Thursday, September 15, 2005
Harry Potter trailers now up
There are two trailers for the upcoming fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, now available for those interested.
This one is the teaser trailer available at the official Harry Potter movie site. It clocks in at about eighty seconds and opens with a very nice montage of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, showing their growth over the course of the movies. For anyone who's watched kids grow up with thoroughly mixed emotions, it's quite evocative, for something found in a mega-blockbuster preview. Unfortunately, the rest of the teaser is just a series of disjointed images of mayhem that don't quite measure up to the opening seconds.
The longer, and superior, full trailer is currently only available here at Moviefone. It's about two minutes long and features a great deal more of the story and a couple of amusing character moments.
It's this second trailer that really whets my appetite for the movie.
And if you'd told me four years ago, when I was leaving the theater after watching the first movie, that I'd be using the phrase "whets my appetite" in connection to a trailer for another Harry Potter movie, I'd've referred you for counseling for your drug problem. The first two movies, directed by Chris Columbus, presented the Potterverse as a comparatively clean, well-lit place that would have been right at home as an attraction at a Disney theme park: slick, overproduced, and utterly uncompelling. It wasn't until Alfonso Cuaron showed up for Prisoner of Azkaban, hands-down the best movie of the series so far, that Hogwarts seemed like a thousand year-old wizarding school rather than a set, or that the people who inhabited its dank corridors might be human beings rather than plot devices (not that even Prisoner was a marvel of characterization, but it was serviceable enough).
Goblet of Fire looks set to continue the grittier feel established by Prisoner. Part of this, no doubt, is the maturing of its principal actors, who not only have honed their craft over the course of the movies, but who have had the opportunity to learn their characters to a depth of understanding usually available only to actors portraying regulars on television. Part of it is the production design, which by first impressions does not appear to have slipped back to the superficial slickness of the first two installments, though it's hard to tell from even the two-minute trailer.
But the major impulse for the films' darker tone is the turn its source material took; Goblet of Fire is the first book in which a major character (or at least a major minor character) dies on-stage, and is also the first in which the series' antagonist, Voldemort, appears as anything but an incorporeal specter -- and promptly murders a helpless senior citizen.
The deaths set up the book's most poignant scene, as Harry attempts to escape Voldemort's clutches; I'll say no more so as not to spoil it. I'm hoping the movie doesn't botch it; that it gets it at least as right as Cuaron and company got the "Expecto Patronam" scene from the climax of Prisoner of Azkaban.
If nothing else, Goblet should be an interesting diversion while we wait for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
(I'm aware that Harry Potter fanhood carries an assortment of baggage with it in evangelical circles. I find myself in general agreement with Chuck Colson; and if I had children of my own, they wouldn't read the books without some very detailed discussions of the behavior of the characters and the true nature of magic, as well as the true Source of all power.)
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This one is the teaser trailer available at the official Harry Potter movie site. It clocks in at about eighty seconds and opens with a very nice montage of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, showing their growth over the course of the movies. For anyone who's watched kids grow up with thoroughly mixed emotions, it's quite evocative, for something found in a mega-blockbuster preview. Unfortunately, the rest of the teaser is just a series of disjointed images of mayhem that don't quite measure up to the opening seconds.
The longer, and superior, full trailer is currently only available here at Moviefone. It's about two minutes long and features a great deal more of the story and a couple of amusing character moments.
It's this second trailer that really whets my appetite for the movie.
And if you'd told me four years ago, when I was leaving the theater after watching the first movie, that I'd be using the phrase "whets my appetite" in connection to a trailer for another Harry Potter movie, I'd've referred you for counseling for your drug problem. The first two movies, directed by Chris Columbus, presented the Potterverse as a comparatively clean, well-lit place that would have been right at home as an attraction at a Disney theme park: slick, overproduced, and utterly uncompelling. It wasn't until Alfonso Cuaron showed up for Prisoner of Azkaban, hands-down the best movie of the series so far, that Hogwarts seemed like a thousand year-old wizarding school rather than a set, or that the people who inhabited its dank corridors might be human beings rather than plot devices (not that even Prisoner was a marvel of characterization, but it was serviceable enough).
Goblet of Fire looks set to continue the grittier feel established by Prisoner. Part of this, no doubt, is the maturing of its principal actors, who not only have honed their craft over the course of the movies, but who have had the opportunity to learn their characters to a depth of understanding usually available only to actors portraying regulars on television. Part of it is the production design, which by first impressions does not appear to have slipped back to the superficial slickness of the first two installments, though it's hard to tell from even the two-minute trailer.
But the major impulse for the films' darker tone is the turn its source material took; Goblet of Fire is the first book in which a major character (or at least a major minor character) dies on-stage, and is also the first in which the series' antagonist, Voldemort, appears as anything but an incorporeal specter -- and promptly murders a helpless senior citizen.
The deaths set up the book's most poignant scene, as Harry attempts to escape Voldemort's clutches; I'll say no more so as not to spoil it. I'm hoping the movie doesn't botch it; that it gets it at least as right as Cuaron and company got the "Expecto Patronam" scene from the climax of Prisoner of Azkaban.
If nothing else, Goblet should be an interesting diversion while we wait for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
(I'm aware that Harry Potter fanhood carries an assortment of baggage with it in evangelical circles. I find myself in general agreement with Chuck Colson; and if I had children of my own, they wouldn't read the books without some very detailed discussions of the behavior of the characters and the true nature of magic, as well as the true Source of all power.)
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