4. Giving Priority To Harry’s Education – Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
This one may be somewhat long-winded to explain, but it’s actually fairly simple. The whole plot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire revolves around Harry attempting to survive the Triwizard Tournament while Voldemort plots off-screen to return to power using the boy’s blood. In this entry, however, it’s not the child that makes the dumb decision, but the supposedly powerful and calculating dark wizard.
The idea is pretty simple: why would Voldemort (and his followers) go to all the trouble of exacting their convoluted plan in a way that has Harry survive until the final task of the Triwizard Tournament? The only logical answer is that they valued his education enough to snatch him away for their ritual at the very end of the school year. It’s seemingly a noble intention, but it backfires – Voldemort only leaves himself one chance to get the better of Harry, and Harry escapes with his life, halfway foiling the dark wizard’s plan.
The smarter thing to do would have been to simply have Barty Crouch Jr. (disguised as Mad-Eye Moody) either take some of Harry’s blood or kidnap him much earlier in the movie. Harry’s blood seemed to be the most difficult ingredient of the ritual to obtain, and Crouch could have easily sped this along by catching Harry unaware at almost any point in the school year. Instead, he spends a year unnecessarily pretending to be another man before finally kidnapping Harry via portkey (in front of a crowd, no less). There are more moving parts to consider, but they all boil down to one fact: Voldemort is actually really, really dumb.