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Amphibians in Movies   Matilda: The Musical (2022)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This story is from a 1988 Roald Dahl book about an extraordinary young girl named Matilda Wormwood (Alisha Weir) whose mistreatment by terrible parents made her educate herself and develop psycho-kinetic powers. She's a genius at math and loves to learn and she's excited to go to school, but she quickly gets on the bad side of the tyrannical principal of the school Agatha Trunchbull (Emma Thompson) who hates children, and tortures them by throwing them out a window or locks them in a small torture closet. So far, this is all the same as the previous movie Matilda (1996), but this one is also based on a musical based on the same book that premiered in England in 2010, with singing and dancing. It has the same scene with a newt put in the principle's drinking water, but it's done differently. On Matilda's first day of school she meets another girl on her first day named Lavender (Rei Yamauchi Fulker) at the entrance to the school. She asks Lavender if she's nervous about going inside. Lavender says she's not worried but her newt Isaac might be, and we see a newt in her hand. Matilda suggests they go into the school together and Lavender agrees, saying that way she and the newt can look after Matilda. Later inside the school, we see Lavender pulling some greens out of her sandwich and feeding it to the newt. Next comes the comic newt scene. The girls' teacher Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) tells her class that it's time to have some fun but Trunchbull hears that, and she doesn't allow any fun in her school, so she forces all the students to go outside in the rain and exercise in the mud, in what looks like a boot camp obstacle course. When they take a break, covered in mud, Lavender secretively runs up to a table with a water pitcher on it and drops the newt in the water. Trunchbull then goes to the table and pours water from the pitcher into a cup and takes a drink. After swallowing she looks down into the cup, sees the newt, and starts screaming, as Lavender watches smiling. Trunchbull screams at one of the boys, blaming him and pulling on his ears. Matilda screams at her and calls her a bully, then she uses her newly-discovered telekinetic powers, staring at the cup until if flies in the air and into Trunchbull's face. The newt starts crawling down the back of her sweater and Trunchbull starts dancing around and screaming that she has a newt in her knickers. Finally we see Trunchbull in her office with the newt in a large jar of water. Later, she forces the students to participate in a spelling bee, believing that none of them knows how to spell, but they surprise her, spelling every word she chooses, including newt. Unlike the newt used in the 1996 movie (shown here) the newt used in this film is computer-generated. They might have also used a fake newt made of plastic or some other material. The water drinking scene is also different. In the book and the first movie, Trunchbull drinks the newt water in front of a class, then flings the newt off of her clothing over the heads of the students where one of the students catches it. Here she doesn't fling the newt, and we are left to assume that she had to get undressed to catch it before putting it in the jar. It seems that Lavender did not think her prank through all the way, or she would have realized that she was going to lose her precious pet Isaac. You can watch the newt in the cup of water scene at the beginning of this YouTube video. The book vs. the movie The newt scenes in this movie are a bit different from what is described in the book. In the book, Lavender brings the newt to school with the intent on terrorizing Trunchbull. In the movie it's not certain if that's why she brought the newt or if it was a spontaneous act. In the book the scene happens in a classroom. In the movie the scene takes place outdoors. The movie sequence is described under the pictures above. This is what happens in the book: Miss Honey tells her class that Trunchbull will take over her class the next day after lunch so they should do their best not to make her angry. She tells them that a jug of water and a glass must always be on the table for Trunchbull. Lavender volunteers to take care of the water, thinking that she might be able to do something heroic with the glass. She devises a plan to put a newt in the glass. In the movie, Lavender takes advantage of the fact that she has a newt and Trunchbull has drinking water. Lavender goes to a muddy pond at the bottom of her garden that is home to a colony of newts. The book explains that newts are common in English ponds but they're not seen often by most people because they are shy and murky creatures. They are described as incredibly ugly and gruesome-looking amphibians that can live in and out of the water and look like a baby crocodile, six inches long, slimy, greenish grey in color with an orange belly. Lavender catches a newt with her school hat and puts it in a pencil box with some added pond weed to make it comfortable. She is careful not to break its tail off because a boy told her that a broken newt tail would stay alive and grow into another newt ten times bigger to the size of an alligator. (This, of course, is made up.) Lavender brings the pencil box to the school, then puts the newt in Trunchbull's water pitcher. Trunchbull freaks out, thinking the newt is a snake or a baby crocodile or alligator. She's sure Matilda put it there and threatens to whip her with her belt. Matilda gets angry and makes the glass topple over so the water and the newt topple onto Trunchbull's chest. She shoots out of her chair like a rocket with the newt clinging to her clothing. She swipes her hand and sends the newt flying across the classroom where it lands on the floor beside Lavender's desk. Lavender then puts the newt in her pencil box, deciding that a newt is a useful thing to have around. Trunchbull blames Matilda for spilling the glass, but Miss Honey tells her that she must have knocked the glass over herself. I don't know if later in the book Lavender has kept the newt as a pet, but it's likely and it could be the inspiration for her to have a pet newt named Isaac.