Three Amazing Creatures That Were Cut from “Fantastic Beasts”
As anyone familiar with the Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them book will know, there are many magical creatures in the wizarding world that didn’t get their spot in the limelight of the film adaptation.
As it turns out, when creating the Magizoological wonderland of Fantastic Beasts the movie, the creative minds behind the film delved even deeper, making up creatures that didn’t even exist in J.K. Rowling’s original material. Some of these – like the crucial Obscurus – were featured in the film; some others didn’t make the final cut.
Recently, at London’s VFX festival, creative director Christian Manz explained that the creative minds behind the movie didn’t want any creatures to be superfluous:
Story is important in moviemaking, and we didn’t want a creature there for its own sake. […] So we wanted everything to have a gag, something that would make you remember it.
That being said, he also gave us some details about three such beasts that weren’t quite fantastic enough to make it onto the silver screen.
1. A Tree-Forming Lizard
Early on in the production stage of the film, the VFX artists behind the beasts tried out an idea for a creature that would ultimately be scrapped. The beast in question would actually have been many hundreds of small reptilian creatures forming and reforming into large plant-like structures.
While it would have been a nice nod to the slightly lizard-like name of Newt Scamander himself, ultimately the tree-forming lizards hit the cutting room floor at the VFX stage.
2. A Falsely Pretty Fish
In a slightly more bizarre idea, the production team came up with a creature that would look like a beautiful fish while in water and surrounded by other fish. However, after it leapt out of the water, viewers were meant to realize that it was “a bit of a crap-looking fish” according to Manz, and its apparent beauty lay in being surrounded by other beautiful fish that were making it look bigger.
Although it may have made for a fun (albeit slightly strange) sight-gag, the deceptively beautiful fish was also, alas, not to be seen on the big screen.
3. An Iceberg Turtle
While the other two were ultimately cut by the VFX and production teams of the film, this last strange creature was vetoed by none other than J.K. Rowling herself for being slightly too large-scale for the first film of the series.
The beast in question? A giant ice turtle, which would serve as a type of mythological explanation for the existence of icebergs, implying that the magical creature would be hidden under the mundane iceberg.
While that probably would have made for some beautiful visual imagery – something the film is already rife with – ultimately, it was decided by Rowling and director David Yates that it was “a bit too much” according to Manz. That being said, we would love to see that version of Titanic.
Do you think the scrapped creatures should have made it to the final cut of the film? Were there any creatures in the existing wizarding world mythos that you think should have been featured in the film? Let us know in the comments below!
