BLOCKBUSTER: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (UK/ USA, 2016)
Directed by David Yates

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol 

Video game critic Yahtzee Croshaw once defined a good sequel as follows: “A good sequel… is one that uses the original as a jumping-off point for a whole new story… while a bad sequel merely wallows in the original.” The same rules generally apply to spin-offs, at least on television: the good ones (like Frasier and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?) take the original’s most successful character(s) in an interesting new direction, while the bad ones (like Going Straight and Young Sheldon) attempt to milk a few more precious moments out of a concept which had long ago run its course. 

 

When defined in these terms, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is firmly in the good category of spin-offs. However cynical one can feel about efforts to keep the Harry Potter brand going years after the books and films have finished, the film does enough to set itself apart from everyone’s favourite British wizard while feeling very consciously part of the same universe. Its American touches may rankle the most patriotic of J. K. Rowling’s fans, but despite a few niggles it is very entertaining and conveys its ideas in an interesting way.

 

One of the most obvious characteristics about Fantastic Beasts is how far out of its way it goes to pull in American audiences. When the Harry Potter films were being made, great pains were taken to ensure a predominantly British cast to reflect the source material and the setting; the hiring of Chris Columbus for the first two films was designed in part to compensate for this decision, ensuring that American audiences wouldn’t view it as yet another quaint export from across the pond. Whatever you think of the Potter films, either individually or as a set, they have become accepted as a lynchpin of the British film industry because of that sensibility being retained.

 

The setting of Fantastic Beasts in America isn’t simply a coincidence: if they wanted to set it apart from the British characters and names of the Potter series, they could have moved it to Russia, or China, or Australia, or anywhere else for that matter. Instead, the setting is a very conscious decision on the part of Rowling and director David Yates to consolidate the appeal of the Wizarding World in the US. The film avoids reducing its British characters entirely to stereotypes, as happens so often in American blockbusters, but the Britishness of Newt Scamander is made more of a deliberate feature and is much more the centre of attention than it was for Harry Potter and his counterparts. Frankly, you could replace a lot of Eddie Redmayne’s early dialogue with the words: “Hello, I’m British and eccentric”, and it wouldn’t really change the film at all.

 

An equally deliberate choice is the time period. The later Potter films were set in the 1990s but went to great lengths to draw comparisons with the 1930s, with Voldemort’s rise to power and reign of terror mirroring the rise of Hitler and Stalin in Europe, with the carnage that followed standing in for World War II. Fantastic Beasts is set in 1926, before the rise of the Nazi party and before Stalin had reached a position of unassailable power in Russia. The film simultaneously positions itself as a continuation of the Potter series’ warnings about totalitarian tyranny and racism and serves as a prequel to these actions.

 

It doesn’t take long for both of these themes to bubble to the surface. The American wizards’ policy of not associating with ‘no-majs’ (their term for muggles) is the wizarding equivalent of the segregation laws which were in place in the States until the late-1960s. Grindelwald’s Aryan appearance isn’t just a nod to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed ideal that the Nazis desired for the German people: his character is someone who regards the rule of law, due process and other elements of polite society as needless restrictions which prevent the true potential of wizards from being unleashed and harnessed. Yates employs similar camera angles at the rally scene as he did in the sequences set at Malfoy Manor in Half -Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows – Part 1, with the obscurial both referencing the flying Death Eaters’ attack on London and symbolising the amorphous, illusive threat slowly seeping into civilised society and threatening to tear it apart.

 

As well as its visual references back to Yates’ previous efforts, Fantastic Beasts also tips its hat to a number of other beloved children’s films. Scamander is positioned as the wizarding equivalent of Dr Doolittle; not only does his professional share a love of animals, but Redmayne’s delivery and body language are clearly influenced by Rex Harrison’s version of the character (minus the singing, of course). The bottomless suitcase in which all his magical creatures are stored has the temporal mechanics of Mary Poppins’ carpet bag (though Felix the Cat did get there first), as well as the unusual and colourful architecture of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We are very much in familiar territory, but it’s the good kind of familiarity – the film-makers love the films they are referencing and use these devices to bring a sense of wonder to proceedings (the kind that Columbus, for all his pyrotechnics, never managed).

 

So far, Fantastic Beasts is shaping up as a familiar yet entertaining spectacle, which just about manages to avoid tipping over into either a Potter pastiche or just another generic fantasy film in which people point at things and they explode. But what ultimately sets it apart from its predecessors is how it deals with power – or more specifically, its treatment of how people deal with unusual abilities and how their decisions shape and affect the people around them. Where the later Potter films were more focused on the characters’ attitudes towards death (Harry embraces it while Voldemort is terrified and repulsed by it), this film is about the decisions that can lead up to those kinds of attitudes.

 

Each of the main players have unusual abilities which set them apart, with their arcs all revolving around their attitude towards it and how they try to channel or control it. Newt’s encyclopaedic knowledge of fantastic beasts, coupled with his conscientious nature, lead him to unleash chaos on the city and be manipulated be those around him. He responds to tight spots by a mixture of intelligence and sheer luck, always trying to protect what is important. Grindelwald uses his enormous power and skill to manipulate others so he can gain even more power; he uses Credence as a pawn, and then tries to convince him to join him once the latter’s nature is revealed. Credence himself is in this position: rather than control his immense power, he finds liberation in the disorder which his nature brings, a far cry from the strict, puritanical life associated with the New Salem fundamentalists.

 

Considering that the original book has no real storyline to speak of, it’s quite remarkable that Fantastic Beasts is plotted as well as it is. The story may be following some beats we’ve seen before, but it’s generally quite well-disciplined with very little padding or scenes which overstay they welcome. The CGI feels a little better integrated with the organic effects, and Yates seems to be improving in the way in which the action set-pieces are integrated with the film’s more dramatic scenes. It still has the Half-Blood Prince problem – namely the final showdown feeling like something of an anticlimax – but it’s generally quite successful.

 

A good example of Yates’ incremental development as a director comes near the end, where Newt’s bird releases magical rain on the city which erases the memories of all the muggles who would have seen the obscurus which destroyed their home. Such a plot device is very tricky to pull off at the best of times: it can feel like someone hitting a button marked ‘plot reset’, and could come across as cheap and cliched as the whole thing being a dream. Equally, Yates had a habit in the Potter series of taking moments which should carry great emotional weight – for instance, the death of Sirius Black in Orderof the Phoenix – and staging them in such a way that they felt like just another hollow plot point. Here, he avoids both traps by keeping Don Fogler’s character central: we feel genuinely sad when his character loses his memories, and the final scene in the bakery ends things on a suitably ambiguous note, reminiscent of parts of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The performances in Fantastic Beasts are generally good, even if it doesn’t always feel like the actors are stretching themselves. Ezra Miller – who was brilliant in We Need To Talk About Kevin – is the most charismatic of the main cast, bringing a sense of tormented intensity to the role without constantly flying off the handle. Colin Farrell continues his recent, quiet resurgence, with a performance of subtle threat on a par with his work in Saving Mr. Banks. Redmayne is decent in the lead and clearly having fun, though his best moments come at the slower, sadder parts of the film, such as his speech about the obscurus. And Fogler does well in the fish out of water role, resisting the urge to mug to the audience and keeping the character’s decency at the forefront. 

 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is an entertaining addition to the Wizarding World universe which suggests there is still life to be found in Rowling’s body of work even after Messrs Radcliffe, Grint and Watson hung up their gowns. It’s far from groundbreaking stuff, geared very much at slaking the withdrawal symptoms of Potter fans while consolidating its State-side fanbase. But given the source material and the cynicism of modern Hollywood regarding other long-running franchises, this is filled with more wonder and genuine fun than we had any right to expect.

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