I missed the Harry Potter presentation at Comic Con – hell, I missed almost every presentation at Comic Con. That’s because I work hard for my money. But I heard good things about the footage that was shown, and I have high hopes for the film. While the director doesn’t set my pants on fire, Goblet of Fire may just be the best Potter book to date*, and certainly the most filmic, chock full of enormous and exciting set pieces.
One of the early concerns about the film was that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Mad Eye Moody, played by Brendan Gleeson, didn’t look like he did in the book. Now, that’s the sort of complaint that fanboys always make with adaptations, but in this case it seems a real sticking point. Early images showed a very nice looking Gleeson, but the character’s name alone should give you some idea of what he’s supposed to look like.
Fear not, Potterphiles. An image of Mad Eye has hit the web, and it looks an awful lot like what I imagined it would. The image below comes from Aint It Cool News, who got it as part of a very long chain of ownership that’s muddied at best.
* This is probably as good a place as any to drop my quickie review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: I thought it was good, but that Rowling wastes too much of the book’s page count on bullshit at Hogwarts. All of the adult characters who became important in the last book essentially disappeared this time. Plus, there’s a war going on – I understand that life continues in wartime, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed that after the cataclysmic events of the last book much of life went back to normal.
Well, except for the parts that didn’t. Has anyone seen any complaints about the very obvious parallels with the War on Terror? You have to give Rowling credit for putting this stuff in a kid’s book. But not so much credit that she doesn’t get to work on Book 7 ASAP!