Warner Bros. stole the Quidditch World Cup

All of us Harry Potter fans have the Goblet of Fire DVD by now, right? Why is it that when we watched this movie in the theaters we were able to enjoy the Quidditch World Cup in all of it's splendor, yet when we wanted to take that joy home and keep it on DVD, we were cheated! Doesn't anyone remember this? They didn't even include it on any of the extended scenes on the DVD set. We didn't get to see Barty Crouch's house elf that stole Harry's wand. We didn't get to witness Krum's awesome flying skills in the game. We were left dumbfounded by the brief intro by the Minister of Magic and Krum doing a fly by, then cut back to the tent (AAAAWWWW!). When I first watched this at home with my family, we thought there was a defect in the DVD we bought. When I emailed Warner Bros about this travesty, I had no real response from them. After some web surfing I found others in an uproar about it. They said that Warner Bros did not promise a "theatrical version" on the DVD so they could savagely cut out anything at a whim! There have been many other discrepancies that others have noted in all of the Harry Potter movies. But it seems to go unnoticed. I just would like to know when I can get a "full" version of the movies that is NOT missing parts!

This is not an isolated incident. It happens to tons of movies all the time. The studios get to decide what can be allowed in the theaters and what can be allowed in the homes. Not only that, but they can have different versions of these for different regions. So if you are in the US your DVD can have different scenes than someone in Europe. For all we know different US states could have different versions. They probably think they are personalizing them for different demographics or something! Hey, how about including all the versions on the DVD and allowing us to decide which we like?

OK, so the studios have lied to us by showing one thing in the theaters and handing us something different to take home. Is that where it ends? No! How many times have you sat watching your television, when you are hit with a new movie preview! You are amazed! You must see it! It is so (pick an adjective: funny, action-packed, etc.) Now, you wait the month or three until it comes to a theater near you. You have built up your expectations about this movie. Then, you sit for two hours and come out of the theater stunned... not in awe of your expectations being met, but rather in the let down you feel. You have just been duped into spending money to sit for two hours and watch something that only has about two minutes of content that live up to what you wanted in a movie. Why is this? Because the advertisement either misrepresented the movie, like made it look really funny when it was really serious with two minutes of funny. Or the quality of the writing or acting or everything was so bad that the two minutes of clips in the commercial were the only highlights in the movie that were any good at all. No matter what the reason, you were sold a false bill of goods. If the movie was a car it would be a "lemon". Oddly enough, nobody cares that you just spent a big handful of your hard earned cash on two hours of your life that you now wish you could get back!

OK, more to add to my rant here...
So you pay for your family (4x$10+) to see the movies in the theater. This is an investment. Of course you are at the mercy of the theater company in the sense that they intend to make you sit there for two hours with no available food or drink but theirs at a ridiculous high price which means you are probably doubling your theater investment. So if your tickets are $10, and you have 4 family members that is $40 dollars. If each person wants a drink and a snack (candy or popcorn, etc.), let's estimate another $10 dollars for each person, making your investment $80 so far. OK, so you are a real big fan of Harry Potter and you want to get some kind of momento offered by the movie company (WB). We bought Hogwarts badges for $13 per badge (2 badges makes $26). So, now our investment has gone up to $106. Of course we bought the book when it first came out but I will not include that since it had nothing to do with the movie company. This is a conservative estimate considering we bought all the books all the DVD's and many more collectors' items. So after our $106 investment, according to the movie studio, we are not entitled to take the movie home with us for our personal enjoyment. Instead we wait at least a year and finally get a television advertisement teasing us with the promise that we can take home the movie we loved in the theater. Now after another $25 investment (I don't remember exactly), we finally can relax knowing we have our own copy of the movie we love! Only... WAIT A MINUTE!!! It's missing scenes! "Honey, are you sure that we bought the right DVD set? Was it the cheap one or the more expensive one? Oh, yeah we made sure to get the one with all the extra scenes, right?!" Only, we don't get what we paid for do we? They cut the Quidditch World Cup sequence SO BADLY that our whole family agreed that it must have been a faulty copy of the DVD, so we immediately drove back to the store to ask them for another copy, after doing so, we saw that it was the same, so I thoughtfully went to the Warner Bros website to complain to the DVD support team that we felt that we were supplied with a faulty copy of the DVD. Maybe they had a mishap during the mass production of the DVDs. Well I did not get a real response from them so I did some searching and found that their policy is that they are not claiming on the DVD packaging to be supplying the consumers with a "full theatrical" version of the movie, and therefore are at liberty to alter it. Does the injustice only ring in my ears? Is someone giving me crazy pills, or what?!? I mean, I realize that this is several years ago, but it still hurts me today! And it only reminds me of the fact that these injustices continue with other movies. Probably every movie you have on DVD has been altered in some way. I bet that families all over the place have arguments about movie trivia because someone remembers something from the theater version and the other person remembers it from the DVD, but they don't match! Is one of them wrong, or are they crazy? No, they both saw what they saw when they saw it, but they did not see it in the same version. Hah! Go figure that one out!