If you enjoyed Secrets of Dumbledore, don't read this post

 The Secrets of Dumbledore introduces us to a long-ignored nephew/son, a new Grindelwald and a whole new magical world that is beyond our dreams and expectations.

The Secrets of Dumbledore does not introduce us to a tight plot, plausible characters or any kind of tension or even consistency with what has gone before.

I want to write that I watched SoD yesterday but I really didn't. After 30 minutes of focused attention, I found myself giving up any hope of finding a film deserving of that attention as the plot meandered, the characters blathered and the special effects took the front seat.

I started tidying up my den. I wandered into a nearby storage room to give it a much needed reorganisation. I talked to my sister on the phone.

This is a boring, lazy, silly film. Filled with scenes that go on much too long, even (long) scenes that aren't required at all. Filled with characters who some must find charming yet serve no real purpose: Jacob Kowalski? Seriously? Bunty Goodacre? Really? Even Newt Scamander is barely tolerable as a character.

I guess some Harry Potter fans are thrilled to see Minerva McGonagall as a young woman for a full 12 seconds. Or to hear familiar names like Rosier, Carrow, and Zabini attached to non-descript characters who appear and then disappear from the screen.

But really... SoD is a disaster.

Please, Jo, please. Stop. Respect the masterpiece you created in the seven Harry Potter books. Let them live on untainted by any more attempts to fill in the backstory, to cash in on the glory.

How many additional family members can you possibly discover? Now it's Aberforth who has an all-powerful child whom he has cast alone into the world.

How many more additional powers can you give to... well, every main character? Originally, wizards and witches, like all humans, were all relatively even in their powers and abilities. Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort, Bellatrix... perhaps a few others rose above the rabble. People with exceptional ability were recruited to be Aurors for the Ministry.

And even those people of exceptional ability, up to and including Albus and Voldemort, faced some limits to what they could accomplish magically.

In this new Fantastic Beasts version of pre-history, nothing is impossible. Nothing is even consistent. And it's maddening.

You worked very hard in the early books to establish what is possible and what is not, magically. To make clear the training required to accomplish even that limited set of possibilities, of how only truly extraordinary people like Albus Dumbledore and Tom Riddle were to be able to rise above and accomplish more. More, sure, but still within limits.

 And now you've just declared open season. There are no limits. And, as a result, there's no drama.

Albus is bound by a blood oath with Grindelwald until, suddenly, he isn't. Why? Apparently because Grindelwald tried to hurt a newly recognised Dumbledore nephew. But Grindy has hurt Credence before. With no apparent impact.

Grindelwald can bring animals back to life (I was waiting with bated breath for the word "Inferi" to be uttered). Dumbledore can create alternative realities in which he battles Credence. Fantastic Beasts can do fantastic things, even if we've never heard of them and their abilities just happen to suit the needs of the particular plot situation.

In the process, all tension, all suspense is undermined. If any major character can accomplish anything, then why should we worry about the outcome? Well, unless we are completely terrified that Newt will not be able to give his best-man speech at the wedding that is the subject of a ridiculous 20-minute epilogue to this already over-long film.

I could go on to talk about the over-the-top, smack you in the face allusions to American politics and the rise of authoritarianism but I think I need to go. Wash my hands. Cleanse SoD from my brain and move on with my life.

Magical Beasts are not worth finding

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.

Fantastic Beasts coming soon

Today, we got our first peek at "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", the new Potter-world film slated for release in 2016.


The timing is interesting (at least to me) since today is also the day the first reviews of the new Star Wars film have come out (with wide release either today or tomorrow) -- I wonder if the Potter people were sending notice to the Star Wars people that there's a new cinematic bully in town that isn't planning on giving up its position of dominance so easily.


Hmm....


That being said, I approached the new FB trailer with a great deal of enthusiasm.


First, I am very excited to see J.K. Rowling's debut as a screen writer. She's proven her skill in so many different forms of writing over the years: novels for children, novels for young adults, novels for adults, mysteries, (fictional) text books, (fictional) history books, short stories and even newspaper articles (for the Daily Prophet) but this is her first attempt to write a film.


But, for some reason, she always left the screen writing to others. And I think the film versions of the Harry Potter books were much the worse for that.


So I am very interested to see how Rowling shapes up as a script writer. I have no reason to expect anything but greatness in this script but I find myself quite excited to find out how great the final product really is.


Second, I just love the initial creativity of Rowling's play on the title of the original book (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) in the approach to the plot for the film. The book is written as a text: here is a description of a fantastic beast and here is an explanation of its natural habitat.


Not surprisingly, the film abandons the text-book approach and introduces a plot that still ties closely and effectively to the title: we've brought in a case full of magical beasts, we've lost some of them, and now we have to figure out where to find them again.


Cool.


Now, the trailer is the only thing I have seen or heard with regard to the plot of the new film so I may have missed some information out in the virtual world that might address some of the following questions but here are a couple of things I am already wondering about based on the brief trailer:


1. Since the film's plot apparently involves the arrival in New York City (from England, I suppose) of Newt Scamander with a case full of beasts, the escape of some of which causes the chaos that ensues, does that mean that there are no such beasts that are native to North America?
2. Since the beasts in question arrive inside a brief case, does that mean that they are all tiny? So no Centaurs, Grindylows, Hinkypunks, Hippogryffs, Dementors or anything like that?


And finally, on the trailer itself, while I think it's brilliant that the trailer begins with a well-known Potter-world spell ("lumos maxima"), I have to admit that I am very frustrated that the filmmakers have chosen to continue the ridiculous conceit that "lumos maxima" is a spell that needs to be renewed over and over again. This conceit was introduced in one of the early movies and, to be honest, makes no sense at all.

"Fantastic Beasts" might just be fantastic

I have just read on an online news outlet that Colin Farrell has joined the cast of the upcoming Potterworld movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them".


Which, of course, led me to recognize that this new Potter movie is currently in development and I have been paying absolutely no attention to it.


I am a massive fan of the Harry Potter books, as this blog by itself would attest, but I can't seem to get myself wound up about the idea of a new movie based not on a Rowling-written book but on a Rowling-written screenplay.


And maybe I'm wrong not to be more excited.


I became increasingly disappointed with as each of the original Harry Potter movies was released. Although my discontentment was based on a number of factors, one of the main issues I had was that the movies (especially the later ones) failed to convey the depth and beauty of Rowling's art.


I think my lack of interest in this new movie is a hangover from the old antipathy. If it's a movie and it's related to Harry Potter, goes my thought process, it's bound to be a disappointment.


This recent news item (and my blah response to it) has caused me to pause to reflect and that's a good thing.


"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", if its screenplay is indeed penned by J.K. Rowling, would represent our first opportunity to see what this immensely talented writer can do with an entirely new literary form.


She wrote wonderful books. It was someone else entirely who then wrote increasingly awful screenplays from those books.


It is entirely possible that, in approaching this new story as a movie script from the off, Rowling will show the same kind creative talent for the screenplay that she showed for the novel form.


So maybe I should be more excited about the upcoming release of "Fantastic Beasts".


Wait a minute: I think I already am!

Rowling's working on something New(t)

I think it's quite fitting that, on the day J.K. announces she will be writing the screenplay for the new Newt Scamander movie -- okay, let that phrase roll around in your brain for a minute -- I have made the decision to abandon my recently announced "read every book in the house" challenge and return to Harry Potter.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Scamander announcement. One, I really didn't think much of the actual book and, two, Rowling seems to think that the fact that she witnessed the writing of the screenplays for the Potter movies was sufficient training for her to take on this task as her first screen writing effort.

I guess I'll just have to keep an open mind. I am interested in the plot J.K. has come up with for the movie and I'm interested in seeing how she integrates the magical world into the real world of New York in the 1930s and '40s. I have a deep admiration for Rowling's imagination and her skills as a creator of characters and situations. So I'll wait things out and see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, I get to go back, after a break of several months, to reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It will be neat to see how I respond to it after being away for so long.