Ahoy, squirts. Quint here and let me tell you... I'm dragging. It's nearly 2am PST and I have to be up at 8am in order to get to the SUPERMAN RETURNS panel in enough time to ensure a seat. I'm running on fumes, spending 12-14 hours at the Con doing interviews and watching all this cool shit. I know, poor old me. Truth be told, I live for this stuff. But that still doesn't make my body happy when I force it awake after a week of getting between 3-6 hours of sleep a night.
Anyway, I'm going to try to hit you with the Comic-Con exclusive trailer for HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE!
I know many of you out there are either eagerly awaiting your copy of the newest HARRY POTTER book or are taking a break from reading it right now (I myself have it preordered on Amazon, so it'll be awaiting me when I return home), so in order to take advantage of the Harry Potter hysteria, let's go into the HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE trailer that was shown.
Director Mike Newell taped a video introduction telling us that this is a special trailer cut just for us, that won't be shown outside of Comic-Con. After seeing the trailer, I wish that wasn't true. As cool as it'd be to say I've seen this footage that no one else has, I have to say this is hands down the best trailer for any of the HARRY POTTER films thus far.
I was worried at the start of this production. Newell runs hot and cold for me. I love DONNIE BRASCO, but didn't care much for FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. I loved Cuaron's take on the world of HARRY POTTER and when Newell came on board a lot of the visual effects team that Cuaron had brought on left with the visual effects artists from the first two films coming back. I loved the casting of Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody and everything else seemed to be good... but I was just worried that the atmosphere would be toned down and the bar for effects lowered back to where they were with the first two films.
This trailer made me throw all of that out of the window. It perfectly sets up the Tri-Wizard Tournament, the competing schools, the chosen players and the three different tasks without giving too much away. It's a brilliant introduction to the story for those who haven't read the book.
I'm going to go into specifics here, so if you want to be kept 100% pure, then I wouldn't read too much further.
We see all the schools arriving... with the standout being Durmstrung's aquatic appearance. We see the ship quickly come up from under the water of the pond on the Hogwarts ground. The effects here are easily the best of the series thus far (at least in this one shot). The water dripping off and the pond violently crashing against the hull as it rises up is beautiful.
We see Dumbledore explain the Tri-Wizard Tournament as well as pull the names for the players of the tasks, the reaction of Harry Potter's name being in there (calling him a cheat)... In the video intro Newell says that Harry'll face many dangerous obstacles in the film, from horntails to Lord Voldemort himself... and worse and most life-threatening of all... a new-found interest in girls.
True to his word, we were given Harry clumsily asking Cho Chang to the Yuletide ball, as well as a longer shot of Hermione appearing in her dress and walking down the steps. We also get Ron accusing her fraternizing with the enemy (by going to the dance with Viktor Krum, the chosen player from another school).
Mad-Eye Moody. We posted that weird picture from what looked to be a sticker of Moody that got me worried... He looked regal and had an eye-patch instead of his crazy eye.
Moody owned in the trailer. Gleeson isn't quite as craggly and messed up as I would have liked, but they nailed the eye and he nails his delivery. The eyepatch isn't really there. Instead imagine the straps to an eyepatch, except instead of a patch there's a crazy eye rolling around in its socket. The visual effect was fantastic and just as creepy and awesome as I wanted it to be.
The bit we see of him in the trailer has him explaining the Avada Kedavra curse to the Defense Against Dark Arts classroom, saying that only one person in history has survived this curse and that person is sitting in this classroom. Of course all eyes (including Moody's crazy one, to be sure) turn to Harry Potter.
We get glimpses of what I'd imagine is the Deatheaters ruckus caused on the grounds of the Quidditch World Cup. You see tents flapping and an eerie green light in the distance. We also get the barest glimpse of Voldemort, although it was so quick and so brightly white against black that I couldn't make out any specific feature. There was a long glimpse of Wormtail churning the cauldron calling upon Voldemort. This looked really nice.
My favorite bit in the whole trailer, though, was the Sirius Black's appearance. Yes, his face appears in the fireplace like in the book and my god... they way they chose to do it is so damn cool. It's not like you're expecting... his face isn't in the flames... it's actually made out of the burning embers and coals, a glowing red and sooty black outline of his face. Spectacular.
I'm so jonesing to see this movie right now and I imagine with me soon to delve back into the world of Harry Potter with HALF-BLOOD PRINCE that anticipation is only going to increase. Great job on the trailer, guys!
Ok, I have to get going. If I'm lucky I might get 5 hours before my day starts... Farewell and adieu!
-Quint
