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A review of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Similar to Pokemon-GO? New Harry Potter trilogy.

    This film is the beginning chapter of the new Harry Potter spin-off trilogy which will be on screen in 2018 and 2020.
     Our hero is Newt Scamander who is a magical zoologist and the author of the "Fantastic beasts and where to find them" which is a textbook of the magical school where Harry Potter and his friends belong.

     Unleashed magical animals and battling sorcerers scamper around modern time New York circa 1926.I saw this movie in 3D in Holland, so hereby frankly report the impression and feeling I got about this film.

The plot of "Fantastic beasts and where to find them".

    Newt Scamander is a grand alumni of Hogwarts magical school. Back in time for 70 years before the adventures of Harry Potter's main stories, he landed in the new world, America, in search of unknown fantastic beasts with a trunk filled with beasts which he had collected.

    Then, a beast which looked like a duckbill and had great deal of jewelry fled from the trunk and Newt struggled to catch it when a non-magical common man Jacob, who is aspiring to be a baker, got caught in the fuss and mistakingly brought back Newt's suitcase. When Jacob got to his hotel to unwind, strange creatures popped out from the trunk and flew around very agilely. Before long, Tina, who is an agent of MACUSA (abbreviation of The Magical Congress of the United States of America) sniffed the fuss involving magic and came close to Newt, meanwhile, some dark magical force in a smoky transparent shape come to hover around New York.

 Cast and staff of "Fantastic beasts and where to find them"

Director/David Yates

Starring/

Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander

Katherine Waterston as Porpentina Goldstein/ Tina

  • Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein
  • Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski
  • Colin Farrell as Percival Graves
  • Samantha Morton as Mary Lou

    The protagonist Newt is so well performed by Eddie Redmayne as a geek to the extent it felt a little creepy. Percixal Graves is played by Collin Farrell who has charming eyes like a wet puppy(??) and is best as a tough guy. On top of them, a surprising guest actor shows his profile, which I'll mention later. The script is written by J.K Rowling herself.

Running time and additional info about "Fantastic beasts and where to find them".  

  • Running time 132 minutes 
  • Release Date 10 November 2016(Alice Hall)/ 18 November 2016 (UK) 
  • Budgedt 180 million dollars

Review of "Fantastic beasts and where to find them".(including some spoiler)

The hero Newt creates a really geeky atmosphere.

 The hero of Harry Potter's main stories was a smart and fine young boy, meanwhile Newt is not good at communicating with people and feels more comfortable at being with fantastic animals, therefore even his smile is always somewhat awkward and his face is tilted all the time for some reason. He is the type that girls can feel creepy around if they are talked to by him on the street, to such a degree that Newt is performed as a kind of nerd. In contrast to Harry Potter's main stories, children don't show up as main characters in "Fantastic beasts and where to find them" and adult figures in this film are generally depicted as geeky or bookish people. Aside from Newt, Tina also has an air of a kind of librarian with her black bob cut hair. A boy who comes to be possessed by dark forces also seems to be a nerd who is isolated inside and does nothing but play video games with his straight bangs and clumsy attitude. Casting is such as this, and I felt like this film has a different tone from Harry Potter's main stories, knitting together the characters.

Monster hunting world view which is similar to Pokemon GO! 

     Newt is a magical zoologist and he loves to collect fantasic beast in grain. His trunk has a kind of bottomless flexible vast space in it, there are snow covered mountains, rocky planes, large granges, which it to say, as if he is carrying along private zoo within his trunk always. There are blue bee-like creatures, snakes with wings, huge hawk with four wings, and little human like plants etc. The main reason which propelled him to land the American continent was to catch unknown beasts, which I can say, it’s truly Pokemon GO! Like spirits. All in all, Newt is a nerd type.

Fantasic beasts are main feature.

    The people of the production side of this movie must have thought the fantastic beasts were the main selling point, which was obviously felt through the screen. At the beginning, a duckbill-like cute animal runs around New York, sneaking into a bank vault, breaking into a jewelry shop, swallowing glittering bijous, which is chased by Newt and Jacob, naturally results in a comical situation with police cars surrounding them. In the middle of the film, Jacob is chased by a rhino-like monster and Newt fights with not only his magic wand but with the support of his fantastic beasts, one example is the scene where a plant-like creature undoes the cuffs locked around his wrists.

The former half is amazing, but the latter half goes slack.

    As for the former half, the film is breath-taking immediately from the opening, which is just a sequence in which the camera follows the articles of newspapers, but this is so amazingly constructed and give us the impression of dynamic spaceship chases in a Star Wars movie, where we flight through the winding valleys of newspapers, overwhelming. Then, the story unfolds itself lightly as Newt enters the land of freedom and soon starts to running after his lost fantasic beasts. The skyscraper of 1920’s Newyork has mixed atmosphere of an authentic European elegance and modernized huge metro police, is mysterious like the city which Franz Kafka once described in his novel “America”, which is unknown continent full of chances where every event can happen. Nicely created setting !

 

    The vast destrction senes of metro tunnel and skyscrapers are thrilling, but I had expected more ingenuity for the last showdown. The spectacle of being crumbled, cracked walls was overwhelming but after it continued for a while, I slightly got bored of it.

    All in all, the biggest surprise in this film is that the famous actor shows up his face for a second, telling you who he is will be a spoiler, I leave it in white letters.

"Jonny Dep"  showed up! I was really surprised.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is full of humour.

    As the above, I have written about boring points in this film, next I write about fun points. Thanks to the existence of non-magi common man Jacob, there are many funny senes created in the movie. Though not lol, there are many hee- hee scenes.

 Tubby and a little goosy Jacob with moustache can't use magic and does not know the existence of magic even, so he really is aghasted by miracles he sees at the first time, sometimes dazed, sometimes acclaim what is happening (for example, cooking with magical powers!) , which is funny and reflects our feeling as non-magis as well. Jacob falls in love with a witch  and this episode add nice fairy-tale like taste to the film.

    All in all, I was expected too much about this film from the fact that the author J.K. Rowling herself wrote the screenplay to enjoy fully this film. I must say it was a little dissapointing. Ofcourse, I could enjoy extraordinal fantasic beasts and overwhelming action senes and all stage decors, but this film would have been more enjoyable if there were authentic atmosphere which mysterious sorcerers create and moosy mythtic mood and the depth of emotions in characters. For me, Fantasic Beasts felt like a little banal, mediocre film despite the high expectation I had about it.

    Anyway, we can see the next chapters in 2018, and 2020, so I hope things get better in those sequences! What I watched this time is only the opening of longer story. 

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