Skip to main content

harry potter - Why were there so many spells cast in the movies without saying the words to the spell?



From my memory of the last Harry Potter movie I saw, I've seen many wizards cast spells without saying the spell at all. During the final battle in Hogwarts, many wizards just swung their wands and their enemies were knocked out. I am 100% sure about this!


The most remarkable spells were the ones that emit a green or red beam in the final battle of Harry Potter against Voldemort when they pushed their beams towards each other.


So, the question is, are they cheating? Because, unless there are wordless spells, they must say the words for a spell.



Answer



I assume that the filmmakers wrote the dialogue that way for dramatic effect. My impression was that they had the characters say the words almost all the time, but that in most fight scenes they skipped out on most of the incantations in order to focus more audience attention on the action. For example, in the book version of the final fight between Harry and Voldemort, Voldemort uses the Killing Curse while Harry casts a Disarming Charm. In the movie, the first detail can be presumed while the second one makes no sense in context (in the book, Harry gave Voldemort a last shot at redemption, and it was thought of as his signature dueling spell), so the scriptwriters dropped it.


The movies, as far as I can remember, completely passed over the idea of casting spells without saying the words.


EDIT: Yes, this was done in the fifth or sixth book and afterwards. But they never covered that in the movies, so for a movie-only audience the ability doesn't exist. There were also combats where Harry would say one or two spells and not the rest. This really stood out for me in the fight scene at the end of movie 5.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF

Which Doctor Who works are canon?

I have been watching a Doctor Who documentary and they mentioned that Paul McGann did audio stories so he wasn't just a one-hit Doctor (and that there are novels featuring his Doctor as well). My question is: is Doctor Who canon just the show, or is it like Star Wars where some books and audios are canon and some are not? The documentary also shows that before 2005 they did audio stories where the Doctor is female and obviously that cannot be — not the female part, but the show doesn't count any female Doctors in episodes like The Day of the Doctor . Answer Nothing, and also everything The definitive piece of writing on Doctor Who canon is this blog post by writer Paul Cornell . I'm essentially going to be summarizing his post here, much less eloquently, but one section I want to quote directly is this: Nobody at the BBC has ever uttered a pronouncement about what is and isn't canonical. (As I'm sure they'd put it, being such enthusiasts for good grammar.) Be...

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...