Surprised by the negative reviews on IMDb

Rating: 8/10 (16 October 2017)

As the heading suggests I am very surprised by the negative reviews on here, I am a big fan of the Harry Potter movies & wasn't overly keen to see a new franchise start up just yet as they did such a good job with the original films, so I did wait a while to see this film, but I was impressed with how much better it was than I thought it would be. This was a great prequel to the Harry Potter world, this movie does a good job at setting up a whole new world without relying heavily on the original Harry Potter movies.
The things I liked about the film:
The visuals - were outstanding here as all the monsters were really well done & quite different from what we have seen before (especially that oversized rino). Especially once you seen what was inside that suitcase, the world & monsters within really were visually impressive.
Characters - Newt was generally a like-able character as the main hero, I hadn't heard much about him before but thought he did a good job in this film. Kowalski was good as the comic relief for the film but also added some surprising emotional scenes towards the end of the film which I did think was a nice addition to his character. Colin Farrell as Graves was quite menacing as the main villain & the nice little twist at the end only enhanced his character too.
The only negatives I have for the film is that as it kicks off a new universe I feel that there was some things left unexplained such as the Lestrange character, sometimes getting the feeling that often happens in set-up movies that there are many story lines crammed into the one movie, however we can only hope that these story lines are touched on more in future films.
I am now certainly looking forward to the fantastic beasts & where to find them franchise & what lies ahead.