Minus 10 House Points, though, for the murky brown colour grading that aims for moody and ends up rendering the whole film a tad muddy.įor the first half of the Potter saga, the Wizarding World marks an escape from Harry's miserly muggle life. If the book's brilliant House Of Gaunt chapters are skipped over, director David Yates does a decent, if slightly rushed, job of the cave setpiece – the most spine-tinglingly eerie sequence of perhaps the entire book series – and that big climactic death is genuinely affecting. It makes for a slightly awkward mix at times, but there's still plenty to enjoy – Half-Blood Prince is almost a Hogwarts greatest hits set, luxuriating in Professor Slughorn's potions classes, more Quidditch matches, lusty exchanges in the Gryffindor Common Room, and the mystery of what exactly Draco Malfoy is up to in the Room Of Requirement. The penultimate Potter story – and the final Hogwarts-centric instalment – balances out the series' increasing darkness, as Voldemort rises back to power, with a rom-com-infused lightness as Harry, Ron and Hermione head into full-on hormonal adolescence. Still, Rowling provides a welcome thematic link to Potter in Ezra Miller's Credence Barebone, another magical orphan growing up without the love he deserves – with more dangerous consequences. The Jazz Age New York setting doesn't quite dazzle as it should, and the demise of Colin Farrell's Percival Graves to make way for Johnny Depp's Grindelwald remains a disappointing downgrade.
The beasts themselves are cute too – the gold-pilfering Niffler and size-shifting Occamy proving particular favourites – though the film finds itself caught between being a zippy standalone adventure and the launching pad for a bigger, darker franchise arc. But it has its delights – introverted magizoologist Newt Scamander is a very different kind of leading man, one who prefers empathy to traditional acts of heroism, and Rowling's screenplay strikes up a fun new foursome with Tina and Queenie Goldstein and muggle baker Jacob Kowalski. Without Hogwarts, the first Fantastic Beasts lacks the cosy familiarity of the main Potter saga.
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