Can also confirm that it's not meant to be fiendfyre, but "Protego Diabolica". It's in the screenplay.

I did like how powerful magic was, though. Seeing Credence destroy that mountain bit at the end was satisfying.

 

That really tilted me actually. Like, he's just been given a wand, he knows no incantations, his magic is twisted as fuck, how can he do this?

Another point - in the original movies, did they include wand movements at all? Because I'm noticing a distinct lack of them in FB for the most part.

 

They dispensed with wand movements altogether some time around PoA.

 

My headcanon is that wand motions are like training wheels. Same for verbal incantations, to an extent.

Protego diabolica? That's fucking dumb. There's this whole thing going that there aren't redundant spells in HP magic, and that the spell's effect can depend on the wizard/witch (Killing Curse nosebleed from GoF), Grindelwald uses a spell that seems exactly like Fiendfyre except for the color, and not like blue magic fire is a thing, and it's a Shield Charm variant? smh

Edit: IIRC Protego Horriblis in DH was a protection Hermione cast over the camp, I speculate from curses/dark magic. Grindelwald's spell uses a similar name convention but it's blue demon fire. Does the film show the fire actually protecting Grindelwald from other magic? Anyway, another thing to the "add things to your prequels that don't fit with the world of the original series" column for JK Lucas--I mean Rowling.

 

You seem mad bro.

 

How about fuck off and ignore me for a change.

 

I'm on board with Protego Diablolica actually. Dark magic isn't exactly defensive in nature. Seems fitting that there's a dark variant of the shield charm that works proactively in lashing out at incoming threats.

Just because Grindelwald with the elder wand makes it appear as a towering firestorm doesn't mean that your average dark wizard can't use it in a less refined manner.

 

Yeah, true. I was talking more about a spell in general being able to do such a thing. I don't think we've seen a spell that explosive before.

 

It's beginning to smell of 2006 in here. Some people who are throwing their toys out of the pram need to step back and get some perspective.



Only a moron would look at Grindelwald's spell and think "this can only be fiendfyre". Calling it fiendfyre was merely an inference to the best known explanation, but there were always glaring differences. The "How destructive is it?" row is the big one, because it shows not just a difference in superficial appearance but also in fundamental nature. Fiendfyre is purely destructive; its entire reason for existing is to be something so destructive that it is impossible to protect something from it. Meanwhile, Grindelwald's spell allowed certain individuals to pass unharmed.

I don't need to be persuaded of the concept that redundant spells do not generally exist. I am the one who has most vigorously argued for it. But people are applying it dogmatically here. The spells are fundamentally different in their effect.

Ultimately, the only similarities between Grindelwald's spell and Fiendfyre is that they are both fire and both form animal shapes (though even then, in different ways). Neither of these things is particularly unique: we've seen tons of magic which creates fire, and tons of magic which shapes things into animals.

Getting so upset that it has turned out not to be fiendfyre is irrational at best, and at worst displays a malicious and dishonest intent to simply find excuses to hate on anything new or different.

 

It's a good table but in a community of fanfic writers those similarities are worth commenting on, if not getting irate or condescending over.

It's a supremely powerful, overbearing magical fire that single wizards of non-Grindlewald tier can't contain or stop, alone.

Personally, I didn't think it was fiendfyre as I watched the film until it popped into animals and was implied that it would spread to destroy Paris.

I think it's quite neat really, we know what protego does and we know what protego diabola does and it'll be cool to have an incantation that has name recognition as big scary hard to stop magical fire.

 

A simple solution is that Grindelwald adapted a shield spell and fiendfyre together to create this new spell himself. So it has all the power of fiendfyre, but it is meant to protect the caster. How he could do this... well I would just put that down to him being one of the strongest wizards in at least a century or two.

 

Honestly, I think everyone is thinking way too hard on that spell. It was cast by an extremely powerful wizard armed with an extremely powerful wand: he could have completely made up the spell for all we know. Of all the things worth talking about in this movie, the exact spell Grindelwald casted at that moment is extremely low on my list.

 

Additional thoughts on second viewing:

- Second viewing was much better than the first.

- The spell that allowed the British Ministry assassin to go through the walls is a great worldbuilding addition, as is (as noted before) the forensic magic, which is so much better than forensic magic as normally seen in fanfic.

- I'm think that the Protego Diabolica going nuts and turning into animals was something that Leta did, not Grindelwald. It was too fast to catch, but she casts two spells. The first spell is deflected by Grindelwald with his back turned. Her second spell isn't at Grindelwald but rather does something to the fire which makes it rage out of control (forcing Grindelwald to leave). All I saw was a yellowish something impact the fire.

- When they finite the fire, it seems to return to the tomb. Maybe Leta, being a Lestrange, did something to infuse the fire with the spirits of the Lestrange dead.

- I'm increasingly sure that the skull isn't just a projection medium, but the actual source of the visions. The first time we see it, when he uses it the Muggle house, Grindelwald is examining the images as something giving him new information, not merely showing the others what he already saw. Further, the skull has "Für das Größere Wohl 1898" written on it, so I think it was either created by Grindelwald while he was at Durmstrang (and perhaps its creation is the reason why he was expelled) or Dumbledore and Grindelwald made it together.

 

Just watched it, absolutely loved it. Yes, it had plot holes. Yes, it had things that didn't make sense. But dammit, I enjoyed it. I went in with no expectations, and I came out having thoroughly enjoyed myself. Which is exactly what I want out of a film.

 

This was something I noticed as well. It makes for a great piece of worldbuilding (the element that is, IMO, easily the best thing about The Crimes of Grindelwald), and I am intrigued by the fact that the phrase is actually in German. In my mind, that would at least lightly indicate that Grindelwald created it by himself before he met Albus in England.

Furthermore, like most things in TCOG, it raises more questions than it answers. For example, I wonder whether Grindelwald (and Dumbledore) actually killed someone to obtain a skull, whether it’s the skull of a particularly significant person, whether it’s some sort of Durmstrang relict that Grindelwald "appropriated," and/or whether there was some sort of ritual involved. I would like to see a flashback at some point in the series’ future.

 

My guess is there'll be a Pottermore article, if anything.

 

My guess was that the skull belonged to the wizard who created the book of prophecies to which they refer throughout the film, or that the use of the skull by someone/s did. I think I'd prefer the former, although it's quite macabre.

 

Why would Leta want the spell to go wild and kill everyone? Or did she expect them to be able to stop it before it killed them?

Also, the skull thing is a hookah, so it sort of makes sense that it might be the source of the visions.

Edit: I liked how the niffler was involved with the gold dust of the forensic magic (I think that's how it happened). I like that kind of thing where the unique abilities of magical creatures are used in conjunction with spells.

 

Skull is a Horcrux of some seer?

The Horcrux Hookah was in one of jberns works, hope they pay royalties.

 

Well...disappointing, to say the least. It feels like the HBP of the Fantastic Beasts series, in that it's primarily about backstory and setting up pieces for later. The difference is that, whatever your opinion of HBP, the backstory it gave us was for a character who'd been built up over five books, not someone we'd just met and someone else who turned out to have an entirely different backstory in the end, rendering the two hours spent on it fairly pointless.

I will say, although I found it all pretty incoherent by the end, I'm willing to accept that it might have been technical issues rather than the writing; I found it very hard to make out what was being said a lot of the time. So maybe, if I watched it with subtitles, or read the screenplay, it would suddenly all make sense. I doubt it though. On a related note, I found the opening escape quite difficult to make out due to how dark it was.

Spoiler

Aurelius Dumbledore? Really? I'm about 75% sure it's going to turn out to be bollocks, because the only one saying it (as best I could understand given the above issues) was Grindlewald, who...well, Grindlewald. The remaining 25% feels like at this stage, Rowling might do anything.
The whole is Credence a LeStrange thing was...well, it was two hours of - at this stage - completely irrelevant stuff. It did make Leta fairly interesting, but she's dead now, and I had to look that up between coming out of the cinema and writing this post, because I genuinely couldn't remember.
The blood pact I don't especially mind, but it does seem like an attempt to fix a problem that wasn't really a problem. Instead of all too human flaws, Dumbledore's initial reluctance to fight Grindlewald is now a magic bond. Fine, whatever, but unnecessary, and requires some more consideration to work out the timeline, given the situation with Ariana.

On the positive side, the performances were all basically fine, nothing special particularly but nothing to really complain about. Even Depp managed to at least be different to the last few things I've seen him in, if not as charismatic as Colin Farrell was. And the set pieces - my issues with the escape aside - were all pretty fun. Lots of impressive magic.

But all in all, about half an hour of actual story spread out to nearly two and a half hours of film, the end result being pretty dull. I'd rather have had a longer installment and one fewer films in the series.