It is a little hard to believe that almost 20 years have passed since we first read about the ‘Boy Who Lived’. The first Harry Potter book, written by then unknown J.K. Rowling was released almost 20 years ago. The boy wizard’s trials, tribulations and triumphs have been chronicled in six further books, a billion-dollar eight-film franchise, a current West End hit and more.
And the wonderful wizarding world he inhabits clearly has more to offer as this latest venture therein shows us.
As Potterheads can tell you, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was one of Harry’s textbooks at Hogwarts Schools of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was also a little book written by Rowling for charity.
“During the writing of that book,” says Rowling, who here makes her screenwriting debut, “I became interested in its ostensible author, Newt Scamander, and he took on quite a bit of life for me. So I was very enthusiastic when the studio came to me and said they wanted to make it into a movie, because I already had the back story in my mind and it just so happened that they’d optioned the very thing I was most interested in.
“And I knew if it were to happen, I would have to write it because I know too much about Newt to let someone else do it.”
The action in Fantastic Beasts takes place in 1926 New York, where Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives after a trip he took around the world to research and rescue magical creatures. Some of these are safeguarded in the magical hidden dimensions of his deceptively nondescript leather case. He has no idea of the tensions arising between magical and non-magical folk (in the US known as No-Majs, not Muggles).
The beasts may be in the title, but it’s the humans who are the heart of the story
When some of the magical creatures escape his care, Newt teams up with No-Maj Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) and her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) to find the escapees… and deal with the growing threat of war between the good and dark forces of magic.
Although the film is set decades before Harry’s birth – and across the Atlantic Ocean – Fantastic Beasts features myriad connections with the world we are so familiar with. Not least, the resolute message of inclusion and tolerance that Rowling champions so heartily.
Producer David Heyman, who also produced all eight Harry Potter films, says that many of the underlying themes of the Potter books are in evidence here too.
“The virtue of tolerance in contrast to the dangers of intolerance and repression, being true to who you are, outsiders coming together and connecting…,” he says. “There is an emotional universality and relevance to those ideas that are utterly relatable to people across the globe. The beasts may be in the title, but it’s the humans who are the heart of the story.”
“My heroes are always people who have the courage to say, ‘I see how it is, but it doesn’t have to be that way,’” Rowling asserts. “They are the ones willing to ask, ‘Why is it this way?’”
Redmayne chips in, adding that: “A theme at the core of this film is the fear of things we don’t understand, and also how people react to that fear by taking extremes. It’s why wizards are living in hiding in New York. It is why there is absolutely no interaction between them and the Muggles, which is permitted to some degree in the UK, where Newt is from. And it’s why they want to destroy magical beasts, who might inadvertently reveal the existence of magic. Those are notions that J.K. Rowling explores and they seem to be at the forefront here.”
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also stars Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Carmen Ejogo and Colin Farrell. Behind the scenes are a number of Harry Potter alumni, including director David Yates, who directed the last four films in the series, production designer Stuart Craig, visual effects supervisors Tim Burke and Christian Manz and editor Mark Day. Cinematography is by Philippe Rousselot and costume design is by Colleen Atwood.