Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

It would be easy to dismiss Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as little more than a misguided studio attempt to drag out a very profitable franchise that by all means concluded. Can't blame anyone for looking at this and imagining something akin to the disastrously stretched out Hobbit trilogy. And yet, with the strength of J.K. Rowling writing the screen play and long time Potter director David Yates at the helm, this sort of prequel might actually be one of the best films in the series.

What is a bit refreshing about it is that as a prequel, it does not connect in any sort of substantial way to the events of the original octalogy. There are passing references to Hogwarts. Albus Dumbledore's name gets dropped. There are Easter eggs that the die-hard Potter nerd will catch, but none of them matter to the plot of this film. Instead, Fantastic Beasts really just expands the world and makes it surprisingly more interesting than it already was, all by simply expanding into America.

Yes, this makes it sound like a very American-centric view, but one of the problems with the other Potter films is that they all take place in pretty much the same places. It was almost always Hogwarts, which as a location became a bit of a drag. Otherwise, it was just a few London locations and then random small towns and forests in Britain. Expanding to America really gave the world a more global feel. Goblet of Fire is the first real hint at the idea of a magic world that extends across the planet, but Fantastic Beasts gives us our first actual look at it.

1920s New York is just inherently a more unique setting, but having the film take place there also allows organic ways to explore the mystical world. The American magic society is not entirely the same as the British one, and it goes beyond what terms they use. (What Brits call "muggles," Yanks call "nomags," and I still wish Rowling had workshopped both a little bit more.) Interestingly in America, wizards need a permit to carry their wands. They have also banned the breeding of magical creatures. There also seems to be more conservative rules regarding wizard and nomag mingling (as in, it is against the law to do so). Characters touch upon this a bit in dialogue, hinting at the history of "witches in America" as a reason. It was actually really clever to see them use actual US history, referring to things like the Salem trials without ever explicitly spelling it out, to establish the lore. Finally, it is interesting to note the magical governmental differences. Where in Britain, there is more of a parliamentary system headed by a prime minister, the United States has a Congress, lead by a President. Actually seeing differences between the British and American magical worlds goes a long way to making it all feel legitimately global.

The story is also rather dark. Instead of starting as something for children and maturing as its base readers aged, Fantastic Beasts simply starts with more mature themes and tones. There are even aspects of the film that are legitimately creepy. That meshes with the more murky color palette used by David Yates, who used a similar visual style when he directed The Order of the Phoenix all the way through The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2. There's a graphical consistency to Yates' Potter films, which really helps connect the worlds despite not actually connecting the central stories. The film itself touches upon several intriguing themes. Though Rowling denied intentionally paralleling World War II and the rise of Adolf Hitler with her Harry Potter story, it is hard not to notice the similarities. Here, where the story occurs in the Roaring Twenties, there seems to be a similar parallel. All in all, the motivation of the central villain (and the set up for the larger threat) isn't ultimately that different from the other Potter films, but it seems to fit more with the time period.

(As an aside: the story of a wizard supremacist trying to destroy the comparatively progressive magic society has some more power to it given recent political events. The central villain's motto very much could be, "Make magic great again.")

Some might complain that the "big reveal" at the end - showing who the villain truly is - was disappointing, since they made it pretty clear from the start who you should assume is the villain, but that misses the point they were going for. While our ragtag group of heroes doesn't know the truth, the audience has been given a pretty clear indication of what to suspect the truth is. It isn't about maintaining a mystery, nor is it about building to some big twist. Instead, this creates a tension with the audience. We are in on the secret while we watch. It makes viewers pay close attention to see through all the intrigue, and increases a sense of concern as we see where things are headed before the characters do. While Kowalski, a nomag, functions to serve as a surrogate for the audience (allowing reasonable exposition dumps), the structure of the film isn't to get movie-goers to feel similarly to the characters.

What also makes Fantastic Beasts stand out is that for a Hollywood blockbuster, they appear to let actors...well...act! Eddie Redmayne's character Newt is such an oddball, and he plays it with a ton of nuance and subtlety that it actually feels like he was playing an actual character that he helped bring to the screen. Ezra Miller's Credence similarly uses body language very efficiently to define his character. In fact, he probably doesn't get more than a dozen lines of dialogue. The acting was a bit spotty in the early Potter films due to so many cast members being literal children. Daniel Radcliffe has grown into one of the best actors working today (with the most amazing and unusual resume). Emma Watson emerged as a solid actor and a powerhouse of a person overall, too. It can be a little brutal watching some of those Potter films though. Here, it is a cast of entirely adults, doing entirely adult things, in an entirely adult world, and they allow the actors to actually play characters rather than simply fulfill narrative functions. Even Dan Fogle's goofball, every-man Kowalski is surprisingly entertaining for such a relatively simple character.

In many ways, Fantastic Beasts feels a bit like a much better version of Sorcerer's Stone, wherein the larger, over-arching story is only just touched upon a bit while the world-building is its primary focus. Yet here, that wider narrative gets more attention, and the world-building is actually more interesting. The lack of blatant connectivity to the other Potter films, save some passing references, actually makes it very accessible. One does not need to have seen any other installment to fully enjoy this one.

Of course, it isn't perfect. There are some holes, and the ending is a bit contrived for the sake of extending melodramatic beats. One of the problems with a world wherein magic exists that can achieve anything is that unless a character dies, they have a default means to essentially "retcon" the entire final act. In this case, so much of the film is about wizards worrying that they will be exposed to the non-wizards, and this results in a crazy finale that does. That is, until they use a convenient magic spell to wipe all their memories and put everything back to normal, so, no harm no foul, I guess? Still, slightly disappointing ending to the film doesn't quite ruin what is otherwise a surprisingly captivating story that is building for more films. I'm not sure if this cast of characters will be center stage for the rest of it. Part of me thinks it isn't strong enough to carry an entire series! Newt was a refreshing lead because he wasn't part of some prophesy, nor was he just inherently a super wizard. He's ok at magic because he is an adult who has long since graduated from Hogwarts. It would be tough to go four more films centered around him, though. While I hope these characters remain present, it doesn't exactly seem set up for them to carry an entire series' arc.

I was admittedly unsure going into this film. I always thought it was the characters that made me like the world of Harry Potter, not the world itself. And yet, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was one of the best Hollywood films of the year, and successfully captured my interest in the world itself. It helps to have Rowling writing the script. The franchise itself has largely been one of the better movie series from Hollywood because of her ability to write well-structured narratives, entertaining and lovable characters, inject parallels to the real world, and sets things up really well.  They also do a great job making sure to include moments where characters actually stop to smell the roses, as it were. In the initial octalogy, no matter how much he sees or how dark the story gets, Harry always has a couple of moments to stare and smile at new wonders he witnesses. It is important to have these moments, to remind the audience of the same thing. These are some of the most visually interesting films coming from Hollywood. Even though they get dark, and we've seen a lot of this before, we should not forget that, and should embrace the joy this world provides as well. With Rowling writing, the spin-off "prequel" is poised to do some great things.