Behind the Scenes of the Big “Crimes of Grindelwald” Reveal
There has been a lot of talk about the big reveal in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Like David Yates, we were all “gobsmacked” when it was revealed that Credence was a Dumbledore, specifically Aurelius Dumbledore. We were also, maybe, a little confused by the story of how Aurelius Dumbledore swapped places with Corvus Lestrange on a boat to America.
In the film, the story is told in voice-over by Yusuf Kama as the audience sees scenes from the past: Yusuf’s mother being cursed by the elder Corvus Lestrange, Leta’s birth, Corvus’s birth, Corvus and Leta’s journey to America, Leta’s baby swap, and ultimately, Corvus’s death.
Rodeo FX, the team who created the special effects for the sequence, spoke to Digital Spy about the task and provided exclusive images.
“It took a while for the whole team to get to understand the whole plot of that scheme,” said Rodeo FX’s Arnaud Brisebois. “It was really complicated[;] in a way, it was even broader before. We were supposed to see Kama [making] the Unbreakable Vow with his father[;] there was much more backstory to it.”
It’s hard to imagine this sequence with even more backstory!
Brisebois explained that because the team didn’t need to know the story to create the special effects, it took a while to really understand the plot until some key changes were made.
At a certain point, I got an updated cut with the sound and I took some time to digest the whole thing and then I’m like, ‘Oh I got it!’
In fact, the Rodeo FX team members had their own theory about the story’s ending.
Everybody was thinking that Credence was the drowning baby [-] everyone was sure [-] and he would be saved or captured by an Obscurus underwater or something, but his backstory was not the case at all. So it was a funny turn of situation.
What did you think of the special effects in this scene? Were you confused by the story at first too?
