Fan­tas­tic Beasts and Where to Find Them

The first impor­tant thing to note in this or any review of the most antic­i­pat­ed film of 2016 is that Fan­tas­tic Beasts and Where to Find Them is not a sequel to the Har­ry Pot­ter films. On paper, that con­cept actu­al­ly sounds quite promis­ing. The present-day set uni­verse of witch­craft and wiz­ardry school, Hog­warts, has already been explored in exhaus­tive detail across eight films and a play, so a change of scenery should be more than wel­come. More­over, if there must be more films set in this uni­verse, then they should at least try and offer some­thing new and exciting.

The events here are set against the back­drop of 1920s New York City, occur­ring decades before Har­ry Pot­ter is even born. There’s an entire­ly new set of char­ac­ters, most of them Amer­i­can, and a new cast of actors, the major­i­ty of whom are much more famous now than any of the Pot­ter cast were when first intro­duced in 2001’s Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

But it is pre­cise­ly in that move from the UK to the US, and from the present to the past, that much of that orig­i­nal appeal has been lost. It leaves some­thing resem­bling a film about wiz­ards and mag­ic, but which upon clos­er inspec­tion, is not real­ly a film at all.

After arriv­ing in New York and acci­den­tal­ly unleash­ing a host of mag­i­cal crea­tures kept in his lug­gage, British magi­cian Newt Sca­man­der (Eddie Red­mayne) goes on a quest across the city to retrieve them. It is in this ini­tial premise that the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the film lies. While the orig­i­nal Pot­ter films made an incred­i­ble fuss of any­one using mag­ic in the non-mag­i­cal, ​‘Mug­gle’ world – even to clean dish­es or cook din­ner with mag­ic in the pres­ence of mug­gles was a grave offence – here, open use is all but per­mit­ted and seem­ing­ly not worth much men­tion­ing. After intro­duc­ing the idea of wiz­ard law-keep­ing in the form of spe­cial agent Por­penti­na Gold­stein (a grave­ly under­used Kather­ine Water­ston), who ini­tial­ly arrests Newt for his indis­cre­tions, the theme is all but aban­doned in favour of open usage and, thus, much may­hem and carnage.

The dif­fer­ence in these series repro­duces the notion of America’s defence of per­son­al free­dom over a British sense of pro­pri­ety and restraint. But this does not explain why the film itself, and its char­ac­ters, take such a flip­pant atti­tude towards the height­ened vis­i­bil­i­ty of crea­tures and the expan­sive destruc­tion they cause. It’s con­se­quence-free may­hem which con­stant­ly puts the mag­i­cal world at risk of being dis­cov­ered by non-magicians.

A rhi­noc­er­os-like crea­ture bursts through a brick wall in the Cen­tral Park zoo. Lat­er, a greedy lit­tle crea­ture ran­sacks a jew­ellery store. Not only does Newt not seem to care a great deal, but nei­ther do the oth­er, more offi­cious char­ac­ters. A suc­ces­sion of exces­sive, unavoid­able and absurd destruc­tions are there for idle spec­ta­cle and noth­ing more.

In this world, dam­age is repaired instant­ly and Mug­gle minds are wiped at will, and en masse. This is all the more aston­ish­ing when con­sid­er­ing the orig­i­nal Har­ry Pot­ter films were at their fun­ni­est, most plea­sur­ably sur­re­al and endear­ing when mag­ic would come to flood the Mug­gle world, cre­at­ing total chaos and grad­u­al­ly dri­ving Harry’s adop­tive fam­i­ly insane.

Just as in Peter Jackson’s Hob­bit films, which attempt­ed to reignite Mid­dle Earth fever some years after the final Lord of the Rings extrav­a­gan­za, it is the gen­uine sense of won­der and awe that is lost in this film. The lack of a unique sur­prise ele­ment fol­low­ing 15 years of Pot­ter ​‘con­tent’ isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to blame. Be it in the first or fourth film in the orig­i­nal series, every ele­ment of the world had a nar­ra­tive rea­son to be there beyond sim­ply super­fi­cial beau­ty or amuse­ment. From Quid­ditch to the Phoenix or Dob­by the house elf, all were won­der­ful, but all of them nar­ra­tive­ly motivated.

Here by con­trast we are chal­lenged to feel awe for CGI cre­ations that are intro­duced for no real pur­pose relat­ing to plot, sto­ry or emo­tion. Being total­ly incon­se­quen­tial, their extrav­a­gant vis­i­bil­i­ty and destruc­tion makes no real dif­fer­ence to pro­ceed­ings. Their sole moti­va­tion is to dis­play the orig­i­nal­i­ty of a ful­ly realised world and the CGI tech­nique of the artists involved.

It is as if JK Rowl­ing – who, telling­ly, takes full screen­writ­ing cred­it here – has fall­en in love with the uni­verse she has cre­at­ed, fail­ing to under­stand what made it so pop­u­lar and beloved in the first instance. It wasn’t the mag­ic alone, but the con­nec­tiv­i­ty of it all, the way in which it all made sense. The Pot­ter films were con­sis­tent­ly unaware of their own awesomeness.

The film intro­duces its themes, from dis­crim­i­na­tion and abuse to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and the clos­et, with­out ever ful­ly explor­ing them in a coher­ent way. Char­ac­ters embody­ing these themes are deployed like human short­cuts to sub­text. They sign­post mean­ing that quite sim­ply is not there. They form instead a con­fus­ing back­drop to the basic A to B plot.

The peri­od set­ting, too, adds lit­tle but pret­ty cos­tumes and inter­est­ing archi­tec­tur­al designs, with few links made between con­tem­po­rary events and those tak­ing place in the wiz­ard­ing world. An over­bear­ing sound­track, mean­while, dom­i­nates the film in a way John Williams’ won­der­ful Pot­ter scores nev­er did, strain­ing to stir emo­tions or cre­ate a sense of move­ment and action when lit­tle of any impact is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing onscreen.

While the mag­i­cal adven­tures of the orig­i­nal series appealed to teenagers, it is dif­fi­cult to see who this over­long intro­duc­tion to a dozen or so harm­less CGI crea­tures against a back­ground of pseu­do-pol­i­tics might actu­al­ly appeal to. Encom­pass­ing all of the per­plex­ing issues unan­swered by this film is one sim­ple ques­tion: who is it for?