Under the strong appeal of many fans, Rowling finally no longer just updated short articles and short stories about the wizarding world on her Pottermore website, but officially returned to the wizarding world created by her: as the "Ha The sequel to "Lee Potter" and the rumored stage play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" and the publication of the book of the same name have been kept secret. The film series written by Rowling himself and tells the new chapter of the HP wizarding world. "Where are Fantastic Beasts" finally unveiled its mystery, and say hello to fans all over the world.
Who is Newt Scamander?
Perhaps it is not accurate to say that the five-part film series planned to be made into a "new chapter" is not accurate, because it is actually about Harry Potter many years before the birth The story, however, although there are and will have some familiar characters appearing, it is not a true prequel-after all, even Harry’s parents had not been born at the beginning of the story; however, "Fantastic Animals" "Series is indeed a new chapter of the magical world created by Rowling. Unlike the "Harry Potter" series, it shows us a more complete and grander blueprint of this magical world from an adult's perspective—— At least in terms of the details that producer David Hyman and director David Yates are willing to reveal, the story will span a full twenty years (from 1926 to 1945), and it will cover several countries on two continents.
Unlike Peter Jackson who expanded a "The Hobbit" into a trilogy, the "Fantastic Beasts" series is not an expanded version of the book of the same name, "Where are Fantastic Beasts".
Anyone who has read this book should be full of question marks, because the book is actually published as a textbook for the protection of magical animals at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a popular science book about magical animals in the magical world. There is no storyline at all. In fact, it must be said that this book has nothing to do with the story told in our new film series. The only connection is the "author" of this book Newt Scamander, a man dedicated to research and protection The magic biologist of magical animals is also the protagonist of our new story.
Unlike the famous boy Harry Potter who was born in a heroic family, our new protagonist Newt Scamander is a young wizard born in an ordinary magical family.
Originally, the most famous of the Scamander family should be Newt’s brother Theseus, a well-known Auror (an elite wizard who fights against the dark magic) under the British Ministry of Magic. The wing beast (remember Buckbeak in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") was influenced by the mother of the breeder, and had an extraordinary interest in magical beasts since he was a child.
In 1908, the 11-year-old Newt entered Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry like many little wizards, and was put into Hufflepuff College by the Sorting Hat. There, he became friends with a member of the ancient pure-blood wizard family Lestrange, the young witch Leta. They shared a common interest in magical animals, and they were also caused by being excluded by people around them. The loneliness is very close. Until one day Letta endangered the life of another student because of her dangerous experiment, Newt took the blame for his friend, although a professor strongly doubted the decision-at this time, it is not yet well-known, only Albus Dumbledore, a professor in the school’s transfiguration class, believed that Newt would not do such a thing, but his protest was suppressed by the then principal Dippet, and Newt was eventually expelled from Hogwarts. .
Perhaps it was due to Newt’s relationship as Auror’s brother Theseus, or perhaps Dumbledore used some contacts to help him believe that he was an innocent student. Known about animals, he quickly transferred from the deserted house-elf office to the more important animal control center of the department. Still, as a low-level employee, Newt can only receive a meager salary. In order to make a living and continue his research, Newt applied for a publishing house to write a popular science book about magical animals and began to use his free time. Traveling all over the world to find and study magical animals, his passion for this career far exceeded the tedious office work. Finally, in 1925, Newt quit his job at the Ministry of Magic and became a full-time researcher.
After traveling to five continents, visiting hundreds of countries, and cataloging countless magical animals, Newt has become a truly knowledgeable and professional magical zoologist, and he has collected and raised in his magic suitcase Many rare and amazing animals.
In December 1926, Newt took his magic suitcase to New York for a private mission and planned to do a short trip. However, it turns out that the plan will never change, and our story is from here. Officially kicked off...
why is North America's extreme hatred of magic? I
believe that any senior fan can be familiar with the numerous nouns, sayings, and historical allusions that appear in the "Harry Potter" series, and even memorize all the wizarding families. Genealogy... However, for all viewers who are new to the wizarding world, I am afraid that not everyone has the patience to go through all the books or read the tens of thousands of encyclopedia entries. So, if you don’t have a fan to watch the movie in a team, or you don’t want to be synchronized with your ears while watching the movie, you may need to understand the correct posture to enter the magical world first, so as not to find the right one. Or hit the wall miserably.
First of all, it is worthy of relief to you Muggles (ordinary people who don't know magic): the story of this new chapter is equally novel and strange even for experienced fans. Just the place and time it happened is far from the "Harry Potter" series.
"Where are the Fantastic Beasts" as the beginning of the new series, the story is set in New York in 1926. At this time Tom Riddle (ie the villain Voldemort in "Ha") was not born yet, the familiar Hogwarts And the British magical world is far beyond the ocean. In the "Harry Potter" series, the North American magical world has not even seen the shadow. The only thing we know about it is a small detail from the fourth book of the novel "Goblet of Fire", that is, before the Quidditch World Cup finals. Several American wizards from the Salem Witch Association were mentioned.
Yes, "Salem", does the word sound familiar?
I believe that most people’s understanding of the "Salem Witch Hunt" comes from the stage play "The Crucible" by the famous playwright Arthur Miller, or from the series "American Horror" "Story: Witch Rally", I won't repeat it here, so as not to offend many professional scholars and textualists. In short, this witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, USA at the end of the 17th century set off another wave of frenzy in the New World after the "witch hunt" in the Old World from the 14th century to the beginning of the 17th century. In half a year, 20 people were killed and more than 200 people were arrested or imprisoned, leaving a clear mark in Western history. And Rowling would naturally not let such a major event pass while constructing her history of the magical world.
Therefore, in "Fantastic Beasts", an extremely hateful organization that claims to be "Second Salem" appeared, and it is not entirely caused by the paranoid Maji (No-Maj, North America against "Muggles", but also It is the name of a person who does not know how to magic.
Long before European explorers first arrived in the American continent and called it the "New World", wizards already knew about the existence of America: a variety of magical travel methods-flying broomsticks and apparitions, as well as more ancient predictions. Magic has made wizards all over the world have access to each other in the Middle Ages. The native wizards of the Americas naturally knew the existence of countries on other continents before the European immigrants arrived in the Americas in the 17th century. As the Maji began to immigrate to the New World, more European wizards came to settle in the Americas. Some were looking forward to taking risks, while more people were fleeing. At that time, the witch hunting movement in Europe had not come to an end. Escape from the harassment and persecution of the Maji (also from fellow wizards), take advantage of the opportunity of the Maji to begin to immigrate to hide their identity, or be accepted by the Native American wizard group, because the latter is very welcome and willing to shelter from the European continent Compatriots.
Nevertheless, for wizards, the environment of the New World is obviously harsher than that of the Old World.
First, they must learn to be self-sufficient, like the Maji immigrants and Native American wizards. Native American wizards have always lived in their respective tribes. All the magic materials need to be collected by themselves, and there is no history of using magic wands here, and naturally there is no craftsman who makes magic wands, even the world-famous Iphamoni School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. , Was also established by an Irish witch, at the time it was just a simple hut with only two students.
Second, the Maji immigrants who accompanied them made the non-magical races of the motherland look extraordinarily friendly and lovely in comparison. Not only did the Maji immigrants start wars against the Native Americans, which caused a blow to the unity of the local magical community, their religious beliefs also made it intolerable for them to tolerate any traces of magic (Puritans are keen to accuse others of using witchcraft, even if the evidence is very weak. ), which makes immigrant wizards extremely nervous.
Finally, the most important and dangerous thing is the existence of "Scourers". Because the American magic world is not a whole, scattered and secret, and has not yet constructed its own law enforcement mechanism, this has attracted a group of unscrupulous hired wizards from different countries. At the beginning, they were only dedicated to hunting down those wizards who escaped from crime in exchange for bounty. , But then the Scavengers quickly fell in this inaccessible zone and began to indulge in power and unnecessary brutality. They enjoyed bloodshed and torture, even betraying their fellow wizards to Maji who was willing to pay for it. In the late 17th century, the number of Scavengers in the Americas increased exponentially, and they contributed to the famous Salem Witch Hunt.
The Salem incident has far-reaching significance to the magic world, and the cause is far more than just those tragic deaths. The immediate impact is that many wizards fled the Americas as a result, and more people decided not to settle here. This led to the fact that until the beginning of the 20th century, the number of wizards in the total population of the Americas was significantly less than that of the other four continents. Since the pure-blood wizard family can obtain detailed information about the operations of the Puritans and the Scavengers through the newspapers of the magic world, they rarely travel to America. This also means that the proportion of wizards from the Maji family in the New World is much higher than that in other places. Although these wizards generally still choose to marry their kind and establish their own pure magic family, the long history of pure bloodism in the European magical world is in vain in the Americas.
And the most significant impact caused by Salem time was the Magical Congress of the United States of America established in 1963, which was established nearly a century before the Congress of Maji. American wizards referred to it as MACUSA. (Often pronounced as Marcusa). This is the unity of the magical capitals of North America, formulating their own laws and government agencies, and learning from other countries to effectively establish a magical world that can coexist peacefully with the maji. The first action taken by MACUSA was to try those who betrayed their compatriots. All those who committed homicide, trafficked wizards, and tortured others were also executed.
However, there are still some notorious Scavengers who have escaped the hunt. After the international hunting order was issued, they disappeared among the Maji forever. Some people form families with Maji. If the children born with magic talents will be abandoned, only the offspring without magic will be left to hide their identity. Even after being expelled, some retaliatory scavengers will pass on their obsessions to their descendants: Magic is real, and all wizards are evil aliens that should be eradicated.
These families who believe in magic but extremely hate the existence of the demon law continue to have a more profound impact, and it is likely that it is precisely because of the descendants of these scavengers that the Maji in the Americas seems to be more difficult to be deceived and deceived by magic than in other places. This also had a profound impact on the rule of the American magic world.
Why is it forbidden to fall in love with Maji in the North American magical world?
In 1790, MACUSA’s fifteenth chief Emily Rappaport enacted a law against the ethnic segregation between wizards and maji. Then there was the most serious violation of the international confidentiality statute, which led to the humiliation and condemnation of MACUSA by the International Wizarding Federation. This incident is not trivial, because this illegal incident occurred inside MACUSA.
To put it simply, this major event involves the treasures trusted by President Rappaport and the manager of the pot Minister of Finance). Aristotle Thephry is a capable man, but his daughter, Docas, is a beautiful vase. She did not perform well when she was studying at Ifamoni School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and when her father was promoted to a high-ranking official, she stayed at home for a long time, not doing magic, and most of her thoughts were spent on her clothes, hairstyle and parties. On an outing one day, Dorcas fell in love with a handsome mochi named Bartholomew Barber. But she didn't know that Barber was a descendant of the Surgeon. No one in his family knew magic, but she believed in the existence of magic and believed that all wizards were evil.
Under the lure of Barber, Dorcas revealed the secret addresses of MACUSA and Ifamoni School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, information about the International Wizarding Federation, and the methods used by these organizations to protect the hidden magic world. After collecting a lot of information from Dokas, Barber stole the wand she showed him, then summoned the news reporters and showed the wand. He gathered a group of like-minded people to arm them, hoping to kill all the wizards in the neighbouring area, and at the same time printed leaflets, provided a gathering place for wizards and witches, and sent a letter to the senior management of Maji. Some of them believed that it was indeed necessary to go ahead. Investigate whether there are so-called "evil secret gatherings" in those places.
Although Barber and his accomplices were finally arrested and imprisoned by firing at a group of innocent majis whom they believed to be wizards due to their enthusiasm. However, the exposure of many secrets of the magical world still had a huge impact. Many marked locations became the focus of attention, including the MACUSA headquarters, which had to be moved elsewhere. Dokas' reckless behavior prompted the implementation of the Rappaport Law: The law strictly prohibits wizards from interacting with the maji, or intermarriage with the maji, and even if they are too close, they will be severely punished.
The Rappaport method further deepens the cultural differences between the magic world in the United States and other parts of Europe: in the other four continents, there is always a certain degree of secret connection and cooperation between the Maji government and the local magic department, while in the United States, MACUSA operates completely independently and has nothing to do with the Moji government; in Europe, wizards and Moji can establish friendship or even intermarriage, while in the United States, wizards are increasingly wary and hostile to Moji. In short, the American magical world was already very nervous about the Maji society, and the Rappaport method has pushed the American magical world to a more secretive trend.
The serious violation of the international confidentiality agreement by Dokas Tefthui has been widely circulated in the magic world. Since then, American wizards have often used "really Dokas" to refer to stupid and incompetent behavior. For those who ignore the international confidentiality agreement, MACUSA has always taken severe punishment measures; in addition, compared to Europe, MACUSA's tolerance for uncontrolled magical creatures is much lower. Because the existence of magical animals and ghosts will increase the risk of the Maji discovering the existence of the magical world.
And our protagonist, Newt Scamander, who loves magical animals, came to the United States under such an era background. At the same time, he also carries many magical creatures that have been classified as high-risk by the International Federation of Wizards... It is conceivable that for MACUSA, such Newt is definitely a figure who will be decisively refused entry.
What is the origin of the villain Greenward?
In addition to the many magical animals, as a fan of the most concerned, naturally the characters and story details related to the "Harry Potter" series in the movie. Just like our new protagonist Newt Scamander is just a character in the footnotes in the original work, and even many people dug up this person’s encyclopedia entry, but because Rowling said "Mad Girl" Luna Later he married a boy named Scamander (Newt's grandson).
Regardless of the details of the background setting (for example, the mother of the founder of Ifamoni School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Aesop Thrill, whose mother name is Gunter, is a descendant of Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts. ), I have to mention here is a character who occupies a small space in the original novel series, but has a far-reaching influence: Gellert Grindelwald.
As mentioned earlier, both producer Hyman and director Yates have revealed that they will definitely be shown in future movie sequels. Albus Dumbledore’s famous 1945 battle that made him famous. duel. The object of his duel was Gellert Grindelwald, the most dangerous dark wizard in the history of the "magic revival" war in the entire continent except Britain.
As early as when this person appeared as a background character in the novel, everyone speculated about the relationship between Grindelwald and the Nazi fascists based on his background, rise and fall time. And at the beginning of this film, we can see a series of terrorist activities carried out by newspapers in the magic world against Grindelwald in Europe, and combined with the historical events at that time, it is not difficult to see that this is exactly where Nazi fascism in Europe began to rise. period. The creed of the supremacy of the magical community that Grindelwald promotes also has similarities with it.
In the 1920s, World War I had just ended. Even though the vast majority of Muggles/Muggles didn’t know it, and a few insiders chose to ignore it, wizards did have a certain weight in the First World War from 1914 to 1918. . Since there were wizards on both sides of the battle, their participation did not have a decisive impact, but the participation of the wizards did successfully reduce the number of deaths due to the war and defeated the enemy's wizards many times.
Adhering to the position of opposing the association between wizards and Moji, the Rappaport method is still being implemented hard. At this time, the American magical world has become accustomed to maintaining a more low-key behavior than the European compatriots. The long-term isolation and the pressure to maintain a high degree of vigilance have also made their vigilance and hostility toward the Maji increase unabated. At this time, Grindelwald was gathering more like-minded partners and followers, and naturally would not ignore this continent where the contradictions between the two sides were more acute.
The five parts of the plan are just placed in this 20-year period. It cannot but make people guess. The real main line of the story is not how Newt Scamander finds and protects magical animals, but how the protagonists face it. This battle will change the fate of everyone. And the Dark Lord to be defeated this time is Gellert Grindelwald.
Perhaps it is not necessarily accurate to call Grindelwald the Dark Lord. From the fragmentary description of the original series, we can see that this dark wizard is not on the same level as Voldemort. Compared to Voldemort, who is under a terrifying dictatorship and pursuing power, Grindelwald is more like a revolutionist in the magic world. He is strong, confident, talented and extremely charming. His belief is to bring the entire magic community The status of is really elevated above the non-magical group, so that the global magic world can truly unite and go under the sun, so that all existences with magic no longer need to be careful to hide.
"For the greater good"-it is this creed, and because of the dissatisfaction of the magical community with the many sacrifices that have been made to "protect the non-magical community" for a long time, he called on many supporters and followers, and Eventually formed an army large enough to overthrow the entire continent. The symbol of this army is the most famous symbol of the "Three Hallows of Death" in the "Harry Potter" series.
In the "Harry Potter" novel, the younger Grindelwald is also fascinated by the legend of the Deathly Hallows, but he, like Dumbledore, is not trying to use its power to be like the legend, or as Voldemort desires. In that way, to conquer death, but to change the world. In the original work, Grindelwald used the theft as a means to obtain the Elder Rod, one of the Deathly Hallows, but when he realized that he did not really own it, he did not insist on insisting, or continue to pursue other Deathly Hallows, he may Just use the rod of elders as a symbol, and then focus on his great cause.
At the end of the "Harry Potter" series of stories, when we, like Harry, finally understand Dumbledore’s long-term plans and sacrifices, we can’t help but feel a little scared of the old man when we are moved: How terrible it is for a person who can count his death. And Grindelwald, through various bystanders, and even Dumbledore himself, said in the book that they are actually very similar.
Two equally talented and ambitious young people met at the best age in their lives and became close friends because of the common ideal of wanting to change the status quo. In that summer they drew up a blueprint for a revolution, the young Dumbledore even planned to abandon his brother and sister who depended on him and implement their plan with Grindelwald. However, because Dumbledore's sister Ariana was accidentally hit by a curse in the battle and died, Dumbledore finally realized that he was different from Grindelwald: he could not ignore the lives that were destined to be sacrificed. Between killing and saving, he chose the latter. So Dumbledore stayed, and Grindelwald left with their common plan.
This difference is more than 40 years. And their last reunion was the duel that finally ended the war and later became famous all over the world.
On a certain level, Dumbledore has never regarded Voldemort as an opponent, and Grindelwald is his eternal and only opponent. Because they all understand that power and strength cannot truly conquer everything. Only a belief, an eternal belief that can be passed on from generation to generation, is the true victory and the greatest magic.
Although Dumbledore himself did not appear in this film, his name was indeed arranged at an opportunity to be patient, and if it was really like the producer and director claimed, Dumbledore’s Casting is already in progress, and this famous duel will finally be shown, so the next story is likely to show how Grindelwald and Dumbledore went from a secret contest to a head-on confrontation.
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For some people, the "Harry Potter" series is a work that accompanies their growth. The protagonists of the year have all grown up, married wives and children, but the story is not over yet, because magic is eternal, and Rowling’s magical world is still constantly enriched, just like the fragments of a huge puzzle appearing one after another, and it’s like New York. Te Scamander's magical suitcase is loaded with many attractive magical creatures.
There is no doubt that, compared with "Harry Potter", the current "Fantastic Beasts" series will open a door to truly show the whole world of magic. This is a return and a new journey: through a period of history, Through a pair of adult eyes, explore the magnificent and wonderful magical world full of charm created by Rowling.
This article first appeared in "ELLEMEN Rui Shi"
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