Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Directed by David Yates, Starring: Eddie Redmayne11/20/2016 Fantastic Beasts is a very different beast from Harry Potter in more ways than one. The story structure of setting up, character development, everything important happens at the ending, is still present, but this is a different feeling film. Harry Potter always had a sense of magic behind it. An uplifting lived in and well... magical feel. Fantastic Beasts fails to carry that. The special concoction of joy and mystery that found itself in each Potter film simply isn’t present here, but it can be said that Fantastic Beasts differentiating itself is a good thing. This different just isn’t better. Fantastic Beasts takes place in 1920’s Wizarding New York as Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) enters with a case full of magical creatures. The first two acts will be dedicated to him and these creatures, and in them there is a lot of amazing factors. The first thing is the world. J.K. Rowling world builds very efficiently, and that’s very much the same here. 1920’s New York feels like 1920’s New York, cars lumbering past, and skyscrapers new and shiny. However, this does pose a problem. One of the most incredible things about the Harry Potter films is the way that they contrasted the world human world with the Wizarding World, as the Wizarding world seemed to be stuck in an almost a halt in time, looking like the early 20th century, while the human world evolved more and more over time. It’s fun to see cars and then find yourself looking at a giant beast that takes people places. With the setting of the 1920’s though, both worlds look the same and it takes a lot of the differentiated feeling out of the world. We’ve seen parlors, and mob bosses in the 1920’s, what’s the difference if a tiny, poorly rendered (most of the CG is good, this one guy not so much) goblin is being a mob boss. We’ve seen government raids, we’ve seen parlor singers. This is a familiar world, and not the one of wonder that Potter gave us. It’s still a fine world that is well used but it lacks real magic. If there is an aspect of Fantastic Beasts world that works, it’s there’s a whole number of people who demonize wizards, that attune themselves to a New Salem group ready to burn witches. They come off like a religious cult and are genuinely scary at times. The contrast more comes in the fact that we’re comparing the idealization of the 1920’s that the film has to the shadiest aspects of things that existed in that time period and that’s terrifying. There are many moments that do contain magic, though, and those can be put on the actors and the characters. If Rowing has been always great at worldbuilding, she can do characters in her sleep, and each one here feels new. Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander is the best he’s ever been, mainly because the effect Newt has fits Redmayne very well. Newt’s a little dopey and antisocial, and that fits the physique of Redmayne excellently, much better than his other leading roles have. There’s a crowning moment of his career in which Newt attempts to get a large rhino creature back into his magical case of creatures, by attempting to mate with it, that has a wonderful bravado to it. Redmayne is also just funny and engaging in that moment. Katherine Waterston gets some fun moments too, but her character is kind of the weepy, distressed bumbler, so her shining moment is a heavily disturbing, almost execution. Moments like those and the rhino are what make Fantastic Beasts better than most blockbuster fare. It might be moving too fast for the audience to see the extent of the world, but it’s determined to show us emotional set pieces and that it does. The other few characters are less so established, with Dan Fogler being simply the bumbling idiot, Alison Sudol being a charismatic, ditzy, manipulator that gets some laughs, Colin Farrell as Graves, a government worker, and Ezra Miller as Credence, an abused boy who is part of the New Salem cult. While Newt and friends have a pretty cohesive story that wraps up right before the third act, the one involving Graves and Credence takes up the third as a somewhat convoluted, but intoxicating blunt metaphor takes over the film. That would constitute a spoiler, so I won’t say anything of it, but this story is the reason why Fantastic Beasts kind of fumbles its third act. It all makes sense but when wrapping so many threads up in mostly dialogue there’s a sense of whiplash and clunkiness to the entire thing. The final twist though involving a character is a brilliant moment of a studio all tricking the heck out of us, and an exciting note for the movie to go out on. Fantastic Beasts has plenty of brilliant moments, but it also has plenty of missteps. This is a sweeping, surprisingly scary, imperfect work that is better than most blockbusters bother to be. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them gets a 7.5 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |