Wednesday, May3: Please see an update and correction to this post.

Update (3/13): This is such a cool idea for hard-core Harry Potter fans only. The podcasters at the Leaky Cauldron (Melissa Anelli, John Noe, and Sue Upton) put together a fan DVD commentary podcast of "Goblet of Fire." (Didn't know Leaky had a podcast? Check it out.)

To the irritation of many HP fans, Warner Brothers has yet to release a DVD with directors' commentary, probably as a spoiler-prevention measure. I listened to the podcast as I watched the movie for the fourth time, and it was kind of cute. (Am I the only HP fan who didn't cry when Cedric Diggory was killed?) They're thinking about doing commentaries for movies 1-3. Hey, this is the sort of thing fans do between books. Don't laugh at us.
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My "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" DVD arrived the other day, and I've since watched the movie twice. It was a better movie the second time around, but much of my criticism from the first viewing still stands.

I suppose it's a bit ridiculous to be such a Harry Potter purist at this point. Screenwriters and directors must cut and condense the books for the screen and add exciting sequences, but here's the danger. Inevitably, subplots are lost, characters are flattened, and the canon is butchered when combining or removing scenes.

For instance, I can live with the truncated Quidditch World Cup sequence and the absence of the house elf Winky, but a few scene changes left me dismayed, and two involve Barty Crouch, Jr.'s character. (pictured)

1) The presence of Barty Crouch, Jr. (BCJ) in the Riddle House in the opening was appalling. Why was that necessary? I can only assume it was intended to help viewers who hadn't read the books understand that there was a prison escapee in cahoots with Lord Voldemort gunning for Harry. But it destroyed the tension. BCJ was in awe of Voldemort and came up with the plan to impersonate Mad-Eye Moody on his own. Like many of V's followers, BCJ hadn't seen V after his failed attempt to kill Harry.

BCJ asked Harry so many questions about what it was like to be in Voldemort's resurrected presence because he hadn't seen him since his downfall, was excited that he'd returned, and knew he'd be rewarded for his evil plot. His presence with Voldemort in the Riddle House in the beginning dampened some of that anticipation at the end, at least for me.

2) The presence of BCJ in the Pensieve scene. Not only was the man not in the courtroom audience, in the book he was a prisoner, a scared 19-year-old (not an arrogant rogue) calling out for his mother, pleading his innocence, and begging his father not to send him to Azkaban. He was guilty, of course, but that scene in the book was powerful. There was nothing arrogant or menacing about BCJ until after he transformed back into himself.

Barty Crouch, Sr., a ministry official who tried and condemned Death Eaters, was disgusted and embarrassed that his son was an accused Death Eater. And the kid's mother…well, she was distraught. Her heart cried out for her son and she ended up fainting from the grief of it all. She loved him so much that she ended up trading places with him in Azkaban, which is why he was at the Quidditch World Cup and at Hogwarts masquerading as Mad-Eye Moody.

It's all much more subtle and intricately plotted in the book, and there's the rub. A two-hour movie based on a book with over 700 pages doesn't have the luxury of being subtle, I suppose. The film makers had more than book purists in mind; there was a legion of potential moviegoers who hadn't read the books and had to understand the movie as a stand-alone film.

The presence of BCJ in those two key scenes destroyed the powerful father-son subplot, rendering the father's character shallow and his motives murkier than portrayed in the book.

3) The dragon scene was terrible. There is no way Dumbledore would sit idly by while a fire-breathing dragon chased Harry around the school. No way. Those who've read all the books know how important Harry is, and keeping him alive is of the utmost importance. Yet, in the movie version of Book Four, a dragon breaks free from its chains and chases Harry to the roof of the castle, and nobody in the stands, all witches and wizards, do nothing to help him or even see if he's OK? The sequence was exciting, but this is what I mean when I say that adding or deleting information "butchers" the canon.

4) Michael Gambon. I don't like his "interpretation" of Albus Dumbledore's character, and I use quotation marks because I heard a rumor that the actor hadn't read the books! I don't know if the late Richard Harris had, but his Dumbledore was true to the book. Harris was in a delicate condition at the time. He was suffering from Hodgkin's Disease and died after appearing in the second HP movie. Perhaps it was his illness that made him less animated, but Harris's Dumbledore matched the book's character: wise, clever in a subtle way, dignified and sure. Gambon's Dumbledore is troubled, uptight, and too animated. I'm sure I wasn't the only fan who gasped when he grabbed and pushed Harry after the champion selection scene.

I don't know how all you early Harry Potter fans dealt with it. For fans who read the books before the movies came out, it must have been quite exciting to see the characters on the big screen and at the same time, confusing and disappointing that scenes had been changed, cut, and rearranged. I didn't have this problem with the first three movies because I started reading the books only last summer (Can you believe it?). I didn't have anything to compare or complain about.

Bottom line: "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is still my favorite HP movie.

I guess I shouldn't take it all so seriously. It's only fiction, after all. We're supposed to be having fun, right?

Can you imagine what they're going to do to Order of the Phoenix?

(Warner Brothers image)