Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

The things people do these days to milk a franchise is baffling. They actually made a prequel about the guy who wrote a book we hardly noticed in the Harry Potter mythos. You can nag all you want about Rogue One being a needless prequel, but those plans were vital for blowing up the Death Star. The book this whole movie revolves around on the other hand means nothing.

Also, for a so-called Harry Potter prequel, there is nothing that reminds you of Harry Potter. None of the familiar characters or locations are shown. I mean, yeah, there is a secret society of wizards and they are using magic wands, but that’s as far as similarities go. You can change a few names and nobody would see the connection.

It doesn’t even work as a standalone movie, because it doesn’t have a specific focus. I couldn’t even understand what the story is supposed to be about. It constantly jumps from one theme to another without having any sort of uniformity. Is it about ecology because it deals with endangered species? Is it about discrimination because of the way the elves are treated? Is it about “with great power comes great responsibility” type of scenario because the wizards need to keep their powers hidden and deal with anyone who steps out of line? I don’t know; it’s everything and nothing at the same time.

Not even the way each theme gets treated individually is done properly. You never feel the protagonist is taking care of a zoo full of endangered magical creatures, as much as he is playing Pokemon Go, running all over the city trying to capture huge animals inside a small suitcase. And since most of these creatures had escaped the very same suitcase he had them in, half of the movie is essentially procrastinating by having him gaining back what was already in his possession. There is no progress; he is just trying to get back to where he began.

As for the other half of the movie, it’s basically the wizards trying to find something which is endangering the secrecy of the magic society. Which turns out to be not a magical animal but some weird cloud a human is using. You would think the protagonist uses some trick to overcome the situation but no, the magic police arrives and simply blows the cloud away. The only thing the protagonist did was to tie the hands of the main villain with a simple gesture, while ordering one of his animals to basically stupefy the whole city, so they will forget everything that happened in the whole movie.

Which brings us to the grave sin I hate so much. Magic can do anything and is abused to the point a whole city is miraculously restored after a catastrophic event and nobody remembers a thing about it. Isn’t it funny that despite all this mess not a single person died or nobody outside the city saw anything that was going on? The ending is essentially a reset, so there won’t be any consequences, and thus no plot progression whatsoever.

Not even the characters were interesting. The protagonist is a forgettable Doctor Who knock-off who gets overshadowed by his own Pokemon. The main villain barely has any presence and is defeated without much of a fight. The obligatory female doesn’t even have a role outside of a mediator between the government and the protagonist. She could have easily been replaced by a random bureaucrat and it wouldn’t make a single difference. The best character was easily the fat guy with the mustache, and he was only there as comic relief. Also, no explanation was given for why he wasn’t brainwashed right away and was instead allowed to learn so much about the magic society.

The Harry Potter books were never good but at least they were following a certain pattern and were pandering a certain audience. This movie does none of that, it has no actual ties with the source material, no plot consistency, and no interesting characters. It’s terrible.