To put my cards on the table, I am not a huge fan of either of the two "new" Potter-world tomes. Neither the play The Cursed Child nor the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them fills me with a great deal of joy.
I have written earlier about some of my concerns with the play. I don't think, however, that I have written much about the film.
I watched Fantastic Beasts for only the second time last week. I read the script when it originally came out and then bought the Blu Ray of the film when it was released. I have pretty good equipment at home (50" 4K UHD TV and a topline Blu Ray player) so I figure I got about as good an experience of the film as I could possibly have, outside seeing it in iMax 3D or something.
And I was not impressed.
The story is overly complicated and yet meanders, the characters are sketchily drawn and the special effects, while at times impressive, remind me more of the original Ghost Busters than anything else. The CGI 1920s New York City looks about as fake as the CGI 19th Century Toronto of CBC TV's relatively low budget success The Murdoch Mysteries.
The film also seems to lack a sense of itself. Half the time, it comes across as a middle grade comic adventure (at the level of, say, The Philosopher's Stone) and the other half it is gritty and nasty and violent (The Deathly Hallows).
If that weren't bad enough, Rowling indulges in a great deal of revision of the world she herself created. For example, if I'm not mistaken, in the books, a Legilimens has to look into the eyes of the person whose mind they are invading -- in this film, Queenie can invade minds without even being particularly close to people. This power is played for cute in the movie but it's use here undermines its frightening power in the novels.
And then there is the character of Percival Graves. A highly placed and respected member of the MACUSA, identified as an auror on various websites, Graves has significant magical powers that go way beyond what the average witch or wizard exhibits, reminding the viewer of, well, Voldemort and his powers.
SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that Graves is, in fact, Gellert Grindelwald who, at the film's opening, is the subject of a world-wide search after he disappears in Europe. In the film, we see Newt Scamander cast a spell on Graves and watch as Graves (a dark haired Colin Farrell) dissolves into Grindelwald (a white haired Johnny Depp).
So we must conclude that Grindelwald is, at all times, Graves and that Graves did not have an independent existence before Grindlewald arrived in the US. Which raises the question, how did Graves rise to such a high, trusted position in a MACUSA organization that is, self-admittedly, on the brink of open war with No-Majs (Muggles in America), in JUST A FEW DAYS?
Grindelwald had just disappeared as Newt was arriving in New York with his bag of tricks. We see Graves already in a significant position in MACUSA almost as soon as Tina arrests Newt. Tina arrests NEWT on his first day in New York. That means Grindelwald created Graves and rose to a lofty position in MACUSA in a matter of days, if not hours.
Sure, you could argue that Grindelwald killed an already existing, highly placed auror named Graves when Grindelwald first arrived in America and assumed his physical appearance and his identity but how was he able to fool so many people without knowing anything about Graves' life, character, behaviour? And why wasn't his impersonation spotted, especially in an organisation as security conscious as MACUSA?
The plot is full of holes, I tell you. It's poorly designed, horribly paced and weakly presented.
I may still own the Blu Ray of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them but I doubt I will ever watch it again.
