Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie Review

Stranger in a Strange Land

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 26, 2017

Nothing quickens a studio executive's pulse more than a sure-fire franchise. Warner Brothers appeared to have lost its most bankable series when the Harry Potter saga concluded in 2011 with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. But author J.K. Rowling came riding to the rescue like Dumbledore's Army, bearing a new entry in the Potterverse inspired by her slim 2001 volume published under the pen name of "Newt Scamander". Newt's guide to mystical creatures, entitled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, is one of the textbooks assigned to young Harry in his first year at Hogwarts. Rowling's publication purported to be a copy of that very bestiary, with marginal notations by Harry, Ron and Hermione.

For the filmed version of Fantastic Beasts, Rowling wrote an original script delving into the origins of Newt Scamander's textbook and recounting the exploits of its author many years before Harry's fateful birth. Produced by Potter veterans David Heyman, Steve Kloves and Lionel Wigram, and directed by David Yates, who helmed the last four Potter films, Fantastic Beasts was released in November 2016 and was promptly devoured by Hogwarts veterans suffering from five years of Potter withdrawal. Four sequels are planned, and Fantastic Beasts' impressive world box office of $812 million guarantees that they'll be made.

"New York is considerably more interesting than I expected!" — Newt Scamander

In 1926, Newt Scamander arrives in New York City from Great Britain, bearing a battered suitcase that contains a dimensional portal to an animal preserve—but not for the usual endangered species. A self-taught expert on mystical wildlife (or, in Rowling-speak, a "magizoologist", the first of his kind), Newt bears the perpetually befuddled air of an absent-minded professor. Shy and abstracted, he's not particularly comfortable with other people (who, he says, find him "annoying"), but he has an instinctive rapport with magical animals, including many that the mainstream wizard world considers dangerous and would prefer to see exterminated. Newt thinks they're just misunderstood and mistreated and, in his own modest way, he wants to change his fellow wizards' hearts and minds on the subject.

The immediate purpose of Newt's trip is to return a rare Thunderbird, a kind of cross between a dragon and an American bald eagle, to its native habitat in Arizona, but he almost immediately becomes enmeshed in various intrigues. A case of identical suitcases prompts an odd-couple partnership with a local Muggle—or, "No-Maj", in American parlance—named Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a cannery worker who aspires to open his own bakery but can't get a bank loan. Newt also finds that he has arrived at a dangerous time for American wizards and their governing organization, the Magical Congress of the United States of America, or "MACUSA", which is headed by the imperious President Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) and boasts a squadron of "Auror" enforcers. There is a growing movement among No-Majs to expose and condemn wizards, as typified by a messianic group known as "The Second Salemers". The leader of The Second Salemers is the severe Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), who has dragooned a fleet of adopted children into her service, including the downcast Credence (Ezra Miller) and an eerie little girl named Modesty (Faith Wood-Blagrove). While Mary Lou is unsuccessful in her initial attempts to enlist a powerful newspaper publisher, Henry Shaw Sr. (Jon Voight), in her anti-magical crusade, the Shaw family will shortly reconsider their support when a mystical force intervenes in the political career of the eldest son, Henry Shaw Jr. (Josh Cowdery).

Newt Scamander has barely arrived in New York when he runs afoul of MACUSA after one of his creatures, a platypus-billed thief called a "Niffler", escapes and runs amuck in its magpie-like pursuit of shiny objects. Hauled into the organization's cavernous New York headquarters by a demoted Auror, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson), who is seeking to reestablish her credentials, Newt attracts the attention of President Picquery's chief aide, a powerful wizard named Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), who has recently been tracking random eruptions of destructive magical forces. For a time, these mystical rampages are attributed to other escapees from Newt's menagerie, but it eventually becomes apparent that something more powerful and sinister is attacking the city, thereby threatening to expose the secret world of wizards to the fearful eyes of No-Maj society. It is Newt, with his accumulated knowledge of occult life forms, who is able to track down and confront the marauding spirit, aided by Jacob, Tina and Tina's sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), a sweet-hearted coquette who has the useful ability to read minds.

Rowling is an established master at juggling multiple story lines while keeping an eye firmly on her tale's ultimate destination, and there are many moments in Fantastic Beasts where you can see her laying groundwork for things to come, especially in the hints about Newt Scamander's past. Looming over these early adventures is the threat of a renegade dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald, whose younger self appeared briefly in flashbacks during the Potter series and who is introduced here in a cleverly animated opening montage of magical newspaper reports. (Grindelwald himself appears only briefly, played by Johnny Depp.) Grindelwald is obviously the Voldemort of this extended chronicle, but his plans and the future entwinement of his fate with Newt's remain for future installments to explore.

But Rowling offers more than a preamble. Newt's visit to New York provides a self-contained adventure that stands on its own while assembling an engaging band of companions to accompany him on future adventures. Newt's struggles with both New York's No-Maj world and the competing factions within MACUSA, and his ultimate confrontation with a mythical and lethal creature dubbed an "Obscurus", supply a solid narrative foundation, while allowing Rowling and director Yates plenty of room to explore a new realm of magical wonder and deliver on the title's promise of introducing us to an assortment of "fantastic beasts", both inside the multifaceted preserve that Newt has constructed within his case and in familiar environs like Macy's and Central Park. Though set in the past and an ocean away from Diagon Alley, the world of Fantastic Beasts feels entirely of a piece with Harry Potter's landscape of antique locales, dusty relics and ancient powers.

Fantastic Beasts is a welcome return to form for director Yates after the disappointment of The Legend of Tarzan. Yates has said that he initially resisted reenlisting for Rowling's world after four Harry Potter films but was won over by the strength of her script. The director and his producers and creative team bring with them a wealth of experience in the painstaking art of creating a quasi-naturalistic environment in which magic is an everyday occurrence for those who practice it, and supernatural events are just as likely to occur in the distance or at the edge of the frame instead of always taking center stage, as often happened in the early Potter films. Yates has also become adept at directing actors in lengthy sequences where they have to react to critical elements that don't yet exist and will be added later by CGI. It certainly helps that, as detailed in the disc's extras, Fantastic Beasts was shot on huge practical sets with lovingly crafted period detail, and that many of Newt's creatures were represented by elaborate articulated puppets. But the cast, especially Redmayne, Waterston and Fogler, deserve substantial credit for bringing this world alive with their credible immersion into their characters. All three are experienced players, but the film's breakout performance comes from Alison Sudol, whose Queenie is a charmingly original variation on the traditional dumb blonde (and, as things turn out, not so dumb). The reliable Ron Perlman supplies a comically sinister motion-captured performance as Gnarlack, the goblin proprietor of a demon speakeasy called The Blind Pig.

At the conclusion of Fantastic Beasts, Newt promises that he will personally deliver to Tina a copy of the book he is writing, the same one that will eventually become required reading at Hogwarts. MACUSA will no doubt remain suspicious of the diffident British wizard, but viewers and Tina eagerly await his return.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fantastic Beasts was shot by the esteemed French cinematographer, Philippe Rousselot, a newcomer to the Potterverse but an experienced hand at photographing alternate realities, both antique and mystical. His credits include Guy Ritchie's two Sherlock Holmes films, Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire and Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For Fantastic Beasts, Rousselot's lighting and the production design establish clear distinctions between the magical world and that of Muggles—excuse me, No-Majs. The palette of 1920s New York is muted and subdued, with an often dusty texture and just an occasional flash of bright color, usually associated with wealth (e.g., the red bouquets on the tables of the Shaw banquet). Whenever magic enters the picture, the palette shifts. The Goldstein sisters' apartment is suffused with a warm glow; Newt's inter-dimensional creature preserve and its inhabitants are a rainbow of bright, saturated hues; and the many levels of MACUSA are alternately marked by flashes of color (e.g., the central dial that registers mystical threats) and expanses of brightness (e.g., the punishment chamber from which Newt rescues Tina).

Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray faithfully renders the film's many shades, with deep blacks, excellent fine detail and subtle color grading that gives the digitally acquired production a sense of texture effectively creating the requisite antique appearance. Fantastic Beasts was finished on a digital intermediate at 4K (from a 3.4K ARRIRAW source, according to IMDb), which no doubt accounts for the superior sharpness of the downconverted 1080p image. Warner has mastered the 133-minute film with an average bitrate of 22.17 Mbps, using nearly all of the available space on the BD-50 (allowing for extras and multiple soundtracks). The encode is capable, and the image is free of artifacts.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with its recent Blu-ray of Live by Night, Warner has chosen to accompany Fantastic Beasts with two lossless soundtracks, one in Dolby Atmos (with a TrueHD 7.1 "core") and another in DTS-HD MA 5.1. In a curious twist, the disc has been mastered to default to the DTS-HD MA track; viewers with Atmos-capable equipment have to remember to select that option manually.

In an even more curious turn, Warner has omitted the Atmos track from the 3D release of Fantastic Beasts, for no apparent reason. This review is limited to the Atmos track; the DTS-HD MA track will be discussed in the 3D review.

Fantastic Beasts' Atmos soundtrack offers all the bells and whistles (and also roars, chirps and stampedes) that we have come to expect from a major studio tentpole, with standout sequences like the Obscurus' rampage, which immerses the listener in falling masonry, shattering glass and the fearsome spirit's enraged roar. Each of Newt's many varieties of creature has its own distinctive voice, ranging from high-pitched staccato chatter to a deep, sustained bellow, and the film's sound design has expertly pitched these animal expressions midway between the familiarly organic and the delightfully otherworldly. Acts of magic inspire a symphony of effects both obvious and subtle, with every room and corridor of MACUSA headquarters a unique sonic experience. (The pneumatic tube network running through the Wand Permit offices is especially memorable, as enchanted sheets of paper whoosh through the system in all directions.) The mix fully exploits the ability of Atmos to position and shift discrete effects throughout the surround field with exemplary clarity.

The dialogue is clear and well-prioritized throughout, but there's often so much happening at once in the sound mix for Fantastic Beasts that it may take several viewings to grasp some of the expository detail with which Rowling has seeded the characters' exchanges. James Newton Howard joins the roster of Potterverse composers with an energetic orchestral scores that shifts smoothly between the film's comic beats (usually at the expense of Dan Fogler's Jacob) and the film's stirring adventure elements. Key themes from John Williams' compositions for the first three Harry Potter films help link Fantastic Beasts to the rest of Rowling's expanding fantasy world.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Before Harry Potter: A New Era of Magic Begins! (1080p; 1.78:1; 15:31): Rowling, Yates, producers Heyman and Wigram and the four lead cast members describe how the new addition to the Potterverse was conceived and developed. Redmayne ("Newt"), Waterston ("Tina"), Fogler ("Jacob") and Sudol ("Queenie") are interviewed in a group, and their camaraderie is as entertaining as their comments.



• Characters (1080p; 1.78:1;): The cast, Rowling, Yates, producer Heyman, costume designer Colleen Atwood (who won an Oscar for her work on Fantastic Beasts) and various additional crew discuss the principal characters, their backgrounds and their appearances.


• The Magizoologist (4:14)
• The Goldstein Sisters (5:04)
• The No-Maj Baker (4:42)
• The New Salemers (4:42)
• The President and the Auror (5:37)



• Creatures (1080p; 1.78:1): Rowling, Yates and an assortment of effects personnel and concept artists discuss the design of the film's creatures.


• Meet the Fantastic Beasts (4:18)
• Bowtruckle (2:36)
• Demiguise (2:20)
• Erumpent (3:42)
• Niffler (2:29)
• Occamy (3:09)
• Thunderbird (2:25)



• Design (1080p; 1.78:1): Production designer Stuart Craig headlines discussions of the how the film's production team applied the lessons of Harry Potter to creating an older era and a new locale.


• Shaping the World of Fantastic Beasts (5:54)
• New York City (7:25)
• MACUSA (7:07)
• Newt's Magical Case (4:59)
• The Shaw Banquet (4:29)
• The Blind Pig (4:39)



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.40:1; 14:33): The visual effects for these scenes are finished (or nearly so), which suggests that they were removed late in the editing process. The single best scene is the "Suitcase Celebration", where the Goldstein Sisters perform the school song of Illvermorny, the American counterpart to Hogwarts. A "play all" function is included.


• Major Investigation Department
• Jacob Tenement
• Newt's Case
• MACUSA Cell
• Creocreatura
• Tracking Demiguise
• Suitcase Celebration
• Skyscraper Roof
• Obscuris Unleashed, Part 1
• Obscuris Unleashed, Part 2
• Newt Goodbye



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays a trailer for the Harry Potter series, plus the now-familiar promo for 4K discs.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You don't need to have seen a single Harry Potter film to enjoy Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Potter fanatics will find a wealth of references and clues, but newcomers should be thoroughly entertained by Newt Scamander's unexpected journey and the rich world of people and creatures he encounters. Warner has given the film a polished Blu-ray treatment that includes interesting and informative extras, and the disc is highly recommended.