Carol's questions for New Steve Was: Tempest in a teapot/cup/kettle

[Carol]

Steve wrote:
> 
> As to what happened to Professor Moody in GOF I think anyone
watching the movie was not confused at all. As to the Longbottoms that
were tortured true enough but were also hit with the death curse.
> 
> Steve who still belongs to the movie group.

Carol responds:

Okay, so you understand that the real Alastor Moody was kept in his
own trunk for ten months by the imposter Barty Crouch, but didn't it
seem at all odd for Harry to address the real Moody, whom he'd never
actually met (except to glimpse his emaciated form, minus its magical
eye and prosthetic leg at the bottom of that trunk) as "Professor"
Moody when he never taught a single class and to act as if Moody were
someone he knew? The last time he saw a man who looked like Moody,
that man (really Barty Jr.) was trying to kill him. In the book, Harry
addresses him tentatively as "Professor Moody" and Moody says gruffly,
"Never got around to much teaching, did I?" or something like that.
Any confusion a reader might feel is immediately cleared up. There's
also a moment when he complains that his eye has felt dirty "ever
since that scum wore it." The movie, in contrast, acts as if Barty Jr.
never existed and "Professor Moody" were the same character who taught
Harry DADA the previous year.

Barty Jr.'s role in torturing the Longbottomws (*into insanity*) is
also ignored in OoP. He's one of four characters who are guilty of the
crime (Barty is a boy of nineteen at the time). The other three are
Bellatrix Lestrange (maiden name Black--she's Sirius Black's cousin),
her husband Rodolphus, and Rodolphus's brother, Rabastan. I can
understand leaving out the Lestrange brothers (even the books tend to
forget their existence, especially Rabastan's), but it seems to me
that the movies 1) shift the blame for the crime against the
Longbottoms from Barty Jr. to Bellatrix without indicating that they
acted together and 2) fail to make it clear that this particular use
of the Cruciatus Curse is no ordinary Crucio like Harry receives from
Voldemort in the graveyard in GoF but a prolonged Crucio by four DEs
that ended in their permanent incapicitation. There's a moving scene
involving Neville's mother, who dimly senses that Neville is important
to her. She can't speak, but she shows what remains of her love for
her son by giving him empty bubblegum wrappers. I was very
disappointed to see that scene cut from the film. As it is, it looks
as if Neville is contemplating revenge (not in the book) for a mere
Cruciatus Curse that happened fourteen years earlier. (Yes, the
Cruciatus Curse is an Unforgiveable and it's a form of torture, but
the victims don't usually suffer lasting harm. Neville is, to all
intents an orphan, just as Harry is. The difference is that his
parents are lying in a special ward in St. Mungo's where he can see
what's left of them at Christmas, but they will never recover from the
insanity that Bellatrix, Barty, and the Lestrange brothers inflicted
on them.

All of that is lost in the films, and to me it seems like a
significant loss.

Carol, glad that New Steve is still in the Movie group and wondering
if we should move this discussion there