I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a couple days ago.

(spoilers behind cut)

Thing I liked: the amount of short-range Apparition in this movie. Characters routinely use teleporting to get past grates, to jump from one building rooftop to the next, to dodge attacks. This is a very Correct use of teleportation and I approve.

Thing I did not like: the amount of Obliviation in this movie. Like, even more than I was expecting. Were we supposed to consider the mass mind-wiping of an entire city a happy ending?

I spent most of the movie worried about whether Newt’s Muggle companion* was going to make it through intact. At the end, the President of Wizarding America is like “You’re going to have to obliviate him, but I’ll give you a chance to say goodbye”, and then she and all her lackeys walk away. Now, to someone who is already thinking about the Eleventh Doctor, this is clearly code for “I’m going to look the other way while you smuggle him to safety”. Except Kowalski then does a 180 on his previously-expressed desire to stay in touch with the wizarding world, says some “I was never supposed to know, this is how things should be” bullshit, and deliberately walks out into the rainstorm of Lethe water. *sigh*

(It didn’t just remind me of Doctor Who, you know, but of a movie I saw when I was a child. Another movie with a setting hidden amongst ordinary New Yorkers, and which was far, far more horrifying than it thought it was.)

(when the monsters came for me, they did not wield claws or teeth or guns, but those little silvery sticks)

*My brain insists on referring to Kowalski as a “companion”, because Newt has the same accent as Matt Smith and once that’s gotten you to start seeing Newt as the Doctor, it turns out to be kind of hard to stop.

---

Tags:

#in conclusion: #entertaining movie #will make you side-eye your water bottle #amnesia cw #oh look an original post #Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them