What the same fairy-tale creatures look like in "Harry Potter" and other films (15 photos)

The charm of the world created by J.K. Rowling lies not only in the fascinating plot and characters, but also in the author's ability to harmoniously integrate into it a variety of mythical and fairy-tale creatures that have previously appeared in various works. The writer creatively approached the creation of images of these creatures, reworking them to match the magical world of Great Britain of the 1990s, where the events of the "Potteriana" unfold. Today, we are attracted by the design of these creatures in the film adaptations of "Harry Potter", which we compared with similar images from other films and TV series, excluding "Fantastic Beasts", since this is a completely separate story, and less successful. Let's see what the same fairy-tale creatures look like in "Harry Potter" and in other films.

Centaur





In the Potter series, centaurs appear twice. The first time, the centaur Firenze spoke to Harry in the "Philosopher's Stone", when he saw the spirit of Voldemort drinking the blood of a dead unicorn. By the way, this is the only appearance of unicorns in the entire film series, so it will not be possible to dedicate a separate point to them. The second time, several centaurs appeared in the fifth part, when they dragged Dolores Umbridge with them.

Between these two films, viewers could see half-human, half-horse creatures in The Chronicles of Narnia (2005).

Dragon



Adult dragons first appeared in The Goblet of Fire, and they look pretty much like the dragons from the most obvious source for comparison, Game of Thrones. And the difference between the two frames is about 10 years. The image of dragons in popular culture has already been established, so they look more or less the same everywhere.

Goblin





The bank goblins from Harry Potter and the terrifying orcs from The Lord of the Rings (as Tolkien noted, orcs = goblins) look like a civilized and brutalized version of the same thing, if you look at their facial designs. But the battle orcs are still much larger than the miniature Gringotts employees.

Ghost





The main feature of all ghosts in the movies is translucency. And the production designers of the Potteriana did not reinvent the wheel. (But the directors and producers threw Peeves out of the film adaptation!)

However, other films have their own nuances compared to "Harry Potter". For example, in the film "Ghost" (1990), Patrick Swayze's character was an ordinary person in appearance, who became transparent only in certain scenes, and in the film "Casper" (1995), all the ghosts were given cartoonish features.

Three-headed dog



As we know, Fluffy was a charmer, but a completely classic Cerberus. We did not compare him with his brother from the film "Cerberus" (2005), since everything was drawn very poorly there. But such a stern three-headed dog attacked Dwayne Johnson in the film "Hercules" (2014).

Phoenix



Let's compare the frames from "Harry Potter" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" once again. For some reason, the Phoenix from Narnia turned into some kind of military aircraft.

Basilisk



Basilisk was unlucky. This mythological snake rarely appears in films, and in addition to "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", it can be seen in the "solo" low-budget TV movie "Basilisk: The Serpent King" (2006), where it was drawn on a computer, which is why it looks the way it does.

Werewolf



JOKE!

Werewolf after transformation



In general, in the film adaptation of "Harry Potter" the werewolf is shown as quite creepy, not like in the same "Twilight", where they look like just big dogs. In the collage, we compared Lupin the werewolf with his sidekick from the film "The Wolfman" (2010), who received an Oscar for his makeup work.

Giant



It would seem that creating a screen version of a giant is not so difficult - certainly compared to other, more complicated creatures. It's just a larger person. But here the production designers of "Order of the Phoenix" suddenly made a mistake, presenting a rather weak visual appearance of Grawp for 2007. Compare him with Wun Wun from "Game of Thrones".

Hippogriff



The Potter hippogriff is a real cutie. But they are not like that everywhere. The mythical bird-horse also appears in the series "Merlin", an episode called "Lancelot" (2008), where this same Lancelot saves Merlin from a surprisingly aggressive and evil griffin.

Troll







When it comes to trolls, there's plenty to do. You can find a thousand and one examples of their design in movies. In the footage, in addition to the very same mountain troll from the Hogwarts toilet, we took a cave troll from The Lord of the Rings, a stone troll from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), a giant from the Norwegian film Troll (2022) and the most terrible troll from the film Snow White and the Huntsman (2012).