# Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - Seen it thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 21, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660 "2016-11-21T16:58:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/41 "2016-11-24T04:03:52Z")
Did anyone else find it odd how Graves interacted with Creedence? It was almost predatory. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/42 "2016-11-24T09:25:00Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Remember, those were Aurors doing that. They are the strongest of the strong wizards, and have a particularly broad range of knowledge. Other wizards tend to be just as specialized as muggles in their areas of interest. We’ve seen Dumbledore do it, and the potions professor guy, but they had a much smaller mess, and anyway Dumbledore is outstanding in his field(s). Maybe it wasn’t a matter of spellcasting skills but rather a matter of resources. Maybe fixing all that damage required them to tap into massive magical reserves, power stored over decades and at considerable expense, as well as requiring the use of expensive, specialized equipment just not available to private wizards. Remember, those were government wizards doing the repairs. It was the wizard world version of a billion-dollar FEMA cleanup. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/43 "2016-11-24T15:54:49Z")
Pretty sure The Ancient One popped in and lent a hand. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/44 "2016-11-24T19:46:05Z")
I found it disturbing how easy they condemned wizards to death and the cavalier method involved. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Woodhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@Miss\_Woodhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Woodhouse)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/45 "2016-11-26T04:18:16Z")
I wasn’t as thrown by the death sentence. I think it was pretty apparent in the HP series that the magical community is pretty ok with a dictatorial style of government. There put up with a lot of oversight and lack of basic trial rights that the average American would very much be bothered by. Fudge and his cronies had a lot of power. It follows that the American magical government would be similar. The fear of being found out by the muggles has made them hand over an awful lot of rights. (It’s a common theme in Rowling’s HP stories.) ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/46 "2016-11-26T11:38:29Z")
Yeah - look how easily mainstream magical society turned into good little Voldemort followers in _Deathly Hollows_. A purportedly modern democratic society doesn’t collapse that easily unless it’s already completely rotten from within. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/47 "2016-11-26T11:44:05Z")
For the real world, look at Hitler and the Soviet Union. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/48 "2016-11-26T20:28:11Z")
Saw it. It was much more dark than the HP films sans the 7th. And even there some of the very dark themes (rape, child abuse) were subtext. Here it was overt. I admit to being annoyed by the term “No-Maj”. OTH, despite my fears of pandering to US audiences, the film really took some potshots at America, unfair potshots IMO. Why did the curvy blonde witch like the fat guy? Not that as a paid up member of the fat guy club, I minded too much? ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/49 "2016-11-26T22:22:45Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Why did the curvy blonde witch like the fat guy? She could read minds, presumably she found something she liked about him. He seemed like an honest genuine person. ---
**Author:** ![appleaday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@appleaday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleaday)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2016, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/50 "2016-11-27T04:58:39Z")
Saw it this afternoon, and thoroughly enjoyed. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so intense (e.g., child abuse, the-almost-execution scene, and so forth). ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2016, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/51 "2016-11-27T05:02:14Z")
I liked it better than I thought I would. I didn’t want to punch Eddie in the face even once, and that’s a big improvement over other movies I’ve seen him in. And I was oddly glad that the mention of the shells being silver was circled back to. There’s one thing I missed, though. Towards the end Graves mentioned that Creedence had “another” sister. Who else was he supposed to be related to other than the adopted mother and little Modesty? The 20-something woman who tells the kids she’ll know if they through away the leaflets? > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Did anyone else find it odd how Graves interacted with Creedence? It was almost predatory. I’m sure that was done quite deliberately to make adult viewers uncomfortable. It wasn’t a bad take on what someone like Graves might have done to an already abused kid to get him to comply. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/52 "2016-11-28T13:26:16Z")
Saw it yesterday with my kids, we all enjoyed it. It was nice to see the wizarding world from an adult point of view - no teenage angst, no kids trying to fix things themselves because the adults won’t tell them anything, no Ron. I did think the weakest point was the 2 separate plots, and the problems in merging them together. And Kowalski was absolutely our favorite character, it’s a shame he won’t be back for the sequels. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > 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. In the books, the students start to learn non-vocalized spells in their final few years - I forget exactly how it goes, but they do say it’s much harder to cast spells silently. And the final 2 movies absolutely had lots of battle scenes without vocalizing. I think the director realized having dozens of extras constantly yelling “Incendio” and “Confringo!” just makes a scene look stupid. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > 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 think their execution method is _meant_ to be merciful - they extracted her best memories so she’d want to go into the death pool. It was only when Newt escaped and Tina realized what was going on that she started to freak out. > [@Quartz](#): > > 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. No stinger. > [@magnusblitz](#): > > 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. Are you sure? All we know is that he stole it sometime between the end of his friendship with Dumbledore and 1945. > [@TruCelt](#): > > Too bizarre, I didn’t notice him! Was he playing that Graves fellow? Colin Farrell played Graves. But when he transformed to Grindelwald at the end, it was Depp playing Grindelwald. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/53 "2016-11-28T14:40:01Z")
I thought to read minds, you had to actively try to do so, and it was a learnt art, not something inherent. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/54 "2016-11-28T14:46:04Z")
I liked it a lot. Much of it reminded me of _Doctor Who_ – Redmayne looked something like Matt Smith, and there were scenes that were like the Fourth Doctor explaining events to the companion. And, of course, the suitcase was bigger on the inside. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rowling was influenced by the show. Of course, it was obvious from his first appearance who Grindelwald was. > [@elfkin477](#): > > There’s one thing I missed, though. Towards the end Graves mentioned that Creedence had “another” sister. Who else was he supposed to be related to other than the adopted mother and little Modesty? The 20-something woman who tells the kids she’ll know if they through away the leaflets? In a few of the shots, they showed a second girl working on the envelopes. I suspect the character was cut out of the final film. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/55 "2016-11-28T14:49:52Z")
The books and previous movies use the term “Legilimens” for anyone good at legilimency, with no implication that it’s inherent. It has been pretty much established that wizards can be much more talented in a particular area of magic than others, so Queenie being good at it isn’t implausible. And how do we know she wasn’t trying to read minds? It could come so easy to her that she just does it automatically. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/56 "2016-11-28T15:07:16Z")
I had a moment where I chuckled at the thought that Ron Perlman was finally in a genre picture where he isn’t all covered in makeup and instead is CGI. Was there any explanation why his fingers were twisted backwards? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2016, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/57 "2016-11-28T23:28:54Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > On the one hand Eddie Redmayne was clearly doing a Matt Smith impression. I have no idea who Matt Smith is, but if Eddie Redmayne is impersonating him, he must have been doing it for the last six years. He’s playing Newt exactly the same way he played Jack Builder back in _The Pillars of the Earth_. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/58 "2016-11-29T01:17:32Z")
Well, Smith started playing the Doctor at the same time. “Impersonation” may be too strong a term, but he does look a lot like Matt Smith and had similar mannerisms. The role also is very reminiscent of several of the Doctors (especially Tom Baker) in the way he was rapidly explaining things to his companion. Rowling would have been at the right age to have grown up on \* Doctor Who\* and was ten when Tom Baker took on the role, so she would have seen him into her teens, and there’s a lot of Fourth Doctor Whimsey throughout the Potter books. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/59 "2016-11-29T13:20:23Z")
Yes, I definitely got a strong Tom Baker vibe from Newt’s character. Especially with the No-Maj/Earthling getting swept into his world, and just going with it. And the scarf. BTW, did anyone pick up on his war service? When he’s talking to Kowalski, he said he spent the war in the Ukraine working with Ironbelly dragons. Later in the scene with the MACUSA, someone recognizes him, and it turns out his brother is a war hero. Clearly laying some foundation for future movie plots. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660/60 "2016-11-29T13:56:19Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > I have no idea who Matt Smith is, but if Eddie Redmayne is impersonating him, he must have been doing it for the last six years. He’s playing Newt exactly the same way he played Jack Builder back in _The Pillars of the Earth_. It was kind of a combination of both. Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor was very quirky, fast-talking, had an angular stalking stride, and wore a long coat, short pants, boots, and a bow tie. Jack Builder was very shy and awkward and nervous. Redmayne was channelling them both, I guess. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-seen-it-thread/772660.md?page=4)