The Harry Potter universe has always had people in awe of it. The powerful storylines and the amazing world of magic equally mesmerized everyone, regardless of age when the books were first released. J. K. Rowling had somehow managed to unite an entire generation of individuals under one singular cloak of witchcraft and wizardry.
Naturally, like many other kids my age, I also grew up with these stories of mystical adventures. The single thread upon which my childhood years went by was the belief that somewhere out there was a whole world filled with high-spirited witches and marvelous magical creatures waiting to welcome me with open hands if I ever found myself tired of my mundane muggle life. But throughout my time of being the avid potter-head that I am, I had never once gotten a chance to experience this enchanting world in theatres.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore provided me with just this opportunity. This movie is the third film in the franchise Fantastic Beasts trilogy, based on a spinoff of the wizarding world preceding the timeline of Harry Potter. Naturally so, I was fervently eager to experience my first ever interaction with the universe that had basically shaped my childhood.
Admittedly at first, the movie seemed to captivate me. But in retrospect, that might have been possible because sitting in a movie hall, surrounded by people who were just as invested in the glories of this fantasy land, was something I had only ever dreamt of.
The movie started with the love confession of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, the two people who were once considered the most powerful wizards of Earth, which was a wave of relief in the small proportion of LGBTQIA+ representation the wizarding universe was otherwise devoid of. But as it progressed, I just struggled to make sense of whatever was happening in the movie.
The visuals of the movie were no doubt amazing. It filled me with a sense of nostalgia watching the snow-decked landscape of Hogsmeade, the surprise appearance of a much younger professor McGonagall and even the glorious expanse of the school of Hogwarts on a big screen!
But somewhere, that magical touch of the original Harry Potter books was missing. Maybe it was because the Harry Potter movies have always intertwined darker themes through the lens of a child, making them somewhat lighter to perceive. But the Fantastic Beasts movies have had this staunch sense of mature themes, whether it be the symbolic exhibition of impending deaths of the characters or even the somber nature of how everyone seemed to prepare themselves for war. Where the Harry Potter movies had somewhere shied away from blatantly portraying destruction, this movie, in particular, seemed to solely focus on the aspect of violence as seen in how even the scenes were set in darker frames. The whole film was basically adults preparing themselves for the final fight and was bound to lack the lively proceedings that children preparing themselves for the same would offer.
Somewhere towards the end of the movie, I did have this feeling that maybe all these factors were just adding to that one elemental change we had all gone through. The realization that we are no longer kids now is probably what the movies aimed to symbolize. There’s no Harry Potter to add to the innocence of the journey and the darker storylines are just vivid metaphors for how our problems from childhood transfigured into much darker, intractable problems that require maturity to overcome.
And just maybe, this movie is the wizarding world holding out a hand to our future grown-up selves, inviting us to be willful enough to still put our hopes in this fantastical world of magic. The promise is that even after all this time, we will always keep the faith of magic alive in our hearts.