The fourth Harry Potter film marked another turning point for the franchise in terms of tone. It brought back the feared Lord Voldemort and first introduced the moments of true darkness the later films would center on while putting the central characters through their most developing moments of teenage angst.
That said, it still has a lot of problems. Whether they’re visuals that don’t line up, storyline elements that make no sense, or actions that don’t match their characters, we’ve collected ten continuity errors in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.
The Bouncing Towel
When Harry makes his way out of the lake after the second task, Hermione runs over and puts her own towel around him. A selfless move it would seem, but in the next shot, she seems to have stolen it straight back.
Maybe she got too cold? Oh but now he has changed her mind, and in the third shot, she's wrapping him back up. Confused? The director obviously forgot to keep up the continuity between these short sequences, meaning they ended up making absolutely no sense.
Harry Isn’t Good At Protecting Sirius
Due to the fact that most of the country thinks he is a deranged murderer who just escaped the most secure prison in the world, Sirius Black took off on Buckbeak and went into hiding at the end of The Prisoner Of Azkaban. To make sure no one can find out where he is or what he’s doing, Sirius is using various codenames.
Harry doesn’t seem to care and sends his letter off with ‘Sirius’ written on the front. There aren’t many people in the world called Sirius, and if a letter was found addressed to one, a few eyebrows might well be raised.
And Sirius Can’t Read His Own Letters
While we don’t see a lot of Gary Oldman’s brilliant character in this film, we do see him in a fireplace and hear his voice. Harry is reading a letter from Sirius, and it is the voice of his godfather he hears in his head while he reads. Only, the brain-version of Sirius seems to like playing tricks on Harry.
Rather than reading what the letter actually says (‘by the way, the bird bites’), we hear Sirius say ‘P.S. the bird bites’. It seems weird that they wouldn’t just give Oldman the exact words the letter says.
Neville Can Teleport?
We’ve seen this a fair few times in the world of Harry Potter, but those Great Hall tables can do some crazy things. When the students are tucking into the feast at the beginning of the film, we see Neville sitting next to Hermione.
A few moments later, he is on the other side, next to Dean. It could be argued that he got up and moved, but have you seen the length of those tables? It would’ve taken him about half an hour just to get to the other side.
And So Can McGonagall?
There are two different times in The Goblet Of Fire where McGonagall seems to perform some magic she doesn’t even know she’s capable of. Firstly, when the dragon makes the teachers fall over, she and Snape are shown getting back on their feet, before the shot switches and they’re shown doing exactly the same thing again.
Later on in the film, we see her comforting Harry with her hand on his shoulder. The next scene shows her in a completely different place, standing next to Snape. Maybe she should talk more openly about her teleportation powers?
Someone Still Thinks They’re In Third Year...
As we know, Professor Lupin decided it was best that he leave Hogwarts when people started to find out he was, y’know, a werewolf. As such, Mad-Eye Moody came in to replace him and we didn’t see Lupin in a teaching role again. For some reason, one extra is heard clearly saying, ‘I have Professor Lupin next.’
This is one of the laziest and most ill-informed lines in the whole film. Whoever told her to say that line should have definitely watched The Prisoner Of Azkaban before getting involved in the making of this film.
An Escaped Dragon Doesn’t Seem To Be Of Much Concern
When the dragon escapes from its chains, everyone is rightly scared. But there doesn’t really seem to be much of a protocol. All of the teachers just look worried, there isn’t a group of dragon trainers on hand for if it all goes wrong, and so they just sort of leave Harry to deal with it.
Impressively, he does, and the dragon falls into the lake. However, no one really saw this happen, and you’d think a bit more of an investigation would need to go into the whole event. Perhaps someone should have at least asked Harry what happened to the dragon?
No One Knows Where To Look
Seeing as giant flying horses that pull magical carriages through the sky don’t exist in real life, the Beauxbatons carriage had to be edited into the sky for its entrance scene. Due to this, nobody in the crowd seems to know where they should be looking.
There are a few looking skyward (probably as they were told to), but a fair few seem preoccupied with the floor (where there are precisely zero magical horses) or even the camera lens itself.
A Dead Man Can’t ‘Willingly’ Do Anything
When Peter Pettigrew is brewing the potion that can bring Voldemort back to life, he takes a bone from Tom Riddle’s dad and says, ‘bone of the father, unwillingly given.’
This, like in the book and the foreign dubs of the film, should be ‘unknowing given’. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that they changed the line, because a dead person can’t ‘willingly’ do anything at all. The idea of his doing it 'unknowingly' makes much more sense and removes the accidental repetitiveness of the next ‘willingly sacrificed’ line.
Barty Crouch Must Be Taking Some Seriously Strong Potion
In The Chamber Of Secrets and The Deathly Hallows Part 1, we see Harry, Ron and Hermione under the influence of Polyjuice potion. Similarly, also in The Deathly Hallows Part 1, we see a variety of characters transform into Harry using the potion. All of them keep their own voices.
Barty Crouch is able to transform into Mad-Eye Moody both in body and voice. Is this some sort of special, advanced Polyjuice that isn’t explained? It’s probably due to the fact that hearing David Tennant’s voice come out of Brendon Gleeson’s mouth would give away the major twist at the end of the film.