Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire

The look of the tiny tot, the cutest among the three friends in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and the Chamber of Secrets, changed (along with the official Gryffindor robes) in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — going from cute to hip. A year later, Daniel Radcliffe was the quintessential teenager with unkempt, shaggy hair and dishevelled clothes in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. By the time the next film instalment came around, Radcliffe had grown from a gangly teenager to a well-built young man with short hair — a look that he maintained for the next two films.

A bushy-haired, cute-as-a-button Emma Watson won over Harry Potter fans worldwide with the first two films — acting be damned! Then within a span of two years, Watson grew up with a vengeance. She looked great as a spunky teenager in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and beautiful in the Yule Ball gown in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We saw a rebellious side to her in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and a soft one in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And when she donned the red gown for Bill Weasley’s wedding, Watson was simply wow!

Ten years down the line, Rupert Grint still has the same expression he did when we first saw him on Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The most noticeable change in Grint’s on-screen persona has been his hair that went from scruffy in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to a leonine mane in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and then a shaggy mop in the next three films. His physical frame went from lanky to brawny between films four and seven, even as his character went from goofy to moody and broody.

Harry Potter’s final battle with Lord Voldemort will hit movie screens on July 15, but that young wizard has already scored a decisive victory where it counts: at the box office, on best-seller lists and in the crowded arena of fantasy-driven popular culture. J.K. Rowling, a single mother when she hatched a series of magical boarding-school novels, has ascended to an Oprah-like level of wealth and influence, while Harry, with more than $6 billion in tickets sold globally, has surpassed James Bond as the top-grossing movie-franchise hero.

Like the books, the Harry Potter movies have grown progressively darker and more complex, as the initially stark moral universe of good and evil became increasingly shaded by prickly, often confusing, questions of sex and death (including the death in 2002 of Richard Harris, the first Dumbledore, who was replaced by Michael Gambon). The books and movies have fed the imaginations of fans with a richly conceptualised, densely populated world of plucky school kids, giants, dragons, trolls and adult wizards, benign and malevolent, played by the cream of British acting. Meanwhile Harry, Hermione and Ron, as incarnated by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, have grown up before our eyes.