We thought we said good-bye to Harry Potter in 2011 with the final film installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. We cried, we laughed and we let go as an entire generation made peace with the end of the adventures of the world famous boy wizard. A few years back rumor and rumblings begin surfacing that author J.K. Rowling was thinking of getting back into the Potter game. Rumor became fact, and fact became the new Harry Potter spin-off series/prequel: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And with great rejoicing we are welcomed back into the world of Harry Potter once again.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set 75 years before the events of the Harry Potter series: It’s 1926 and the fear of Gellert Grindelwald spreads throughout the wizarding world. Grindelwald wants the wizarding world to step out of hiding and control the Muggles and No-maj (non magic users) and he’ll stop at nothing to get power to achieve this goal. Thus our story begins in New York City as Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives with his magical suitcase full of all sorts of magical creatures. Due to plot and a funny mix up, Newt walks throughout the city where his case is accidentally switched with a No-maj’s case. Eventually he teams up with newfound friend Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein (Katherine Waterston).Together they find the No-maj who has the case, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who of course opened the case, letting some of the magical creature out.
It’s bad timing because there have been attacks against No-maj’s. With evidence leading back to Newt’s creatures, MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) lead by President Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) and her top man Percival Graves (Colin Farrell) imprison Newt, Tina and Jacob for being terrorists. MACUSA is unwilling to listen to reason due to the Grindewald scare. This leaves it up to Tina’s free-spirited and big-hearted sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), to get them out of prison and prove Newt’s creatures are not to blame, and save the day.
Of course there is a B-storyline that is just as important to the movie. J.K. knows how to craft a multi-layered story where everything is important. Samantha Morton plays Mary Lou Barebone, a narrow-minded No-Maj and the sinister leader of the New Salem Philanthropic Society (the NSPS, or “The Second-Salemers”), an extremist group whose goals include exposing and killing wizards and witches. She and her adopted son Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) are preaching about the existence of magical people and how these witches should be hunted. Without giving anything away, I’ll only say these two actors are wonderful and is each is chilling in their own way. Miller brings a creepy factor we’ve never seen before in a Potter film. Each scene with these two characters just keeps getting stranger and stranger until the very end when it all makes sense.
With new Potter movies we get to meet new characters that will just be as popular as our original three heroes. Redmayne, Waterston, Fogler and Sudol each bring to life their characters in such a way you feel like you’re meeting old friends instead of new characters. That’s really a credit to J.K.’s character creation and director David Yates, who understands her world and how to create for the visual medium.
Always one step ahead, K.W. and Yates have already planted the seeds for the future of this new franchise. Queenie is a Legilimens, which means she can read minds. After spotting a photograph of a mysterious woman in Scamander’s office, she telepathically establishes that she knows the woman pictured is Leta Lestrange, and tells Scamander as such. Although Newt politely asks Queenie to get out of his head, the pair of them spin the beginnings of a story: Lestrange and Newt were best friends, and maybe more, but have since drifted apart. Also mentioned in dialogue is Newt’s friendship with Albus Dumbledore. Already the brain starts playing with the how’s and whys, but J.K. will makes us wait to find out.
The special effects in the movie are amazing. Each animal looks real and you swear they are. The interaction between CGI creatures and actors looks good and believable. Some scenes are better than other of course, but over all it looks great. At one point in the movie due to plot we end up in a speakeasy nightclub run by Gnarlack, a gangster goblin, played by Ron Perlman. The scene is quick and has some beautiful elements in it, especially the details on Gnarlack. He’s real as far as I’m concerned. And pay close attention to the detail of his hands. It’s gross, and you’ll never look at hands the same.
Over all this is, no pun intended, a fantastic movie. As soon as it starts and you hear the old theme mix into the new theme you’re hooked. But let’s be honest, us “Potter-Heads” were hooked already! It’s an amazing new story with wonderful new characters, making an already brilliant world shine that much brighter.
