'Fantastic Beasts': Meet Some Of Newt Scamander's Magical Creatures
This fall brings Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to theaters, expanding the wizarding world that J.K. Rowling created, complete with a screenplay written by the novel's author herself. The most recent trailer finally laid out the basic premise of the story for us with some magical creatures escaping from Newt Scamander's suitcase, leaving the wizard with the task of tracking them down before they wreak havoc on the non-magical world and reveal the wizarding community.
If you're wondering what some of these magical creatures are in the aforementioned most recent trailer, Warner Bros. has revealed the names and a few details on them. One of them is even the symbol of one of the Ilvermorny wizarding school, the American equivalent of Hogwarts. Find out about the Fantastic Beasts magical creatures after the jump.
Niffler
If that name sounds familiar, that's because this creature has been mentioned in the Harry Potter books before. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, one of Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures classes saw the fourth year students using Nifflers to find gold that he buried in front of his house on the school grounds. The Niffler seeks out things that glitter and shine, preferring jewelry and coins and destroying anything that gets in its way. It can store the goods it finds in a pouch on its belly, one that holds far more than seems physically possible, because of magic of course.
Bowtruckle
Here's another creature that was mentioned in the books, debuting in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Professor Grubbly-Plank had fifth year students draw a Bowtruckle as a way of studying their anatomy, but Harry's escaped before he could finish drawing it. The stick-like creature eats insects and is very skilled at picking locks. At Comic-Con, Eddie Redmayne said the Bowtruckle named Pickett (he has a few) was probably his favorite from Fantastic Beasts. That makes sense since Entertainment Weekly says they are extremely loyal and sweet. Fun fact: Creature designers went through 200 designs before they settled on this one.
Thunderbird
Now we're venturing into some of the creatures that we know nothing about. The Thunderbird serves as the symbol of one of the four houses from the American wizarding school Ilvermorny, but it's also very much a real magical creature. The large bird has shimmering wings decorated with cloud and sun-like patterns and they have the ability to create storms just by flapping their wings. This one is named Frank and Newt hopes to return him to his natural habitat in Arizona. There's a good chance this bird will become helpful at some point in the story because Thunderbirds can also sense danger. Could Frank be the key to helping unveil our villain of the film?
Occamy
This is the one creature that we haven't gotten that great of a look at yet, and even this photo doesn't show us much of the creature. Visual effects supervisor Christian Manz tells EW that it looks like a cross between a dragon and a bird, but this creature is unique from both of those creatures because its shells are made of pure silver, thus making them worth a lot of money. What's interesting about the Occamy is it's choranaptyxic, which means it will grow or shrink to fit the available space. As the magazine hints, that could make things rather problematic if it escapes into the open with unlimited space to grow.
Demiguise
Apparently the Harry Potter world needed a creepy monkey to enter the wizarding world. The Demiguise looks like some kind of primate, but you've never seen a primate like this, and there's a chance you may not see him at all. That's because a Demiguise has the ability to become invisible at will (its hair can be spun into invisibility cloaks). Also making him difficult to catch is the fact that it has precognitive sight. That sounds like a creature that would also be helpful in dealing with a villain.
Swooping Evil
I'm not sure if J.K. Rowling just gave up while trying to come up with a name for this creature, but this one is seriously just called Swooping Evil. The creature resembles a dragon-like butterfly, which is intentional since it lives inside a spiny, green cocoon when it's not flying around. This is one creature you probably wouldn't want to encounter in the wizarding world because it has the ability to suck out brains. On a less nightmarish note, the creature also has venom that can be used to erase bad memories. Perhaps the bad memory of seeing your friend get his brains sucked out.
***
Those are the magical creatures revealed thus far. What's interesting is that most of the creatures appear to have some kind of ability that could become helpful sometime later in the story whenever our heroes have to deal with the villain that we know very little about so far. That was definitely something that happened often in the Harry Potter books, so it's bound to happen here as well. There are probably plenty more creatures to be revealed when Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them arrives on November 18.