The Problem in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Isnt Hermiones Dress

Publish date: 2024-05-04

The Big Picture

The Harry Potter film franchise faces intense scrutiny from fans over differences between the books and movies, including Hermione's dress color at the Yule Ball.
The film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire fails to explain the complexities of the Triwizard Tournament, a crucial plot element.
The movie's handling of the tournament's scoring system and ranking contradicts the book, causing confusion and overlooking important character moments.

Whenever any popular book series is adapted to film, there is always a legion of book fans who will quibble over the minutiae of every detail of the adaptation and take issue with every deviation from the source material. While it is true of almost every adaptation, when it comes to the most popular book series and one of the most successful film franchises of all time, the differences, and the debate over them, can become exponentially more ferocious and complicated. So when it comes to the Harry Potter franchise, this debate has endless nuances over the various differing details between the books and the films. As such, one of those details that has been making the rounds on fan forums lately has been the issue of the Yule Ball dress Hermione (Emma Watson) wears: in the film it is pink, yet in the books it is described as being blue. Of course, the most reasonable response is that it really doesn’t matter: there are no massive plot implications for the color of the dress. And for that matter, if these sorts of changes are actually important, there is a far greater and far more prevalent problem due to the fact that Daniel Radcliffe’s eyes are blue and Harry Potter’s eyes are supposed to be green. But even that difference really has little impact on the plot — and besides, the main adaptation problem with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire isn’t the color of Harry’s eyes or Hermione’s dress. It’s the fact that nobody knows how the Triwizard Tournament works.

The Triwizard Tournament in 'Goblet of Fire' Is Never Explained

It seems to be an egregious oversight, but it is there nonetheless. Nobody in the film ever takes the time to fully explain to the champions or the audience how the Tournament actually works, or specifically how the individual events of the Tournament have any bearing on the overall selection of the Triwizard Champion. The way that the Tournament is presented contextually in the film, each Task is essentially an obstacle to be overcome: you get past the Task and you get a clue to help you; you move on to the next Task, until you come to the Final Task in the maze, and then the first one to touch the Triwizard cup wins.

In the book, however, there is a far more complex system going on, involving gamesmanship and a number of time constraints and advantages that have far more bearing on the final task than the film ever shows. For one thing, there is a panel of judges that gives scores to each champion at the end of the First and Second Tasks based on how well they completed each. At the end of the First Task, based on points, Viktor Krum (Stanislav Yanevski) is in first place, Harry in second, Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson) in third, and Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy) in fourth.

Harry’s Decisions Cost Him Points in the Second Task

It is precisely this points race that makes Harry’s decisions in the Second Task so significant, as well. When Harry reaches the hostages under the lake, he is the first champion to get there; if he were to take his hostage back to the platform in that moment, he would have taken the lead outright and been in first place going into the Final Task. Instead, though, he decided to ignore the points race and waited around the hostages until Cedric and Viktor had both come along to retrieve them, even helping Krum get Hermione free along the way. In the context of the way the Tournament actually worked, Harry willingly gave up his advantage in time to make sure that all of the hostages were rescued, finishing outside of the time boundaries and for all he knew dooming his chances of winning.

The way that the film handles the task, though, when Harry comes back to the platform with Ron (Rupert Grint) and Gabrielle, there is some vague muttering among the judges and then the enigmatic statement that due to extenuating circumstances, Harry is in second place. This is the first point in Goblet of Fire in which there is any indication that the champions are even being ranked in any way, and it adds further confusion that there is no explanation of what this ranking actually means.

The Tournament Points Make a Difference in the Final Task

Where this ranking actually becomes crucial (in the book) is with the Third Task. In the final event, the ranking of the champions determines which of them enters the maze first, and in what order. As a result, the person in first place has an advantage to finding the cup in that they have more time to figure out the maze. It is not an insurmountable lead, but it is a distinct advantage, and in the book, Harry and Cedric are tied for first place due to the points they were awarded in the First and Second Tasks.

In the film, however, it is unclear if the ranking has any bearing on the final event at all. There are four entrances to the maze, one for each champion, and there is never any indication that there is a staggered start based upon Tournament rankings. The Third Task is wildly different from the version in the book in many respects, but this element is perhaps the most subtly problematic of those differences. If all of the champions came into the Final Task on an equal footing regardless of their performance in the previous Tasks, what was the point of the previous Tasks?

What Harry Does With the Prize Is an Important Character Moment

The conclusion of the Tournament is also a significant deviation from the book. The way that the event is established in the film, the ultimate champion is competing for “eternal glory” by winning the Tournament. While that is a part of the prize in the book, there is also the small matter of a thousand galleons prize money to the winner. This particular element becomes extremely important to the book, because after he wins, Harry sees his prize money as a constant reminder of the death of Cedric Diggory and can’t stomach the thought of it. After first offering it to Diggory’s grief-stricken parents, he ends up giving it to Fred and George (James and Oliver Phelps) to start their joke shop and bring a bit more joy into a rapidly darkening wizarding world. It becomes a way of showing Harry’s generosity, friendship, and grief, and is entirely absent from the metrics of the Tournament in the film.

While it is not related to the Tournament, there is also another strange absence in the film version of the story, and that is the Quidditch World Cup. Not only is it one of the most entertaining sequences in the book, but it is also, strangely enough, the focus of most of the first act of the film, as well. The thing that makes it strange is that, while the first act of the film builds up to the Championship game, the audience never actually gets to see it on-screen. The game begins and then immediately cuts to the celebrations after the game, making it unclear who, in the film’s version, is actually supposed to have won the game.

Hermione’s dress might be pink instead of blue, and Harry’s eyes might be blue instead of green, but those are hardly the central problems with the film. There are always a number of complicated decisions that go into making an adaptation, and entire subplots of a long book inevitably have to be cut down to size in order to fit it into a standard runtime. Still, all in all, it is a massive oversight that the movie never actually takes the time to explain the central operating dynamics of the event that is supposed to be the center of the entire plot in the first place.