The female lead mentioned the title as a good title for the book Newt was working on (as he was getting on the ship to back to England) and his eyes lit up as if to say, yes, that’s a perfect title.
Went in with low expectations and enjoyed it less than I had feared. I enjoyed the Potter books and movies less and less as they progressed. Didn’t expect much of this spinoff.
A lot of my dislike for this movie has to do with my personal preferences, I imagine. So much of it was CGI, I felt as though I might as well be watching a cartoon. Then, when you add in the wizards’ apparently limitless abilities, I didn’t see any reason to buy into any real human emotions. Why give a shit about anything, or worry about what will happen, when the answer is always “MAGIC!”
Seriously, they can rebuild a city, but can’t design a functioning suitcase latch? :smack:
Redmayne was really irritating. I liked the baker.
So much of it was done for the whizbang 3D action movie effect - which I find wearisome. Take the end in the subway. Blackcloud boy goes bursting up out of the subway, through the magic dome. They show Jon Voight’s younger son looking amazed/pleased/something - then cloudboy shoots right back into the subway so the wizards can kill him. What the hell was THAT about?
The child abuse shit was really ugly - IMO.
Clearly set out to be a huge money maker - which I’m sure it will be. Just won’t get any more from me. I really was surprised at how much I disliked this film. I find CGI action movies so boring.
I kind of assumed Newt was going to be the POV character in this new series of films but now I am hearing it will focus the rise and fall of Grindelwald and Newt will just be cameos. A little disappointed because I liked him and Tina.
Only in the same way that the Harry Potter films was about Voldemort, is my expectation. My guess is it will be about Newt’s worldwide adventures, helpfully expanding the mythos for the fans, with Grindelwald’s simultaneously developing story being a constant thorn in his side.
I am also hoping Dumbledore will be played by Jared Harris, who not only is Richard Harris’s son but also looks a bit like young Michael Gambon, and more importantly is a very wizardy looking actor.
Except Jared Harris is 55 years old now, and isn’t this supposed to be a younger Dumbledore?
I read the thread title completely wrong. What a difference an ‘r’ makes. Carry on…
Because he and Dumbledore sought out the deathly hollows for the invincible power they represented. Grindelwald acquired the Elder Wand and Dumbledore won it from him in a duel. He then went on to borrow the cloak of invisibility from Harry’s parents in order to study it. He also attempted to use the resurrection stone.
I enjoyed it. I’ve never read the Potter books, and I’ve only seen a few of the movies, but this one worked as a stand alone for me. Lots of 3D goodness, action, magic, creatures…I was entertained. i also earned “good husband points” for taking my wife. The Druidess has read all the books and seen all the movies, and has introduced me to the Potterverse through the movies.
My non-expert take on it is that it was the savagely puritanical repression and demonization, especially the physical beatings, that produced the frantic efforts at magical suppression that in turn formed the obscurus that eventually destroyed the child.
In Harry’s day, on the other hand, while the Dursleys were definitely anti-magic and constantly trying to stop and condemn Harry’s manifestations of it, they weren’t incessantly flogging him and screaming about his eternal damnation and keeping him under constant terrorizing observation. His childhood was spent being mostly oblivious of and occasionally bewildered by the inexplicable things that somehow happened to him. Not obsessively focusing on his alleged “evilness” in a pathological stew of terror and shame and seething resentment.
Yes, I think it would be consistent with the Potterverse to have occasional obscurials even in today’s world, among non-magical communities that are SERIOUSLY freaked out over witchcraft. But I bet modern wizards are better at detecting/rescuing/curing them than their counterparts were nearly a century ago.
I enjoyed the movie very much, plot clunkage and all.
I enjoyed it well enough.
Newt Scamander irritated me during the first part of the movie. Say something! He just kind of stood there looking dumb and not answering questions that could easily have cleared some things up. Similarly, Porpentina just stood there and got arrested for not informing the Mag Congress about Scamander, WHEN SHE DID TRY TO TELL THEM! Arg.
Okay, so the President of the congress is black. That’s nice. But um, why were all the aurors white? Only one black member? Just the one? All the others white? Not even a native american wizard or witch?
I gathered that Grindelwald was a bad guy from his occasional mention, but his reveal at the end still didn’t really impress me that much. I guess I should have been all “oh no! Not Grindelwald!” Oh well. Not as up with Potter lore as I should be. What did he say to Newt as he was being led away? Something something all die. I am looking forward to some future flashbacks of him and Dumbledore, and I wouldn’t mind seeing how he managed to take over the real Graves.
I went to the 3D Imax to see this because I’m a gluten for punishment. I collect stereoviews and that entices me to see these movies. While it’s entertaining to see creatures buzzing in your face it really mucks up the quality of the rest of the film. I’m not sure if it was a product of the 3D video recording process but much of the film was beyond the field of focus. If there were 2 people talking to each other one of them was out of focus as well as all the background scenery.
IMO they put a great deal of effort into the scenery and it was lost in all of the out of focus shots. My thrill with the novelty of 3D died early in the film and I found myself wanting to see things in focus. I would have preferred the higher resolution of IMAX reminiscent of Cinerama. I would have felt more drawn into the movie without it jumping out at me.
I was so distracted by the special effects that I felt I missed out on the film. the roll of baker (sorry for play on words) played by actor Dan Fogler was entertaining. The CG graphics were very good despite the 3G side show.
Take your kids to the 3D version but rent the blue ray.
This is a common theme in kid’s movies, because it’s a common theme in their lives. They either don’t have the words, or don’t get the chance, or simply freeze up and so can’t explain themselves when opprobrium is pouring down upon them in gallon buckets.
Typo of the year award.
Oh, and you lot are nuts. I loved Redmayne in the role. He seemed like exactly the sort of guy who would become obsessed with animals and spend his life searching the back reaches of the world trying to save them. Gentle heart, small and wiry, not quite comfortable with full human interaction . . .he was great!
I was eating toast, what do want?
Dumbledore was born in 1881, and this movie is set in 1926, making Dumbledore 45, which is well within the range Jared Harris could play for a beardy wizardy character.
JK Rowling tweeted that the last of the five movies will be set in 1945. I’m not sure which movie will feature Dumbledore, so I’m not sure whether Jared Harris will be able to play the right age, when that movie is made.
Huh? Of course there are other non-white MACUSA members and non-white Aurors.
And I can’t find an image, but I’m pretty sure that in the scene where Newt was pleading with the Congress that his animals weren’t dangerous, there was one wizard in the foreground who seemed pretty clearly intended to be Native American.
I agree. Newt’s obviously not really a “people person”, whether we read that as some variety of ASD or just general shyness and awkwardness. So it made perfect sense that he wasn’t a very good communicator, especially at first. And it made his opening up to others by the end seem like real character development. But we’ll have to wait till the next movie to get a real handle on it; this film, like the concurrent Dr Strange, was heavy on set-up and exposition, laying the groundwork for sequels.
One thing I can’t help wondering, in the category of Questions Nobody Would Have Dreamed It Possible To Ask Twenty Years Ago: Why can’t you just Accio a niffler? Seems like an awful lot of ruckus and destruction could have been avoided with a simple spell.
Harry.potter.wikia.com is under the impression that most animals are immune to being accio’d despite going on to record several instances of people accio-ing animals.
This is a bad road to go down. If repairing goddamn buildings is as easy as holding out your wand and your other hand and walking smoothly down an I-beam, why is the Burrow such a pit? If Tina and Queenie can change their regular clothes into flapper chic with a tap on the head, why did Ron’s dress robes look like a dank dressing gown? I try to avoid asking these questions as it inevitably showcases how badly arranged JKR’s worldbuilding is.
'Kay.
[QUOTE=Inner Stickler]
If repairing goddamn buildings is as easy as holding out your wand and your other hand and walking smoothly down an I-beam, why is the Burrow such a pit?
[/quote]
Oh, I can spitball that: Muggle infrastructure is much simpler to repair with magic than magic-created buildings are. I think canon bears me out on this: when, e.g., Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic suffers major structural damage, it’s not just a five-minute fix. Likewise, The Burrow, being an old wizarding dwelling kluged up over the generations with multiple crusty (and in some cases now obsolete) old spells, would be a horrendous PITA to actually rebuild.
[QUOTE=Inner Stickler]
If Tina and Queenie can change their regular clothes into flapper chic with a tap on the head, why did Ron’s dress robes look like a dank dressing gown?
[/quote]
Easy: that type of illusion is much too complicated and specialized for a (fairly mediocre) fourth-year General Magic student.
In fact, I could expand that to a general observation about domestic (clothes, food, cleaning) and healthcare magic getting rather short shrift at a more academically-oriented place like Hogwarts. If you like it as a hobby or for homemaking (e.g., Hermione with her knitting, Mrs. Weasley and her cooking), you study and practice it on your own. Or if you need it for your career, you get trained in it (e.g., Tonks in a dangerous line of work as an Auror can fix a broken nose, Madam Pomfrey is a trained healer of some kind). But spells for clothing and feeding and caring for yourself and your surroundings are not part of your ordinary schooling.
[QUOTE=Inner Stickler]
I try to avoid asking these questions as it inevitably showcases how badly arranged JKR’s worldbuilding is.
[/QUOTE]
In some cases I agree with you, but I’m not sure that either of those two questions exposes any irreconcilable inconsistency.
It was better than I was afraid it was going to be, but I didn’t LOVE it. It was a fun movie experience, but not the strongest example of the Potterverse. Most of it was being a little too long and I didn’t like a lot of the casting and acting. Like all of the more KNOWN actors I thought were hammy and/or distracting. The lesser known actors were generally better and more enjoyable to watch. I really am unhappy with the casting of Depp so I don’t know if this is the last one I’ll see in theaters.
I think the strangest part for me was all the American accents. It’s so weird after the other 8 films. Not a bad thing, but took a lot of getting used to.
It was definitely better written than The Cursed Child. The difference between written by JKR and based off an idea of hers is clearly apparent.
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).
And maybe we should ask not why they haven’t fixed the burrow, but why it hasn’t fallen down. Any architect would tell you that only magic could be supporting that structure. LOL!
But it’s also true that the Weasleys just aren’t the sort to care about appearances. They aren’t interested in a trophy home, and they have six children. So, you know, clean house/happy kids, pick one!
That’s true of everything though. Hogwarts is like a Prep school with maybe junior college added in. Real Doctors (Medi-wizards?) are trained in the hospitals, athletes on their teams, etc.
Not every wizard can do every kind of magic. They have their specialties and talents like everyone else.
Too bizarre, I didn’t notice him! Was he playing that Graves fellow?
. . . toddles off to IMDB