Hopefully you've found some free time in the past couple weeks to see JK Rowling’s latest contribution to the massive wizarding world of Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. As a long term Harry Potter fan, I always thought the movies projected the storylines of the books fairly, leaving just enough room for me to miss Rowling’s cleverly written details and revert me to rereading the series nostalgically, yet still as if I'm reading every book again for the very first time. Now that Rowling is the playwright behind the next series of Harry Potter films, the world of witches and wizards is about to grow exponentially.
The past eight Harry Potter movies have forced Rowling to squeeze a vast amount of information into an average of two and a half hours of screen time. But there are so many amazing things left unsaid in the movies: Fred and George’s great escape from Hogwarts, Rita Skeeter being an animagus, anything about Ariana Dumbledore and so much more. Perhaps I'm just a book nerd, but I love all the details the novels have to offer. The ingenious and extensive world Rowling has created is so vast, often I don’t hesitate to believe it’s real.
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But this movie was something different than the eight that lay in it’s wake. Fantastic Beasts has allowed Rowling to write without the pressure of appealing to any storylines. The fans are left clueless as to how the story will progress! Personally, (though often I hate being left in the dark) I find there’s a thrilling joy in the unknown. On top of it all, Fantastic Beasts and the following four movies will outline Grindelwald’s rise to power, ending with the epic dual between Grindelwald and Dumbledore- the story of how Dumbledore gained the elder wand. It’s like Rowling’s creating the fanfiction backstory we all want to read, but it’s cannon! Not to mention the fact that Fantastic Beasts has already brought light to theories that work to perfectly to have no been planned by Rowling herself. (Was Ariana Dumbledore an obscurial?!)
Of course this is not the first of Rowling’s additions to the ever expanding world of Harry Potter. She created a site called Pottermore, which in actuality is pretty self explanatory- it’s more Harry Potter! It’s basically everything a Potterhead could wish for, full of games and stories of the hidden secrets of the wizarding world that were just simply couldn’t fit in the books. For example, Rowling explains that there is a wizarding school right here in America called Ilvermorny, and the website allows users to be sorted into houses in this school as well as Hogwarts. Since Fantastic Beasts takes place in America, we can only hope to hear more about the wizarding world that falls right underneath our noses!
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks a new precedent for JK Rowling. Her fanbase is ever growing and her fans will stay by her side until the very end. This newfound outlet for her brewing creativity will fuel the next four and who knows? Maybe even more to follow! She will be able to flow freely with her impulses and intuitions to show us the development of Dumbledore we long to see: how the wise old man became the wise old man. I will be sitting anxiously waiting, no matter how many years go by to see all the movies. It will be crazy to think that one day I’ll be the adult in the movie theatre watching the series draw to a close, reminiscing about six-year-old me the day I picked up The Sorcerer’s Stone.
Embrace this movie. Though I haven’t read it yet, I’ve heard The Cursed Child rang out as a general disappointment. Perhaps it’s not up to par with Rowling’s usual diverse and intricate writing style, but enjoy the canon. Enjoy learning more about this vast world that one single person has been able to create for all of us. Explore this world when reality becomes to hard to bear. And if you’re still debating seeing the movie (which I hope you’re not) just know that my boyfriend said in the first five seconds of the opening music “This is the best one yet.”
