Edited by Robert Beach
The importance of the Harry Potter franchise to the modern age of fantasy, blockbuster, and cinematic landscape cannot be overstated. This franchise is a pop culture phenomena second to none; a tremendously popular book series that was translated in something close to its entirety to the big screen in a radical cinematic experiment of letting the actors age through the films over the course of an entire decade.
Modern pop culture, geek and
nerd pop culture specifically, just doesn’t make sense without Harry Potter. Especially for Warner Brothers, the company that spent nearly 10
years dominating the entire fantasy genre thanks to the double barrel blast
that was the Potter films and the Lord of the Rings movies. And now, with the fantasy power vacuum
still unaddressed since the recession of Game
of Thrones’ influence over the medium, and the Hobbit films having run their disappointing course, WB is returning
to the Harry Potter well one more time for a prequel series all their own
entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them, and we’ve just received the first set photos.
The film, starring Eddie Redmayne, Colin Farrell, Ron
Perlman, Ezra Miller, and Jon Voight among a host of other actors, will be
based around the books of the same name put out by Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. I haven’t read those books, so I’m going into these pictures
thoroughly cold. Don’t expect this piece to give book fans much insight into
how well the film will be translating the characters to film so much as a
simple appraisal of how the film looks to a muggle like me.
Right from the start, I like the look of
this film from its period setting in the 1920s. The problem with an inordinate amount of prequels tends to
be they end up bogged down looking at a character during a time in their
life when they were fundamentally less interesting, rather than actually
expanding on the past of a movie’s universe. The fact that Fantastic
Beasts is going to be so fundamentally removed from the Potter-verse of the
present without even the slightest chance any of the main cast will show up is
a great step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.
What’s more, it’s a visual aesthetic we really haven’t seen
explored before in the context of modern blockbusters. Our current pantheon of blockbusters
aesthetics is actually thoroughly grounded in a handful of different locations
and very rarely do any of them dip into the past outside of mainly Disney
offerings like On Stranger Tides or Lone Ranger. The ‘20s, especially realized in this beautiful pastiche,
are an untapped template of possibility. It’s nice to see someone finally
start to develop as it blends so perfectly with the charmingly antiquated
designs of the wizarding world of Harry Potter while maintaining a uniquely
American slant.
“American” is very
much on my mind throughout these pictures, especially during the train station
shots. Aside from Hogwarts itself, the train platform is one of the fundamental locations of the Harry Potter series, so seeing the basic outline of it transposed to the American equivalent of that
core idea is a great way to pay homage to the franchise as a whole while
establishing this world as something unique and different. The design of the main station looks perfect
and is really evocative of American aesthetics overall, notably with all the
marble columns and floors complemented by the exposed steel.
At the heart of these images is Eddie Redmayne as main
character Newt Scamander, the most ridiculously named lead character in a
blockbuster since Katniss Everdeen. I really like the fundamental design of his costume and the color
combination of the steely, turquoise blue with the muted orange of his vest, another great mix as well as a unique visual palette for the
Potter-verse. What really stands out
about him to me is how much his design reminds me of Doctor Who. The color/clothes balance is cut from the same cloth as
William Hartnell’s 1st Doctor costume and deeply reminiscent of 11th
Doctor Matt Smith’s later designs.
Additionally, the blue coat and orange vest remind me a lot of Colin
Baker’s redesigned costume from the audio dramas and the visual design used for
the quasi-Doctor in the David Tennant 10th Doctor Christmas special
‘The Next Doctor.’ The most Doctor Who aspect of his design is the wand as the way he holds it coupled with the constantly glowing tip in
all these clips makes it look an awful lot like the Doctor’s sonic
screwdriver.
So far, everything about these photos is sending out the
right signals. The visual identity
of the film is strikingly unique with just enough familiarity for you to be
able to place the franchise without it obstructing the original story being
told. The character design and
setting combine perfectly to put out a dynamic new setting a more familiar
hero is being dropped into. Meanwhile, the clash of reserved British sensibilities
with American bombast radiates from every one of the images.
Of the three major fantasy films
rolling out next year, I’d say this is the one I'm looking forward to the most, even though I’ve never been as huge a fan of the Harry Potter series as a lot
of my contemporaries. This is the
movie that looks the most confident in itself. It's willing to do something
different, and I really respond to that. I say all this even if “something new and different”
really is just a time and location jump for the 9th installment in
highest-grossing film franchise of all time.
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