A Worthy Prequel

Rating: 7/10 (29 July 2018)

There has been a suggestion that this film is the start of what is apparently going to be a Harry Potter prequel series. Well, the films do occur before the Harry Potter films, this one being set in 1926, and there are slated to be five in this series to be released, but a part of me feels that as opposed to the Star Wars prequels, which Lucas was said to have envisioned long before they were released, but wasn't able to produced them due to the lack of technology and the costs involves, these films seem to simply exist to capitalise on the Harry Potter phenomena.
Honestly, I don't necessarily believe that this is a bad thing, especially if something works, and from the results that this film produced it is quite clear that it was very well received. Okay, Cinema Sins wasn't all that impressed with the film, but then again that is Cinema Sins and you generally take everything he says with a grain of salt. Still, he is right in one thing and that this film simply exists to capitalise on Harry Potter, and a lot of flaws that he points out do hold a lot of water. For instance, I pretty much worked out who the bad guy was (the wizard Grimwald) right from the word go, and also there does seem to be two films running in tandem, though I don't necessarily believe that this is a bad thing.
Anyway, we have this zoologist, Newt (or mago-zoologist to be more precise) arriving in New York. He says that he is interested in meeting up with a breeder of magical creatures, though as it turns out the Americans aren't really all that keen on magical animals, and in fact are hunting them to extinction. Newt's goal is to basically convince the world that these creatures aren't all that bad and that we should learn to admire them for the beauty that they happen to be. Oh, he also carries around this case that happens to be a portal to an extra-dimensional world where he keeps all of his creatures.
The thing is, as happens with a lot of these films, is that our friend arrives in New York in the middle of a crisis. There happens to be this invisible creature running around causing havoc everywhere. However, he has other problems on his mind because his case ends up getting switched with a muggle's case (I could see that happening from a mile away as well, particularly since it was quite clear that they happened to be carrying the same case). Anyway, there is another wizard, Tina Goldstein, who is in disgrace and is doing everything she can to get back into the wizard's good books. Not surprisingly, since a muggle happens to have the wizard's case, when he opens it all of the creatures get out.
I guess that was the better part of the film, our protagonists running around trying to get all of the creatures back into the case, and the sub-plot (which turns out to be the main plot) of the wizard who is trying to suppress his abilities, and that in turn being released as a violent force that is destroying the city, probably wasn't all that necessary. Then again, this does happen to be main stream cinema, so I guess that this sort of subplot is actually needed. Of course, you also have Grimwald lurking around somewhere, though as I pointed out, it is pretty obviously right from the get-go who he actually is.
Still, I quite enjoyed this film - it was actually a lot of fun. I guess it was a refreshing change to the the films that basically followed Harry through his time at Hogwarts. Mind you, from what I could tell I'm not convinced that these films are going to be setting the scene for the events in Harry Potter - this one doesn't seem to have any real connection with them, with the exception of a mention of Dumbledore and Hogwarts. Another thing I liked was Newt's character - he came across very shy and reserved, which I felt was very well done. You honestly don't see many characters like this these days.