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Fantastic Beasts 2 Trailer Reaction
Yesterday, the first trailer for the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them sequel was released to a pretty positive reception. (If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here!)This one has an interesting title: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
As soon as that title was announced, I thought that it was a little weird. That’s a title that only people who have some sort of background knowledge of the Harry Potter universe will understand. It reminded me of the second Hobbit movie, which was The Desolation of Smaug. They both mention a character that exists only in the movie and that “outsiders” might not understand. Yet, it’s probably assumed that anyone who sees the sequel has already seen the first movie and knows who that character is. Anyway. That’s not the point of this post.
The point of the post is that I actually really liked the teaser trailer.
It did exactly what a trailer should do: it showed a bunch of exciting scenes from the movie with some voiceover, a couple of random lines, some shots of returning characters, and some of new characters. It was really well done.
The opening shot got me excited right away. Showing Hogwarts is a great way to get people to buy into what you’re doing. Not to mention, casual viewers will be able to recognize what the trailer is for because of how recognizable Hogwarts is.
Then, when you hear, “I have some questions for you… professor” with just someone’s back, you know that you’re about to see Young Dumbledore for the first time. And I think
I can speak for everyone when I say, at this point, you’re starting to get really excited. To add to all of that, it’s in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. There’s a lot of cool stuff here.
We then see some shots of Newt Scamander going to Paris, a deluminator taking some lights from what I assume is a New York City street, finally a Dumbledore face reveal that shows that he and Newt are working together on something, and then a quip from Dumbledore. Dumbledore potentially being funny and sarcastic is something that I’m looking forward to, because that will be faithful to how he is in the books. It would only make sense for his younger self to be like that.
Then we get some quick shots of some of the characters. It looks like Grindelwald will be on trial for his titular crimes at some point in the movie. Also, I’m very happy to see Kowalski and some of those good ol’ fantastic beasts back in this movie. Kowalski was possibly the best part of the first movie. I loved the humor that he brought, as well as his being the everyman: the Muggle that we as an audience can relate to in this magical world.
We get some shots of mystery, intrigue, new characters, returning characters, and a circus with floating bubble people. I especially liked seeing the return of Credence (Ezra Miller). He was a mysterious and interesting character in the first Fantastic Beasts so I’m really interested to see where he’ll be taken in this movie. Also, any time you can have more of Ezra Miller in anything is a win.
To finish off the trailer, we learn that Dumbledore “can’t move against Grindelwald” and that it has to be Newt. Hopefully, the reason it can’t be Dumbledore is because of their relationship that we learn about in The Deathly Hallows. I’d love to see that more deeply explored onscreen.
There is also a shot of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald looking a lot different than he did at the end of the first movie. I still don’t know if I buy into Depp as Grindelwald, especially
with some allegations against him, but I’m willing to give him a second shot with a much larger role.
What sealed the deal for my excitement was the quick glance at the Deathly Hallows symbol. I really hope that it wasn’t just put in there as a connection to the Potter movies, but because the Hallows will actually be involved in the plot somehow. Because we know that Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted to master the Hallows together. That could be an awesome subplot that I would like to see worked in to this film.
Overall, the trailer did exactly what a trailer should do: created some hype and anticipation. Now it’s time to avoid anything and everything that will give away details about this movie.