Lo folks it's been a very long time since I have written, here. I have published some stuff on my other blogs but here I have not posted in ages.
The lighthouse was ever meant to be a place where I can post my thoughts on pretty much anything, a place where I fling my light into the darkness and hope that someone catches it. Anyway today that is a movie review. I know it's not what you're used to but bear with me.
As you may have guessed from the title the movie is fantastic beasts and where to find them. The first movie in a new harry potter franchise. Now i'll be going into the movie in some detail so:
Spoilers! you nitwit!
Well now that you have been warned let's start (I should probably point out that this will make no sense to a person who haven't seen the movie).
When first seeing the movie I for some reason found myself really really disliking the main character, it is only on sleeping on it that I realized why, he reminds me a bit to much of myself, he prefers not to meet peoples eyes, he gets stale in conversations and he can be very blunt, oh and he gets totally carried away when he's talkign about a subject he's comfortable with, then all that repressed sociality (is that a word?) bubbles out when he knows how to handle it. In short the guy has aspergers syndrome. Once I realized that I realized that this is perhaps the best portrayal of the "disorder" (god I hate that word) that I have ever seen. I mean I'm one of those people who like Sheldon Cooper from big band theory despite being a pretty blunt stereotype, because at least he is true to his nature. But Sheldon and even more the savant type characters with Autism that we so often see in media represent a few very fringe cases, most people with Autism/aspergers aren't like that, they're more like Newt. Another character I feel might represent the spectrum is Rodney McKay from stargate Atlantis, though as much as I appreciate David Hewlett's acting he doesn't quite get the feeling of odd down as well as Eddie Redmayne does with Newt Scamander.
Now I have poked around the internet and a lot pf people seems to think Redmayne added this to the character himself. I don't think so. The throw away line from Queenie when she first meets Newt convinces me it's in the script. "I always find it hard to read you people... British". No she does not find it hard to read British she finds it hard to read you people autistic people, though the wizarding world might not even have a term for it.
That said I think the original script may have been a lot more ham handed with Newts "disorder" than Redmayne ended up playing it. Hence why a lot of people miss the fact that he is supposed to have it at all. My guess is that Redmayne either knows someone with it, or went and interacted with people with it to study his role. It's actually a bit sad, he does one of the best performances of a disorder of all times and 1. It's stuck in a movie that will never get any proper recognition because of it's genre. 2. People are so used to seeing autism presented as the stereotype that they can't even recognize when someone is trying to do a more subtle version. In a way it reminds me of Starship troopers who did it's anti fascist mocking so subtle the movie ended up becoming a fan favourite with neofascists, we really don't reward subtetly these days. I hope this does not go the way of Starship toopers and make the messege a lot less subtle in the sequal.
Anyway movie-ing on. Now as for the plot I have a few issues. First of what is up with Queenies legilimency? Voldemort was described as the most powerful legilimency in the world and yet even he could only know when people lied to him without using that spell (Legilimens) and a wand. But Queenie actually reads minds, without wands or spells. She even reads them at considerable distances despite Snape's assurance that "Time and space matter in magic". What she does seems more like the force than magic.
Secondly the obscuratus, it has been mentioned several times in the Harry Potter franchise that wizards learning to control their power on their own is a bad idea. I think they may have overdone it a bit though, with one such boy being practically able to level a whole city.
And thirdly and what is big on the spoiler Grindelwald. I have two points with him really, first of why Johnny Depp? He looks like a reject from a punk band not like the sauve man who led a generation of European wizards to go to war against one another. Nothing like either of his previous appearances. Not the handsome boy in the Photographs, and not the old man in Nurmengard.
Which leads me to my other point, why is he even in the movie? Wouldn't it have been infinitely more interesting to have Graves be one of his disciples or perhaps just a sympathizer? Show how deeply rooted the ideas of Grindelwald really is in the wizarding world at large. How even well meaning witches and wizards may find themselves led astray when they feel pushed. It's basically captain america the winter soldier all over again. Instead of showing that the champions of good can be corrupted by their own paranoia they squander the idea by having the big bad directly manipulate them into it. Totally ruining the point. No way the head of the American Aurors office could have fallen to Grindelwals rethoric on his own, no he got to actually be Grinelwald posing as Graves. No way that there can be a facist streak in the US intelligence agencies (winter solder), no they got to have been actually infiltrated by nazis for that to happen. A movie which shows such subtlety elsewhere here totally fails on subtlety.
Oh yes and another point. This Girndelwald is older than the one who stole the elder wand, which means that the wand we see him use in this movie probably is the elder wand. Hence why he is able to take on a hundred "aurors" at the same time, also that was maybee a tad much, the power of wizards such as Voldemort and Girndelwald is that they can turn the wizarding world on itself and thus not face it united because then even the most talented wizard would fall to sheer numbers. Using terror and the bystander effect to make people afraid to oppose them openly, and dealing with anyone who does in the most ruthless way possible (In voldemorts case usually murdering them and their entire family to set an example). But I have gotten of topic, the point is there's no way Grindelwald could have done that without the elder wand (in fact he shouldn't have been able to do it with it) which means that by taking the wand from him either Newt Scamander or Tina Goldstein may have become the new masters of the elder wand, which might explain why Dumbledore can actually defeat Grindelwald years later, because Grindelwald is no longer the wands master (how was he ever the wands master though? he stole it, he did not take it in battle).
Oh one more thing relating to the reveal, Notice how good Newt really is at fighting, I mean Tina is a auror, yet she gets beaten fairly easily by Graves/Grindelwald, Newt holds out for a lot longer. It again makes me think of his disorder, people with asbergers are often vert very good at thinking on their feet in aciris. And both Harry Potter and Severus Snape has suggested that the most important talent for a duellist is this. Granted he is beaten, but then again he is facing the second greatest dark wizard of all time.
Actually one thing beyond that, Jacob and Queenie, Why didn't they just go to magical Britain instead, we know that muggles are allowed to know there is they are in a close relation to a wizard or witch. And they sure seemed like they were heading into close relation territory.
Oh well that is what I had today,
See you in another few years.
