The Day the Magic Died

There is one scene in the Harry Potter film series that to this day lives on in infamy. You know the one.

For years, this scene from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the series' fourth installment, has been the subject of ridicule for its brazen divergence from the book and complete misrepresentation of one of its main characters.

It all comes down to one word. Book readers, say it with me.

Calmly.

Dumbledore asked calmly.

As you can see, in the film, the Hogwarts Headmaster did not ask calmly, instead rushing at Harry, grabbing him, and aggressively demanding to know whether the fourteen-year-old had somehow bamboozled the Goblet of Fire.

And fans were pissed. I mean, seriously. We've never let this one go.

Nor should we. For me, this was the moment when the books and movies were no longer the same series. The films became (and perhaps were always destined to be) a loose adaptation of the novels, rather than a strict adherence to the source material.

There had always been changes, of course. Cramming 500-page books into two-hour movies is going to mean cuts and, along with them, disgruntled fans frustrated that their favorite literary moments haven't made it into the films.

But this was a completely different character. Book Dumbledore would never.

It's like it broke the spell. In that moment, you couldn't help but be pulled from the scene and made painfully aware of its inaccuracy. It killed the magic, and I think that's why it's still such a sore subject with fans sixteen years later.

Much of this criticism has been directed at actor Michael Gambon, who played Dumbledore in the third through eighth Harry Potter films. Gambon had the difficult job of following Richard Harris, who portrayed the Hogwarts headmaster in the series' first two installments before passing away in 2002.

I will always maintain that Harris was the superior Dumbledore. I felt that he embodied the character perfectly, and his death was a massive disappointment to me. Gambon was already at a disadvantage in that his was one of the few roles in the series that had to be recast, which by default created a noticeable inconsistency between the first two and last six films.

It didn't help that the actor showed a wanton disregard for his crucial role in the franchise; Gambon never read the books and said that he saw "no point" in doing so. (To be fair, Alan Rickman pulled off his iconic role as Severus Snape without ever having read J.K. Rowling's work, but he never seemed to so egregiously stray from the essence of the character he portrayed.)

This is an issue that has always sharply divided fans of the series; everyone has an opinion about the two Dumbledores, and they generally feel pretty strongly about it. A good deal of that is simply personal preference and how we each internalized the books' description of who the character was.

And, of course, the buck didn't stop with Gambon, and he wasn't entirely to blame for the error in Goblet of Fire. The ball was dropped across the board. Where was director Mike Newell when this scene was being filmed? Why did no one speak up? This asinine divergence from the book was entirely avoidable.

This scene is one of the many reasons I will continue to hope for a television adaptation of the Harry Potter books. Not only would such a series allow for the inclusion of abandoned storylines like those of house elf Winky, the Gaunts, and Neville's parents, but it would also give showrunners the opportunity to fix things the films got wrong, including this infamous blunder.

In the meantime, for healing purposes, enjoy this image of how the line should have been delivered.