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Harrow posted:I'm interested to see how young they cast Dumbledore for the next movie. Depending on when how long after Fantastic Beasts it takes place, he'll be pushing 50, but he's also a wizard and they probably age slower. (I hope they go for Jared Harris like that one rumor suggests, though. He might be a little older than Dumbledore should look, but a) he's a good actor, and b) he's Richard Harris's son and that'd feel pretty appropriate.) I think very few good decisions, casting or otherwise, are going to be made with this movie series. But we'll see, I could be wrong. At the end credits when I saw, "Written and Produced by JK Rowling" my immediate thought was, "Welp, she's gone full George Lucas." We'll see.
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Dec 1, 2016 21:46
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Potterverse:DeimosRising posted:it's consistently dumb I guess.
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Dec 1, 2016 22:19
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I'm willing to cut Rowling some slack since she's never written a screenplay before but man what were the editors doing
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Dec 1, 2016 23:46
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The more I think about it the more I wonder if maybe I was just expecting too much and that's why I didn't like it? (Is wanting a good movie expecting too much?) I was able to stomach the first Harry Potter film (arguably the worst of the batch) but this movie was inexcusable. Were my standards too high? I would have preferred a Attenboroughesque documentary, like I said, with lots of magic and whatnot. The moral lesson about how wizards are just killing off these awesome creatures because they're assholes would have been good/fine. Even a Werner Herzogesque exploration into the magical world and how wow holy poo poo so hosed up it is would have been pretty cool. I guess neither of those are very engrossing or actiony movies for pre-teens? (The intended audience of Harry Potter, sorry 20-somethings and those even older.) I know I loved just sitting down and watching National Geographic when I was a pre-teen. (Big Cat Diary ruled, fight me!) But maybe I was a unique case? Meh. I think the assessment of this movie being two movies in one is very accurate. It largely fails because it's trying to do too many things at once. I was pretty upset that this movie was so bad and I'm a bit peeved at myself for expecting quality. I'm blaming myself, right? Like I should have known better. Sigh.
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Dec 1, 2016 23:58
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I never understood the hate for the first two films. They're like 90s CBBC miniseries' but with a budget and a famous director. How is that anything but wonderful?
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Dec 2, 2016 00:46
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Because not a single child in them can act and the second one is the longest one for no loving reason.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:49
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GonSmithe posted:Because not a single child in them can act and the second one is the longest one for no loving reason. No kids in the UK could act in the early 2000s. It's a recent phenomenon. And it is the later films that are too short, sir.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:51
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This is actually an OK movie and watching people lose their poo poo over CANON arguments and why the first movie in a planned five-parter doesn't answer every plot thread is quite amusing.
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Dec 2, 2016 00:52
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Jenner posted:Were my standards too high? If "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" is an 'inexcusable' movie to you then yes. It's at worst a plodding and rather dreary film, not some atrocious disaster. I also doubt your standards are particularly high or you wouldn't have been going to see a Harry Potter film in the first place. You seem to want people to agree with you that it was the Worst Movie Ever and even the harshest of critics aren't going that far and I'm not sure why you're surprised. I mean I thought this was a pretty meh movie and I'm certainly not going to defend it beyond having a couple of interesting bits, but weird "gosh, is it my fault for assuming films should be GOOD" stuff is silly. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 00:57
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dont even fink about it posted:This is actually an OK movie and watching people lose their poo poo over CANON arguments and why the first movie in a planned five-parter doesn't answer every plot thread is quite amusing. I don't think those are the issues most people have with the movie.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:04
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Jenner posted:The more I think about it the more I wonder if maybe I was just expecting too much and that's why I didn't like it? (Is wanting a good movie expecting too much?) I was able to stomach the first Harry Potter film (arguably the worst of the batch) but this movie was inexcusable. Were my standards too high? I could not possibly be labeled a 'fan' of harry potter even though I've read the series and watched (most of?) the movies, and I thought this movie was all sorts of trash with some unfinished neat ideas in places. I went in expecting nothing and came out thinking that the movie was all over the place, and the worse for it. I thought this movie was much better than the recent Star Wars, though, even if Star Wars was the more structurally coherent of the two.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:16
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dont even fink about it posted:This is actually an OK movie and watching people lose their poo poo over CANON arguments and why the first movie in a planned five-parter doesn't answer every plot thread is quite amusing. Who is doing this?
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Dec 2, 2016 02:31
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JediTalentAgent posted:Underground Magic School sounds like an anime. Like you've got a bunch of magical kids from the wrong side of the magical tracks who can't get into the elite school and they all end up going to a cheap school run by negligent, shady, disgraced wizards/witches... which puts it about on the same level as Hogwart's, anyway. Sounds like the Vincent Clortho Public School for Wizards.
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Dec 2, 2016 05:07
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ImpAtom posted:If "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" is an 'inexcusable' movie to you then yes. It's at worst a plodding and rather dreary film, not some atrocious disaster. I also doubt your standards are particularly high or you wouldn't have been going to see a Harry Potter film in the first place. You seem to want people to agree with you that it was the Worst Movie Ever and even the harshest of critics aren't going that far and I'm not sure why you're surprised. If it was just its own movie in its own right disconnected from any franchise or whatever I think I could have excused it. (At least... I hope so. I seem to be much more forgiving on these cases but we'll never really know for sure because that's not the reality we live in.) But it was the fact that it was grabbing onto the coat tails of the Harry Potter movies (which I thought were largely okay and even good at times) that makes it inexcusable to me. Because it gave itself the illusion of a standard of quality to expect that I feel it utterly failed to achieve. (Though I won't dispute that it genuinely tried to get there, it just failed to.) As such it was a greater disappointment. I don't care that people don't agree with me, I like talking to people who don't agree with me and learning their point of view. And I don't think it's the worst movie ever. (There are far worse movies, like Hotel Transylvania and its sequel.) But I do admit I am being a bit elitist because I just truly believe people who like this movie are being way more forgiving than they normally would be for some reason or another. People who like this movie point out the good things that they like about this movie and use that to explain why they like it and those things are (for the most part) good. But for me, the badness of this movie far outweighs any of those good things. Obviously people are going to have different tastes and such so it's fine. Critics and viewers and fans are going to come to their own conclusions and they might not be my conclusions and that's fine. They're not bad people with terrible taste who are utterly irredeemable and this movie is not some terrible crime against humanity/Harry Potter/whatever. It was just bad and IMHO it honestly had no right to be.
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Dec 2, 2016 06:31
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Jenner posted:If it was just its own movie in its own right disconnected from any franchise or whatever I think I could have excused it. (At least... I hope so. I seem to be much more forgiving on these cases but we'll never really know for sure because that's not the reality we live in.) But it was the fact that it was grabbing onto the coat tails of the Harry Potter movies (which I thought were largely okay and even good at times) that makes it inexcusable to me. Because it gave itself the illusion of a standard of quality to expect that I feel it utterly failed to achieve. (Though I won't dispute that it genuinely tried to get there, it just failed to.) As such it was a greater disappointment. And in comparison I would say it is directly on-level with the Potter films which, except for maybe Prisoner of Azkaban, were not particularly good films. Particularly the later ones which were bloated, grey, plodding messes barely held together by a few strong moments or performances. I genuinely can't imagine how you can think the Potter films are "largely okay and maybe even good at times" and then dislike FB to that degree because they honestly share almost all of its flaws. Like part of the reason I'm not particularly shocked about is flaws is because they're almost all flaws prevalent throughout the Potter films. I don't think that FB has any particular flaws that I wouldn't associate with everything post-PoA except maybe the fact that it doesn't have an attached book to fill in some of the poorly explained nonsense. (Well, it technically does, but I doubt anyone really counts that one.) Not even Potter fans hold the films up as particularly high quality. (If anything they seem more prone to nitpick the fact that the films tend to gloss over or ignore important plot points from the books from what I've noticed.) The ones I've spoken to are mostly disappointed in Fantastic Beasts as an expansion of the Potter universe rather than as a film itself, though I freely admit I'm not delving deep into the Harry Potter fandom. If you're thinking they're too forgiving, I would suggest rather that they're getting a film basically about what they expect from the franchise.
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Dec 2, 2016 06:49
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/\/\ Maybe you're right? I'm not sure. There is definitely the possibility that my having read the books before seeing the movies lead me to mentally fill in and forgive many of the gaps and problems that exist in the Harry Potter films. If such is the case it's possible Fantastic Beasts, failing to have a book to support it, seemed more flawed to me even though it might have had many of the same issues. But while I don't doubt it's a factor I don't think it's hugely influential. Because I know the Harry Potter movies definitely shared many of the problems FB had because I've criticized them and complained about them too. But the HP movies always tried to follow the plot and tell the story of the book they represented (to the best of their ability.) And their failure to be 100% loyal to the books never bothered me because I am not a super fan and some of the stuff in the books was beyond stupid and is better off left out/forgotten. (As such the books, while an influencer, are probably not a huge influencer?) FB tried to follow two separate plots and several different stories. It suffered for it. FB had two romantic sub plots but only one of them got any kind of development to defend its existence. FB had many other flaws which I and others have talked about that really hurt the experience and enjoyment of the film. It is my opinion that the HP movies had enough redeeming qualities about them to offset the flaws (thus making them at least okay) While FB did not (thus making it quite bad.) 
Jenner fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Dec 2, 2016 |
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Dec 2, 2016 08:08
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Jenner posted:But the HP movies always tried to follow the plot and tell the story of the book they represented I can agree with this except that I will point out that isn't necessarily the same as avoiding the problem you mentioned. The Potter books are often weirdly focused and all over the place, going after multiple plot threads at once. Half-Blood Prince in particular is kind of all over the place, focused on filling in a bunch of gaps before the final dramatic superbook and the end result of a pretty convoluted narrative without much focus, something which shows a lot in the film version. I saw it with a friend who never read the books and a lot of their criticisms are not very far from yours of Fantastic Beasts. There's a lot of points in the films where they rely on viewer knowledge of plot points to understand how they connect or why they are there at all. The things you mention, from thinly-developed romance plots where one gets more focus, to overly-crowded and unfocused plots, and so-on are absolutely part of the Potter films. If they bothered you more in FB then that's totally reasonable but I don't think there's much difference there.
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Dec 2, 2016 08:25
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I really enjoyed this movie, I thought it was a lot more exciting without having read a book. Now I just want the novelization, though... David Yates' wand-pistols always annoy me, and I might be the only one in the thread who loved our two leads! Doctor Whagrid and Sam Waterston's daughter were a lot of fun. How is America somehow darker when you add in wizardry?
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Dec 2, 2016 08:32
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Die Sexmonster! posted:and Sam Waterston's daughter  Not-Maura Tierney is Jack McCoy's kid? I'll be damned.
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Dec 2, 2016 16:58
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We thought this was a pretty bad movie. Great beasts, terrible every other thing that makes a movie. Iv heard people raving about it and I wish I saw the same movie they did. Wait to red box it.
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Dec 3, 2016 05:38
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Steve2911 posted:I never understood the hate for the first two films. They're like 90s CBBC miniseries' but with a budget and a famous director. How is that anything but wonderful? You can always count on Chris Columbus to make a dull, soulless, by-the-book film.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:49
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If this movie had just been Newt 'n' Jake's Beast-Wranglin' Adventures with the fuckin MACUSA guys being the Boss Hogg to their Duke Boys, it would have been infinitely more fun and better-contained. As it stands, we get the out-of-nowhere villain who's barely been mentioned in passing and whose motivation has been completely loving inscrutable the entire film (was there ever even a "Graves"? Is the real one dead or missing or something? what did he actually want to accomplish because it seemed like he was trying to contain/stop this demon thing, or that his controlling it would do ... something? make muggles kill wizards? force wizards to kill muggles in self defense?), a character who is both massively underutilized by the plot and the universe she exists in (a mindreader should be running the show, not getting your coffee -edit- not to mention how incredibly lazy it is from a dialogue and characterization standpoint, we don't need to actually tell anyone anything, she just *knows* they have emotional depth), an insanely incompetent body of authority ("we know you've been dicking around against protocol the past two days but we're going to trust you to obliviate this guy who is obviously your buddy"), and an entirely-unearned teary goodbye from a character who never really shared an emotional conversation or connection with this aspergery wizard nerd she's had to babysit for two days straight.
Buzkashi fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 04:31
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Saw this yesterday, was pretty decent. It really did feel like just an appetizer for a more fleshed out depiction of international wizardry. I understand the comments about it having two jarring plots, and I agree with that, but I was bothered less by that because I am interested in the way formal wizard society works around the world. The beasts were cute and all but I actually wanted to learn more about being a wizard in America and how hosed it can be. I'm thinking Newt might be trying to release all his creatures into their natural habitats? In which case I hope we get to see better thought-out illustrations of magic in Paris, Kenya, etc. 7/10 overall.
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Dec 5, 2016 14:29
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Is there an exceptionally good audiobook version of the books?
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Dec 5, 2016 16:47
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Baron Porkface posted:Is there an exceptionally good audiobook version of the books? Yes. Stephen Fry did a complete audio book reading for the entire series and he is goddamn phenomenal.
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Dec 5, 2016 17:22
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Looper posted:I'm willing to cut Rowling some slack since she's never written a screenplay before but man what were the editors doing Really, I'm not sure the screenplay has many issues in it that aren't present in Rowling's actual Harry Potter novels. It's just exacerbated because it's a movie and this time nobody could go in having read the book first, which would've subconsciously smoothed out the rough spots for some people. I don't think she's ever been very good at pacing or managing multiple plotlines gracefully, and those are the two biggest issues that Fantastic Beasts has as a movie. It tries to juggle several storylines with very different moods, and eventually the darkest one erupts in the last act to become the actual main plot. That's a pretty common structure in Harry Potter books, all told, and the books just get away with it better because there's more room to spread out.
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Dec 5, 2016 19:48
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I would much rather watch sequels that show Redmayne and co. stopping the wizard Nazis from stealing magical beasts to use to destroy muggles than anything to do with the core HP story. Let the set designers and artists go nuts and show me some voodoo swamp mages or 1000 year old Aztec priests instead of London.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:24
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I don't know what they say about the final battle with grindelwald in the books, but I'd be very cool with them doing both. Dumbledore vs. Grindelwald in the Incan ruins or the Amazon would be dope.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:03
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Jay-V posted:I don't know what they say about the final battle with grindelwald in the books, but I'd be very cool with them doing both. That mentality is what got us this movie, are you sure?
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Dec 5, 2016 23:15
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Sometimes its best just to leave a climatic duel to the history of the world. It didn't pan out super well for Star Wars. I mean sure the idea of a young hot Dumbledore is intriguing but I don't trust they'd be able to execute it well. It's a tough trick to pull five movies out of a story that you know is going to end up with Grindlewald losing to Dumbledore.
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Dec 5, 2016 23:54
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Harrow posted:I don't think she said that. I thought Graves said that. Maybe they both did and I just don't remember though, that's very possible. Yeah it was Graves that said it. the president says she was the one that ordered them to shoot
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Dec 6, 2016 02:30
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Paragon8 posted:Sometimes its best just to leave a climatic duel to the history of the world. It didn't pan out super well for Star Wars. You're kidding right? Grindewald lost to this movie's protagonist, much less Dumbledore.
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Dec 6, 2016 19:32
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I went back and looked at the reddit thread for when this movie came out and was surprised at how positive the general reception was. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I found it to be a pretty bad movie overall. The plot was all over the place, the characters were cartoony, it was way too CGI-heavy, and most importantly it just kinda missed the entire reason the Harry Potter movies were good and popular in the first place. It's honestly kind of strange to me how highly it rated on RT as well. I dunno, obviously my opinions aren't absolute and I'm not trying to hate on anyone that enjoyed it, I just haven't felt my own take on a movie be so different from the general public before.
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Dec 7, 2016 02:40
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PantsBandit posted:most importantly it just kinda missed the entire reason the Harry Potter movies were good and popular in the first place. Beyond "are an adaptation of an existing popular book series" I'm not sure what you mean here. Well, that or Alan Rickman (RIP.)
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Dec 7, 2016 02:41
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ImpAtom posted:Beyond "are an adaptation of an existing popular book series" I'm not sure what you mean here. Well, that or Alan Rickman (RIP.) What I mean is the books and movies were about something more than just "magic and crazy poo poo". Harry and his friends felt like they were discovering this world along with the viewers (obviously it helps they started as kids) and as such the fantastical elements were sort of drip-fed throughout. And they always felt grounded, in a sense, partly because the CGI was (almost) always very tasteful. Fantastic Beasts just felt very loud and forgettable to me in comparison because there's so much exaggerated wizard poo poo going on all the time and none of it feels meaningful. I didn't feel an attachment to any of the characters in the same way as the cast of the mainline HP films, even in the first movie. Plus I just find the setting unbearably boring compared to Hogwarts.
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Dec 7, 2016 02:50
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PantsBandit posted:What I mean is the books and movies were about something more than just "magic and crazy poo poo". Harry and his friends felt like they were discovering this world along with the viewers (obviously it helps they started as kids) and as such the fantastical elements were sort of drip-fed throughout. And they always felt grounded, in a sense, partly because the CGI was (almost) always very tasteful. I'll have to disagree here. Someone said this earlier and I said the same thing then. I think that is what the books are but the films themselves generally are done with the assumption you've read the books and leave a lot of things completely unexplained. They're also excessive and cartoonish both in the early films (remember the Knight bus ride?) and the later films (where the CGI gets way overdone in general.) I don't think cartoonish is necessarily bad for a kid's series, even one that gets as death-tastic as Potter does, but to me the films were a mix of garish and drab. I said it earlier in the thread but I think that may be the divorce in response. Te me Fantastic Beasts felt exactly like the post-Prisoner Potter films with the sole exception of me not having a book's worth of knowledge to back it up. YMMV on that totally but I genuinely and wholeheartedly don't think it is different in style, tone or feel from the Potter films except for the obvious difference of lacking a school setting. (And even then it resembles parts of Deathly Hallows.) To be fair Deathly Hallows is the very end of a 7/8 movie series while FB is the start of one. (I should note that I didn't *like* FB but I also wasn't big on the Potter films in general, I saw this because my sister wanted to see it for her birthday, and so I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who felt the series peaked with Prisoner of Azkaban.)
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Dec 7, 2016 04:19
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ImpAtom posted:Yes. Stephen Fry did a complete audio book reading for the entire series and he is goddamn phenomenal. !!! We finally agree about something! ... is this... love? I was mulling over if we should draw broad sweeping implications from the casting choices in the HP and FB movies. (Concerning things like: there just aren't a lot of non-white wizards. Are people of color less magically gifted or something?) I highly doubt the kind of stuff that is being conveyed by the casting is intended by Rowling. She herself has been adamant that the wizarding world is very diverse and that magic schools exist all over the world. She was criticized for the movies largely failing to reflect that but it's difficult to determine if that was Rowling's doing or Hollywood's doing. (Hollywood has a problem.) It's probably better to just take Rowling's word for it. But we can talk about the kind of problems and implications HP and FB present in their stories and lore and the questions they raise. I'm gonna talk about it. - The British wizarding community appears to have the ability to just know someone is magical regardless of their parentage. They show up immediately, as soon as the kid is old enough, and wisk them away to Hogwarts. The American wizarding community does not appear aware of everyone who is magical and definitely does not wisk them away to the American wizarding school when they're of the right age. Why is this? America is very big, perhaps the community in America does not have the infrastructure/room/resources to get every kid? -In Britain and America wizarding society is unique and distinct from non-magical society. Wizards appear to have major differences and views removed from the current views of society at large. (Example: In the US, the president of the Magical Congress is a black woman. In the 1920s, 40ish years before civil rights, when racism is all the rage in America.) Why is this? We learn that both the wizarding communities keep themselves secret from the non-magical, effectively isolating themselves from their ideas and influences. However, Hogwarts accepts children from muggle (non-magical) families at an age where they have experienced quite a bit of muggle culture and have a muggle identity, muggle ideas, and muggle ideals. They are integrated into wizarding society at large with their unique culture intact. It is very difficult to believe that popular muggle conceptions would be unwelcome or unpopular among wizards and not spread. (Especially racist ideas. When you have a large population of wizards utterly obsessed with blood purity and who truly believe others are inferior to them. Yet another reason why they are superior would be gobbled right up.) It's easier to believe it in America, where interaction with the mundanes is strictly forbidden. (But if you can't interact with non-magical people what do you do about their magical children?) -For whatever reason, wizards don't intervene and take magical people out of abusive environments. In fact, in FB, when Tina tries to do something about it she is punished. (It's ultimately explained why they left Harry Potter with his abusive family in HP. We still don't know why they leave kids in abusive environments in FB.) Do they just not care? Is it too risky? What is up with this? -Tina knows about what happens to wizards who repress their abilities obscurius. And she's not like a scholar or a super sperg who is obsessed with and learns about this stuff. Can we assume from this fact that a lot of the folks in power in the wizarding world have an idea that this happens? Accepting this, what they are doing is super irresponsible. They're effectively creating a hotbed for Obscurius. (Obviously Graves/Grindewald knows about it too. But we all know why.) There's more but this is getting long and like, do we have any answers? Goddamn, wizarding society is hosed up.
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Dec 7, 2016 05:56
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Democratic Pirate posted:I would much rather watch sequels that show Redmayne and co. stopping the wizard Nazis from stealing magical beasts to use to destroy muggles than anything to do with the core HP story. Let the set designers and artists go nuts and show me some voodoo swamp mages or 1000 year old Aztec priests instead of London. How you gonna tell me Redmayne worked with Ukrainian dragons on the eastern front and not do a little flashback, drat. After watching it again on a whim it was actually better a second time, a fun christmas romp. But the plot only hangs together with a lot of quick inferring of poo poo, it's all there and actually does make sense but just barely. Between that and it being 20 minutes too long it's probably the worst editing job I've seen in a movie this year. I realise kids movie etc but a real weak point is when Graves has Newt on the railway tracks and is hitting him with spells, it's just bizarre. These little sparks are bouncing off the ground near Newt while Graves is going nuts casting at him but the movie just hangs there, Newt isn't getting hurt or defending himself and it just looks ridiculous. All the tension gets sucked out of that scene, we lose any sense of what these characters are actually trying to do, it's just bad. Bad.
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Dec 7, 2016 11:27
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Jenner posted:(Example: In the US, the president of the Magical Congress is a black woman. In the 1920s, 40ish years before civil rights, when racism is all the rage in America.) Why is this? This reeked of tokenism to me, which was kind of troubling considering the president was both kind of incompetent and generally unpleasant
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Dec 7, 2016 12:55
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I mean we have a black president in real life but haven't figured out how to do magic yet so it seems stupid for that to be the "unrealistic" sticking point for a straight up fantasy story.
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Dec 7, 2016 15:22
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