Christy talked me into seeing this yesterday and it was one of the best movie choices she's made in years. I never liked the Harry Potter series. I think I was just this side of too old to care about any of the characters. Some day I'll go back and revisit them (which is a recurring theme lately) and see if they've improved with age but for now, I am all in on the Fantastic Beasts franchise.Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is a British wizard visiting New York City in 1926 ostensibly to see a breeder about a particular beast, but he almost immediately runs afoul of the United States Magical Congress. A disgraced former agent, Tina (Katherine Waterston), arrests Newt and charges him with various offenses but her bosses don't seem to care as they are busy investigating unexplained unnatural phenomena that threatens to expose magic to non-magical humans. Newt's suitcase --which contains a vast array of endangered magical creatures-- is accidentally switched with that of Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a plain vanilla human who just wants to open a bakery. Jacob accidentally releases a handful of creatures, forcing Newt, Tina, and her sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) to search for them before they can be used as an excuse to justify extreme measures by the Magical Congress. Meanwhile, one of the top investigators, Graves (Colin Farrell), is quietly undertaking his own research by wheedling information from an abused ward (Ezra Miller) of a fanatical anti-witch sect leader (Samantha Morton). Graves knows what has been causing the disturbances and is desperate to get his hands on it before anyone else.
This had a ton of hype from its inception because of the Harry Potter pedigree associated with it. I was giving it even odds but now I am totally on board. I read online that they've already planned to have five movies in the series and unless they totally fuck up the next one, they have my money already.
I loved this movie, and I'm looking forward to the slew of sequels. I've liked Ezra Miller since "The Perks of Being A Wallflower", and that Justice League trailer sold me on seeing him as the Flash. This was a really well-cast film. Everyone is good, and I was sold on it when I saw Dan Fogler in the trailer. He's a guy I'll watch in anything. He's been trying to get a Sam Kinison biopic made for a while, with himself starring. I loved the change-up in this film, and I won't spoil it, because I wasn't ready for it, but it was a nice cap to an amazing film.
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