Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them [2016] review

Characters:

In the lead role, we don't have Harry Potter, but a man by the name of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne).  Based on his previous bodies of work I wasn't sure if I'd like him as the main character, but overall I thought he did an ok job.  Jacob (Dan Fogler), baking entrepreneur, stole the show for me especially at the end.  I would have appreciated a little more dialogue and banter between the two of them to enhance their budding friendship, but it never fully got there.  Newt did admit to Jacob that most people didn't like him and it's fairly obvious why because of Newt's eccentric ways.  I understood that his behavior was intended for his character, but it didn't do him any favors for the audience to care about him.  I wanted to care.  I wanted to care about his beasts.  His primary relationship and concern was with his beasts, to be sure, but the movie didn't do anything to make you care about them save for the twiglike creature that could pick locks. 

As for the two main females, Tina and Queenie, sadly they were only integral to the plot in the simplest terms.  Tina (Katherine Waterston) didn't really pick a stance on how to play her role and just came off weak and disjointed.  Queenie (Alison Sudol), while very one dimensional, was surprisingly crucial at two specific moments in the film.  It made me appreciate her as a character even though I didn't fully understand what she did for a living and what purpose she served in the overall new yet familiar Harry Potter universe.  Overall, they felt under-used and valued and when it came to the scene where Tina's mind was going to be erased or something, I didn't feel vested.

The Barebones were the epitome of creepy and I know I should care about the abuse of Credence (Ezra Miller), but I couldn't get there because the characters were so weird and uninteresting.  Maybe it was the haircut, but I had no sympathy towards any of the children, especially since they appeared to be against magic users and I am a fan of magic users, especially the ones that do good.

As for Graves (Colin Farrell), the President (Carmen Ejogo), and the rest of the MACUSA, none of them showed any warmth or caring and they were simply operating on their own unknown agenda that was kept from the audience until the final act when it was too late to sympathize or commiserate.  Up until the final act their decisions and actions were confusing and misguided.  Some breadcrumbs and explanations along the way would have been nice.

Story:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them conjures an image in my mind of thestrals, dragons, centaurs, trolls and other creatures previously introduced in the Harry Potter universe.  So why should I care about them and why would I want to find them?

So far, J.K. Rowling has done a successful job in making me care about an owl, a phoenix, a hippogriff, and even a giant spider when it passed away.  Sadly, this movie doesn't really make me care about any of Newt's beasts, and most of the creatures are just a means to an end.  So to what end?  Is that at least interesting?

Well the premise of the movie is that "something" is terrorizing 1920s New York.  Things are even more dark and grim than the already dark and grim set pieces.  Towards the end of the second act, it is finally brought to light that MAYBE something from Newt's case is the cause of the terror.

So what is the movie doing in the first act concerning the beasts?  Well it's telling you were to find them - they're all in Newt's briefcase.  The first act also name drops Grindelwald via a newspaper and maybe he's mentioned one other time and that's it.  The movie is afraid to mention his name because ultimately it's revealed that he's behind the attack.

So did Grindelwald somehow lure Newt to New York as part of his plan?  No.  It just seems to be by happenstance.

Strip away the beasts, and what you really have is a story about an Obscurus.  What is an Obscurus?  After all the character-lack-of-development and the childlike method of catching escaped beasts, we finally learn that an Obscurus is created when a child is forced to suppress his/her magical abilities.  Keeping it all bottled up inside will create a powerful dark force within the child.  At a certain age, I believe it's said to be 10 years old or younger, the Obscurus will explode onto the scene killing the child and creating havoc.  It is revealed that Newt found an Obscurus in an 8 year old in his travels and he was able to extract it, but the child died regardless.  The Obscurus is shown in a frozen floating bubble in a specific part of his briefcase where all his beasts are kept.

At the end, we learn that the child named Credence, believed to be a squib, is so powerful that he was able to contain his Obscurus well beyond the age of 10.  Graves, who has random contact with this boy, doesn't realize until it's too late and Credence takes the form of the Obscurus and back and forth while wreaking havoc all over Manhattan.

It's also revealed that Tina was demoted as an Auror as she helped Credence once and she had an obsession with the 2nd Salem-ers.  Guess they should have listened to her in the first place right?  Anyway, she's able to calm the boy down and he gets destroyed by the MACUSA who all look the same in their brown leather coats and hats.  Graves is revealed to actually be Grindelwald in disguise and he's taken away.

Again, in the third act it's revealed that Grindlewald's plan all along was to use the Obscurus to inform the No-Maj/Muggle world of the existence of magic and in the end his plan succeeded.  So how to fix it?  Well Newt references something from earlier where he has a potion or poison from one of his creatures that will act as an Obliviate spell.  He uses his one giant hawk like beast to spread the poison into the atmosphere which dispenses it via a rain storm.  As everyone's mind gets wiped (not sure what happens to those not touched by the rain), the MACUSA fixes the broken buildings.

I didn’t know this at the time, but read online that a sliver of Credence survived so see ya in the sequel I guess.  Newt has an awkward goodbye with Tina and Jacob who was Obliviated with the rest of Manhattan is able to open his bakery thanks to an anonymous donation from Newt.  Queenie enters the shop, Jacob freezes, rubs the back of his neck and smiles.  We get a happy ending, but the ride there wasn’t the best execution.  With a muddy story and lackluster characters, this isn’t a great start to a new series of stories.  I do want more and hopefully we’ll get more about Grindelwald, his connection to Dumbledore, which will hopefully enrich the Harry Potter universe with interesting characters and stories.