The Harry Potter flicks of the 2000s and 2010s have their flaws, but fans are more than willing to look past them to enjoy the nostalgic series.
Plenty of details are tweaked, entire characters are tossed aside (I’ll always wonder what could have been, Peeves), and heaps of details are glazed over, but such is the nature of the adaptation. One development that nearly came to pass was thankfully scraped before the flicks made their way to theaters, saving a generation of fans from a lifetime of nightmares.
Voldemort is a terrifying character. That point is underpinned frequently across the Harry Potter books and movies, starting with Harry’s first conversation with Hagrid. The looming threat of the world’s most deadly wizard continues to grow as the films inch on, until — in the fourth release, The Goblet of Fire — He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named finally navigates his return.
Even before he’s reborn into a proper body, however, Voldemort makes plenty of appearances. He’s present in both of the first two Harry Potter releases, first as a gristly addition to Defense Against the Dark Art’s professor Quirinus Quirrell, and later as a vestige of the boy he once was, Tom Riddle. It’s the first that really held the potential for the horror genre, and even in the released films it’s a terrifying sight to see a twisted, hateful second head extending from the back of Quirrell’s skull.
That’s not nearly so terrifying as what could have been, it turns out. Early designs for the character of Voldemort leaned far harder into horror elements, and we couldn’t be happier they were scrapped. The studio reportedly ditched the design over concerns it was “terrifying and potentially traumatizing to kids,” and good god was it right to do so.
Images of the actual nightmare fuel that nearly was revealz a fittingly disturbing visage, but one that is most definitely not for kids. A reptilian, forward-jutting jaw is overflowing with sharp, canine teeth, the eyes are slitted and set back, the nose — much as it’s described in the book — is “as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils.”
It’s honestly a great imagining of the Dark Lord of J.K. Rowling’s magical world, but it’s also a very good thing this never made its way to screens. That original design is utterly disturbing, and since those films are very much geared toward kids, would have led to a generation of sleepless preteens, all sharing the same sharp-toothed nightmare.
The horrifying potential captured in those early design images has since prompted a widespread response, and comparisons ranging from Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — hopefully he used some of that candy money to buy new teeth — to Mortal Kombat‘s Baraka or Bilbo’s accessory addict moment from Fellowship of the Ring.
There’s also plenty of support for the design among longtime Harry Potter fans, many of whom observed that the original design is far more book-accurate. There are also quite a few people defending the grit of young viewers, noting that horror in young media was a prominent theme until more recently. Kids can handle far more than most people think, and — while they certainly would have found serpent Voldy spooky — many kids likely would have handled the design just fine.
We ended up with a completely different version of the Dark Lord by the time Goblet of Fire hit screens, but there’s a fresh attempt at the series looming. The new Harry Potter attempt might even take inspiration from a design that never made it to screens, introducing fans to a very different version of Voldemort in just a few years.