Against: Will Roberts

Being an overly keen Harry Potter fan I’ve always wondered what my boggart would be. I’m not bothered by heights, spiders are too easy to kill to be scared of and I’m normally too drunk to have agoraphobia in Cindies. Yet upon the confirmation that Eddie Redmayne has bagged the role of Newt Scamander, I have had a revelation; the prospect of Fantastic Beasts of Where to Find Them absolutely terrifies me.

This is partly to do with my sheer love for Harry Potter. As a child I was pretty weird; I essentially lived in a world of fantasy and imagination, and the world of magic was one I would visit regularly. If I felt alone or weird, Hogwarts was a place that made complete sense. And the thought of anyone meddling with the world that as a child meant so much to me makes me both sad and angry.

There is also a general sense of stupefaction as to why these films are being made. Although all fans upon finishing the final page of the last book or seeing the final shot of the last film had a yearning for it to last forever, there is a general admittance that an end to the series was necessary and that Rowling couldn’t have given us a more poignant and perfect conclusion.

So why are Warner Bros. trying to convince us that we want more? We don’t! It’s not like Star Wars or the Alien when an extension to the franchise was either planned or logical. The fact is that Warner Bros. is attempting to expand a universe that has run its course.

Admittedly this isn’t the first expansion of Harry Potter outside the books and the films, all of which I’ve kind of enjoyed. The Tales of Beedle the Bard was quirky and interesting, Pottermore was great fun up until I got sorted into Hufflepuff (twice!) and the original Fantastic Beasts was a perfect companion for any Potter geek. The difference with these is that they were possible to ignore; no one is going to call you out on not completing the latest level of Pottermore as long you know the medical properties of a bezour. However, unless you live far from civilisation, these films will hunt you down.

Yet what annoys me most about Fantastic Beasts is not necessarily my personal gripes with it, but rather what it represents. The other day I watched Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity; a huge, expensive blockbuster with bold ideas and most importantly with no intention whatsoever of milking its potential success for future expansion. However it saddens me to say that these types of films are a dying breed; hardly any original stories are turned into event films anymore because studios are simply afraid of doing something new and innovative. And you’d have to be the least cynical person in the world not to see that this trilogy is just another corporate venture. What’s worrying is that this money over quality mentality is spiralling out of control. Pixar are bringing out more mediocre sequels than ever before. There are even plans for Hunger Games spin-offs which would frankly be insane.

So while I admit that my aversion to these films is largely down to personal reasons, they also represent something a whole lot bigger. Because Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them doesn’t just terrify me for selfish reasons, it’s also another nail in the coffin of originality.

For: Julia Craggs

People whining about J.K Rowling’s new film trilogy, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, frankly need to calm down. The first instalment is due to come out in November 2016, and already the Pottersphere is reaching peak hysteria. Yet to some of those who have grown up with Harry, and who see it as a cornerstone of their childhood, the new films are as unwanted as a ghoul in the attic.

One of their key worries is that this is a ‘sell-out’ move in a bid to squeeze every last Galleon, Sickle and Knut from the Harry Potter universe. But I believe J.K. Rowling has proved her integrity from the first film. For example she banished Steven Spielberg for his attempts to have an Americanised Harry. It’s highly doubtful that Rowling would sell out her prized franchise, and with regular Potter director David Yates on board, it’s guaranteed to be so much more than just a one-dimensional Potter spin-off.

The film will be set in New York, and will pre-date Harry by 70 years, so we’ll be able to enjoy the familiar world of hippogriffs and house-elves in a brand new way, without worrying that the perfect end to the Potter series will be compromised. In fact, this new trilogy will provide us with the kind of background knowledge of the magical world henceforth only available inside Rowling’s brain.

Just from a glance at the book of Fantastic Beasts, we can already tell that Rowling will jam-pack the series with little treats that will let us return to Harry richer and wiser. ‘Annotated’ by Ron, Harry and Hermione, as any of our Muggle textbooks would be, we get such gems as Newt Scamander’s ‘rumours that a colony of Acromantula has been established in Scotland are unconfirmed’, scribbled out and corrected to ‘confirmed by Harry Potter and Ron Weasley’. I’d be surprised if similar in-jokes don’t make it into Rowling’s script; a treat for any Potter nut.

Watching the magical world in a new light shouldn’t make Moaning Myrtles of us all. Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning performance in The Theory of Everything sets him comfortably alongside the acting royalty from Alan Rickman to Maggie Smith that propped up the last eight films. With Rowling as script-writer, she’ll have more control over the outcome of the film than even in the Potter series. Redmayne too has a deep respect for her script, as he said to the Evening Standard, “J.K. Rowling’s a genius, I am so thrilled to be a part of it…I’ve always loved that world and I feel thrilled to be invited into it.”

I, for one, am also ‘thrilled’, especially to see a magical world of ‘Magizoology’ – if only to better understand Hagrid’s love of magical creatures when I return to Harry. As for Newt Scamander, the main character in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – a character that, according to Harry Potter Wiki, began life dismembering Horklumps in his bedroom and ended up on a chocolate frog card – is, in terms of protagonist-ability, second only to one that defeated Voldemort as a baby and was saved from the wreckage by a half-giant on a flying motorbike.

Let’s be sirius. Any of these arguments – that Rowling has sold out; that the new trilogy will despoil the memories of our childhood favourites; that she’s milking the franchise – are ridikkulus. And if it doesn’t get at least a 9 ¾ on IMDb, I’ll eat my sorting hat.