Robert Pattinson became Hogwarts’ martyred golden boy in his first major movie role
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Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)
In his first credited big-screen gig, Robert Pattinson played the small but pivotal role of Cedric Diggory in the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. The casting was a masterstroke. Although most of the Hogwarts students were played by unknowns (unlike their teachers), Cedric still had to be memorable enough for his (spoiler alert) inevitable death to feel like a tragic game-changer. His Cedric is noble, luminous, and, most importantly, unforgettable, so when he dies at the hands of a resurrected Voldemort at the end of the film, we understand the grave seriousness of this evil force being unleashed back on the wizarding world.
Goblet Of Fire is among the most eventful of the Harry Potter movies, containing as it does the Quidditch World Cup, the Yule Ball, and all three strenuous tasks of the Triwizard Tournament. (We ranked the film at the top of our Run The Series rundown.) Cedric shows up in the first few minutes of the movie to accompany Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the Weasleys to the Quidditch World Cup, immediately drawing the attention of Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ginny (Bonnie Wright). He’s as at home there as he is strolling around Hogwarts in his Hufflepuff robes with an almost Elvis-esque swagger.
Though friendly, Cedric is introduced as a rival for Harry; the two compete not just in the Triwizard Tournament but also for the affections of classmate Cho Chang (Katie Leung), who Cedric escorts to the Yule Ball when Harry takes too long to ask her. Even the famous Boy Who Lived pales compared to the impossibly confident Cedric, the golden heart of Hogwarts—a role that puts Pattinson’s brand of magnetic charm to perfect use. He’s not on screen that much, though, at least until the film’s climax: the third challenge, a terrifying maze inspired by Stephen King’s The Shining. Pattinson brings a manic energy to the scene that anticipates his urgent work in later movies.
And then Cedric and Harry run straight into Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Valiant to the very end, Cedric lifts his wand in the face of certain defeat; Voldemort orders his execution with the cruelest of dismissals: “Kill the spare.” It’s a shocking death at that point in the Harry Potter saga: While we know Harry’s parents were killed by Voldemort, we didn’t get to know them as characters, and we’ve seen Harry, Ron, and Hermione get into impossible scrapes in the previous three movies, always to emerge unscathed. Cedric’s death raised the stakes of the series, helping prepare audiences for the many more brave, innocent lives that would be lost in future installments. And Harry’s hysterical refusal to leave his body provides one of the franchise’s most downbeat endings.
If Cedric had been played by an actor with anything less than Pattinson’s alchemic combo of looks and charisma, the loss wouldn’t have hit as hard. In his big-screen debut (the actor’s role in 2004’s Vanity Fair had been left on the cutting room floor), Pattinson stood at the center of a franchise’s turning point, helping sell the gravity of one of its most unforgettable moments. Just a few years later, he’d be headlining his own blockbuster YA adaptation.
Availability: Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire is currently streaming on HBO Max, FUBO, and Sling. It can also be rented or purchased digitally from Amazon, iTunes, Microsoft, Redbox, AMC, DirectTV, and VUDU.
77 Comments
“GODDAMNIT HARRY, DID YOU PUT YOUR MOTHERFUCKING NAME IN THE SON OF A BITCH GOBLET OF FIRE???!!!” Dumbledore asked calmly.
Probably my hottest Harry Potter take is that this was actually one of Gambon’s best scenes as Dumbledore, and a solid argument for why he was way, way better in the role than Richard Harris. Harris is the one who, despite being a legendary hellraiser in real life, took a character who needs to be outwardly a little dangerous and disreputable and turned him into a placid, grandfatherly snooze.(It’s especially galling that Harris played the character this way in The Chamber of Secrets, the climax of which turns on the fact that Harry has the courage to place his trust in Dumbledore—but in the movie it doesn’t take any courage to do that, because he’s so boringly straitlaced that his trustworthiness is never remotely up for debate.)
When I read the books I always imagined Dumbledore like Merlin from the old Sword in the Stone cartoon. Neither of the actors who portrayed him ever seemed to capture his whimsy or playfulness to me.
Yeah, exactly! He’s an authority figure, but he’s a playful authority figure who kind of winks at anything the kids do that’s not actually dangerous, is always believing them when other adults don’t, and is generally really ethical – this is the guy who ripped Harry’s abusive relatives a new one over their disgusting treatment of him. I remember seeing that scene in the theater, and my wife and I just looked at each other, aghast, both thinking that Dumbledore would never treat Harry like that and that someone, either director or actor, was really, really missing something. (Much later I would read that the actor apparently refuses to read any books with the characters he’s portraying in them [??!?], and, uh, it shows.) Turning him into a “grandfatherly snooze” is a mistake, but less so than turning him into an unhinged, domineering prick.
Don’t trust anything Michael Gambon says about himself, he is famous for lying in all interviews. He delights in fucking with people.
I’m probably going to be torn apart for this, but I always thought the perfect Dumbledore would have been Weird Al Yankovic in old age makeup. That’s the vibe I always got from Dumbledore in the books. I could readily see Albus Dumbledore leaping atop one of the tables in the Dining Hall and ripping a magnificent accordion solo.
This is an intriguing far out idea, and now that it has been presented to me I wish that it would have happened.
I can dig it.
In defense of Harris, he was clearly in decline. A younger, more energetic Harris would have been fine.
I always thought Peter O’Toole would have been a better option. And he’d have been around until the end of the series.
I can’t possibly agree any more. I love Gambon as Dumbledore, and everyone’s obsession with this scene “being too different from the book!!” always seemed ridiculous. I thought he was great, as you said, a little dangerous and disreputable. Richard Harris was somnambulant.
Grandfatherly snooze though he may be (ouch, btw), I still think Harris felt wiser, and there seemed to be a twinkle in his eye that is SO Dumbledore to me, that I think Gambon lacked.
I’d agree with that. Both had that knowing look in their eyes but Harris seemed more bemused by the various goings on.
I don’t know how Harris would have evolved in the role, but the two films he was in were basically kids’ movies (much like the books). I honestly can’t keep events of the middle books straight anymore but Goblet definitely seemed like when things got much darker.
Harris was just too old to be cast. Those books were already too damn hot with the full seven volumes inevitable at the time. They never should have cast him . At a younger age, he’d have been great.All that said, yes, Gambon was awesome in the roll and I really wish he had been there for films one and two.
I agree with your hot take. I loved Gambon’s Dumbledore and I had read all the books before the movies came out. Gambon really nailed the ambiguousness of crazy old man and most powerful wizard in the world. Plus its a really good set up for Half Blood Prince & Deathly Hallows where we find out that Dumbledore has been wrong about things and is really an imperfect person in the end. In the books Dumbledore is definitely more one note in that he seems omnipresent during major plot points and says everything with a wink. Gambon gave him more depth but still let him chew the scenery a bit.
Maybe it’s because I never really cared about the books (I think I got about halfway through this one before bailing out and don’t really remember anything about it), but I never got why people seem so genuinely furious with that change.I mean, maybe the fact that he’s calm is important to the book, but it works in the movie.
It works a bit, because it could mean that Dumbledore for the first time senses things getting fully out of hand and letting his normal control slip a bit. Not sure it was the correct move, but I could understand it.
The movies (and Goblet especially) are far too casual about the professors of Hogwarts physically abusing their students.Yelling at Harry is fine. Grabbing him is not.There was room for the movies to comment on how dangerous Wizarding school is, and even on how much emotional abuse seems to be permissable (Snape, but also Moody in this one). Making abuse into comedy simply didn’t work, especially not in a movie where a kid gets brutally and abruptly murdered.
Idk. I read the books as a kid (or at least started them when I was a kid, the last one came out when I was in college). I’ve seen the movies, but only on TV and usually as background. I’ve never really sat down and WATCHED them, so I don’t have much of an opinion of them.
This comes after Prisoner of Azkaban – aka “The Good One™” – where they omit almost all details about the Marauder’s Map and why Harry becomes convinced that his father saves the day at the end. It works to turn Harry into an idiot who barks “MY DEAD DAD JUST SAVED MY LIFE” out of nowhere in the third act, just so he can address a plot point that no longer exists in the story they told up to this point.The movies were always playing fast and loose with the changes; I’m not going to begrudge Gambon a character choice when the scripts were already dodgy enough.
Tbh, I don’t really care about the movies. I read the books as a kid because they started when I was a kid. I think the last one came out when I was 19? I read it because I wanted to finish the series, but by the time the movies were out, I was older and had no real interest. I’ve since seen them, and am able to enjoy them on a certain level, but as far as details are concerned, I don’t care.I read a lot and almost always prefer the book to the movie (the exception is Fight Club, imo), but that probably has more to do with the difference in mediums than the actual content of the respective works. Books provide different perspectives because they are mostly mental portrayals, whereas movies are mostly audio/visual (hey we’re on the AV club!).So given all of that, if an actor wants to take a different perspective with a character: go for it. I just think the meme is funny. Like I said, I didn’t pay much attention to the movies, so only know that this scene is different from the book due to the meme. It’s funny!
And Harry’s hysterical refusal to leave his body provides one of the franchise’s most downbeat endings.
Still, it was funny after he’d dragged the body around for a while and it started farting.
Leading to a direct tie in with the movie Swiss Army Man. This is all making sense now.
*nevermind*
This movie was a such a step down after the series best Prisoner of Azkaban. The third movie smartly streamlined the book, cut a bunch and told a pretty good mystery story with a fun time travel ending. This one started the series issue with trying to cram every single book detail in every movie making them all fell over long and bloated. Part of that was Rowling’s books also getting longer and less focused until the last book ending that turned into a McGuffin hunt involving items never mentioned in any of the other books. The first movie was magical fun and the world building was so cool. The third one is a 100% enjoyable film. The rest of the movies I rarely have had a want to revist. I mean I am sure I will at some point but I never understood why they are early 00’s cultural milestone. Honestly that may be because I was out of the demographic for the books before the first one was published so it wasn’t part of my childhood.
To be fair, this is also where the books in the series ballooned in length. Prisoner of Azkaban was longer than both Sorceror’s (Philosopher’s) Stone and Chamber of Secrets, but Goblet of Fire pretty much doubled the length. From here on out, the average length is over 750 pages I think. It can be difficult to incorporate all those details in a movie. As to your point that they shouldn’t try to include all those details, well, fair enough.
While I agree with that, I think I could have handled all the extra moments if I liked the main cast in this one. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were basically just mad at each other the entire movie. It’s a wonder they were even friends after this, they had no good interactions all movie. Talk about angst.
I think that was Rowling trying to portray them as angsty adolescents, as appropriate for their ages at the time.
They stripped Harry of all his agency in Goblet, and they did that by making Moody too-obviously villainous instead of a co-conspirator with Harry, training him to fight the Dark Arts by dubious methods. Harry does nothing in the movie except at the end.It’s a problem in the books, but stripping out all the bits concealing it makes Harry look like a git.
I loved Azkaban the book, but I wasn’t as keen on how Curon adapted it. I’m in the minority on that opinion, I know, but Mike Newell’s storytelling economy really worked for me in GoF. There is a LOT to cover, but the tournament helps to structure it all, plus he delivers the most ‘high school’ feeling of the movies, imo. I wish he stayed on instead of David Yates, who seemed to just cut everything and was more interested in the special effects (as his run on Fantastic Beasts has only further confirmed)
I thought Cuaron did a great job with the book’s plot, trimming what needed to be trimmed and emphasizing what was important and the Prisoner of Azkaban was an enjoyable experience on the whole. On the other hand, I hated the way that Cuaron stripped out the magical aspects from the aesthetic of the world and especially that the core three basically started dressing more or less like your average 21st century adolescent. That effectively removed the element that the wizarding world was far removed from our normal world in my mind.
My biggest gripe with Curon’s adaptation was cutting the bit where Sirius is threatening Ron, where we’re meant to think he’s mistaken him for Harry (but instead he’s looking for Scabbers). The Peter Pettirgrew reveal later on seems to come out of nowhere and almost feels tacked on.
David Yates, who seemed to just cut everything and was more interested in the special effects
More interested in SFX, but not enough to keep the stuff in the Department of Mysteries where he could have gone wild with the SFX (Baby-head man, flying brains, etc.)
at least they cut out the subplot with hermione trying to end slavery and everyone mocking her naive student activism, because Rowling created a world where slavery is morally okay to the point our hero inherits a slave and doesn’t bother setting him free.
at least they cut out the subplot with hermione trying to end slavery and everyone mocking her naive student activism, because Rowling created a world where slavery is morally okay to the point our hero inherits a slave and doesn’t bother setting him free.
I’ve always thought they should have started splitting the films with this one.
Goblet of Fire is easily the best of the movies and you have no taste
Sure man, whatever you say. I don’t general judge peoples taste on how they rank silly kids movies about wizards.But also you are wrong
I see a structural difference between 1-3 and 5-7. The former are more distinct episodes while the latter, despite still playing as succeeding years, are more serially connected. 4 is like a cops show cold open for that series, even ending with a murder.
Yeah good thought on it1,2 and 3 can be watched as stand alone a lot easier. If you start watching 4, you kinda feel compelled to go through them all. They are not terrible films just not something I seek out muchI love the world and I love the theme parks built around it though. I get the “magic” of it all.
You know there’s an editorial wordcount to meet when the article is four paragraphs of summary and then one sentence of “man stands around looking pretty for about thirty seconds across two hours before getting turned into a meatpuppet” framed as praise for brilliant acting.Now I’m just curious which Pattinson movie was passed over for this round of Watch This in favor of this puff piece.
I enjoy the books and movies even though I think the world building is incredibly lazy. However, it’s a stone cold fact that if Harry had left Cedric alone in the maze to be transported back to his house he would have lived.
Cedric would have reached the goblet first. It was his own sense of fairness that led to his death.
I’m interested in why you think the world building is lazy. While I have my own issues with the Harry Potter series, it’s certainly a massive success, and I’ve always thought the world building was key to that success. Just look at all the full-grown adults who still believe they belong to one Howarts house or another and that they have a particular patronus. Granted, Rowling was building off a long tradition of British boarding-school stories, but she came up with something hugely compelling to millions of people.
Thanks goodness the scene where Cedric tells Hermione she may only use the lavatory corresponding to her sex as stated on her birth certificate was cut.
Cedric telling Harry that he told his housemates not to paste anti-Potter flyers across Hogwarts was disingenuous bullshit. He was a priveleged pretty boy whose primary talent was charming people into thinking he was a fierce friend.
I quite like how he toes the line between ‘public schoolboy you love to hate’ and ‘genuinely nice dude’, especially in this movie.
I agree – there were a number of popular pretty boy athletes at my HS who some people might have resented, but were actually decent guys.
The asshole popular kid is a cliche that is hard to shake, and definitely isn’t uncommon, especially paired with the english public schoolboy trope they were playing with, but its also true that some people are popular in part cause they’re really nice and caring.
Ugh, Michael Gambon. Just not how I envisioned the character. I thought Harris did an excellent job, and Gambon went in a completely different direction—which wouldn’t necessarily have been bad, except that the direction he went was just…wrong.
I agree for movies 4 & 5, but I think his movie 6 Dumbledore was spot on.
This movie felt the most British of the HPs, and thusly, my favorite. I’ve never seen the Twilights so Pattinson has always been Cedric Diggory to me. His role is quite small in the film, but he does make an impression. He’s killed so casually, and yet if I’m not mistaken, he is the series’ first major murder. The story wasn’t playing around anymore, and Voldemort’s debut was really well done.
Yeah, it feels very much like a BBC gritty series. It’s tonally very different from the book (the book has 10 times the events and still does not deviate too much from the first ones) but I grew to love it because it feels less than a special fantastic school and more like idk any high school British series.
Except for McGonagall’s pronunciation of the word ‘dance’ (in the ballroom class). That word, and that word alone, is suddenly done with an American accent. It shook me the first time and bothers me every time again, especially as it comes from the great Dame Maggie Smith.
lol I’ll have to see that again
I’d advise against it. It’s infuriating.
I wonder if that was looped for the American release?
That’s the thing, it wasn’t (some HP has both an American and an actual English version, I do know that) but I’m in Europe and have seen several releases of this movie in different European countries, both theatrical and on dvd (still a thing back then). It’s in all versions and it’s… honestly I just can’t deal with it.
His father’s reaction brought plenty of weight to that scene too.
Yup. Diggory’s death is the first major fatality in the series. And it’s done so well that it really feels like the turning point of the series.The central stories stop being their own little tales within the universe and now clearly focus around Voldemort, his return, and stopping him.It’s also especially brutal that it’s a kid. They take someone we literally had just met in that book and made his death central to the universe. It’s impressive.
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Amos Diggory screaming over the corpse of his son is pretty much the exact moment the movies went from “mostly lighthearted with a twinge of darkness” to “oh shit, I think things are serious now” and it never looked back.
The cheery music from the band that dies almost as quickly as it starts is what gets me. Like, everyone is expecting this celebration and it takes a moment to adjust to the horror in front of them.
This x1000. This scene never fails to shock me in what an emotional gut punch they managed to deliver in what had been, up to that point, a kids’ series. I imagine if watching this for the first time they’d be traumatized.
I’d mark it down as the second most heartbreaking moment in the entire series (a certain free elf obviously being number one). That dude nails the wail of anguish.
I remember always saying “you know the one where the boy died, the nice kid in the contest with Harry!” Then he is in twilight and I couldn’t stand him and now he is fucking BATMAN and he is awesome again (granted he has been great for a long time). Good for the “boy who died in the contest”.
The Boy Who Died runs a nice parallel to The Boy Who Lived.
…Cedric still had to be memorable enough for his (spoiler alert) inevitable death to feel like a tragic game-changer. Too late!Robert Pattinson became Hogwarts’ martyred golden boy in his first major movie role
The cruelest part of Diggory’s fate is that both in the movie and the book he’s around and generally a key player and then “Kill the spare…” and he’s dead.There’s not even a passing thought from either of his murderers, they literally didn’t even know who he was….oh, and it’s literally all Harry’s fault. He doesn’t do the noble “No, let’s both win!” thing and Diggory lives. That’s brutal.
I was lucky enough to see the amazing Off Broadway play Puffs (it was amazing and thankfully there’s an official recording for those who don’t live here), which is about a trio of Hufflepuffs going through school at the same time as Harry, and they do Cedric SO WELL. This terrific blend of charisma with the dorkiness associated with the house.They also do a super neat casting trick where Cedric and Voldemort are played by the same person, because obviously they never corporeally appear at the same time and it leans on Tom Riddle being a mirror of Cedric; both older handsome dark-haired hotshot counterparts to our Gryffindor hero, one representing heroism and the other representing villainy.
At a screening of Half-blood Prince, when Harry’s at the train station cafe in the very beginning and that girl starts flirting with him, some girl sitting next to me blurted out, “Who’s this bitch?!” In writing it sounds harsh, but her tone was that of a jealous partner, though it was probably also a reaction to the change from the book. The entire theater cracked up for like fifteen seconds. Damn, I really miss going to the movies.
love this and reminds me of the last movie premiere when Hot Neville suddenly appears and the entire audience gasped together and then burst out laughing
Yes! My theater also audibly appreciated Neville’s transformation.
Goblet was my favorite of the books and it’s my favorite of the movies for the reasons you cite. It’s effectively the Empire Strikes Back of the series, and for all the failings of the adaptation (I’m not nearly hardcore enough of a reader to list them all), the movie absolutely nails it where it counts (Cedric’s death + his father’s/the crowd’s reaction, Harry’s confrontation with Voldemort, the Yule Ball, etc.).
Going to attempt to pull you out of the greys here.Goblet of Fire would 100% be the movie that I showed someone to get them into Harry Potter for all the reasons you state. It’s got this relatable and accessible story – the Tri-Wizard Tournament – in addition to real stakes and emotion. Those failings of an adaptation are what make it such a crackler of a film. It drops all the extra weight and just kinda says “Go have fun.”
Yeah, the reactions to this film are really interesting in how most seem to consider it a step down from Azkaban both as an adaptation and a film in and of itself – the former because the book is generally considered the best, the latter because Cuaron was the first real movie artist (sorry Chris Columbus) they hired for the series.But I have to say I’ve never found Azkaban all that compelling as a film. Visually and structurally it’s certainly a step up from the Columbus style but narratively, to me, it’s still too slavishly devoted to the book and doesn’t really come into its own as a movie experience. I think the need to streamline the story benefits Goblet enormously because it forces them, for perhaps the first time in the series, to actually adapt the material rather than just visualize it and cut stuff out. It gives the movie a priority of focus that feels new for the series and it pays off smashingly.