The Harry Potter movies this week topped a UK poll to find the most popular book-to-film adaptations of all time, ahead of Lord of the Rings, A Christmas Carol and The Shawshank Redemption. And yet, Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban aside, it would be hard to pinpoint any of the other seven movies made about the boy wizard and his Hogwarts chums that is likely to be remembered as a classic in 20 or 30 years’ time.
Might JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them buck that trend? It has the advantage of being based on an original screenplay by the British author, rather than an existing tome, which means director David Yates shouldn’t be forced to push too many Gryffindor shapes into Slytherin holes. And a newly released trailer suggests the American wizarding world into which Eddie Redmayne’s swashbuckling magizoologist Newt Scamander is about to plunge could be richer than one of Hagrid’s famous stoat sandwiches. Here are five takeaways from our latest look at the new movie.
New York’s witching community is seriously tetchy
OK, so Scamander appears to have crash-landed in 1920s North America and almost immediately proceeded to release his entire menagerie of menacing beasties, some of whom look like they would swallow you whole as soon as look at you, on to the streets. But is that any excuse for all the angst? If Scamander doesn’t get all his pets back in that peculiarly palatial little brown suitcase faster than you can say Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, it looks like all hell is about to break loose in Manhattan.
And they’re on the brink of war
Here’s why. Where the Harry Potter books and films always presented Britain’s Muggles as harmless chumps who could simply be obliviated if they accidentally spotted anything magical, the new trailer confirms North America’s No-Majs are a far more threatening breed. Armed police are seen in a Mexican standoff with wand-wielding witches, while Carmen Ejogo’s President Seraphina Picquery (head of the American wizarding community) reveals that conflict is brewing. Scamander’s arrival looks like just the spark to set the whole world on fire.
Samantha Morton’s Mary Lou is a Trumpian demagogue
Standing on the steps of city hall, preaching to her sinister followers, the grim-countenanced leader of the witch-murdering New Salem Philanthropic Society seems to be adopting a scorched-earth, divide-and-conquer policy in her efforts to convince New York that it is under threat from sinister unseen magical forces. Rowling’s vision of America looks like a society split right down the middle, with neither side willing to budge an inch or give credence to the view of the enemy. Warning: this screenplay may contain traces of topical satire.
There may be a brand new dark wizard in town
President Picquery mentions attacks by a “Grindelwald” in Europe, and hints that something similar has been seen in New York. In the Potter books and movies, Gellert Grindelwald was a famous dark wizard whose early friendship with Albus Dumbledore ultimately corroded to the point that the pair duelled in 1945, resulting in Grindelwald’s incarceration for more than half a century in the continental European fortress of Nurmengard. Grindelwald wanted to use the famous Elder Wand and other Deathly Hallows to become “master of death”, end the International Statute of Secrecy and institute a new system in which wizards ruled over Muggles. If he or his followers are out and about in 1920s New York, it sounds like Mary Lou and her crew aren’t the only evildoers Scamander might need to worry about.
Ezra Miller’s Credence has some kind of secret
The bowl-cut-sporting Credence is Mary Lou’s awkward adopted son, and ostensibly another No-Maj. So what’s he doing talking to Colin Farrell’s high-ranking New York auror Percival Graves? And why is Graves ripping up the streets with powerful magic after declaring: “I refuse to bow down any longer?” Is he secretly a dark wizard, or just having a really bad day? We’ll have to wait until 18 November, when Yates’s movie hits multiplexes, to find out.
