When Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald arrives in theaters later this month, it will have the eyes of millions of fans of J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World. The franchise seeks to build upon a legendary history that young Harry Potter and his Hogwarts classmates could only read about and imagine. A past that will led up to the famed duel between Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.
In Dumbledore's most esteemed moment, he gained the allegiance of the Elder Wand, one of the three Dealthy Hallows and the most powerful wands to have ever existed. When we meet Jude Law's young Dumbledore in Crimes of Grindelwald, he is not yet in possession of the Elder Wand. However, Eddie Redmayne revealed in an interview with Sirius XM, that Law's wand originally looked as such. J.K. Rowling caught notice of this detail while looking at some raw footage and some movie magic resulted. In Redmayne's words:
They then had to CGI out that wand for quite a substantial amount of the film. It was replaced with, I think, actually the most beautiful wand of all. It's very... sculptural.
Early images of young Dumbledore's wand are rather exquisite to match the elegance and stature of the Hogwarts professor. It's a dark wood root with a stone on one end separated by a gold rim. The Elder Wand, on the other hand, (Gellert Grindelwald's hand, to be precise), is 15 inches long, made of elder wood and has a threstral tail-core, which is described on J.K. Rowling's official site as a "tricky substance only wizards that mastered death can control."
It's all in the details and it's understandable how some confusion might arise if Jude Law's wand looked too much like the notorious wand. Crimes of Grindelwald only marks the second of five planned Fantastic Beasts movies, and the duel is still quite some time away. The upcoming film is set in 1927, just a few months after the events of the first movie, and Albus Dumbledore doesn't obtain the allegiance of the Elder Wand in his duel with Grindelwald until 1945.
In Crimes of Grindelwald, the film will follow Johnny Depp, who was revealed as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: Where to Find Them, as he gathers followers for his dark agenda to raise up pure-blood wizards to rule over Muggles. Eddie Redmayne will return as Newt and reunite with his mentor at Hogwarts, Dumbledore, who enlists him to help stand in the way of the dark wizard's plans.
Jude Law's involvement in the Fantastic Beasts franchise is also highly notable from the Harry Potter films. While much of the cast said they had to go to "wand school," Law did not, maybe because he didn't need it? His fellow cast describes their co-star as a "painter" with the wand, each of them having their own style with their wand flicks along with wand looks to go personally with their characters. Fans can take a closer look at young Dumbledore's wand in Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald which hits theaters on November 16.
