- Warning: Spoilers ahead of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
- A plot point with Newt’s briefcase feels like something out of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
- The slightly altered plot device feels like lazy writing that recycles old material for a new audience.
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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is definitely better than the last film, but fans will no doubt groan at some derivative texts that feel ripped straight from the final Harry Potter book in the seven-volume saga.
In The Dumbledore Secrets, out now in cinemas, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) assembles a ragtag band of witches, wizards and a non-magical Muggle to thwart Gellert Grindelwald’s (Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp) plans to a wizard war.
The convoluted plan to defeat Grindelwald involves Newt’s assistant Bunty Broadacre (Victoria Yeates) taking Newt’s magical suitcase to have copies made of it.
Bunty gets duplicates of Newt’s fall from Secrets of Dumbledore. Warner Bros.
If you’re a big Potter fan, this scene might have given you food for thought.
Certainly “Fantastic Beasts” didn’t want to repeat the famous scene from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in which the Order of the Phoenix (a group of Dumbledore’s followers consisting of Harry, Hermione, Ron and several others) drink Polyjuice Potion, which allows one person to transform into another to masquerade as decoy versions of Harry in order to confuse the franchise’s villain, Voldemort.
Hermione, Ron, and others drink Polyjuice to try to confuse Voldemort’s Death Eaters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Warner Bros.
But that’s exactly what they do.
Late in The Secrets of Dumbledore, another group of Dumbledore loyalists – the first iteration of Dumbledore’s army – gather in Hogwarts’ Room of Requirement (the famous room where Harry and Dumbledore’s second army, which would defeat Voldemort, would gather years later). Several copied briefcases fill the space next to Newt’s real one.
No one knows which is the real one, which features a “fantastic beast” that Grindelwald wants to capture.
Similar to Deathly Hallows, Newt’s group disperses, hoping to sow confusion among Grindelwald and his allies. The only difference between the scene in Fantastic Beasts and the original Harry Potter books and films is that no one knows who represents Newt’s true case. In Deathly Hallows, everyone knew which Harry Potter was the real one.
Everyone grabs a suitcase to cause confusion at Warner Bros.
For those who grew up watching Harry Potter, however, this repurposed plot device feels fishy.
If you’re a Potterhead, the reveal is so painfully predictable early on that it’s frustrating.
It will likely leave fans wondering whether or not franchise creator JK Rowling wrote the material herself. And it’s a valid question. According to the film’s credits, Secrets of Dumbledore was based on a screenplay by Rowling, which was then co-written by Rowling and producer Steve Kloves, who wrote all the Harry Potter films.
This is in contrast to the last two Fantastic Beasts films, which were written entirely by Rowling.
The briefcase scene would almost be forgivable if another scene soon after didn’t feel like a lesser recreation of one of the franchise’s most iconic scenes, also from Deathly Hallows.
An emotional moment between Credence (Ezra Miller) and a family member (we won’t spoil this reveal, but go ahead and click the link if you want to know) is an obvious nod to Snape’s death scene in the earlier film.
No one dies in the Secrets of Dumbledore sequence, but the dialogue twist ending with the word “always” feels like such a forced reference to “Harry Potter” that the words here sound hollow rather than sweet Nods to the former franchise.
Both of those moments may have fans wondering why Rowling and Warner Bros. ever thought of turning the thin source material of a Harry Potter dictionary (yes, Fantastic Beasts is a glossary) into a five-movie franchise to stretch when they’re easy I’ll recycle old material and try to pass it off to fans as new when Rowling runs out of fresh ideas.
Perhaps for the best, WB is reportedly waiting to see how Secrets of Dumbledore fares before continuing with the saga.