Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Professor McGonagall is called Minerva in Secrets of Dumbledore. That's definitely her, and I personally don't mind at all. She's a cool character, and as I see it, the movies are "more canon" than Pottermore or J-Money's Twitter ramblings (but less canon than the books).

Part of issue the Identical Grandson write off is that the surname McGonagall came from her Muggle father. In addition, it being the same Nagani was confirmed by Rowling. So unless you want to disregard Word of God here then those still stand, though you can treat the first one as canon to just the film continuity.

Yeah I also personally separate book and movie canon.

For the record, I see Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts as movie canon.

There is no Cursed Child and there never was!

Random thought: maybe Cursed Child was inspired by the fact that Bellatrix is pretty clearly pregnant in the sixth movie? Not because the character was SUPPOSED to be, but because Helena Bonham Carter was in real life and the costumers did NOT do a very good job hiding it.

Fair enough. Anyway, what I do think is canon is muggles being able to perform magic by way of a wizard "loading" a spell into a wand beforehand. Which is to say once that magic is used they won't be able to do any more...maybe I just got that from Dungeons And Dragons but I thought it was true of Harry Potter too for some reason. Like, anything with a sufficiently slender, sturdy prehensile appendage could pull a gun's trigger but wouldn't necessarily be able to aim a firearm or reload one.

It's also possible a maj is just directing spells for the nomaj out of sight, as was the case in the bard tales. Dumbledore and Grindlewald are both known for doing invisibility without the cloak, plus Grindlewald is functionally a metamorphmagus.

So for people who watched the movie, is Credence even interesting in this movie?

Little about his character is discussed.

Along with the rest of the film itself. At least Crimes of Grindelwald was memorable in how awful it was.

Credence is in the movie and his arc is resolved in a satisfying way (imho), but he's far less of a presence here than in the first two.

Also, did this movie have a toy line? I was at Macy's the other day and they had a little toy section full of Harry Potter toys, but nothing for Fantastic Beasts. Out of curiosity, I searched Amazon for FB toys and all I found were Newt Nendoroids and collector's figures going for hundreds of dollars. Kind of a shock if I'm being honest. I get that these movies aren't really for kids, but you'd think Warner Bros. would want merch on the shelves.

The fact that Fantastic Beasts seems to have lost all that kid appeal and childish whimsy that the early Harry Potter books had seems to be in part of why this series isn't doing so well.

Like all the wizards are dressed up in boring suits in an attempt at taking them seriously, you got grim dark topics like sex crimes, abuse, government execution chambers, more overt racism, and elections.

None of the sense of wonder in the Harry Potter books is in here, even the first movie's sense of wonder about the magical creatures was diluted in later movies in favor of a boring ass political plot involving Grindelwald and Dumbledore.

Heck of the reasons Jacob was so beloved at least relatively in the first movie was because he had reactions and awe to all the magical stuff going on.

One gets the feeling that JK really wanted to show she could write more adult stories and be taken more seriously. Like a part of her resents being most known for a children's book series.

Edited by RedHunter543 on May 9th 2022 at 12:40:24 PM

Don't know whether it works that way specifically with wands, but it's definitely possible to create enchanted objects that respond to anyone's command, Muggles included. That's the whole reason enchanting Muggle artifacts is illegal: to keep Muggles from accidentally using one and freaking the f*ck out.

If JK is really insecure about the Wizarding World being labeled as "kids media", she should probably take a few queues from CS Lewis.

Saw it today with my wife. Afterward, our conversation about it consisted solely of agreeing that Mads was way better than Depp, that it was nice that they explained Credence's ties to Dumbledore in a way that made sense and that Ariana actually was an Obscurial, and that Credence's part in the movie ultimately was a wet fart.

Edited by Willbyr on May 17th 2022 at 4:02:15 AM

So for people who watched the movie, does Grindelwald ever bring up the fact he wants to stop WW 2 and the holocaust in this movie?

Or did JK realize how stupid that plot point is, especially with how her no significant changes to the status quo is good politics means that she would have to write the good guys stopping a man who wants to stop WW 2?

I mean, for starters, JKR didn't write this one.

Grindelwald didn't even want to stop World War 2 for altruistic reasons in the second movie, he wanted to basically do a "We need to enslave Muggles or they'll kill us all".

That's still trying to stop WW 2 and the Holocaust even if Grindelwald is clearly evil, so it still raises a couple of uncomfortable questions of why the Wizards haven't tried to stop WW 2 through peaceful means.

She didn't write this one alone. She's still credited as a screenwriter, but the studio brought Steve Kloves (who wrote all the HP films except Order of the Phoenix) as a co-writer, presumably as a salvaging measure after The Crimes of Grindelwald got a pretty negative critical reception.

Grindelwald will not be defeated by Dumbledore until 1945 and by that point, Hitler is dead and the war is practically over.

It is unclear what Grindelwald did during the war, but it has been stated that the Nazis and Grindelwald's Army fed each other, so I can presume that Grindelwald might have been the reason why the Nazis got as far as they did in terms of why the wizards didn't stop Hitler.

I was under the impression Rowling only had writing credit because she created the franchise and little else. That this was mostly Kloves work cleaning up her mess?

Going by the credits in the trailers, not quite. For starters, the screenplay is credited as being "based on [an original] screenplay by J.K Rowling" for this specific film, with Rowling and Kloves sharing co-writers credits for the finalized one.

Per WGA rules you need to write 33% of a script to get credit, and in a original screen play, writers who did not write the original material need to contribute more than 50% to get credits.

So while JKR might have written the original alot of her work could have been re-done and she'd still get credit for the original treatment even if very little of that script made it into the final product

If it hasn't been said publicly then, I doubt we'll get a clear answer any time soon.

Based on what others have said about "Queenie DIDN'T betray the heroes (contrary to literally the finale of the last film) she was just a super secret spy!" and other sudden shifts from what the previous film set up, I do get the impression that not a ton of her actual writing made it past the first few drafts. Probably just broader details at best.

While Writers Guild has such rules as 33% to get credit, I get the impression that the rule isn't quite always adhered to so strictly? Because of drafting processes and how do you percentage an "idea" into the totality of a script and other things... I could see them just giving her credit because she wrote an earlier draft and wrote the franchise and it looks good and she's probably also not happy about *not* being the sole writer on said film in the first place. I could see the credit being... a title.

It's like every Fantastic Beasts movie retcons the events of the previous movie because they don't want to deal with following up on it.

It's HP in a nutshell; setting up grand ideas but wussing out when it's time to follow up.

Apologies for the broad scope here, but the newest CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (Peter Zaslav) just revealed: