Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Review
Stranger in a Strange Land
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, March 26, 2017
Nothing quickens a studio executive's pulse more than a sure-fire franchise. Warner Brothers
appeared to have lost its most bankable series when the Harry Potter saga concluded in 2011 with
the release of
Harry Potter and
the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. But author J.K. Rowling came
riding to the rescue like Dumbledore's Army, bearing a new entry in the Potterverse
inspired by her slim 2001 volume published under the pen name of "Newt Scamander". Newt's
guide to mystical creatures, entitled
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, is one of the
textbooks assigned to young Harry in his first year at Hogwarts. Rowling's publication purported
to be a copy of that very bestiary, with marginal notations by Harry, Ron and Hermione.
For the filmed version of
Fantastic Beasts, Rowling wrote an original script delving into
the origins of Newt Scamander's textbook and recounting the exploits of its author many years
before Harry's fateful birth. Produced by
Potter veterans David Heyman, Steve Kloves and
Lionel Wigram, and directed by David Yates, who helmed the last four
Potter films,
Fantastic
Beasts was released in November 2016 and was promptly devoured by Hogwarts veterans
suffering from five years of Potter withdrawal. Four sequels are planned, and
Fantastic Beasts'
impressive world box office of $812 million guarantees that they'll be made.
"New York is considerably more interesting than I expected!" — Newt
Scamander
In 1926, Newt Scamander arrives in New York City from Great Britain, bearing a battered
suitcase that contains a dimensional portal to an animal preserve—but not for the usual
endangered species. A self-taught expert on mystical wildlife (or, in Rowling-speak, a
"magizoologist", the first of his kind), Newt bears the perpetually befuddled air of an absent-minded professor. Shy and abstracted, he's not
particularly comfortable with other people (who,
he says, find him "annoying"), but he has an instinctive rapport with magical animals, including
many that the mainstream wizard world considers dangerous and would prefer to see
exterminated. Newt thinks they're just misunderstood and mistreated and, in his own modest
way, he wants to change his fellow wizards' hearts and minds on the subject.
The immediate purpose of Newt's trip is to return a rare Thunderbird, a kind of cross between a
dragon and an American bald eagle, to its native habitat in Arizona, but he almost immediately
becomes enmeshed in various intrigues. A case of identical suitcases prompts an odd-couple
partnership with a local Muggle—or, "No-Maj", in American parlance—named Jacob Kowalski
(Dan Fogler), a cannery worker who aspires to open his own bakery but can't get a bank loan.
Newt also finds that he has arrived at a dangerous time for American wizards and their governing
organization, the Magical Congress of the United States of America, or "MACUSA", which is
headed by the imperious President Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) and boasts a squadron of
"Auror" enforcers. There is a growing movement among No-Majs to expose and
condemn wizards, as typified by a messianic group known as "The Second Salemers". The leader
of The Second Salemers is the severe Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), who has
dragooned a fleet of adopted children into her service, including the downcast Credence (Ezra
Miller) and an eerie little girl named Modesty (Faith Wood-Blagrove). While Mary Lou is unsuccessful in her
initial attempts to enlist a powerful newspaper publisher, Henry Shaw Sr. (Jon Voight), in her
anti-magical crusade, the Shaw family will shortly reconsider their support
when a mystical force intervenes in the political career of the eldest son, Henry Shaw Jr. (Josh
Cowdery).
Newt Scamander has barely arrived in New York when he runs afoul of MACUSA after one of
his creatures, a platypus-billed thief called a "Niffler", escapes and runs amuck in its magpie-like
pursuit of shiny objects. Hauled into the organization's cavernous New York headquarters by a demoted Auror, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson),
who is seeking to reestablish her
credentials, Newt attracts the attention of President Picquery's chief aide, a powerful wizard
named Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), who has recently been tracking random eruptions of
destructive magical forces. For a time, these mystical rampages are attributed to other escapees
from Newt's menagerie, but it eventually becomes apparent that something more powerful and
sinister is attacking the city, thereby threatening to expose the secret world of wizards to the
fearful eyes of No-Maj society. It is Newt, with his accumulated knowledge of occult life forms,
who is able to track down and confront the marauding spirit, aided by Jacob, Tina and Tina's
sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), a sweet-hearted coquette who has the useful ability to read minds.
Rowling is an established master at juggling multiple story lines while keeping an eye firmly on her
tale's ultimate destination, and there are many moments in
Fantastic Beasts where you can see
her laying groundwork for things to come, especially in the hints about Newt Scamander's past.
Looming over these early adventures is the threat of a renegade dark wizard, Gellert
Grindelwald, whose younger self appeared briefly in flashbacks during the
Potter series and who is introduced here in a cleverly animated
opening montage of magical newspaper reports. (Grindelwald himself appears only briefly, played by Johnny Depp.)
Grindelwald is obviously the Voldemort of this extended chronicle, but his plans and the future
entwinement of his fate with Newt's remain for future installments to explore.
But Rowling offers more than a preamble. Newt's visit to New York provides a self-contained
adventure that stands on its own while assembling an engaging band of companions to
accompany him on future adventures. Newt's struggles with both New York's No-Maj world and
the competing factions within MACUSA, and his ultimate confrontation with a mythical and
lethal creature dubbed an "Obscurus", supply a solid narrative foundation, while allowing
Rowling and director Yates plenty of room to explore a new realm of magical wonder and deliver
on the title's promise of introducing us to an assortment of "fantastic beasts", both inside the
multifaceted preserve that Newt has constructed within his case and in familiar environs like
Macy's and Central Park. Though set in the past and an ocean away from Diagon Alley, the
world of
Fantastic Beasts feels entirely of a piece with
Harry Potter's landscape of antique
locales, dusty relics and ancient powers.
Fantastic Beasts is a welcome return to form for director Yates after the disappointment of
The
Legend of Tarzan. Yates has said that he initially resisted reenlisting for Rowling's world after
four
Harry Potter films but was won over by the strength of her script. The director and his
producers and creative team bring with them a wealth of experience in the painstaking art of
creating a quasi-naturalistic environment in which magic is an everyday occurrence for those
who practice it, and supernatural events are just as likely to occur in the distance or at the edge of
the frame instead of always taking center stage, as often happened in the early
Potter films. Yates
has also become adept at directing actors in lengthy sequences where they have to react to critical
elements that don't yet exist and will be added later by CGI. It certainly helps that, as detailed in
the disc's extras,
Fantastic Beasts was shot on huge practical sets with lovingly crafted period
detail, and that many of Newt's creatures were represented by elaborate articulated puppets. But
the cast, especially Redmayne, Waterston and Fogler, deserve substantial credit for bringing this
world alive with their credible immersion into their characters. All three are experienced players,
but the film's breakout performance comes from Alison Sudol, whose Queenie is a charmingly
original variation on the traditional dumb blonde (and, as things turn out, not so dumb). The
reliable Ron Perlman supplies a comically sinister motion-captured performance as Gnarlack, the
goblin proprietor of a demon speakeasy called The Blind Pig.
At the conclusion of
Fantastic Beasts, Newt promises that he will personally deliver to Tina a
copy of the book he is writing, the same one that will eventually become required reading at
Hogwarts. MACUSA will no doubt remain suspicious of the diffident British wizard, but viewers and Tina eagerly await his return.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray, Video Quality
Fantastic Beasts was shot by the esteemed French cinematographer, Philippe Rousselot, a
newcomer to the Potterverse but an experienced hand at photographing alternate realities, both
antique and mystical. His credits include Guy Ritchie's two
Sherlock Holmes films, Neil Jordan's
Interview with the Vampire
and
Tim Burton's
Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory. For
Fantastic
Beasts, Rousselot's lighting and the production design establish clear distinctions between the
magical world and that of Muggles—excuse me, No-Majs. The palette of 1920s New York is
muted and subdued, with an often dusty texture and just an occasional flash of bright color,
usually associated with wealth (e.g., the red bouquets on the tables of the Shaw banquet).
Whenever magic enters the picture, the palette shifts. The Goldstein sisters' apartment is
suffused with a warm glow; Newt's inter-dimensional creature preserve and its inhabitants are a
rainbow of bright, saturated hues; and the many levels of MACUSA are alternately marked by
flashes of color (e.g., the central dial that registers mystical threats) and expanses of brightness
(e.g., the punishment chamber from which Newt rescues Tina).
Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray faithfully renders the film's many shades, with deep
blacks, excellent fine detail and subtle color grading that gives the digitally acquired production a
sense of texture effectively creating the requisite antique appearance.
Fantastic Beasts was
finished on a digital intermediate at 4K (from a 3.4K ARRIRAW source, according to IMDb),
which no doubt accounts for the superior sharpness of the downconverted 1080p image. Warner
has mastered the 133-minute film with an average bitrate of 22.17 Mbps, using nearly all of the
available space on the BD-50 (allowing for extras and multiple soundtracks). The encode is
capable, and the image is free of artifacts.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray, Audio Quality
As with its recent Blu-ray of
Live by Night,
Warner has chosen to accompany
Fantastic Beasts
with two lossless soundtracks, one in Dolby Atmos (with a TrueHD 7.1 "core") and another in
DTS-HD MA 5.1. In a curious twist, the disc has been mastered to default to the DTS-HD MA
track; viewers with Atmos-capable equipment have to remember to select that option manually.
In an even more curious turn, Warner has
omitted the Atmos track from the 3D release of
Fantastic Beasts, for no apparent reason. This review is limited to the Atmos track; the DTS-HD
MA track will be discussed in the
3D review.
Fantastic Beasts' Atmos soundtrack offers all the bells and whistles (and also roars, chirps and
stampedes) that we have come to expect from a major studio tentpole, with standout sequences
like the Obscurus' rampage, which immerses the listener in falling masonry, shattering glass and
the fearsome spirit's enraged roar. Each of Newt's many varieties of creature has its own
distinctive voice, ranging from high-pitched staccato chatter to a deep, sustained bellow, and the
film's sound design has expertly pitched these animal expressions midway between the familiarly
organic and the delightfully otherworldly. Acts of magic inspire a symphony of effects both
obvious and subtle, with every room and corridor of MACUSA headquarters a unique sonic
experience. (The pneumatic tube network running through the Wand Permit offices is especially
memorable, as enchanted sheets of paper whoosh through the system in all directions.) The mix
fully exploits the ability of Atmos to position and shift discrete effects throughout the surround
field with exemplary clarity.
The dialogue is clear and well-prioritized throughout, but there's often so much happening at
once in the sound mix for
Fantastic Beasts that it may take several viewings to grasp some of the
expository detail with which Rowling has seeded the characters' exchanges. James Newton
Howard joins the roster of Potterverse composers with an energetic orchestral scores that shifts
smoothly between the film's comic beats (usually at the expense of Dan Fogler's Jacob) and the
film's stirring adventure elements. Key themes from John Williams' compositions for the first
three
Harry Potter films help link
Fantastic Beasts to the rest of Rowling's expanding fantasy
world.
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