'Fantastic Beasts' Is A 'Harry Potter' Spin-off That Really Doesn't Need Harry Potter

fantastic beasts & where to find them

Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them plays up its JK Rowling-ness on poster, and in typeface, but as far as spin-offs go, this one is pretty far spun. Sure, there’s a Gryffindor scarf here, a Dumbledore reference there, but the world of Harry Potter —that eternal English realm of high-fantasy, all castles and dragons— feels far away. Newt Scamander may’ve brought the Old World with him in a magical suitcase —a realm-unto-itself filled with magical creatures and movie-makin’ magic— but he’s fresh off the boat in the New World. And played, by Eddy Redmayne, as an Englishman abroad; a dithering, rumpled, bookish weenie, out-of-step with the tumult of New York City.

The New York of Rowling’s imagination is a 1926 knees-up, halfway between The Knick and The Hudsucker Proxy in both timeline and art direction; All-England wizardry exchanged for All-American gee-whizzery. Dan Fogler’s doughy baker, a muggle —though, in America, they call them no-maj— who becomes Redmayne’s original-odd-couple sidekick, feels like he’s walked in from a Coen Bros casting. Our buddy-duo become allies with sisters named Teenie and Queenie, a pair of magical flappers played by Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol.

The narrative, essentially, is kicked into gear by the old suitcase switcheroo, Redmayne’s menagerie of magical creatures accidentally turned loose when it ends up in Fogler’s hands. So, our core quartet attempts to track down the fantastic beasts before they blow the wizarding world’s cover, with the local magic cops, MACUSA, hot on their trail.

The MACUSA rank-and-file are trussed in Gestapo-ish great coats, and their meetings —presided over by Carmen Ejogo and her electric peroxide sideburn curls— are filled with fascist iconography. There’s a slight subplot involving a Hearst-ish publisher (Jon Voight) with a son (Josh Cowdery) running for office; the Citizen Kane references big, the contemporary political resonances subtle. The film is set in prohibition-era America, and, Rowling extends the metaphor: the world of magic shunned into underground speakeasies, railed against by the evangelical Christian right (personified by the terrifying Samantha Morton). Redmayne mentions, in passing, America’s “backwards” laws regarding the outlawing of marriage between the magical and no-maj; and, for a moment, you can see the outlines of real social parable.

But, as with mid-period Harry Potter, the great villain, here, isn’t Colin Farrell in his jaunty two-tone collar, nor Ezra Miller with his licey monastic haircut and attendant brooding-teenage rage. But, instead, it’s bureaucracy: the rules, limitations, and machinations of institutions so often set in opposition to ideals of the greater good. Here, the MACUSA seek to wipe away the titular beasts out of worry for the magical realm being exposed. But, in Redmayne’s —and Rowling’s— eyes, it’s a clear fear of the unknown, seeking to destroy that which they don’t understand.

Our lead character is ‘magizoologist’, but he’s a modern day conservationist thrown back nearly a century: his collection of creatures a shelter for the hunted, persecuted, endangered; his suitcase a veritable zoo of breeding pairs, rehabilitated rescues, and saved species. He’s outlaw as protector, oddball hoping to be educator.

And the animals he’s collected are the film’s main source of CGI spectacle: there’s grand griffins, but also a kind of randy Rhino; an “incorrigible”, Platypus-like varmint who has a literal taste for jewellery; curled, dragon-headed serpents that grow or shrink to fit the space they’re in; one-eyed hoppers that are more chook-like than Cyclops; and a whole host more.

David Yates —long-time veteran of the cinematic Potter-verse— manages to achieve a sense of wide-eyed wonder when witnessing these computer-generation creations, and the film, in general, plays with an old-fashioned earnestness that’s, ultimately, pleasing. Whilst cosplay-clad fans may lament the absence of most markers of the book series they grew up on, Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them manages to stand on its own feet, minting the first of a planned five-film(!) series, successfully introducing a whole new cast of magical characters to monetise.