Meet Newt Scamander

April 10, 2016 7:24 PM

Meet Newt Scamander in the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
posted by hippybear (38 comments total)

Yes please.
posted by evilDoug at 7:40 PM on April 10, 2016

If it looks somewhat familiar, the film is directed by David Yeats, who made four of the HP movies, with production design by Stuart Craig who worked on all of them. Not taking any chances there :-)

(btw, I'm not sure what "cultjer" is or if it's good or bad, but here's the direct link to the embedded video on Warner's official YT channel).
posted by effbot at 7:40 PM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not even that big of a fan, but that looks beautiful, and now I'm interested.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 7:42 PM on April 10, 2016

I will always feel like Yates made the least impressive of the original HP movies, but I still love them all and will totally check this out.
posted by trackofalljades at 7:42 PM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I kept thinking that Miss Phryne Fisher should show up.
posted by ilovewinter at 7:44 PM on April 10, 2016 [12 favorites]

Oh, it was definitely HP3 directed by Cuaron which was the most interesting of the Potter movies.
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM on April 10, 2016 [14 favorites]

Looks pretty EH at this point, simply an American take on the HP series ie more of the same. Hopefully a better trailer will come along.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:50 PM on April 10, 2016

Jon Voight and Ron Perlman? I though Rowling only allowed British actors in her movies.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:03 PM on April 10, 2016

Fun fact: This J.K. Rowling's first screenplay.
posted by alexoscar at 8:05 PM on April 10, 2016

TCG, the movie is placed in New York City; it would be weird for everyone to be speaking in British accents.

Rowling is a fantastic book writer, but screen plays are not the same as books. I hope this doesn't turn out to be a disaster.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:07 PM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am such a sucker for this. What's the spell for "take my money"?
posted by Ber at 8:13 PM on April 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

Dumbledore was a teacher in the 1920s?

Tenure is cool, I guess.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:30 PM on April 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Dumbledore appears to have been born in 1881? So he was already in his 40s by the time this movie takes place?

Over the years, he rose to be Headmaster. Not sure about tenure positions at Hogwarts, but certainly they retained those they wanted to continue.
posted by hippybear at 8:42 PM on April 10, 2016

Ooh, hoping to see dashing, just-flamboyant-enough young redheaded Dumbledore rising to Scamander's defense. The casting director could make some internet geeks really happy if they somehow cast Rupert Grint in the role.

I'm not a fan of a lot of the ancillary Pottermore material, and I suspect that the first draft of the screenplay was pretty weak, but I trust David Yates and the production team at WB to get this right. At this point they've made a lot of Harry Potter movies and most of them didn't suck, and WB is an American company and will have staff who understand more about US culture and history than JKR does who can hopefully curb her tendency to make up random vaguely offensive crap. I'm looking forward to this movie and the fanfiction universe that will certainly spring up around it.
posted by town of cats at 9:03 PM on April 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

... I would have like that better if any of the women had been shown to have speaking roles.
posted by suelac at 9:25 PM on April 10, 2016 [6 favorites]

Er – the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was posted on Metafilter last December. Or is there a difference between a teaser trailer and a trailer? Is a teaser trailer not an actual trailer? There wasn't a lot of detail in the teaser trailer, just a lot of imagery.

Okay, enough of that. This is great!
posted by koeselitz at 9:54 PM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Omg, I never noticed until now that his name isn't Newt Salamander. I guess my brain was like "yup, I'm gonna stick with a reptile themed name for this fellow".
posted by littlesq at 10:36 PM on April 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nice to meet you, Newt!

I'm not what you'd consider exactly a fan of all things Potter, but enjoyed the movies enough for being nice and entertaining adventures. Brandon, I think also it that will be more of the same, but that's what a LOT of people are expecting: more Potter with a new name and a fresh face. It's good and smart business before anything else. As The Force Awakens proved, when you meet people's expectations, everything is awesome. The best thing to hope is that it will be as competently done as the previous films.
posted by sapagan at 11:30 PM on April 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yknow, I wanted to really love the movie, being a huge Potter fan. But between the mangling of Indigenous cultures in the Pottermore material, and there being only one person of color in the entire film in a city and era that's known for being highly multiracial (sure, she has a leadership position, but it feels like tokenizing at this rate) I'm kind of skeptical.

Interesting to see that he basically has the same arc as Hagrid - expelled from Hogwarts due to beast-related trouble. Except Dumbledore argued for Scamander to stay, and won, while Hagrid suffered with a broken wand.
posted by divabat at 11:38 PM on April 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jon Voight and Ron Perlman? I though Rowling only allowed British actors in her movies.

There were a number of Irish actors in the original movie series.
posted by Elmore at 2:37 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Huh. In the corners of the internet where I hang out, Newt Scamander is black, headcanon-wise... huh.
posted by CompanionCube at 3:20 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

> "Is a teaser trailer not an actual trailer?"

Common mistake; a teaser trailer isn't actually a trailer for the movie, it's the trailer for the trailer.

The movie itself, on the other hand, is actually a trailer for the sequel.
posted by kyrademon at 5:08 AM on April 11, 2016 [21 favorites]

In the corners of the internet where I hang out, Newt Scamander is black

Instantly improved movie.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:09 AM on April 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

Interesting to see that he basically has the same arc as Hagrid - expelled from Hogwarts due to beast-related trouble. Except Dumbledore argued for Scamander to stay, and won, while Hagrid suffered with a broken wand.

The fallout of this movie might be the reason that Hagrid wasn't shown the same sympathy. e.g. We cut you slack with a beast-loving student once before, Dumbledore, and he went on to break New York.

Not again.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:30 AM on April 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I actually wasn't the biggest fan of the HP movies (Azkaban excepted) because I had outgrown the story a bit by the time the 6-7 books came out, but I'm really looking forward to this. A new back story, great actors, and 1920's costuming? I'm there.
posted by permiechickie at 7:17 AM on April 11, 2016

That's the blue-and-brownest movie I've seen in a while. I had kind of hoped big Hollywood movies were moving away from that color treatment ...
posted by penduluum at 7:20 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

From the trailer at least, it seems like wizards in America in the 1920s are a good deal more street-smart and assimilated into muggle-life than wizards in Britain in the 1990s.
posted by wabbittwax at 7:31 AM on April 11, 2016

OMG town of cats I hadn't even thought of this until you mentioned it but how wonderful would that be? Ronbledore is the best! Dumbledore's canonical birth year is 1881 so he'd have been in his 30s and serving as the transfiguration master at Hogwarts in the 1910s when Scamander would have been a student. Grint just about fits. Maybe in something like his ridiculous outfit from that Broadway show he was in?
posted by Wretch729 at 7:34 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also if I were the god of making movies I would not pass up the chance to somehow insert a big musical into this seemingly over-serious production. I mean it's not precisely period correct but can you imagine Anything Goes being done by a performer who can magically teleport and make things vanish?

Those crazy young roaring 20s wizards deliberately using precision self-splinching to be able to tapdance with four feet? Or a wizard jazz musician performing a duet with his own enchanted instrument? It could be so fun.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:15 AM on April 11, 2016 [7 favorites]

This is set in NYC in the '20s, so naturally the cast is all Caucasian.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:36 AM on April 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

That's the blue-and-brownest movie I've seen in a while.

It's mostly shot at night.

Mostly.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 10:00 AM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great, now Huffy Puffy has me wanting to see an Alien vs Wizard mashup movie.
posted by hippybear at 10:08 AM on April 11, 2016

a city and era that's known for being highly multiracial

Yes, but that's using a contemporaneous definition of "multiracial" whose modern translation is roughly "we have Italians, Jews, and Greeks!"

Lump those all together as "whites" and the resulting group encompasses 97% of 1920 New York City.
posted by roystgnr at 12:20 PM on April 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

I kept thinking that Miss Phryne Fisher should show up.

That would be fine with me. I feel myself being attracted by the roaring twenties setting almost as much as by the Harry Potter magic.
posted by Martijn at 1:17 PM on April 11, 2016

I am 1000% certain that fanfiction will take care of this for you, if it hasn't already. Ideally someone will do something fun based on the fact that Miriam Margolyes played both Prof. Sprout and Aunt Prudence. Wizards have time travel, after all. Maybe it could explain why Miss Fisher's trademark revolver is from the mid-1950s.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:47 PM on April 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Great Migration:

By the end of 1919, some 1 million blacks had left the South, usually traveling by train, boat or bus; a smaller number had automobiles or even horse-drawn carts. In the decade between 1910 and 1920, the black population of major Northern cities grew by large percentages, including New York (66 percent) Chicago (148 percent), Philadelphia (500 percent) and Detroit (611 percent).

Harlem Renaissance:

Spanning the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that kindled a new black cultural identity.

Chinatown:

By the 1920s, the Chinese population of New York City was running a substantial food industry, with Chinese farmers on Long island growing traditional produce such as bitter melons, long beans, and mustard greens and trucking the produce into Chinatown daily. By 1930, over 4,000 Chinese were living in Chinatown.

The American Latino Heritage:

More than 60 percent of Puerto Ricans who lived in the mainland U.S. made their homes in New York City by 1920, and that proportion rose to 85 percent by 1940.

The Native American Peoples of The United States

The kind of mixture of Indian autonomy and adaptation to mainstream American culture that many groups have negotiated, is exemplified by the eight hundred Mohawks who were living in 1970 in the North Gowanus Section of Brooklyn, New York. This community has existed since the 1920's when they came to New York to work as high steel workers on bridges and skyscrapers like Rockefeller Centre in New York City.

If they can get a Black woman to play the leader of the No-Maj and pilfer through Native American culture to prop up American magic they sure as hell can add more POC in the rest of the cast.
posted by divabat at 4:53 PM on April 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

Gemma Chan is also in the cast, though her role hasn't been revealed yet. Since she’s British, my guess would be that she’s playing another British character, but we’ll see.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:44 AM on April 12, 2016

(Ejogo is British too and is playing an American, so obviously there are no guarantees.)
posted by mbrubeck at 8:18 AM on April 12, 2016