“I couldn’t believe we started off with that huge fight scene,” recalls Alfred Molina. “I always have this notion that when you start work on a film, there’ll be a couple of nice, easy days. You’ll get to know everybody, sit around, have a couple of cups of coffee, chat away and do some nice, simple little scene. But I went straight into rehearsals for the Arcana Cabana sequence. I’d barely had time to unpack, and suddenly I had a magic cane in one hand and a sword in the other, going at it with Nic. It was a bit of a shock, but it was great to start out with all systems going.”

“We sent Horvath flying up about 27 feet to the ceiling of the Arcana Cabana on a cable,” says Ruge, “and Fred was very game for that. We also did what we call a ‘double ratchet’ in which Balthazar and Horvath each blast each other diagonally across the room, one into a pillar and one back by the stairs. Because the set is so confined and cluttered, I had a lot of concerns about fitting the action in here, but it worked.”

“George Marshall Ruge is absolutely fantastic,” says Molina, “very imaginative and interesting. He likes to think of stunt work as choreography, which I think is a really good way of looking at it. George says that the moment of impact is not what’s important.What’s important is the buildup to it and the reaction from it. And of course, he’s right, because that’s where all the drama is. There’s a part of the scene in which I’m fighting Nic with a sword which I’m manipulating from a distance. It was a great way of actually showing, in an imaginative way, that these characters not only have force and strength, but that they can also transform themselves and objects with an amazing range of powers and skills.”

Special effects foreman Mark Hawker and his team utilized various techniques for the Arcana Cabana sequence. “When young Dave puts on the magical dragon ring, he accidentally makes the Grimhold break through from behind the wall,” explains Hawker. “We took the Grimhold and put it on an eight-foot stick with swivels on both ends. So wherever Dave moves his hand, the Grimhold follows, and it keeps that distance. Of course, John Nelson’s team will ‘paint’out the stick with computers. We had lots of breakaway walls and furniture, and when Horvath gets pulled up into the skylight by one of Balthazar’s spells, we used a rubber skylight with breakaway glass.”

Molina’s character shoots fire from his hands. “I had to set fire to my fingertips,” he admits nonchalantly. “It all came down to this gloopy, plastic-like stuff they put on my fingers, covered with a fire-resistant fabric. Then they put another layer of the gloopy stuff, and another layer of cloth, which they painted to look like my real hand. There was so much stuff on my fingers that they looked like four big bratwursts. Then they lit them on fire, and it gets about a minute before I started to really feel it burn, and at that point, I simply blow them out like birthday candles.

“The technology for the effect is as old as films themselves,” continues Molina, “but it looks great. We could have done it with computer graphics, but it wouldn’t have looked as good. I loved it!”

Young Jake Cherry, who plays 10-year-old Dave Stutler, also had a blast performing in the sequence. “My favorite part was when I got to destroy everything with the Grimhold,” he says. “That, to me, is awesome. My favorite thing to destroy was this really big glass case, taller than me. I pushed the Grimhold in, then jammed it out, then hit some boxes which went flying around. I couldn’t believe they’d actually let me break things on set! “I also saw the visual effect when the dragon ring walks onto Dave’s finger and wraps itself around him,” Cherry adds. “It looks so cool!”

But would Jake want a ring like that for real? “Naw,” he responds immediately. “That would be creepy!”