This article titled "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – discuss with spoilers" was written by Ben Child, for theguardian.com on Wednesday 16th November 2016 13.12 UTCIt has conjured up an impressive 90% “fresh” rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, making Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them easily one of the year’s best-reviewed mainstream movies so far. But is this first of a whopping five planned instalments about swashbuckling magizoologist Newt Scamander and his witchy pals good enough to follow the Harry Potter saga into the record books? Here’s a chance to give your own verdict on the movie’s key talking points.
The new team
Harry, Ron and Hermione who? JK Rowling’s famous key trio of Hogwarts students haven’t even been born in the new timeline and setting – a fearful and terrifyingly polarised 1920s New York riven by a series of apparently sorcerous events. But any misgivings over their absence is more than made up for by the addition of a brand new quartet: Eddie Redmayne’s Newt joins magical sisters Porpentina and Queenie Goldstein – respectively a former auror at the Magical Congress of the United States of America (Macusa) and a Monroesque mind-reader – and the portly No-Maj (American muggle) Jacob Kowalski, who’s just trying to get his bakery business off the ground when he accidentally swaps briefcases with Scamander and finds himself plunged straight down the wizarding rabbit hole.
Is this the team that will head up all five Fantastic Beasts adventures? Rowling hinted so at a recent fan event, and on this evidence we’re in excellent company. Redmayne’s all dithering young fogey charm, Katherine Waterston’s Tina is sharp-minded and serious without being remotely Hermione-esque, Alison Sudol’s Queenie is a flirty, sophic sweetie and Dan Fogler’s genial, hearty Jacob is surely the find of the franchise. Now Rowling just has to work out how to write him back in for part two.
The staggering special effects
Fantastic Beasts’ creature designers surely deserve at least 50 points in the Hogwarts house cup for magicking up some of the most marvellous monsters ever seen on the big screen. The Harry Potter films featured perfectly passable beasties, even if Rowling occasionally borrowed too much from Tolkien and ancient Greek mythology. But creatures like the kleptomaniac Niffler, disappearing Demiguise and majestic Thunderbird seem to have emerged from some uncharted, deeper level of digital Wonderland, so stupendously rendered are they. Moreover, there’s an urgency to the CGI-work in Fantastic Beasts that’s entirely suitable for a movie set in the adult wizarding world. Disapparating sequences now resemble almost instantaneous supercharged whirlwinds, while the “obscurial” released by Ezra Miller’s poor Credence Barebone is like a searing, teeming, chaotically evil black gas. It is cinematic defibrillation of the highest order: Rowling’s new tale might hail from perennial Potter director David Yates, but the boy wizard’s adventures were never this viscerally intense.
The wizarding world-building
So where do we go from here? Rowling says that, just as with the Potter books, she already knows the basic outline of her final chapter, who dies and who makes it all the way to the end credits. We also know that each of the five Fantastic Beasts movies will take place in a different major city, conjuring up the tantalising prospect of a huge expansion of the wizarding world into all corners of the globe.
What’s already certain is that this new magical saga already stands on its own feet. It may have started out as an accident, but Rowling’s latest creation is far more than just a clumsily manufactured Harry Potter prequel series, a cheap conjurer’s trick to keep the money rolling in. This is a fully fledged new franchise with its own uniquely pitched personality, written directly for the screen and working much better there than its novel-sourced predecessor ever did.
The adult cast probably helps. Daniel Radcliffe admits he still winces when he watches some of the Potter films, but none of the key Fantastic Beasts cast are ever likely to look back in dismay. Five movies, at this stage, looks easy peasy.
The revelation that Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald was lurking beneath Percival Graves’s skin
It may not be the best time in Depp’s life for him to play a villain, and some critics have mused that the late reveal could have been better handled. But presuming it was always Rowling’s plan to unveil Colin Farrell’s Graves as the dark wizard in disguise, how else could it have been done? There was an element of Scooby Doo-style “I would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for you pesky kids” to the big moment, but I thought a fittingly jowly Depp gave good sneering villain in his brief cameo. Will his escape from Macusa’s clutches spark Newt into rendezvousing with Tina and the New Yorkers once again in part two?
JK Rowling the multitalented
Some doubted Rowling’s credentials as a screenwriter when Fantastic Beasts was first announced. But the success of her debut film surely proves the author is well positioned to work her magic.
Hollywood will surely be beating a path to the writer’s door if Fantastic Beasts repeats the huge success of the Potter films at the box office, even if she will presumably be kept busy writing the next four instalments in the series. Rowling the film-maker is already a thing. Rowling the director? Stranger things have happened.
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