MOVIE REVIEW | Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a fun movie that expands on the Harry Potter universe.
And that's about it for me... kind of. Honestly, I've never been a fan of the 1920's setting, and it was a change of pace that I didn't quite know what to do with when Harry Potter went there. For me, the fantastical settings of Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest were much more appealing from a fantastical theme and, in my opinion, the recently released Doctor Strange achieved the 'magic-in-the-real-world' setting much better. It felt very out of place for me in FBAWTFT, and that's probably because Doctor Strange's universe is set up in a way for exceptional beings to exist alongside the non-exceptional and doesn't have to lean on the secrecy element that the Harry Potter universe does.
The movie was enjoyable, but my favourite parts were most certainly getting to know all the fantastic creatures locked away in Newt Scamander's briefcase.
One thing that surprised me though was not anything explicitly said or done by the characters, but more the thematic portrayal of anger in the film after the 9/11 attacks in the Unnited States.
Recently in mainstream cinema, especially science fiction, we have been obsessed with the destruction of urban spaces. Going back to the Avengers franchise, New York was completely devastated by alien forces and then again in Age of Ultron. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 also features a great deal of urban devastation. In fact, many top grossing movies (especially ones of science fiction which, as a genre, often makes parallels that comments on society) feature the destruction of urban spaces. What made me pause to think while I watched FBAWTFT was the source of destruction. From these earlier sci-fi movies, we had outside forces invading the heroes' home and causing mayhem (the Avengers series). We shift from this to the Hunger Games, where the suppression comes from within society, but marginalized groups (the 12 Districts) after being pushed to a breaking point. And now we have the Harry Potter series with the destruction of 1920's Manhattan.
