Here's a great little op ed piece from USA Today about Goblet of Fire. Thanks to our Hogwarts mate Sylvia for passing this on!
Distributors of the latest Harry Potter movie had worried about its PG-13 rating - up from a PG because of more mature themes and scary scenes as Harry and friends hit puberty. Could Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire keep the under-12 crowd hooked while not losing the MTV generation (and many adults)?
The Potter magic proved those fears wrong. The movie opened with a commercial Big Bang in the USA over the weekend as it took in an estimated $101.4 million, the fourth-largest opening ever. But its potentially longer-lasting wizardry lies in something else: making teenagers more human.
These days, teens all too often get a bad rap, stereotyped as a subhuman species prone to violence and irrationality and obsessed with sex and drugs. Just watch TV series like The O.C., or movies like Thirteen. Listen to their rap music, read about their maniacal video games like Grand Theft Auto, or scan headlines about homicidal teens being tried as adults.
Goblet of Fire instead goes inside the universal challenges of growing up. Into the awkwardness of discovering the opposite sex, as Harry and company have to find dates for the Yule Ball at Hogwarts School. Into the humiliations: rejection, jealousies, rivalries. It navigates what experts say are very real stages of human development.
The three earlier movies (and the books) appealed to younger audiences as Harry discovered his power. His teenage challenges are more complex: finding ways to deal with fear, for example. And the importance of choices - as Harry defends himself against the Dark Arts, he has to resist his own potential to use them. They're challenges teens face, and too many adults have forgotten.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is scary: plenty of blood and evil in its fantastical world. But today's hard-edged teen stereotypes may be more dangerously so. So much the better if Harry can help defeat them, along with his nemesis Lord Voldemort.
(SOURCE: USA TODAY)
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