Nonton Film Voldemort: Origins of the Heir (2018) Full Movie
Nonton Film Voldemort: Origins of the Heir (2018) Full Movie Sub Indonesia
When news spread last year of a potential "Harry Potter" fan movie, I was cautiously excited.
The project — a story about Tom Riddle's rise to power, and an heir to Godric Gryffindor who tries to stop home — had the blessing of Warner Bros., the producer of the official "Harry Potter" movies, which signaled it might actually be good.
I misread the signals.
Released on Tuesday, the 52-minute "Voldemort: Origins of the Heir" shows precisely why so many people are dismissive of fanfiction. It's aimless, poorly made, and it doesn't possess anything resembling an interesting original idea.
To be sure, my expectations were calibrated. "Voldemort: Origins of the Heir" was crowdfunded through Kickstarter, and never had anything close to the budget or established talent of the official movies. But creative and scrappy young people can always come up with an interesting story, and the movie's trailer looked surprisingly cool for a low-budget project. And it was an interesting premise: If the "Fantastic Beasts" movies fill in the background on the rise of Gellert Grindelwald, then some enterprising fans took it upon themselves to do the same for Voldemort.
Grisha McLaggen in the movie.Tryangle Films
The creativity simply isn't there. In the movie, Grisha McLaggen, the heir of Godric Gryffindor (who doesn't appear in J.K. Rowling's official works) and former friend of Tom Riddle, is trying to track down his Horcruxes now that he's become the evil dark wizard Lord Voldemort. We also get plenty of flashbacks, where a younger Riddle (played by someone who's clearly way too old for the role) argues with friends and shows off his ruthless side. Most of it is done with exposition, in confusing scenes that don't interpret the "Harry Potter" canon in any meaningful way.
All fanfiction is inherently amateur — and this movie can't escape that.
There's a difference between fanfiction and spin-offs. Fanfiction is inherently amateurish, made by fans who use their imagination to push a story further, or take pre-existing characters wherever their imagination goes. There are more quality control and money put into developing studio work, which is why even movies like "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" are taken seriously. A lot of people worked hard on it and it's a polished piece of pop culture.
Makarov, the villain in the movie.Tryangle Films.
But even professionally made work, if deemed bad enough, is dismissed as "fanfiction." Take "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," J.K. Rowling's sequel play to the main "Harry Potter" series. Some "Harry Potter" fans derided its dialogue, zany characters, and infidelity to Rowling's established magical world as "fanfiction." Fanfiction is always seen as something less essential, and usually qualitatively worse than whatever its based on. It didn't help that Rowling's story shared some odd characteristics with actual fanfiction published years before the play itself.
"Voldemort: Origins of the Heir" embodies fanfiction's worst traits.
With the exception of the "50 Shades of Grey" series (which E.L. James originally wrote as "Twilight" fanfiction under the pseudonym Snowqueens Icedragon), "Voldemort" may be the most expensive fanfiction ever. But it still feels like hackwork.
The movie lacks any creative ideas. The movies biggest is that each Hogwarts House founder has a designated heir, who remain secret from the rest of the world for reasons no one who wrote the script has any interest in. They all talk like they studied the blade. Its cheesiness makes it seem much hokier than the "chosen one" thing Harry Potter has to go on.
And if McLaggen is the hero of the movie, the villain it introduces is not so much Tom Riddle/Voldemort, but some guy named Makarov who seems to be a Soviet general. There's a big scene where we first see his face, and dramatic music cues that lead to a reveal where we discover... he's blind in one eye. Yup. The movie has a useless Soviet villain guy with one working eye. It's like a character who would be written out of a bad '80s action film.
voldemort origins of the heir
Some scenes are shot like a video game. Here's our protagonist blasting people with a wand.Tryangle Films
The movie's directors have few original visual ideas, either. One of the movie's opening scenes tries to set it up as some kind of CGI extravaganza, where McLaggen blasts anonymous goons with her wand. It's shot in the first person, with her hands in front of the camera, as if the movie is a video game.
It's just badly made.
One of the weird things about "Voldemort: Origins of the Heir" is that it doesn't even feel like it was written by a "Harry Potter" fans. It needlessly contradicts the "Harry Potter" canon, not to mention basic storytelling rules.
For example, there's a scene where Riddle, working for Borgin and Burkes, meets up with their client Hepzibah Smith, who "Harry Potter" superfans may remember as the owner of Salazar Slytherin's locket before Riddle stole it from her. Sure enough, Smith tells Riddle that she has the locket but asks him not to say anything about it to Burke, just as she did in the "Harry Potter" books. But then the movie also says that she purchased it from the shop in the first place. Why keep it a secret, then, if the shop-owners know she bought it?
making of Voldemort origins heir
The making of "Voldemort: Origins of the Heir."Tryangle Films
There's another part where McLaggen wrongly says Voldemort created Horcruxes because they're the only way to achieve immortality. Meanwhile, Nicolas Flamel is already hundreds of years old at that point.
Most of the movie takes place as an expository dialogue between McLaggen and Makarov, explaining the writers' fanfiction mythology. It gets tiring quickly, especially when so many characters who clearly aren't British try to do British accents.
And don't think that the movie is feminist just because the protagonist is a woman. McLaggen is Mary-sued into being Voldemort's love interest for no reason, and a twist late in the film entirely undercuts her character's existence. By the end of the movie, she's pointless.
The movie can't decide if it wants to be an original piece of work.
When a spinoff succeeds, it both honors the great qualities of the original work yet untethers itself to become its own thing. Just look at "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," or the new "Star Wars" movies "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi." (Or, heck, even "A Very Potter Musical.")
Voldemort origins heir
Tom Riddle and Grisha have a romantic relationship in the movie.Tryangle Films
"Voldemort: Origins of the Heir" gets it backward. It fails to recognize the great qualities of the "Harry Potter" series and is uncommitted to becoming its own thing. It's premised on being a "Rogue One" line venture into unexplored territory, but its uninterested in telling an actual story. Its twist ending traps it into being slavishly dedicated to the original series instead of daring to take it further.
At least they tried.
The best I can hope for the "Origins" filmmakers is that the attention to the project launches the careers of everyone involved. (They're all clearly proud of working on this — the opening credits take about three months of the movie's 52-minute runtime.) While the project doesn't work, it isn't lazily made.
Aside from what must have been a struggling negotiation with Warner Bros., you can see the care put into the visual details. The dark color palette establishes some continuity with the official movies, which were steeped in shadow since "Prisoner of Azkaban." The costumes are pretty convincing and far less cheesy than you'd expect. And some props, like Riddle's diary, look like the real thing.
But the movie itself, unfortunately, defeats itself. It ends with a man named Igor (presumably Karkaroff, the Death Eater and Durmstrang headmaster) poking through the ruins of where Voldemort once was. It ties back to the main series, where the character was known to be dedicated to Voldemort even after his reign was over. I don't know if it's supposed to be a metaphor for the movie's relationship with the "Harry Potter" movies, but it sure works as one.