Somewhat Fantastic: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Review

By Alexis Frankel on December 2, 2016

 

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Harry Potter fans (like myself) rejoiced when it was announced Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them would be made into a movie. Though despite being quite engaging, it proved to be not so fantastic in some regards. The book this movie is adapted from sounds similar to Inception, with it being about a book read within a book. The main protagonist of the movie and writer of the textbook, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) comes to New York in 1926 from England, a country where wizards and humans (No-majs) are not allowed to be friends or  get married.

He is an expert in magical creatures, but not very good at keeping them in his Mary Poppins-style briefcase. This story of recapture, is sewn in with a series of mysterious, magically-related homicides possibly having to do with dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald. Along the way of trying to catch Newt’s creatures, he befriends a No-Maj, Jacob Kowalski, and two sister wizards named Tina and Queenie Goldstein.

Before the production of the movie was wrapped up, it was revealed that Queenie and Tina were coded as Jewish because of their last names. Goldstein is a traditionally Ashkenazi (Jews originating from Eastern Europe) last name. The American cinema has come a long way from producing gross caricatures of them, like in Cohen’s Advertising Scheme, but does not really include them too much in Hollywood. Director, David Yates’ nod at religious diversity makes the film richer culturally and combats the recent anti-Semitic hate plaguing the States recently.

Yet, at the same time, this movie falls into the same pitfall many other Hollywood movies fall into: Westernization and white-washing. I thought of this first in terms of ‘supernatural’ blockbusters like Harry Potter and Twilight where no main protagonist is a person of color and is set in a highly-developed, Western country. I told my roommate, FSU student, Crystal Murphy, about my issue. “You mean like every movie?” she responded.

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Although the president of the MACUSA (The Magical Congress of the United States of America) is a woman of color (Carmen Ejogo), she only plays a minor role in the film in comparison to the the heroes and villains.  A study analyzed 400 films from 2014 to 2015 to see how many people of color had dialogues and found that only 28 percent of them did, despite them making up 40 percent of the population. So, people of color in movies generally do not have any lines at all. While the president had a few dialogues, you could count them on one hand.

“The film industry still functions as a straight, white, boy’s club,” the study states. This has multiple implications for people of color in that when they watch Hollywood movies, they may be tempted to think they do not belong in the cinematic world. This lack of representation gives people of color limited, successful role models in comparison to White people and additionally contributes to the wage gap between the powerful and societally oppressed. There is no reason to omit people of color from films except to keep an antiquated status quo in place.

Also, I kind of forgot what Grindelwald was fighting for at the end of everything – was it to save the animals? Separate the humans and wizards? He wanted to free the animals to save wizards? How much did Johnny Depp get paid to be in it for a minute—what? Alright, so one was an exaggeration, but the hyper-focus on trying to save Credence from the MACUSA/himself, and capture all the escaped animals made the movie’s plot convoluted and left something to be desired.

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In juxtaposition to the Harry Potter franchise, the whole time we have this idea of a main thematic intent and plot: Harry Potter and company are the good guys because he beat Voldemort, and the whole journey is to see which side wins. While there are different subplots within the movies, they all clearly make a 360 degree turn to its main focus. A loss of plot seems to be a feature of many Hollywood movie franchises (which Fantastic Beasts intends to be).

Before you die-hard J.K. Rowling fans “Avada Kedavra” me into oblivion, I really enjoyed this movie. I cried even—the short-lived romance of Queenie and Jacob in reality developed in three or four days, but it was love I tell you! Although seemingly mismatched, their personalities melded together perfectly in a cute, romantic subplot to the other serious elements surrounding the movie. And to see all of the magical creatures from the book come to life was fantastic in itself.

Like every movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had good and bad elements to it. Albeit slightly confusing, the story itself keeps Rowling fans wishing they had a wand to make the next movie appear.

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