Creature comforts have just arrived in the form of the new trailer that has landed for the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”
The film’s star, Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne, introduced the movie at the MTV Movie Awards broadcast last night and taped from the previous evening. An elaborately choreographed routine culminated in Redmayne appearing to rise out of a suitcase in the middle of the stage at the awards, which were held at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California.
Redmayne stars in the film as wizard Newt Scamander alongside Katherine Waterston and Colin Farrell. The movie, based on Harry Potter creator J.K Rowling’s 2001 spin-off book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, re-locates the wizardry to 1920s New York.
The online response to the trailer was predictably enthusiastic with “magical” being bandied around more than a few times. Some “Pott-heads” got emotional:
Just did a little weep watching the Fantastic Beasts trailer
— Amy Bell (@little_magpie1) April 11, 2016
Special attention was paid to the claw-like hands of the creatures reaching out of the mysterious suitcase and the shoutout to Professor Dumbledore defending Newt after he has been thrown out of Hogwarts for “endangering human life.”
Albus Dumbledore is fond of Newt Scamander for the same reasons that I am fond of Newt Scamander. You're welcome. https://t.co/bNdwX6Tf40
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 11, 2016
But not everyone was enthusiastic. A few observers were unimpressed with the lack of diversity on a show in 1920s New York and there being only one non-white person in the trailer:
Newt Scamander's magical power is to turn everyone in New York white except for one black woman. https://t.co/pWGBwm7YS2
— Sunil Patel (@ghostwritingcow) April 11, 2016
Rowling herself won’t be thrilled with fans referring to the film as a prequel. “‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world,” Rowling pointedly noted in a Facebook post in 2013.
The trailer refers to the film as marking a “new era.” Warner Bros, still reeling from the mixed response to Batman v Superman, hopes the “new era” does not extend to the movie’s commercial reception and that it generates revenue, along the lines of its Potter-like predecessors, when it is released on November 18.
