Every hero needs a proper villain and Harry Potter has one of the best. Tom Marvolo Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, is easily one of the most iconic antagonists of all time, at least when it comes to the fantasy genre. Despite his notoriety, there are many things about Voldemort that got lost in translation or changed when the Harry Potter book series was adapted into movies.
Some of the changes were fairly cosmetic, such as Voldemort's appearance, while others changed his personality as well as his complicated backstory. Generally speaking, the movies, no matter how much space they give to Voldemort, only reveal a fraction of what there's to know about him. So if any Harry Potter fans want to get the whole picture, they need to turn to the books, especially if Voldemort is their favorite character.
Updated May 14, 2022, by Ritwik Mitra: Harry Potter is one of the most popular fantasy series around, with seven books and eight movies of the main series being pretty memorable in their own right. The journey of Harry and his friends as they try their hardest to stop the Dark Lord Voldemort is a riveting story that is filled to the brim with twists and turns.
The Dark Lord himself is a highly entertaining character, even though his character from the books might deviate quite a bit from his portrayal in the movies. Both versions of Voldemort are pretty engaging in their own right, with the major differences in the movie variant being mentioned below.
10 He Doesn't Get Angry At Being Called Tom Riddle
Voldemort is a person who prides pure-bloodedness among wizards over anything else. In fact, he's so adamant about pureblood running through the veins of every wizard that he shuns his own heritage after finding out that his ancestors messed around with Muggles!
During the final battle, Harry taunts Voldemort by refusing to call him by his real name. Instead, he spitefully calls the Dark Lord Tom, which gets Voldemort incensed to no end. He constantly tells Harry to cut it out before unleashing a torrent of attacks that would spell the end of his terrifying reign.
9 Harry And Voldemort Never Fly Around Hogwarts While Fighting
The final fight between Voldemort and Harry sees several changes between both mediums. The movies decided to make this battle all the more cinematic, which did end up drawing a mixed reception from fans.
Instead of a simple yet poignant battle in the Great Hall, Harry and Voldemort fly around Hogwarts Castle, almost melting into each other at one point! It's a pretty bizarre moment, although it did lend to the epic nature of this final confrontation between the two rivals.
8 He Killed Quirrell, Not Harry
The first movie showed Lord Voldemort for the first time, with the villain embedding himself in the back of Quirrell's head. After a prolonged speech, Quirrell tries to take the Philosopher's Stone from Harry by force...only to realize that Lily's protection is still so powerful that Quirrell's fingers actually burn up.
In the movies, Harry uses this power to burn Quirrell to a crisp. However, in the books, it's Voldemort who gets so frustrated at Quirrell's ineffectiveness that he violently leaves his host's body and leaves him to die.
7 No Speech To His Death Eaters
After Voldemort's resurrection in the fourth book, he addresses his Death Eaters, who gather at the cemetery and talk about multiple things, including his previous existence as a mere shadow and how close he came to dying.
This speech doesn't happen in the movie, instead, Voldemort only briefly talks to his Death Eaters before he turns his attention to Harry again and starts tormenting him. While it helps to speed up the movie's pace, including Voldemort's speech in the movie would have allowed the audience to better understand his character.
6 Voldemort's Backstory Is Missing
An important part of the sixth book is Harry exploring Voldemort's history via the memories of other people. The movie barely includes any of it and the audience only gets to see Voldemort interact with Dumbledore in the orphanage and with Slughorn at Hogwarts.
What the movies completely leave out are the parts about Voldemort's family and how he never would have been born if his mother hadn't used a love potion to make Voldemort's father fall for her. If his backstory made it into the movies, it'd be easier for the audience to understand where Voldemort's hate for all muggles comes from since Voldemort's father abandoned him after his mother's death.
5 Voldemort Doesn't Fight Hogwarts Professors
The final battle for Hogwarts sees Voldemort take on Harry in a duel. While a tension-filled moment, it's not the only battle that Voldemort undergoes in the books.
While invading Hogwarts with his Death Eaters, Voldemort engages in magical combat with three other people - Horace Slughorn, Minerva McGonagall, and Kingsley Shacklebolt. While McGonagall did have some impressive moments in the series, taking on Voldemort would make all three characters look even more like the powerful wizards they are.
4 Voldemort's Death Is More Cinematic
In the book series, Voldemort meets his end inside Hogwarts in the Great Hall. Harry manages to defeat Voldemort while his classmates and friends look on. It's a poignant moment for everybody present because they realize it's finally over and Voldemort no longer will be back to haunt them, with the Dark Lord's corpse falling on the ground as any other human would.
The movie gives Voldemort a more cinematic death, which has been dubbed unnecessary by a wide portion of the fanbase. He and Harry fight in the courtyard and that's where Voldemort vanishes into thin air after his own killing curse takes his life. While also impressive, it doesn't give the students and professors the satisfaction of seeing the evil wizard who attacked them finally die a normal, human death.
3 Voldemort Looks Different
Even though it might be difficult to believe, the book version of Voldemort is even more frightening than the movie version, appearance-wise. The biggest difference is that Voldemort has red eyes in the book. His nose is also almost non-existent, unlike in the movies where he still has quite visible remnants of it.
The red eyes and snake-like nose all point out how much Voldemort changed, how inhuman he became during his search for immortality, and his toying with dark magic.
2 Young Voldemort Is Already Too Scary
One of the failures when it comes to Voldemort's characterization is that the movies make him overly scary even in his youth. In the books, it's stated that while Voldemort was studying at Hogwarts, he was not only an already powerful wizard, but he was also charismatic and highly popular. The memory from the sixth movie however portrays young Voldemort as a somewhat quiet and disturbing person, one with a strange demeanor.
It's hard to believe that nobody would suspect him of anything if he behaved like this. Character-wise, the seemingly charming young Tom Riddle's portrayal in the second movie is much closer to the books than his young version from TheHalf-Blood Prince.
1 Voldemort And Harry Are Related
This revelation doesn't come as such of a shock since most pure-blooded wizards are related to a certain degree. The seventh book reveals that Voldemort and Harry share a common ancestry but it's never discussed in the movies.
More specifically, Harry's ancestor is Ignotus Peverell, who invented the invisibility cloak, and Voldemort's ancestor is Ignotus's brother Cadmus. It's highly unlikely this would change anything when it comes to Voldemort's behavior toward Harry in the movies, but it's an interesting tidbit nonetheless.