[A little analysis and speculation] Fantastic Beasts [Harry Potter spin-off]

Hello! Today is Doctor Strange’s release day!

I’m going to see it, obviously!

Anyway, this time I’m writing about the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts, with a bit of analysis and a bit of wild speculation!

When is it set?

Let’s start with the period.

It’s official anyway: America, 1926.

The American twenties are known as the Golden Age, or the Roaring Twenties.

The word “Prohibition” came up and Al Capone flickered across my mind — I got a real kick out of that.

I love the twenties. That nostalgia you can’t quite put into words, the glitter and the style of it. And jazz being part of the fabric of the era… it’s the best.

So I was delighted when the period came up in films like Captain America: The First Avenger and The Great Gatsby, and in Doctor Who.

And thinking about what comes next — the Empire State Building, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the world heading into darkness — gives it real weight. It’s a bit like the ending of Rogue One lol

On top of that, this is set sixty or seventy years before the Harry Potter series, which I’d have thought makes the film hard to write. Here’s what I mean: we already know how the future turns out from Harry Potter, so whatever happens here, we know things end up at peace on that side. That makes tension difficult to build.

But I think the film handled it well. Harry Potter does flicker at the back of your mind, and yet the culture of the American wizarding world, the magical creatures right in front of you, the Obscurus — the audience’s head is so full of all that, it never bothered me.

One more aside: security on this shoot was apparently ferocious. To stop anything leaking, the cast weren’t given the script until the day of filming, and even then it only appeared on screen while you held a key down on the PC. Learning the lines must have been brutal.

Where the Fantastic Beasts series might go next

Personally, the presence Dumbledore and Grindelwald carried in this one was something else lol

Let’s start by laying out who Grindelwald is.

• The most powerful dark wizard there was, until Voldemort came along.
• The owner of the Elder Wand before Dumbledore.
• Defeated by Dumbledore and imprisoned. That is the moment the Elder Wand passes to Dumbledore.
• Killed by Voldemort in prison. (In the books he is not killed.) He also tells Voldemort there is no point in becoming a dark wizard — so in old age he appears to have had a change of heart.

All of that made it into the films.

But there is one crucial piece the books tell you and the films never do.

• As boys, Dumbledore and Grindelwald came from the same place — and they were close friends.
• A difference of opinion about Muggles led to a duel.
• Dumbledore’s sister dies in that duel.
• The two break off completely. The next time they meet is the fight that puts Grindelwald in prison.

There is more besides, but the short version is that Dumbledore was not a perfect man — he had darkness in him too. I was a bit disappointed that the films had skipped this, but since Fantastic Beasts is apparently a five-part series, I think they will get to it after all.

That duel, the one that killed his sister, seems to be a genuine trauma for Dumbledore. It turns out later that the nightmare he was living through in Half-Blood Prince, after drinking the potion near the end, was this very duel.

And the reason Dumbledore was gathering the Deathly Hallows was to see his sister again. That is why, when he got hold of the ring that brings back the dead, he put it on without a moment’s doubt — and lost his hand for it.

With all that in mind — and this is pure speculation — I think the series goes: young Dumbledore vs Grindelwald, then the Order of the Phoenix vs Voldemort in the years before Philosopher’s Stone, and finally a film that runs straight into the opening of Philosopher’s Stone.