The second installment of the Fantastic Beast franchise was released Friday, unleashing all of the nitpickers who are fans of Harry Potter. But Crimes of Grindelwald and Harry Potter are not the same — they just take place in the same universe.
The movie, which is expected to gross $63 million domestically, takes place one year after the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film built on the existing wizarding world set up in Harry Potter, providing the exposition needed for the five-movie franchise.
The second movie, Crimes of Grindelwald, is where parts of the story start interfering and meshing with ideas brought up in the Harry Potter series. To #ProtectTheSecrets, I won’t go into the details of the movie’s many plots, but fundamentally the movie shifts the Harry Potter timeline around — especially when there’s a cameo from a certain professor.
But no matter what happens in Crimes of Grindelwald, it’s part of the wizarding world canon because the script is written by J.K. Rowling. There’s no disputing it. Had the screenplay been written by any other person, it could have been tossed out and disregarded, but it’s not.
When Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them came out in 2016, some Harry Potter fans were disappointed because the tones differed between the two franchises. The reason the tone and visuals are different is because they’re completely different movies. That’s it. People who go in expecting the movie to be exactly like Harry Potter are going to be disappointed. Who really wants to watch the exact same storyline play out but with different characters anyway? No one.
The point of the Fantastic Beasts series is to take a small mention in the Harry Potter series, Newt Scamander, and have him go on adventures during the Gellert Grindelwald era, a charismatic character whose backstory is mentioned in The Deathly Hallows. That’s what Crimes of Grindelwald expands upon — the knowledge known in the seventh Harry Potter novel. The spin-off is an ode to those who read the books and for those who didn’t to see more into the world.
Some of the choices Rowling made in Crimes of Grindelwald are questionable, like creating the term Maledictus and introducing Nagini as one and contradictions with the timeline, but it doesn’t matter. Rowling has three more films to tie everything together, and whatever she writes is officially canon. The distinction is it’s not Harry Potter canon — it’s strictly wizarding world canon.
Georgia Davis is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. What did you think of Crimes of Grindelwald? Tell Georgia by tweeting her at @georgiadee35.
