Harry Potter: 10 Changes From The Books That Ruined The Movies

5. A Shift Away From Lessons

The first three Harry Potter films followed a very rigid structure: Harry's at the Dursleys', Harry goes to Hogwarts, Harry has lessons, Harry realises something's afoot, Harry has more lessons, Harry stops an evil threat, Harry goes back to the Dursleys'. Simple, yet effective.

Goblet Of Fire changed that, not only making Voldemort a real and tangible threat, but also shifting the focus of the body of the story away from the usual rigmarole of lessons. This is pushed to the extreme in the film adaptation, where we only see one class from the entire year at Hogwarts: Barty Crouch Jr. as Mad-Eye Moody teaching about the Dark Arts, a scene that is completely essential to the plot.

There's plenty of other stuff going on in that year, what with the Triwizard Tournament and all, but it set a precedent. From this film onwards, lessons only ever appeared if they were totally essential to the plot later on, making the fact that Hogwarts is a school little more than a chance for a big exposition dump.