Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
by J.K. Rowling
Warner Bros.
If you haven’t read Carrie’s review of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I highly recommend doing so before reading this review, as I don’t plan on rehashing the plot so much. My quick and dirty summary is that a wizard (Newt) enters New York with a case full of fantastic beasts. Said beasts escape while an unknown force is terrorizing the city and a bad wizard is making the headlines. The beasts are blamed for all the shitty things going on, when it reality it’s the work of something else.
There, that’s the plot from my point of view.
The main reason we’re running two reviews is that Carrie and I are coming at this movie from two completely different viewpoints, and before I say why, I need you to sit down.
This might be a shocking admission, but I have never finished the Harry Potter series, whether in book or film form. I couldn’t make it through Order of the Phoenix because of the insane amount of angst. I’m pretty sure my family’s copy still has my bookmark left in it where I threw in the towel. Seriously, I am a romance reader, a devourer of melodrama, and I just couldn’t do it.
Do I regret it? Not really. Life is too short for books that don’t grab you. My main complaint is that I don’t get to bond with other HP readers because I know quite a lot of people who have been personally touched by the series.
So the most important question I feel I can answer is, Can non-HP readers see this movie? Yes, they can, but there are times where you’ll be confused. I firmly believe you’ll have a richer experience being more involved with Harry Potter. You’ll pick up on details like familiar names. You’ll have a more intimate knowledge of how the wizarding world works (i.e. I couldn’t remember what Aurors do for the life of me). Symbols and signs will make much more sense — the Deathly Hallows symbol means nothing to me.
If the movie looks fun and interesting to you, regardless of your experience with HP, you’ll be able to follow the plot line just fine, but deeper connections may go over your head.
But aside from my limited HP knowledge, I’m not quite sure I enjoyed this movie. To me…it was meh. There were things that bothered me and then later infuriated me after my comments turned into a full-blown rant during the post-movie car ride with my boyfriend. The biggest saving grace, honestly, was how gorgeous it was and I really did love seeing all the fantastic beasts. I’m a sucker for a movie with an ensemble – whether they’re a talented group of actors or CGI magical animals.
I do agree with Carrie in that the movie felt like several in one. The chaos of magical animals loose in a city of humans is enough of a conflict that I don’t think the evil force angle was really necessary. It watered down the first conflict. I would have had more of the movie focusing on the capture and care of those beasts.
The implied love interest also bugged the crap out of me.
I liked Tina and actually found her a bit more interesting than Newt. She was a more complex and conflicted character and Newt was a bit manic pixie for me. So it makes me sad and a little bit angry at the notion that she won’t play a role in the next one, especially after her important function in this one. Why make the audience get attached to a character to just explain her away in future installments?!
After the movie, I messaged Sarah about my thoughts, to which she responded with the news that there are going to be several more sequels: five, I believe. I thought for sure that she was joking. But nope.
The thing that really grinds my gears is that Fantastic Beasts wraps up nearly everything in the movie. The bad guy is captured. Newt’s beasts are secured. There are no glaring loose threads. To me, there is really no need for another one, and the continuation seems very much like a cash grab. One of my greatest pet peeves is when an artist or creator doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. You’ve had a great success with XYZ. Maybe try something new rather than running something into the ground.
I know there are many people who love Harry Potter and everything associated with it. They’ll keep revisiting that wizarding world because I’m sure it gives them such happy feelings, whether it’s catching up with favorite characters or getting that feeling of nostalgia. But for me, as someone who read only the early books when they first came out and as they were being published, I have no such attachment. Fantastic Beasts was a visually appealing movie, but I definitely didn’t find it magical.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is in theaters now and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
I’m on the same page as you as far as the HP books and universe go. I couldn’t finish the books, but I’ve seen all the movies; some more than once (for reasons entirely due to Alan Rickman).
Tina could have been an interesting character, but, to me, she came across as the killjoy who is attempting to be the voice of reason and I felt absolutely no interest in any potential for romance between her and Newt. A developing friendship and partnership might be fun, but a romance seems forced to me. I did like the relationship between Queenie and Jacob.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie as much as a non Harry Potter fan could and so did my husband. Maybe, I’m getting overwhelmed by big CGI movies these days, but most of the beasts and special effects didn’t impress me much. Also, having seen Doctor Strange a week earlier, I felt like I had just watched the magical, city fixing scene.
My boyfriend and I had the opposite experience. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, but I thought Fantastic Beasts was really ‘meh’ as well. I thought that movie was too predictable and the villains were 2 dimensional. I didn’t enjoy Tina very much and kinda wish the movie had more of the 2 secondary characters. OTOH my boyfriend (who has never touched the books, has only seen the movies once a long time ago and doesn’t remember much and didn’t really enjoy them anyways, and loves to tell me how much harry Potter sucks) really loved this movie. He said it was by far the best Harry Potter movie he’s seen. He thought the plot was somewhat predictable, but he really loved the unique characters, especially Newt.
I think maybe you put too much stock into someone liking the movie because they were a Harry Potter fan. I wouldn’t be surprised if fans were less likely to like the movie because of all the hype around it. I’ve been so excited for this movie ever since it was announced so it was probably bound to be a let down. I think the failings of the movie don’t have that much to do with missing information non fans wouldn’t know about, and more to do with the story and character development, and whether you like it or not has more to do with how important those things are to you and how likely you are to overlook some of sloppiness.
Side note that I really didn’t enjoy Dr Strange either, so maybe there’s just something wrong with me haha
I absolutely adored the Harry Potter books when they first came out, read all of the first six at least 20 times, the first 3 probably closer to 100. Then the seventh book came out and I read it twice within the 24 hours I got it and haven’t picked up any of the books again. My main issue stems from the fact that Ron was obviously supposed to die (and JKR saying her original intent was for Harry and Hermione to end up a couple only confirms this in my mind). When he survived and Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione all coupled up, I felt like the easy ending was written, rather than the right ending, which I could get behind for the book in Stranger Than Fiction but couldn’t stand in this series that dominated my teen years (7th book came out when I was 19, started reading the books at 12).
I felt like that ending was selling out, and have a difficult time seeing other ventures as more of a way to appeal to fans and make more money than anything else. To me, FBAWTFT didn’t need to be made, except to make money, and for what was a little add on book that barely connected to the original HP series to be dragged out into 5 movies seems a bit excessive.
I don’t know, I haven’t seen the movie, but many of these additions to the franchise have taken away the magic of Harry Potter for me.
Not a criticism of you or your review at all, but you not being familiar with the HP world aside from general details gives you some blind spots- like thinking that the villain is locked up, therefore wrapping up the story. And FWIW, HP characters being absent for a book or two is par for the course, and rarely an indication of their importance plot-wise.
My own blind spots come from loving pretty much everything HP related, so I forgive faults too easily. Honestly though, I loved the movie. The fact that it WASN’T set in the original HP universe meant I could come in with no expectations for THIS universe and just enjoy it for what is was.
The Washington Post lists this film as one of the 12 they recommend people see in December.
I loved the first book. I never finished any others and i watched all but the last film. This didn’t appeal to me because (a)Redmayne isn’t my favorite and (b) what I term ‘critter madness’ on film such as all the extraneous orcs in the second hobbit film leave me annoyed because I consider it lazy writing.
Spoiler? In the source material (ie the foreword to the original facsimile Fantastic Beasts textbook), Tina is Newt’s wife.
Total fire opinion: I kind of liked this better than HP!
Since you didn’t get to the 7th book, essentially, it looks like this franchise is now suddenly going to build up to culminate in the showdown between Dumbledore and Grindlewald that was talked about some in that book. So I assume we’re eventually going to get a younger Dumbledore as part of the main cast (Arthur Darvill really wants to be young Dumbledore and I really want him to be cast.)
I just can’t get into this movie because every time I look at Eddie Redmayne’s Newt, I see Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor from “Doctor Who” (one of my favorites) and mutter under my breath that they cast the wrong actor for the part. I know the dangers of typecasting and I know Redmayne has the Oscar cred. But the irrational part of my brain still pitches a hissy fit every time I see anything from this movie because of this quirk.
I do like that this movie centers around adults. It’s pretty refreshing to see a work in this franchise not revolve around teenage kids.
The one bad thing about not being familiar with the source material is that once the true bad guy is revealed there’s no significance to his name. You can’t experience that moment of omg, though I called who it was the moment I heard they were doing five movies and were trying to cast young Dumbledore. Plus those newspapers were nothing but foreshadow. If you knew, you’d realize that this movie wrapped absolutely nothing up at all. Not even Tina’s character who has to come back at some point because she’s married to Newt in cannon. As a potterhead I do agree that it’s money grabbing. Additionally, I know I’ll be angry at some point because I bet JK and Warner will be too scared to touch upon the ‘friendship’that we all know is really romance between Grindelwald and Dumbledore.
where are you looking at the cast list for film 2? The list I see has Katherine Waterson as the second lead. It is substantially the same list, only with Zoe Kravits as Lastrange. Though I agree that her conflict regarding being good/belonging and assisting people who need aid (including Newt) is well done. Though I though Jacob was awesome.
@Laura: I checked IMDB after I watched the movie and she wasn’t listed at the time. The cast list may have been updated recently.