newell, now, yes?
Kat: Yes.
Caleb: Yes.
Bryn: Right. It’s a tough one I guess… because I guess, after the first two, obviously with Chris Columbus directing, and Warner Brothers obviously wanted to take it into a different direction. Alfonso totally changed it. He was more of a visionary. He wanted to make the film a lot more adult, a lot more grown-up, obviously, he was trying to… obviously the kids were growing up so he wanted to make it a bit darker and a bit… But every director that directs film likes to put their own mark on the film, obviously, so I think the first problem with the fourth movie – I mean for me – was the fact that the book was so much bigger. When you look at the first three books, and then you see the fourth book, to try and fit all of that in a two hour movie – and the book’s twice as big – was a pretty difficult, difficult thing to do. I’d have to watch it again, I do admit. [laughs]
[Caleb laughs]
Bryn: I’d have to watch it again to comment further. But visually there was some good stuff in it. I kind of understand what everyone was saying about it not being as good as the book. They tried to put as much in it as they possibly could, but films evolve in lots of ways. They did film a lot of stuff on that movie that never ended up in the theaters, simply because it would have made the film too long.
Michael: Mhm.
Bryn: So there were things that were cut out of the movie. Especially… there was one scene that was in the Owlery. We built a set of the Owlery, and in the movie all you ever see is Harry outside the Owlery, chatting. But in reality, we actually filmed a big scene in there…
Caleb: Oh.
Bryn: … so there was lots of things which unfortunately get cut because if a film gets too long, then you can’t obviously… I think most cinemas can only show so many showings per day. A lot of it comes down to money, as well. You don’t want to be sitting in a theater for nearly three hours, do you? I’m sure the big fans would love it, but… [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Bryn: But most people would start getting fidgety and all that sort of thing. I was going to say, what was your – if I was to throw a question back at everyone else here – what would be the aspect, one aspect – of that film that you felt disappointed about? If you could think of one or two things that you wish they had done a better job of?
Kat: The backstory, the Rita Skeeter stuff, for me.
Bryn: Right.
Kat: For sure, I’m missing that whole sub-plot a lot.
Bryn: Right, okay.
Caleb: So mine was…
Bryn: What about…
Caleb: … a more fleshed out scene right after the Death Eaters attack at the World Cup. So I’m kind of wondering, was that filmed and cut down? I guess they had already made a choice not to use the House Elves in the movie, so probably not.
Kat: Right.
Bryn: I can’t remember. I can’t remember if they cut that scene or not. I know we did a big scene of the Quidditch World Cup. I know I’ve had a couple of comments in the past saying they were disappointed there wasn’t more about the Quidditch World Cup. I think they did shoot more of the Quidditch World Cup, but I can’t for definite say what they actually… I wasn’t there when they shot that. We did all the sets. I wasn’t actually on the film unit, though, for that particular part of the shoot. I was busy… I think I was probably busy working on the graveyard set, to be honest with you.
Laura: I have a question.
Caleb: Which is awesome.
Laura: I just wondered, because you mentioned about the Owlery… Owlery, it’s such a hard word for me to pronounce.
Bryn: Yeah.
Laura: Coming from the production and design end of things, when you’re creating these huge sets and then you say, “Oh, this, no, you barely got to see it in the film.” How does that feel, the details that we get to see on stuff like the Studio Tour and stuff and then brought to life in the theme parks, but is there certain sets for you that you wish got more screen time?
Bryn: That’s a good question. Sets, yeah, one of them was the Owlery, we built a beautiful… Stuart Craig the production designer designed this lovely set, which was a big, old Tudor style building with lots of woodwork and you had hundreds of owls and perches and I actually sculpted a huge, great big owl, like a big statue owl that was holding up a balcony. It was a beautiful set.
Laura: Oh, wow.
Bryn: And they cut it for whatever reason. I don’t know the real reason that it was cut from the movie. Maybe it was, maybe, I don’t know, maybe it was a script decision or whatever it was. Sometimes they cut things for different reasons. It might not just be because of timing, it may be because they felt it didn’t work or… I don’t know. It’s very, very difficult to say. These decisions tend to be made in the cutting room once the films made and there’s normally lots of reasons for it. It’s a shame for fans. I wish they could… because they don’t get to see a lot of stuff we’ve… they do get to see most of the stuff we’ve done, but some of the nice stuff. I did a… there was statue they wanted in the Yule Ball. They wanted me to do these ice sculptures floating in the air and they were supposed to be these beautiful winged horses, supposedly craved out of ice and when they actually looked at that shot, they realized that it would have taken up a lot of that shot, a lot of the screen, it would have blocked out the ceiling of the Great Hall and made the shot look a bit claustrophobic so that whole… I spent a few weeks working on these statues and things and they never got used. So a lot of that kind of thing happens. We make things sometimes they make a decision and say that’s not really going to work. But that happens in a lot of movies, it’s not just the Harry Potter films but there was a hell of a lot of stuff that was… if any of you guys ever go onto my website, Kat, I’m sure Kat’s seen it as well, but if you go onto my website and look at the different movies, you’ll see some things you know. You’ll see the Owlery statue I did, you’ll see the winged horse that I did for the Yule Ball that was never used and you would be interested to see things that you think, “Oh, I don’t remember seeing that.” Some of it…
Kat: And that is moviesculptor.com, right, for everybody listening?
Bryn: That’s right, yeah.
Kat: Yep.
Bryn: Exactly. Yep.
Kat: Everyone in the chat is talking about the gravestone that you made with the winged angel. Can you tell them a little bit about that process?
Bryn: Yeah, sure. That changed a couple of times. That whole concept of the Riddle grave. Again, this was Stuart Craig being such a classical film designer that he is. I think in the book, isn’t it just a gravestone in the book, I believe…
Michael: Yeah.
Bryn: … you’re probably going to have to fill me in on that. Right.
Michael: It was just a giant marble headstone so it’s pretty basic.
Bryn: Exactly. Well Stuart Craig being Stuart Craig said, “Well that sounds a bit boring. Let’s do something a bit more sinister, well not sinister to begin with. Let’s do something a little bit more theatrical, a bit more romantic.” So he sent me out with a camera and with a driver and we went around to graveyards in London. We had a couple of graveyards and graves we wanted to look at and we found one that was a really beautiful grave and it was of an angel draped over a grave and he said that would be great. Because he wanted it to be a romantic thing because, obviously, a classical type looking grave. So I ended up doing… and again if you look, you’ll see on the website the original maker I did for the original Riddle grave and it’s basically an angel draped… it’s virtually exactly the same style gravestone that’s in the movie except you’ll see it’s completely different. So anyway, we… I did this model. Designer, director, everyone came down, producer David Heyman, we’re all standing around this thing and I said, “You know what, I think we need to make this a bit more sinister. This whole scene with Voldemort being reborn and all that and that whole scene is quite a dark scene.” So they went back to the drawing board and Stuart came up with another idea and said, “How about the angel of death? Let’s have the angel of death on there.” So he did a little sketch for me and we had another concept artist do another little rendering of it as well. But anyway, they gave me all that information and I came up with this model of the idea for this new Riddle grave and then it developed from there. We changed it a few times but essentially the first time I did the model, it kind of worked really well, so they were quite happy with that and we went with that. The actual full size, real grave is a slightly bit different than the maker I did, only in drapery on the figure, etc., etc. And they loved it so much that in the beginning of the movie, they built up this whole scene with the snake coming out from the graveyard and it slithers up – you probably will know this, you’ve just seen it – but it slithers up and then it goes underneath the Riddle grave and then you get the titles come up, yeah?
Kat: Mhm.
Bryn: And making that, that was quite another funny thing because that whole scene with the snake… when they did the first rendering of it, the snake just appears from behind the gravestone, and I said, “Let’s think of a better way of making the snake appear.” So, Stuart being Stuart, came up with an idea and said, “How about it comes out of a tomb, a really grisly, nasty tomb?” So he got some information. I don’t know if anyone has ever been to Paris, but if you ever do, go and have a look at their graveyards in Paris. There’s some really incredible tombs and quite gruesome-looking stuff. And he showed me some information, some pictures of that, and it was of some skulls in a tomb, in a door of a tomb. He said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with something like this?” And we literally had days, we literally had two or three days, before they shot this, so I had to quickly do this door with all these skulls and bones in. And that’s what you see at the beginning of the movie, the snake coming out of the door. And it was all ramped up because they loved the Riddle gravestone that they wanted it to work with that. And that’s basically how that whole scene was born. It started off as a romantic grave, and then they all decided that no, that’s not gruesome enough. This whole scene is dark and foreboding; we want it to be a real impact and be a really good backdrop for this whole scene with Voldemort and everyone. So basically, that’s how it happened. Like most things we did, it evolved from an idea, it then gets given to me, I evolve it further, I deal with Stuart. But everyone on the movie tended to get involved with it, including, obviously, the director, the producer. David Heyman had a very big influence on things; he had a vision of things with Stuart. But everyone… it worked well, and every director they chose – going back to that original question you had about Mike Newell – every director they used… you can’t have on board with that anyway. He’s… they’re very open to people’s suggestions because they’re joining a group, let’s all join a family. They’re being invited into a family because it will take the baby… To hand over this baby, this Harry Potter baby and say, “Well, we want you to do this movie.”
[Caleb and Kat laugh]
Bryn: So they’re kind of in their way of thinking as well. He’s a lovely guy, Mike Newell. I didn’t really… I saw him a few times. I didn’t actually have too much to do with him. He only came down a few times to approve the Riddle grave and other things I did. But very sort of… almost like a school teacher type, really tall British guy. Very nice guy, so… but anyway, that’s basically the story of the Riddle grave, so…
Kat: I love that story. That’s…
Caleb: Yeah.
Laura: What a beautiful story.
Kat: Definitely beautiful.
Caleb: I kind of got chills when you started to describe it coming out of the grave. That was really great.
Kat: Yeah.
Caleb: Oh! So did you get to do anything with the maze? Well… no, did we already talk about the maze?
Michael: A little bit, yeah.
Caleb: I don’t think we have though.
Kat: I don’t think so.
Caleb: So anything with the maze in the third task in Goblet of Fire?
Bryn: I’m not sure. I don’t think I… oh, yes, hang on! We did. [laughs] It was a pretty boring thing we did, actually.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Kat: Okay.
Caleb: Well, that kind of matches.
Bryn: Well, basically, that maze, it was very tall, the maze, wasn’t it? And the greenery people didn’t have a way of… basically, all of the greenery you saw had to be stuck into a frame, and they didn’t have any way of attaching this stuff. It was mainly a wooden frame. They didn’t have any way of attaching this stuff into a lot of the areas, like the corners and everything to make it work. So they said to me, “What can I use?” I said, “We’ll just use some Styrene.” I had a couple of guys down there for a couple of weeks cutting hundreds and hundreds of feet of square Styrene length, and they were sticking it all over these frames for these guys to stick all their green bush foliage in. So it wasn’t exactly the nicest job in the world, but we did have a hand in creating that maze. Yeah, definitely, so there you go. And also, the built-in perspective stuff we had to do. So it looks like… when the shot… when you’re in the middle and you look down these long runs of maze, that was actually a perspective shot, so it diminished down to a point. But in the film, you can’t tell that. It looks like it goes on for miles. So there you go.
Michael: Oh.
Caleb: Interesting.
Kat: So you’re going back to do more work on Diagon Alley, yeah?
Bryn: Yeah, we’re still working. We’re still going to open in the summer.
Kat: Right.
Bryn: It’s looking fantastic, I’ll say that. So all you guys that can’t wait to go and see it, I promise you you’re not going to be disappointed, okay. It’s going to be absolutely amazing. And, like I said, there’s going to be some nice surprises, some things you won’t realize until it opens there, so…
Kat: Right.
Bryn: You’re going to have a great time.
Kat: Good. I’m very much looking forward to it, I promise you that.
Caleb: Yeah. Definitely.
Kat: Very much.
Caleb: So cool.
Michael: He’s still working on the Harry Potter stuff, you guys.
[Bryn and Michael laugh]
Kat: I know.
Bryn: I know. Fourteen years now. [laughs]
Michael: There’s some excellent job security there, sir.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Bryn: Fourteen years and it still hasn’t ended, so there you go.
[Bryn and Michael laugh]
Kat: Excellent.
Caleb: Very true.
Kat: Well, thank you again so much, and I at least will talk to you very soon.
Bryn: No problem.
Caleb: Thank you.
Bryn: Yeah, no problem at all. I’d love to talk to you guys again. Keep being fans and they’ll keep giving me work to do, that’s all I’ll say.
[Bryn, Caleb, and Michael laugh]
Kat: Hear that, everybody? There it is, straight from the source. [laughs]
Michael: You’re set for life, man. [laughs]
Bryn: Oh, no, no. That’s great.
[Michael laughs]
Bryn: Thanks for all of your lovely work. I appreciate it.
Kat: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Bryn.
Michael: Thank you, Bryn.
Bryn: No problem. You take care, everyone. All right.
Michael: You, too.
Kat and Laura: Bye.
Bryn: Bye, now. Bye.
Kat: Well, so… I mean…
[Laura and Michael laugh]
Kat: … how do we finish up after that conversation?
Caleb: It was pretty incredible.
Kat: I don’t really know. So I think we still have a little bit of the movie left to talk about before we wrap it up.
Michael: Continue bashing Goblet of Fire! [laughs]
Kat: Yeah, I think so.
Caleb: I think the only thing we haven’t really hit…
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: … is that very last scene where… well, there’s a couple of sequences, the first of which is Harry and Dumbledore together, when Dumbledore says, “Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”
Kat: Which is the best quote ever.
Caleb: It is a very good quote.
Laura: Not in the book.
Caleb: Not in the book. That scene is not in the book, yeah. But that’s okay. We still like that quote and that scene.
Michael: Because Dumbledore says something to a similar effect to somebody else, right? To Fudge, or something, I want to say… or maybe he says it in another book?
Caleb: Yeah, maybe another book. I can’t for sure know.
Michael: Yeah, I feel that it’s said in the books by Dumbledore, not word for word, but it’s pretty close to that, so…
Caleb: I agree with Olivia Underwood in the chat. Good Gambon acting in this scene. I definitely agree.
Michael: Yeah, well, he’s calmed down a little bit. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah.
Kat: He’s my favorite at acting.
Laura: He got all the rage out. He let it out.
Michael: Yeah, he didn’t burst into the common room, grab Harry by the shoulders, and go, “Priori Incantantem! Argh!”
[Kat and Michael laugh]
Kat: That’s true, that’s true.
Caleb: And then we get the… well, so the schools say goodbye. We see Krum saying goodbye to Hermione and Fleur saying goodbye to Ron, which is a nice airing.
Kat: [imitates Fleur] “Bye bye, Ron!”
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Yes, you can still call in, for everybody that’s asking. Yes, we have a few more minutes, so go ahead and call in.
Michael: Yes, please.
Caleb: And then the very, very… so it’s super cheesy, but it also speaks to the shift in the tone of the books, as far as the series go, where Hermione says, “Everything is going to change now, isn’t it?”
Laura: “Yes, yes it is.”
Caleb: And Harry is like, “Yes!”
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Caleb: “Duh.”
Michael: I think for me, personally, that’s just another one of those moments of camp because I feel that Emma kind of overdoes it and Dan is so restrained in his reaction. [laughs] He’s like, “It’s okay. Just calm down.” She’s just so…
Caleb: Yeah.
Michael: We were all talking in the chat about Emma’s epic eyebrow acting. A lot of people cite that in the fandom and it’s certainly in action in that very last scene.
Caleb: Mhm.
Michael: And she’s just so breathless and over-the-top with the line and then Dan just totally counteracts it with, “Yes, yes, it is.”
Laura: Yeah. It’s also kind of a delayed reaction.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: It is. True.
Caller: Hello?
Laura: If you actually…
Caller: Hi! Can you hear me?
Michael I hear a caller.
Kat: There is a caller.
Michael: We hear you. What’s your name?
Caller: Yay! I got through!
Kat: You did.
Caller: My name is Allison. I’m calling from Chicago.
Michael: Oh!
Caleb: What up, Chi-Town?
Kat: Hello.
Michael: The Windy City.
Caller: Indeed. I just had a quick comment about the ending and how I didn’t really like it that much.
Caleb: Okay.
Michael: Oh, you’re on Team Don’t-Like-Goblet-of-Fire‘s-Ending. [laughs] That’s…
Kat: That’s a large team.
Michael: Yeah, it’s a pretty… if any of you listening got a chance to watch The Friends In Your Head, a live movie-viewing of the 24-hour Harry Potter marathon where they watch them all, I mentioned… they were so kind as to interview all of us for their video segments in between and I mentioned, during my interview, that the endings for pretty much all of the Harry Potter films do tack on a very corny ending. Goblet of Fire is certainly not the only one to do that and I don’t think it’s the most egregious of all of them. I think personally Chamber wins for me for silliest ending.
Kat: Ugh. “There’s no Hogwarts without you, Hagrid.”
Laura: Prisoner, Order of the Phoenix…
Kat: All the endings are pretty bad.
Laura: … Half-Blood Prince… [laughs]
Michael: Yeah. The endings are silly and it’s because the books end things in… they do finitely end with the school year being over, but they meander as far as that goes and they lead into the tone for the next one, whereas the movies have to wrap it up a little more cleanly and throw in these cheesy lines. They always have the trio walking together, saying something corny, and this is just another one of those.
Kat: Although, the Half-Blood Prince ending…
Michael: This one, I think, though, people have more problems with it.
Kat: I’ve got to say the Half-Blood Prince ending, I actually find very appropriate. Actually, I think that’s probably my favorite ending. Although, I really do like the ending of Part 1, but again, those are two years in the future. [laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, I was… yeah, Part 1 is awesome.
Michael: Well, Part 1, of course, is a unique case, too.
Kat: It is.
Michael: But Half-Blood, I think, works because even though they do have kind of corny lines, it ends on a more melancholy note. The thing with Fawkes leaving is really nicely done.
Laura: Ron is just chilling.
Michael: [laughs] Has nothing to say. But I think… and I think that’s why Goblet is so silly in its ending is that it’s a little too light-hearted considering what just happened. [laughs] We’ve just had a student die and everybody should be a little more down and out.
Kat: Mm. True.
Michael: But the students are like, “Woo! Goodbye! Goodbye to all these students that we didn’t get to know at all! Woo!”
[Everyone laughs]
Kat: So true, so true.
Michael: So… and it’s a pretty ending shot, too. It just is kind of weird to focus on the two main things that we didn’t really get to know: Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, so…
Kat: And it’s a green screen shot, nonetheless…
Michael: Yeah!
Kat: … because that hallway that they’re standing in is actually closed off at that end.
Michael: Mhm.
Kat: I know because I’ve stood there.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: And they put a green screen there and they extended it and all of that, so it kind of sucks that you end on a green screen shot but whatever, I guess. Oh well.
Laura: Well, could horses that actually fly…?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: No, no, that stuff is fine! But the fact that it’s a fake window.
Laura: Oh, okay.
Kat: You couldn’t find a real…? I don’t know. Whatever. It’s fine.
Michael: [laughs] Do we want to wrap up with our overall thoughts on Goblet?
Kat: Sure. It is my second-to-last least favorite movie.
[Michael laughs]
Laura: It’s second-to-last least favorite? Is that what you said?
Kat: Yes.
Laura: Okay. [laughs]
Kat: So it is my seventh favorite movie.
[Michael laughs]
Caleb: Yeah, I think it’s the same for me.
Kat: Yeah.
Laura: Michael?
Michael: [laughs] It switches places constantly for me with Order of the Phoenix. They both swap depending on which one I’ve watched most recently, so I guess Goblet is currently at the bottom. [laughs]
Laura: Well, I will end on a positive note…
[Michael laughs]
Laura: … nice and happy and say that I like the film. It is probably my third favorite of all of them so whatever.
Michael: Oh my goodness.
Kat: Well, yeah, but I especially like the book so much.
Michael: Not necessarily.
Laura: No! It’s just I think…
Michael: You just explained that.
Laura: Yeah, I explained it, exactly. I said it’s entertaining to me and I think it captures, to me, the spirit of the film; not necessarily a straight adaptation, but I came out of it happy. Not thrilled, but happy.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Laura: Whereas other movies, I came out being like, “Ugh.” Like Order and Half-Blood Prince.
Kat: I had a LiveJournal account when this movie came out… I’m dating myself.
Laura: Oh boy.
[Caleb and Michael laugh]
Kat: I remember… first off, for the person that asked, probably Chamber is my least favorite movie. But I remember coming home from this and I literally sat down at my computer and wrote for about two hours the angriest LiveJournal post I think I’d ever written.
[Laura and Michael laugh]
Kat: Maybe somebody out there could find it. I don’t remember my account name, though, so good luck.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: I think it had something to do with ‘N Sync because this was, what? 2000 or whenever.
Michael: It was early 2000s.
Caleb: I mean, this really could have been two months ago and your LiveJournal would still be about ‘N Sync.
Kat: It was not two months ago! [laughs]
Caleb: You would have a LiveJournal today about ‘N Sync.
Laura: Her LiveJournal is where she puts all her true thoughts.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Yes. No, no, no. It was… yeah, whatever. So… yeah.
Michael: I remember when I… this was back in the day when I didn’t go to the midnight showings. I didn’t start going to midnight showings, actually, until Half-Blood, and I was just downtown with a lot of my classmates because we were checking out our new school that had moved to downtown, and we were just strolling around and we were done with the day so I said, “Do you guys want to go see Goblet of Fire?” So we did, and I came out of it really, really happy.
Kat: Hmm.
Michael: And this was long before I’d taken film classes or anything of the sort but I do remember coming out of it very happy. And at the time, too, as shocking as it may sound, I did not like Prisoner of Azkaban when it first came out; I was very much against it. And so I enjoyed Goblet at the time and I think that does speak to what Laura is saying, that I did enjoy it very much as a popcorn film, as an entertaining, keep-you-occupied-for-two-hours kind of movie. And for what it’s worth, when Goblet of Fire, on the few occasions that it does get things right, it gets them really, really right, so… and then when it gets things wrong it gets them horribly, horribly wrong. But… [laughs]
Laura: So one of them…
Michael: I think the one good thing I can take away from it, really, that I was completely happy with, is the graveyard scene. And I think a lot of people still cite that in the fandom as probably one of the more excellent scenes in the series overall.
Laura: And it’s such an important scene to have gotten right or wrong.
Michael: Yes, yes, definitely.
Laura: Anyway, I’m pleased. I said from the get-go of us starting the show that I was excited for Goblet and it’s kind of sad. I’m like, “Wow, we’re already over with Goblet.”
Kat: That’s how I’m going to feel at the end of Order.
Laura: Now I have to stick through Order of the Phoenix. But…
Kat: I’m going to make you love this book!
Laura: I don’t hate it, I just… I like the other ones more.
Michael: I’m just going to patiently sit and wait for Half-Blood Prince. [laughs] So I’ve got a while.
Kat: You do. I think we’ll probably start Half-Blood a month ago next year. [laughs]
Michael: [laughs] I look forward to that day, a month ago next year.
[Laura laughs]
Kat: Yeah. Okay. So I guess that’s it, everybody.
Laura: Oh, yeah. If we’re already talking about Order of the Phoenix then I guess it’s a good time to talk about the fact that we’re going to be starting it and that you can be on the show just like our guest, so…
Michael: Yes, and thank you to our guest, by the way.
Laura: Yeah, he was on earlier with us. Sorry about that.
Michael: [laughs] He’s not here anymore, sadly, but hopefully he’ll get to listen to this after the fact. But yes, thank you to Bryn Court. He was a great guest. It’s like I said, I could’ve just sat here and listened to his stories all day.
Kat: Right. And everyone who called in, of course. We love talking to you guys and if we could do this more often, honestly, we would, but as you’ve seen, we’ve been going for over two hours already, so…
Laura: And we also did a whole movie watch before that. [laughs]
Kat: Right, exactly.
Michael: It’s okay.
Kat: So you guys should all come see us at the conventions and stuff that we do, because then you can sit at the booth with us and chat for hours. So do that. Come join us.
Michael: And we’ll have a lot of other ways to contact [unintelligible].
Kat: Right, we do. Of course.
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Right, of course. We have Twitter at @AlohomoraMN, facebook.com/openthedumbledore…
[Kat and Michael imitate Kat fumbling with saying “Dumbledore”]
Kat: On Tumblr, mnalohomorapodcast. Of course, the number you’ve been calling all day, 206-GO-ALBUS (206-462-5287). Find us on iTunes, subscribe, leave us a review – that is the quickest way to get the show, of course. And our wonderful Snapchat artist Michael Platco – shout-out Michael – you can follow us at mn_alohomora. And, of course, our Audioboo, which is directly on alohomora.mugglenet.com. All you need is a microphone and a pair of… no, you don’t even need headphones. You need a microphone and an Internet connection. So do it. Leave us a voicemail.
Laura: And just a reminder that we are going to be scheduling our guest host – meaning you guys – for Order of the Phoenix pretty much right about now, so if you would like to be on the show, please check out our site at the “Be on the Show” page at alohomora.mugglenet.com. And yeah, we’d absolutely love to have you.
Michael: But while you’re waiting for Order of the Phoenix to start, now is the time to get your Alohomora! merchandise. Check out our store – we’ve got T-shirts, short and long sleeved, tote bags, sweatshirts, flip-flops, water bottles, travel mugs, and more coming soon. We’ve got over 80 products to choose from in that store. I would be remiss not to mention the Mandrake Liberation Front merchandise that we have since Noah is unable to speak right now.
Kat: Right. [laughs]
Michael: [laughs] We also have ringtones that are free and available on our website, the Alohomora! main site, so check it out.
Caleb: And our last note for you guys is to make sure to check out our smartphone app, which is available seemingly worldwide. Prices will vary depending on location. It has really awesome stuff like transcripts, bloopers, alternate endings, host vlogs, and much more. And I think… I’m a little sad to see it go, but it has been very long. But it has been one of my favorite episodes we’ve probably ever done.
Kat: Yeah, it’s great.
Michael: This was fun.
Kat: It was a lot of fun. Thank you, everybody.
Caleb: Thanks again, everyone.
Laura: Thanks for sticking around this long, from all different parts and timezones.
Kat: I know, seriously.
Caleb: But that is going to do it for our live movie watch and discussion for Goblet of Fire. I’m Caleb Graves.
[Show music begins]
Laura: I’m Laura Reilly.
Michael: I’m Michael Harle.
Kat: And I’m Kat Miller. Thank you for listening to Episode 77 of Alohomora!
Michael: [as Dumbledore] Open the Dumbledore! Priori Incantatem!
[Show music continues]
Kat: [as Dumbledore] Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?
[Michael laughs]
Kat: Sorry, I had to do it.
Caleb: [as Hermione] It’s all going to change, isn’t it?
Michael: [as Hermione] It’s all going to change now, isn’t it?
Laura: Yes, it is.
[Laura and Michael laugh]
Laura: I love magic!
