Lumos!
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (or as I will call it FB to save words) welcomes the audiences back to the wizarding world that they fell in love with a long time ago and are still very much fond of it. This time, however, the movie takes place 70 years before the events and adventures of our favorite boy who lived and has no source material to refer. It's a good thing that the screenwriter for the movie is J.K Rowling herself. The movie revolves around the magizoologist Newt Scamander who visits New York in search of finding lost magical creatures and to rescue and release some of them to their natural habitat. While on this journey, he makes friends (Queenie, Tina, and the muggle Jacob) and some enemies (primarily Percival Graves) who are after him and his briefcase full of magical beasts and also has a side motive that is revealed in the third act of the movie.
Eddie Redmayne is very charming and likable as Newt on the screen and you feel his love and emotional bond with the beasts. There was a message of tolerance and acceptance in the film amongst all the hatred and darkness which is also a reflection of the world we live in today. This has been the case with Rowling's writing even with Potter. Dan Fogler playing the No-Maj was a comic relief and also played his part fantastically. You sense his wonder for the wizarding community as if it was completely unknown to you (being fans already). The movie does assume that audiences are familiar with the Potter universe (atleast from the books but I am guessing most people have read the books :)) at some points but it never hits you over the head with constant references to the old saga. Katherine Waterston as Tina and Alison Sudol as Queenie were great as well. Queenie's chemistry and relationship with Jacob was the best to watch on screen. In fact, all the actors were great as their parts. The CGI for the creatures looks different from the Potter films and that in my opinion is because of the world and how different it is from Hogwarts. While that was a confined setting, this is a much larger scale and very different 1920s New York. And this leads me to the cinematography which was excellent and stunning especially the scale and era of New York that was captured. This movie set up future films very well and I am excited for all the unravellings that are about to happen. The director David Yates is familiar with this world and you could see that in the film. I was also impressed by the music by James Howard which had sprinklings of the Harry Potter film score but also stood out on its own. Oh, and talking about the beasts, the Niffler was the best one for me. I could watch his misadventures all day long.
J.K Rowling makes her debut as the script writer and in my opinion excels with the details awarded to the story and the characters. And that is one of the disadvantages for the movie as you feel the weight of trying to accommodate a lot of things in the movie. This did lead to some pacing issues where the shots change (some might say suddenly) from dark action to light comedy and vice versa. Ezra Miller's character reveal was a shock and good surprise but his final form felt unnatural even for this world. However, his story and eventual demise did sadden me. I did not see Gellert Grindelwald's appearance coming until the final few minutes which was great but when it was actually revealed, it was a little underwhelming perhaps because I have lost some of the Johnny Depp charm. I certainly hope he grows on me in the future films. I liked what Colin Farrell was doing with that character before the Depp reveal.
Readers might think of this post as negative but believe me I enjoyed this movie a lot and brought back old memories. Five years since the last Potter movie felt so long. It will always be hard to recreate something that you grew up with but FB does a good job.
Mischief Managed!
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (or as I will call it FB to save words) welcomes the audiences back to the wizarding world that they fell in love with a long time ago and are still very much fond of it. This time, however, the movie takes place 70 years before the events and adventures of our favorite boy who lived and has no source material to refer. It's a good thing that the screenwriter for the movie is J.K Rowling herself. The movie revolves around the magizoologist Newt Scamander who visits New York in search of finding lost magical creatures and to rescue and release some of them to their natural habitat. While on this journey, he makes friends (Queenie, Tina, and the muggle Jacob) and some enemies (primarily Percival Graves) who are after him and his briefcase full of magical beasts and also has a side motive that is revealed in the third act of the movie.Eddie Redmayne is very charming and likable as Newt on the screen and you feel his love and emotional bond with the beasts. There was a message of tolerance and acceptance in the film amongst all the hatred and darkness which is also a reflection of the world we live in today. This has been the case with Rowling's writing even with Potter. Dan Fogler playing the No-Maj was a comic relief and also played his part fantastically. You sense his wonder for the wizarding community as if it was completely unknown to you (being fans already). The movie does assume that audiences are familiar with the Potter universe (atleast from the books but I am guessing most people have read the books :)) at some points but it never hits you over the head with constant references to the old saga. Katherine Waterston as Tina and Alison Sudol as Queenie were great as well. Queenie's chemistry and relationship with Jacob was the best to watch on screen. In fact, all the actors were great as their parts. The CGI for the creatures looks different from the Potter films and that in my opinion is because of the world and how different it is from Hogwarts. While that was a confined setting, this is a much larger scale and very different 1920s New York. And this leads me to the cinematography which was excellent and stunning especially the scale and era of New York that was captured. This movie set up future films very well and I am excited for all the unravellings that are about to happen. The director David Yates is familiar with this world and you could see that in the film. I was also impressed by the music by James Howard which had sprinklings of the Harry Potter film score but also stood out on its own. Oh, and talking about the beasts, the Niffler was the best one for me. I could watch his misadventures all day long.
J.K Rowling makes her debut as the script writer and in my opinion excels with the details awarded to the story and the characters. And that is one of the disadvantages for the movie as you feel the weight of trying to accommodate a lot of things in the movie. This did lead to some pacing issues where the shots change (some might say suddenly) from dark action to light comedy and vice versa. Ezra Miller's character reveal was a shock and good surprise but his final form felt unnatural even for this world. However, his story and eventual demise did sadden me. I did not see Gellert Grindelwald's appearance coming until the final few minutes which was great but when it was actually revealed, it was a little underwhelming perhaps because I have lost some of the Johnny Depp charm. I certainly hope he grows on me in the future films. I liked what Colin Farrell was doing with that character before the Depp reveal.
Readers might think of this post as negative but believe me I enjoyed this movie a lot and brought back old memories. Five years since the last Potter movie felt so long. It will always be hard to recreate something that you grew up with but FB does a good job.
Mischief Managed!