As mentioned yesterday in ‘Crimes of Grindelwald: Deleted scenes 2,’ the DVD extras for Crimes of Grindelwald include the Ballroom scene we saw shots from in the film trailers. Leta is told by a murmuring wizard, seemingly in confidence and with admiration, “Congratulations, Leta, your brother lives. We all believe it.” You can watch the fifty second clip on YouTube now:
The Hypable.com list of all the deleted scenes reports that the clip in the DVD Extras begins with the man repeating to Leta the words of the Prophecy, “Return great avenger, with wings from the water.”
How would including this scene have changed our experience of the flashbacks to Hogwarts and Leta’s Defense Against the Dark Arts encounter with the Boggart? With the payoff at the Paris cemetery when she explains about her brother’s seeming demise and we learn at last what the descending-in-water-blanket means to her? What do they tell us about the film as written and the film we see?
In the film as released, the DADA classroom scene is offered as a flashback at the dead center of the movie (scene 69, for you Taoist numerologists). We see Newt’s Boggart transform into Ministry of Magic furniture because what he fears most is a day job indoors behind a desk. Significantly, especially in light of the Lana Whited theory about Grindelwald being a dragon-beast-within and Dumbledore needing a dragon trainer, Newt’s Riddikulus spell transforms the furniture “into a gamboling wooden dragon” (published screenplay, p 152).
Leta’s confrontation with the Boggart and her greatest fear appears immediately after Newt’s. She is something of a bully and bad girl as a student so the Gryffindor students murmur to each other, “I’ve been looking forward to this.” A peek inside the heart of darkness? A weapon to use against the seemingly fearless Slytherin intimidator of others?
In the film these classmates must be disappointed because all they get to see is the floating blanket that the dancer in the ballroom scene recreates as a pointer to Leta’s family history and the “great avenger” returning from the water as prophecied.
In the published screenplay, though, there is no mention of the blanket. [Read more…]
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