Fantastic Beasts and the Beating of a Dead Horse.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, when Dumbledore asked Severus, “After all this time?” and Severus replied, “Always!”, all the potterheads around the world wiped their tears and adopted this one dialogue as the hallmark of the entire series, and unanimously vowed to be with the Wizarding World like Snape was with Lily- Always. However, as the Fantastic Beasts franchise is progressing, we are made to think- has the Wizarding World outlived its relevance? The latest instalment in the series is the Fantastic Beasts and the Secrers of Dumbledore. This movie has an ambitious title ‘Secrets of Dumledore’ because anyone who has thoroughly watched the Harry Potter movie series and read the books (such as myself) knows that Albus Dumbledore is a secretive man. He kept all sorts of secrets with him and had extensive plans to defeat evil. But just like how Crimes of Grindelwald failed to deliever any serious crimes committed by Grindelwald to provide flesh to his arc as the antagonist, Secrets of Dumbledore, likewise, failed to deliever any substantive secret of Dumbledore to contribute either to his story or to the story in general.
Joanne Kathleen Rowling was a phenomenon children’s story writer. I specifically use the word ‘was’ because she isn’t a phenomenon anymore. She has done her part in writing the Harry Potter book series. The new movie series- the so-called Fantastic Beasts series- is merely a desperate and terribly failed attempt to revive the Wizarding World’s charm and make some coin out of it. The latest instalment in the series is The Secrets of Dumbledore, which was released in the first half of April. The movie brought back the usual actors like Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore, Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein, Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, Ezra Miller as Credence Barebone or Aurelius Dumbledore, etc., some new additions, and a replacement- Mads Mikkelsen as Gellert Grindelwald instead of Johnny Depp.
At the simplest level, this movie does not take forward from where the last movie left. The Crimes of Grindelwald was a messy confluence of multiple story threads. It ended up delivering only confusion to the audience. The current instalment, however, saved us from chaos, but it still managed to disgust us with its cringe and illogical moments. To provide takeaways, Rowling broke the established norms and defied the cannon of the Wizarding World. For instance, in the Harry Potter series, it is clearly mentioned, and I quote from the Wizarding World’s website, “If a Muggle were to look at Hogwarts, for example, all they would see is a ruin with signs telling them to keep out.” Then, how did they manage to take Jacob Kowalski inside Hogwarts and have him have lunch in the Great Hall? Another quite absurd moment was when Newt Scamander gave Jacob a fake wand but presented it as a real one just to impress Jacob.
In the movie, Dumbledore mentioned that much of the magic known to the Wizarding World originated in Bhutan. Based on just this one dialogue, we are transported to Bhutan for the sake of aesthetics and climax. No effort was made to explain this crucial statement since twenty-five years have gone by since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and not once in these twenty-five years was such a statement made about Bhutan. Then why is J. K. Rowling keen on making such comments so hastily that there’s a high chance a layperson (who is not a Potterhead) would totally miss it and have a hard time figuring out why the setting suddenly shifted to Bhutan. Part of the explanation may also lie in the fact that the buzz around fantasy shows/movies throughout the last decade involved a certain degree of fetishising the East, be it the Lannister dresses being stitched and sent out from India for Game of Thrones to the assimilation of concepts and architectural elements in the very recent The Wheel of Time series that aired on Amazon Prime Video.
Another issue with this franchise is the imposition of the ‘fantastic beasts’. It’s all good and a feast for the eyes to watch magical creatures created with the latest VFX technology on the screen, but the story is clearly not about them. They are rendered to the margin and used only as occasional tropes simply to justify the name of the series and the budget of Warner Bros. The same is true of the first two movies as well. The story essentially is of the rise of Grindelwald and the hate politics that he brings with him that threatens a schism in the Wizarding World and the persecution of Muggles. But surprisingly, the franchise is named Fantastic Beasts. How curious!
In this movie, I also figured out that Rowling, as excellent a writer as she was, has lost sense of what her audience likes. It should not come as a surprise now that a whole generation grew up reading and living with the world of Harry Potter. And that generation is now in its thirties and definitely won’t miss an instalment of the Wizarding World. Such an audience has a certain level of expectations from J. K. Rowling, but she gives them Newt Scamander dancing in a cave of a vicious beast to save his brother. The uneasy puns failed to produce laughter and instead ended up being cringe. This series gave us characters that lack a personal touch and fail to make impressions that last outside the movie hall. Queenie donnes a single, monotonous expression throughout the movie, Tina plays no role in this movie, but she gets redemption in the happy climax with literally two appearances, Yusuf Kama didn’t contribute anything in the last movie, and he doesn’t contribute in this movie either, and I don’t even get the point of a Muggle wandering around with Wizards, with a fake wand in possession trying to take on the greatest Wizard of that time. The Harry Potter movies were liked by children and adults alike even though they were meant for children as the target audience. Now those children are adults, and the Fantastic Beasts franchise had constantly failed to deliver what the Wizarding World promised when they were mere kids.
Rowling has done her job creating a world loved by millions across the globe, but now she is shying away from playing with complex plots and, in the garb of complexity, conjures up absurd characters and stories. The tropes are the same as the Harry Potter franchise, such as the Room of Requirements, the Phoenix bird, Minerva McGonagall, Hogsmeade, the classic Harry Potter tune, etc., but they are put in awkward situations and settings which don’t resonate with the viewer. Credence Barebone, aka Aurelius Dumbledore, is, in my view, the only complex character that has a nuanced past and is trying very hard to find his identity. The makers of the Fantastic Beasts franchise need to realise that the bar is the Harry Potter series, and it will remain so as long as there’s Wizarding World.
The main crux of the story is Dumbledore admitting and expressing his love for Grindelwald, which we already knew. However, we still hoped to see what direction this would give to the story. This angle, like other tropes in this movie, rather than steering the course of the movie, stayed stationary as it was in the previous instalment and ended up being a stale argument. The duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore broke the Blood Pact between them. And the basis for this, as summarised once again by Dumbledore in one dialogue, was, “He meant to kill, I meant to protect.” Come on! The Blood Pact literally stopped Dumbledore from moving against Grindelwald and thus deprived the franchise of its share of action, and it is broken so simply? The story is filled with illogical and non-conforming actions from beginning to end.
The final words are in order. The Fantastic Beasts franchise is an awkward amalgamation of familiar tropes of the Wizarding World, pseudo-complex story, unasked-for fantastic beasts, distracted plots, impersonal characters, absence of Johnny Depp, and much-changed writing of J. K. Rowling. The franchise has desperately failed to live up to the expectations of the Potterheads around the world. We can only hope that the end of the franchise isn’t as disappointing.
