Skip to main content

harry potter - What does the rudimentary body potion do to you?


Voldemort uses a Rudimentary Body Potion to return to life as a shriveled, scaly man-child horror.


enter image description here


Later on Voldemort has access to a Regenerative potion to bring give himself a true form, but afterwards he looks very similar to a snake.


enter image description here


Clearly one of the potions do something other than bring him back to life, because when he possess a normal face:


enter image description here


The first potion however uses Nagini's blood, is it this ingredient that provides his new face or is it purely the later that makes him look that way?



Answer




Well, I think the confusion comes with mixing movie canon with book canon. In Philosopher's Stone, here's what Harry sees when Quirrell unwraps his turban:



Harry would have screamed, but he couldn’t make a sound. Where there should have been a back to Quirrell’s head, there was a face, the most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.

Philosopher's Stone - page 212 - UK - chapter 17, The Man With Two Faces



This was before Voldemort started taking Nagini's venom as part of the potion that restored him to rudimentary form.


In Goblet of Fire, prior to taking the Regeneration Potion, Voldemort is described as looking like this:



The thing Wormtail had been carrying had the shape of a crouched human child, except that Harry had never seen anything less like a child. It was hairless and scaly looking, a dark, raw, reddish black. Its arms and legs were thin and feeble, and its face – no child alive ever had a face like that – was flat and snake-like, with gleaming red eyes.

Goblet of Fire - pages 555-556 - UK - chapter 32, Flesh, Blood and Bone



And after he takes the regenerative potion, Voldemort looks like this:




The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry... and Harry stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes, and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s, with slits for nostrils...

Lord Voldemort had risen again.

Goblet of Fire - pages 558 - UK - chapter 32, Flesh, Blood and Bone



Voldemort didn't have a "normal" face at any time, according to JKR and the books. The difference between Voldemort in the movie Philosopher's Stone and Goblet of Fire is signficant; the former has a rather silly (IMO) Voldemort created with poorly done animatronics or something, while Ralph Fiennes's makeup and prosthetics for Voldemort are far more chilling and sinister. Ralph Fiennes's look is more true to the books.


Anyway, to answer your question about the first potion, Nagini's venom was used, not her blood. It was unicorn blood and Nagini's venom that were essential to the first potion. I don't know if Voldemort's look in the movie Philosopher's Stone was a result of poor planning, of not wanting to scare small children (it is a Chris Columbus film, after all), or of limited technology, but that look is noticeably inconsistent with canon.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more