I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen a thread for this movie yet!
I saw it over the weekend. My take is that it’s fine but clunky. I think the movie suffers for not having been a book first and allowing JKR to expand and develop the characters that way before condensing everything into a screenplay.
I haven’t actually seen the last couple Harry Potter films so I don’t know if this decay was present in them as well, but I felt that the Fantastic Beasts movie had started to lose some of the particularly Harry Potter-esque stylings that make it stand out among other fantasy and magic movies. Fighting in this movie consisted of a lot of throwing white explosions at each other and very few vocalized spells, as an example.
I will probably see the other films but I won’t make a special effort to see them in the theater.
Just saw this yesterday, and there were a lot of little points that I have questions about:
[ol]
[li]So, wizards that don’t get trained in magic or a magic-friendly environment by age 10 die, and before then manifest an obscurus. But Harry Potter was eleven when he was admitted into Hogwarts. Before that, he did some accidental magic here and there, but nothing on obscuras level. So … is there a cure developed later? Some kind of blessing bestowed upon all children three generations later?[/li][li]Why did Grindelwald have an amulet with the mark of the Deathly Hallows? Does he have some connection to the Peverell family?[/li][li]Something magically sealed with a lock charm has no defense against a brute-force kick?[/li][li]Why take all of the creatures around with you when you’re main purpose of travel is just the one storm eagle?[/li][/ol]
Anyway, those are mostly minor points that don’t really take away from the movie on the whole. I’m sure the first two will be explained by later movies.
From a plot perspective, though, I don’t see how the story continues much further with the current cast. Grindelwald is obviously going to be a reoccurring character, which makes this series all about his fight with Dumbledore. But that fight doesn’t happen for another twenty years (I think so, anyway; wasn’t WWII supposed to be the muggle side of the conflict? My Potterverse lore is lacking). So this is going to be a long build-up, and probably not with most of these characters.
It was a mildly interesting tale, but there were the two purposefully misleading bits held back the story in an attempt at drama. The little girl was not an obscuras - big surprise (unless you’re familiar with tropes, in which case the emo Credence is at the top of your list). The beasts from the case were not responsible for any deaths - what a shocker (except to the audience). It needed something to deliver actual drama, and it just wasn’t there for me.
We have a name for this in literature: “protection from editors.” When an author gets famous enough, they can write anything, and their text doesn’t get touched because, well, who cares? The readers will buy it anyway. This feels like a very similar thing, but I’m not aware of a term for it.
I enjoyed it. It felt a little over stuffed withe exposition but I was excited to return to this world and see how America worked within it which forgave a lot.
To be honest I thought it would end on much more of a cliff hanger than it did which was actually appreciated.
I think regarding Harry, he never tried to suppress his magic because up until Hagrid’s arrival, he didn’t ‘know’ it was magic? That is, Harry’s was still able to find an outlet because he wasn’t actively fighting against being magical or strange.
He must have had some fascination with the Deathly Hallows because wasn’t Dumbledore defeating him how Dumbledore gained control of the Elder Wand?
Yeah that was a particularly silly moment.
The impression I got was that at this moment, few other than Newt see the value of rehabilitating some of these magical creatures and there was no one he felt he could trust with the rest of them while he released the eagle back into the wild.
Yep, exactly. In addition, it’s obviously a set up for the (now 5 part) movie series. I also thought it dragged a bit in the middle. It was a fun way to spend a couple hours, but nothing all that special.
I saw it on Friday night and was underwhelmed. I was trying to figure out why. Perhaps it’s because the Harry Potter films had an overall story arc (and each followed an academic year), so we knew where we were going. Also, when I first heard about the movie, I expected a travelogue in which he finds and captures or befriends the various creatures. This thing was crazy intense, and not as family-friendly as I’d expect (not that I care, as I saw it alone).
I liked it. To me it had some of the wonder of the early Harry Potter films, without the doom and gloom and despair of the later ones. It was just fun. I don’t know where the future films will go. Perhaps they will develop an similar dark arc, which would be a shame.
I enjoyed this one much more than any of the last 4 or so of the Potter movies.
Ooh, also, can I just say that the american wizarding version of the death penalty is macabre as all get out and not the method I would think a government on the up and up would be doing?
I went in with no expectations. I enjoyed in immensely. The plot had some holes but so do most movies. The creatures and NYC were rendered incredibly, I’m amazed by the constant advances in the CGI art.
Watched it today. I really dislike Eddie Redmayne, so was happy for any scenes he did not participate in, as I really enjoyed Jacob, Tina and Mr Graves. Film was quite nice. But knowing that they are trying to turn it into a franchise is really off-putting.
I saw it this afternoon. Was there a stinger? I was disappointed with the ending: the romantic inside me would have liked to see him ask her to come with him.
I liked it, but it definitely had issues. Felt very much like they tried to sew two completely different plots (Newt letting the beasts out, and the Grindelwald/obscurial/wizard politics plot) and they didn’t mesh very well. I know a lot of people like Harry Potter because of the creativity of the setting and went for the beasts; personally I don’t really care and was much more interested in the wizard politics and history, which gets a bit of a shaft here… movie definitely left me wanting more. The obscurial thing never really clicked for me, either. Didn’t like the way the end confrontation went either with the lame fight (white lights!) and Scooby-Doo unmasking of the villain.
Despite all that, I did like it overall… I did care for the main characters (even if they got a bit short-shifted by the over-packed plot) and had fun for the most part. Though I did start off kinda disliking Newt just because he’s silly for not buying a more secure suitcase.
And on top of that, Grindelwald should have the Elder Wand at this point (never looked closely enough during the film to tell if the one had was it, though). If it is, that raises a whoooole lotta questions about the end fight.
If you’re going to have a movie called Fantastic Beasts, it will probably concentrate on the fantastic beasts a lot of the time.
On the one hand Eddie Redmayne was clearly doing a Matt Smith impression. On the other hand, if Matt Smith had been cast (he was in the short list) he would’ve been just redoing the Eleventh Doctor, so I guess that’s good.
I was very impressed by all the lead actors I didn’t know. They were excellent.