The story takes place in New York City in 1926, approximately 70 years before Harry Potter's journey. Fortunately, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a more adult work. After all, anyone who grew up with the franchise is now an adult today. But don't worry, there will be no lack of magic. The premise could not be simpler - and in fact it yields expendable and childlike scenes. But that's it, it's just the premise. The script, written by Rowling herself, is much more complex than that, inserting several layers, knowing how to insert new pieces in her large board, guaranteeing a totally new look from the viewer. As said before, the feeling is different from being in front of a Harry Potter film and much of this is also due to the way these creatures play an active role within the script, not just in a timely manner like the hippogriff in The Prisoner of Azkaban. The change of air, of course, already gives a new tone to the work.

We see the magical universe of the United States being made and form in a magnificent way, with the right to president, congress and very different terms from which we have become accustomed, used in England. It is an excellent expansion of the magical world, in which for the first time we left that more restricted world of Harry Potter and started to realize that the magical world is present in the whole world, as well as in the world of non-magicians. Despite being in a world that shares practically the same rules, each witch society has its cultural differences (the American one is more conservative, in that it does not allow wizards to relate to non-wizards, for example, differently from British society).

Leaving England and leaving for the USA offers us a totally different view of this world. Starting with the different laws in relation to non-majs, something that Scamander himself calls backward. It is quite curious, as it is a social / political posture that, on some levels, is similar to what Voldemort preaches, especially with regard to the loving involvement between the two groups. This question only guarantees greater depth to Rowling's creation, one point dialogues with the other, while the word "bad blood" (in addition to many other factors, of course), gains an even greater repulsion from the viewer / reader - see, we are speaking of a curse that reflects a position adopted seventy years before the events of A Pedra Filosofal, a gigantic backward conservatism.

The interesting thing is the way the text deconstructs this archaic position taken by the Americans. Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) is the one who represents this evolution of thought. From the beginning she had already shown some hesitation in arresting Scamander, but she is in constant conflict between her duty and what she really wants to do. Her sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), externalizes this internal conflict of the character - one is more restrained, while the other expresses her feelings clearly, acting as ideal female counterparts for Newt and Jacob. The beauty of this is that we do not need to hear this fact through some speech, but we see through Waterston's performance, who gives us a woman who is precisely in the encounter between the past and the future - she, more than anyone, represents the opening the mind to more progressive postures, something that is made clear by your willingness to save Credence and not simply kill him, especially in the final fight inside the subway.

It is not that the work is absent from some slips, but its successes are able to stand out so much from the errors in such a way that we effectively feel as if we are facing something new. Although it takes place in the same universe, Fantastic Beasts does not have the same atmosphere as Harry Potter books or films, it manages to give us something totally new, familiar, but with its own identity, in such a way that we are hooked again into this universe of magic. and witchcraft. Rowling demonstrates her talent as a screenwriter by differentiating from the setting of her story, to the characters themselves, creating new personalities who do not simply copy those presented to us over the previous seven books. Above all, we are talking about a work that, despite being a spin-off, manages to stand on its own legs, allowing someone who has never seen or read anything from this mythology to fully enjoy the experience.

The script also addresses topics such as fear of the unknown, repression, religious fanaticism and demonstrates an important concern with representativeness when placing a black woman in the position of president of the magical community. And that should be explored further in the next films. Here we have some "reality clashes" in moments of wonder. In one second we are amazed by that new face of the Wizarding World and in the other we see the characters having to deal with situations that evoke the worst prejudices and hate speech in our real world.

Those who expect a production full of references to Harry Potter will be a little disappointed. But the truth is that it is good that Fantastic Animals is a work more closed in itself. There are quotes, of course, to characters like Dumbledore, to known spells, to famous surnames and to the relics of death, but nothing more than small tips or notes of what is yet to come. Rowling works well with these encounters and mismatches, uniting characters with specific functions to present a different, yet familiar, magical world. Rowling's narrative mastery is also remarkable in the precise mix of enchantment and terror. The interesting thing is that the plot preferred not to explore Grindelwald's journey in search of a pure race: he decided to go the other way, showing the prejudice of the no-maj (the American denomination for "muggles") against the witch community. Prejudice becomes an essential part of the arc of Graves (Colin Farrell) and Credence (Ezra Miller), characters that underlie what we will see from now on.

Yates proved to be the right choice for directing Fantastic Beasts. The director has matured a lot over the previous four features in the franchise and is already familiar with all the mythology created by Rowling. In addition, he was responsible for the most serious works of the boy who survived and knows how to print that more adult tone here. Not that children will not identify with the feature, but it is a more universal work in terms of age group, and it is not nearly as bureaucratic as Chris Columbus in The Philosopher's Stone or The Chamber of Secrets. The action scenes are able to deliver something that does not leave us completely confused and the director knows how to differentiate them throughout the film. Each brings us a different situation, allowing the narrative not to sound too repetitive. The presence of Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is essential here as in the rest of the film. It acts as our new gateway, the non-magic that is recently introduced to all this magic. Our enchantment is ours, since we ourselves know new sides of this universe, from the new creatures, like the charismatic thief of objects that shine, to the terrifying Obscurus.

Visually, the film is able to effectively present the contrast between Newt's journey and the destiny of the wizarding world, mixing scenes with lots of light and others that have a dense and gloomy atmosphere. This is very clear in the sequence where Jacob (Dan Fogler) walks inside Scamander's suitcase and walks through well-lit forests, meeting creatures with many colors, until he finds Obscurus, a beast of darkness. All this construction is very well accompanied by the melodies of James Newton Howard, who is able to resume all our fascination with magic through his songs with a more fantastic tone and inherits many of the great names, such as John Williams and Alexandre Desplat, who preceded him.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them can be defined as an experience that cohesively fits into the universe created by Rowling and also opens many doors, with the potential to captivate a new generation of fans who are discovering magic now, a definitive proof of how JK Rowling has control of this universe. More mundane than its predecessor Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them subtly presents the US context at the time, with the post-war, Prohibition and approaching financial crisis, to replace the hero's journey with a historical parallel that must reach World War II. The wizarding world has grown.