So, What Exactly Went Wrong With Fantastic Beasts?
The Harry Potter spin-off looked like a perfect follow-up to the beloved story, but something went terribly wrong with it after the first instalment.
When Warner Bros. released the last instalment of the extremely popular Harry Potter series in 2011, everybody started wondering how and when the J. K. Rowling franchise would return to the silver screen. Fans had to wait five long years for the premier of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in 2016 and it was a resounding success.
The story of young wizard Newt Scamander tracking down unique supernatural creatures around the world seemed like a perfect sequel to the Potter saga. And even though the film deviated slightly from the source material, fans were eager to see more. And then it all came crashing down.
The next two films came in for so much hatred from both fans and critics and suffered such huge losses at the box office that the originally announced fourth instalment has been put on hold indefinitely. But what exactly went wrong? How did a franchise with such great potential fail so miserably to live up to expectations? Over on Reddit fans have offered up two possible answers.
For one, fans of the source material felt cheated and misled: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them promised a huge adventure featuring lots of exotic creatures, and adding more details to everyone’s favourite universe. But the sequels instead focused on a convoluted Dumbledore backstory that nobody asked for or cared about.
With so much going on between Dumledore and Grindelwald, Newt got completely sidelined and people were really peeved: they paid to see Eddie Redmayne as Newt track down and collect exotic creatures but instead they were treated to a cliched villain origin story. If only Warner Bros had kept their focus on Newt, there is no telling how successful the franchise could have been.
Secondly, many people are now of the opinion that J. K. Rowling should perhaps finally quit as the franchise’s head writer. It’s not that she’s bad at what she does, it’s just that the series desperately needs new writers to boldly take the story where it has never gone before. J. K. Rowling has already created one of the most beloved fantasy worlds, so letting others take over and restore people’s confidence in it seems like the right move at this point in history.