Maxim Horvath

"Time for a little revenge."

- Maxim Horvath

Maxim Horvath is the central villain in the 2010 Disney fantasy film The Sorcerer's Apprentice. He was once one of Merlin's apprentice, but turned to the dark arts after his love interest favored his best friend and became a follower of Morgana Le Fay. He leads the Morganians and seeks to set Morgana free and help her unleash the curse known as The Rising.

He was portrayed by Alfred Molina, who also played Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2, Johann Tetzel in the 2003 film Luther and Satipo in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Past
More than a thousand years before the start of the story, Maxim Horvath, Balthazar Blake and Veronica Gorloisen, were disciples of the legendary wizard Merlin. Merlin cast a spell on the three of them to keep them from aging until they found and taught his successor. The three were at first very close, but their mutual love for Veronica eventually split Maxim and Balthazar. Maxim could not bear that Veronica chose Balthazar over him and became a servant of Merlin's worst enemy, the dreaded Mogana le Fay, out of petty jealousy.

With Horvath's help, Morgana murdered Merlin and gained the secret of the most evil curse in existence, the Rising, which would raise every dead spellcasters from the grave under their control, as an army they could use to take over the entire world. Balthazar and Veronica confronted and defeated Morgana, but at a terrible price, for Veronica was forced to seal Morgana's soul within herself and Balthazar had to seal her into a magic nesting doll called The Grimhold, to save her from being possessed. Horvath then disappeared, spending the following centuries recruiting and forming evil sorcerers to aid in his search for the Grimhold.

Imprisoned
Horvath and Balthazar battled throughout the ages, with Balthazar trapping many followers of Morgana into the Grimhold, finally bringing their conflict to modern-day Manhattan in New York City. Balthazar now being the leader of the Merlineans: wizards who use magic for the benefit of mankind; while Horvath being the leader of the Morganians, who use magic as a mean to subjugate humans.

This conflict lasted until Balthazar defeated Horvath and sealed him away in the Grimhold in his turn. However, a ten-year-old boy named Dave Stutler ventured into Balthazar's antique shop, and was recogniezd by Merlin's magic Dragon Ring as none other than the fabled Prime Merlinean, who was to inherit Merlin's powers and defeat Morgana once and for all. Unable to control his newfound power, Dave accidentally stumbled upon the Grimhold and freed Horvath. Balthazar battled his old enemy once again, and after a violent struggle the two got stuck in a magic urn called The Grimlock for ten years.

Horvath's Return
Ten years later, Dave his now a physic student under psychological care due to the trauma of the battle, about which none believed him due to the magic disappearing with both sorcerers, making him the target of much ridicule. As Dave is spending time with Becky Barnes, the girl he loves, the two feuding sorcerers are finally freed. Horvath escapes first and trhows the Grimlock through the window, but Balthazar escapes before the urn shatters dozens of stories below.

Horvath sneaks into Dave's flat and asks for the Grimhold, but Dave threw it away. As Dave escapes, he brings to life a pack of wolves from a picture and sends them after him. Dave only owes his life to Balthazar, who turns the wolves to puppies and takes him away on a giant animated eagle statue, before beginning his sorcerer training, much to Dave's dismay.

Skirmish in Chinatown
On his track of the Grimhold, Horvath casually kills a passer-by and goes to Chinatown during a celebration, but Dave and Balthazar are on their way as well. Horvath shape-shifts into an old chinese woman to ambush Balthazar, but he sees through the disguise. Unfortunately, Horvath found the Grimhold and released his old apprentice Sun Lok, who attacks turns the parade dragon into a real one. Balthazar subdues his old foes and takes away the Grimhold, while Dave succeds in defeating the Dragon, crushing Sun Lok under its weight. After distracting police, Dave and Balthazar goes for Dave's laboratory to start the training, but not before Horvath noticed that the Dragon Ring had fall into Dave's hands.

Recruiting Drake Stone
On the first night of Dave's training, Horvath visit a fry cook who provided him information of other Morganians' whereabouts. The fry cook stated that he got one kid, and illusionist named Drake Stone. Horvath stated that one will do, but upon visiting the said illusionist, he was clearly dissappointed upon discovered that Drake was pampered and uneducated in the dark arts, having wasting his talents for stage magic tricks. Nevertheless, Horvath goes to teach him as well as utilize him to set up his plan to raise the dead and destroy humanity, a plan which slighty distraught Drake due to his fans might in danger. He decides to do this in Battery Park within the Financial District of New York using the satellite dishes. Horvath suggested that they will visit Drake once he was alone.

Skirmish in New York University
Seeing that Drake has located Dave in male's bathroom in New York University but wasting the time to push him around, Horvath choose to enter the scene and prevent Dave from escaping. Horvath coerced Dave about Grimhold and even confused him by asked him truth that Balthazar yet to told him and what will he do if he lost people who he cared about. Fortunately, Balthazar comes for his disciple's rescue and after subduing Drake, a skirmish ensued with Balthazar enchanted bathroom mirror with Hungarian Mirror Trap. Drake goes to help Horvath, but Balthazar dodge his air blast which send Horvath to enchanted mirror, sending him into Reverse World. Balthazar then knock Drake unconscious.

After Balthazar and Dave gone, Horvath and Drake, recovered from the skirmish, goes for the faculty's admin and uses hypnotism and claimed to be a teacher who had problem with his failing student. There, Horvath learned that Dave had unauthorized lab space which Balthazar established as his base.

Incredible Car Chase
Now know where the Grimhold is, Horvath and Drake ambushed Balthazar in Dave's Lab, restrained the sorcerer, and found the Grimhold. To buy some time to free himself from his shackles, Balthazar tried to reasoned with his former friend, and Horvath revealed that his betrayal were due to Veronica loved Balthazar more than him, and he shared Morgana's opinion of humanity's fate. Once his restrains become fragile via freezing, Balthazar blasted Horvath away, but Drake incapacitated him and allowed Horvath to perform counterattack. Fortunately, Dave comes to the rescue, with both Morganians escaping.

The incredible car chase ensued in the streets of New York city. Horvath at first disguised Drake's car into a taxi, but they were exposed due to Dave, with Balthazar's guidance, used the Dragon Ring's connection with Grimhold against them. In retaliation, Horvath morphed Drake's car into better car to escape. Balthazar also morphed his car to better one as well, making the chase more exciting than ever. Failed to outrun their foes with conjured fog as smoke screen, Horvath enchanted a nearby huge glass into another mirror trap and trick the heroes to entered Reverse World with it.

and at some point chased Dave and Balthazar in a car race, transforming the car following his needs. He also released Morganians from the Grimhold, including the legendary witch Abigail Williams to enlist their help. After his cohorts outlived their usefulness, Horvath used the Parasite Spell to dispose of them and stole their catalysts, magic items (such as rings and talismans) to gain their power. He eventually abducted Dave's love interest Becky Barnes and held her hostage in exchange for Merlin's ring.

Horvath went to Battery Park and freed Morgana, who began casting the Rising. He then animated a bull statue to kill Dave and fought Balthazar, but Dave defeated him with a telsa coil, and Balthazar blasted him away.

His current whereabouts after Morgana's death are not known, though the film's stinger shows an unidentified hand (heavily implied to be his own) retrieving his hat from the Cabana Arcana. However, since Balthazar mentioned that electrocution causes a sorcerer to lose his magic, it is fair to assume that he is now powerless and will finish his life destitute, with no way of providing for himself unless he know how to regained it.

Appearance
Maxim Horvath is a short and portly man with dark hair and brown eyes. He wears a grey coat and a tie with a spider jewel on it, black rubber gloves, and a bowler hat. Horvath's Staff, the Morganian wizard's own prized possession, is a long black stave-like cane with a blue crystal that glows whenever he cast spells to channel his magic. (Originally, the cane was a long, medieval sword with the same, blue crystal on its pommel, which he had transformed into a staff.)

Powers and Abilities
Horvath is a highly powerful sorcerer, (of the 777th degree) who can use magic to perform very potent telekinesis, crushing things and people against a wall or making things fly and remotely controlling them; to animate objects and statues and bring drawings to life (such as the bronze statue of a charging bull and wolves from a wildlife calendar); to cast illusions; to shape-shift; to see the past; to transform things; to command animals and compel people into doing what he wants; to conjure fire, catch it in his hand and throw it as fireballs or powerful fire blasts; to hurl powerful gusts of ; to bewitch objects (such as when he creates a or a Persian Quickrug); to blast his foes with powerful plasma bolts; and to cast a wide array of spells (including the dangerous Parasite Spell).

During the course of the film, he aquires Merlin's Dragon Ring (by stealing it from the primary protagonist Dave Stutler), and the catalysts of both Drake Stone and Abigail Williams, attaching them all to his staff, making it extremely powerful. This however, made the staff suspectible to conductivity with surge of energy that made it more difficult to be handled: Dave exploited this by using a tesla coil which blast caused the staff become overload with energy input that Horvath accidently disarmed himself.

Following spells that he mastered in the film are:


 * Elemental Spells: Horvath has mastered various element-based spells such as:
 * Air Blast: Horvath can conjure a powerful gust of wind.
 * Plasma Bolts: Horvath can conjure soft ball-sized Plasma Bolts through his cane.
 * Fire Ball: Horvath can hurl fireballs from his conjured flame or already existing source.
 * Fire Surge: Horvath can conjure a stream of fire like a flamethrower from his conjured flame or already existing source.
 * Fire Carving: Horvath can focused heat to for carving purposes. Used to conjure a carved Morgana Star on a New York fry cook's patties to bring his attention.
 * Combustion: Horvath can caused molecules to shake that resulting spontantenous combustion. Used to create a wall of fire on the water near the center of Morgana Star that summoned by Veronica-possessed Morgana to destroy the Grimhold, but is stopped by Balthazar.
 * Fog Spell: Horvath can conjure fog that can either used to locate invisibility-induced spell or conjure smokescreen.
 * Plasma Deflection: Horvath can unleash a wide, bluish wave of electrical shockwave that not only pushes away anything that stand in it’s way, but also deflects projectiles like Plasma Bolts.
 * Mental Spells: Horvath was talented in using mental power spells such as:
 * Telekinesis: With his staff as catalyst, Horvath can levitate and manipulate objects or person without touching them. He even capable to manipulate objects under his control like a marionette. Horvath was very skillful with this spell that he don't have to perform any gesture when casting the spell on few occasions.
 * Hypnotism: Horvath can make suggestions on someone’s subconscious to make them do whatever the user wants without him/herself being aware of what they did. Used to hypnotize an NYU administration officer to give location of Dave Stutler's lab.
 * Psychic Vision: Horvath can perceives the residual information of an object and/or person by using senses that gave him flashback that occurred around the said object/person. Used to track down Grimhold that revealed to be taken by a Chinese Woman.
 * Enchantment Spells: Horvath is expert in enchanting other objects where the said enchantments are:
 * Animation Spell: Horvath can bring animal picture/statue/crest/symbol to life at will in form of either actual creatures or simply golems that taking their appearance to perform his biddings.
 * Disguise Spell: Horvath can shapeshift himself or other people into someone/something else for either disguise or fooling his foes.
 * Car Spell: Horvath can reshape a car into better or worse variant of it.
 * Trap Spells: Horvath is expert in using spells to create or enchanted objects into booby traps such as:
 * Ectoplasm Trap: Being trained as Merlinean, Horvath can be assumed to very good with conjuring time-manipulating ectoplasm as either a booby trap or an outright offensive attack, but how good he was is unclear.
 * Hungarian Mirror Trap: Horvath can enchanted mirrors and other reflective surfaces(usually on solid objects) to locked someone into a reverse world.
 * Persian Quickrug: Horvath can enchanted any rugs into taking traits of actual quicksand.
 * Parasite Spell: Horvath can fatally absorb other sorcerers' lifeforce with this energy-draining enchantment.

Personality and Traits
Maxim Horvath is a sophisticated, respectful, well-mannered, well-read and erudite man, always impeccably enthusiastic, collected, and polite, even when about to kill someone. But this refined facade hardly veils his cruelty. He is extremely cold-hearted, power-hungry, jealous, bitter impatient and insensitive, so he cares only about himself and disposes of his followers and allies without second thoughts. He is also perceptive, sarcastic, condescending and with a strong sense of dark humour.

However, he does have (or had) strong feelings of love for Veronica, and retains a grudging respect for Balthazar. Also, as long as he gets what he wants, he holds his parts of bargains and leaves his foes alive (when he has no interest in killing them, that is).

Trivia

 * The enchanted bull statue conjured by Horvath, is based the real-life Charging Bull statue statue in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street in Manhattan, New York.
 * Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice is greatly inspired by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Maxim Horvath is the equivalent of Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort. Unlike Voldemort, however, Horvath used to be Balthazar's ally, once a true good man, and knows what love is (how he turned to the dark side was out of jealousy as he fell in love with Veronica, but she chose Balthazar instead as her lover and made him evil), while Voldemort never knows or learns about love and became an complete monster since his early life.
 * In terms of his backstory prior to his betrayal, his former friendship with Balthazar, and also his status as de facto leader of Morganians, Horvath is similar with Megatron in the Transformers franchise, particularly in the Transformers film series:
 * Both organizations that they affiliated with shares similar racial ideology and beliefs.
 * Much like Megatron's Michael Bay film incarnation who on the run after The Fallen defeated, Horvath is on the run after Morgana defeated by Dave.
 * In the movie opening where Horvath was introduced via his depiction in the Encantus, he appears to held a bottle of some kind of potion, suggesting that he held a degree of knowledge in magical potion brewery and/or even alchemy albeit his said talent neither seen nor explored in the movie itself.
 * In the early script of The Sorcerer's Apprentice film that can be seen here, Maxim Horvath was intended to be Morgana le Fay's successor as leader of Morganians and also Balthazar's former master (whom also originally intended to be a Morganian assassin).
 * Though he is intended to be British, "Maxim" is a Russian given name and "Horvath" (Horváth) is a Hungarian surname.