Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

My friend and I took the time out of our really busy weekend to go see “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” starring Eddie Redmayne. The verdict: Redmayne is gorgeous and this movie really is fantastic!

It starts with a montage of newspaper headlines to situate the viewer in the environment, which is New York City in 1926. The movie itself is not super steeped in the time period, although there are references to Prohibition and the First World War. There’s also less overt racism and sexism than history would have had, but the xenophobia of the time finds another way of making itself present.

The main conflict involves the relationship between the Muggles and the wizarding world. The wizards have been persecuted and are now in hiding. This means that there is a ban on magical creatures, making things difficult for Newt Scamanda. However this also leads to small children with magical powers being nervous to show them and develop them. If children repress their magical abilities they create what is called an obscurus, which is essentially a ball of dark energy that lashes out and destroys anything in its path. There is one rampant in New York City, but Newt’s creatures are being blamed instead.

This is quite a clever conflict, as there is no definitive “bad guy.” The Muggles are just living their lives, and the wizards are trying to protect themselves. The “bad guy” here is our fear of anything different from us. There would not be an obscurus if people were accepting of others.

The movie does reference the Harry Potter series a little, Dumbledore comes up, and Grindelwald is mentioned as terrorizing Europe. There is also a necklace briefly shown with the Deathly Hallows symbol on it. For the most part, it is its own series which is really nice.

So I’m really excited for where this movie series is going to go next! Drop “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, this is the follow-up that we’ve really been waiting for!