Hogwarts Professor

Today’s Crimes of Grindelwald thoughts are from a Potter Pundit who looks at the story from the perspective of a writer and editor concerned with the tension and play between a story’s surface narrative and various undercurrents. Did Crimes of Grindelwald succeed in delivering both satisfactorily and with the proper proportion and interfacing? Enjoy!

Crimes of Grindelwald: Thoughts from a Fan and Fiction Editor

I had heard mixed and even disappointed reactions about this movie before I saw it. I had also heard that something somewhat shocking was in it, and I kept getting the vibe that it broke canon. So I didn’t go in with super high expectations. Mind you, I didn’t go in with super high expectations for the last one (though I loved it), simply because this series will never be Harry Potter, and they are prequels, and if you’ve read the books, you already know how the story ends. That’s not to say that I didn’t go in with tons of excitement. Because I did. Any chance to get more from the Wizarding World is always a mega plus to my muggle mortal existence.

But because of what I’d heard, I kept waiting for something really awful to happen. I kept waiting for really bad writing or a ridiculous rule change that ruined what had come before. Like I mean really ridiculous. If you don’t believe me, here are some things that were passing thoughts: Did Dumbledore and Grindelwald somehow magically have a kid? Will someone be brought back from the dead (which would be a huge no-no and would really break canon)? Did Dumbledore make a Horcrux? Is there a fourth Deathly Hallow?
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Leta Lestrange was robbed. And so were viewers of Crimes of Grindelwald.

A big challenge, perhaps the biggest challenge, in reading J. K. Rowling’s new film Crimes of Grindelwald is getting at what she wrote versus what wound up in the film we see and in the ‘Original Screenplay’ that is published. That screenplay, once again, is anything but ‘original;’ it is — with notable differences here and there –just a printed version of the final director’s cut. We know we do not have the original screenplay Rowling wrote or even the approved shooting script that Yates used because of (1) the number of deleted scenes that actors mention in their junket interviews before and after the premiere, (2) the scenes we saw in the movie trailers that are not in the released version, and (3) notes in the final script that was published.

The first task of a serious reader of the script, consequently, is hunting down as many of the deleted scenes as have been revealed and to try to figure out where they fit in the movie as edited by Yates (to conform to blockbuster formula and theater time constraints). As we saw in the first Fantastic Beasts franchise film, a reader making this effort is rewarded with key insights about the structure and focus of what Rowling wrote (cf., The Six Scenes You Missed in Fantastic Beasts (and a Seventh) and Fantastic Beasts Revelations from the Far Side Sources). A tragedy with the second film is that we do not have a LEGO movie as we did the first time, a version that used the shooting script rather than the director’s cut so it could be made for the LEGO set’s release simultaneously with the movie. No such luck this time…

I have not been following the interviews with Crimes of Grindelwald actors as I did for the first film and I failed, too, to keep up with all the trailers and movie-still-photography releases from Warner Brothers in the year of pump-priming before we could watch the final version. Kelly Loomis, our HogPro All-Pro on the spot, however, has had her fingers on this film’s media pulse from the very beginning so I asked, begged really, if she could put together a guide to the deleted scenes we know are out there that puts them in sequence with respect to the ‘Original Screenplay’ published scene numbers. You’ll find this invaluable resource — and three notes I’ve made about what the deleted scenes tell us we miss in the Leta, Credence-Nagini, and Queenie stories — after the jump! Thank you, Kelly! [Read more…]

Happy Thanksgiving!

HogwartsProfessor is not a Harry Potter news aggregator website. We try to offer commentary on our favorite books and films that is original, ground-breaking, challenging, edifying, and fun rather than repeat what others have said or report fan news not related to textual artistry and meaning. Except, of course, for Dancing with the Stars videos and updates.

Having said that, I don’t live with my head in the sand. I receive daily bulletins from SnitchSeeker.com with fandom news that rarely has anything more substantive than Warner Brothers press releases and I check out MuggleNet.com once or twice a week for a look at how the monster-sized fan sites live (and think). I also get email owls from around the world day and night which alert me to news-I-can-use, most often subjects that HogPro readers want me to discuss.

Crimes of Grindelwald, as you would imagine has created a flood of this kind of owls, all with wonderfully distracting commentary from Potter-philes about the meaning of the latest Fantastic Beasts franchise film. I say “distracting” because I’m trying to chart and explore the artistry of the screenplay now myself, all while trying not to be too rude to my family home for the holidays and keep a full-time Muggle job which is retail. Did I mention PhD requirements and assignments?

To turn this distraction into a weblog post for Thanksgiving, silk from a sow’s ear you might say, I have chosen three Crimes of Grindelwald posts from sages online that I think are both worth your time as serious readers and indicative of the kind of work being done elsewhere in fandom. No, none of these sites do anything like what we offer at HogwartsProfessor.com; let me know, though, if you’ve found our doppelganger or sister site out there in nether-nether land and what you enjoyed or didn’t about these three samples.

Bagman touched his throat with his wand and whispered, ‘Sonorus’ before saying in words that echoed around the stadium, “Ladies and gentlemen, witches and wizards, I give you Sims…, Sipal…, aaaannd Kim!”

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Valerie Estelle Frankel has won a Dream Realm Award, an Indie Excellence Award, and a USA Book News National Best Book Award for her Henry Potty parodies. She’s the author of over 60 books on pop culture, including Doctor Who – The What, Where, and How; Sherlock: Every Canon Reference You May Have Missed in BBC’s Series 1-3; Harry Potter and Myth: The Legends behind Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, and all the Hero’s Journeys; and How Game of Thrones Will End. Many of her books focus on women’s roles in fiction, from her heroine’s journey guides From Girl to Goddess and Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey to books like Superheroines and the Epic Journey and The Many Faces of Katniss Everdeen. Once a lecturer at San Jose State University, she now teaches at Mission College and San Jose City College and speaks often at conferences. You can explore her research at www.vefrankel.com.

Symbolism in Crimes of Grindelwald — Valerie Estelle Frankel

Wow, what a film. While the plot certainly had its weak moments, from very few actual “crimes” of Grindelwald to a rather small-scale plot, the film seemed clearer than the last about what it was trying to be. Certainly, there was much fascinating backstory for fans, with a return to the twist endings that got us all so hooked. Beginning with the shocking revelation at the story’s end reveals much about where the characters are heading.

Finally, the chick that Credence has been painstakingly nurturing, believing it to be a baby raven and the Lestrange family crest, is revealed as a phoenix. Symbolically, a phoenix represents regeneration. “A universal symbol of resurrection and immortality, of death and rebirth by fire” (Cooper 129). It’s a Christ symbol, like many that surround Harry in book seven. Credence’s caring for the bird suggests on one level seeing himself as a baby raven, feeding this vulnerable side of the self, hoping to evolve himself into a full-grown raven, and finally discovering he’s the heir to a more magnificent heritage yet. He longs to become bright, brilliant, and immeasurably powerful. Mixed in with the tale of switched babies, there’s more than a visual touch of the ugly duckling. The parallel figure Leta Lestrange meanwhile sees herself as evil and sorrowfully tells Newt, “You’re too good, Newt. You never met a monster you couldn’t love.” Of course, Newt, who has spent his life caring for baby birds, is also caught in this imagery, devoting himself to saving both Credence and Leta. He bonds with the latter by sharing a baby bird with her and tries to keep all his symbolic charges alive, whatever the cost.

Crows and ravens are symbolically identical (and indeed are related biologically), prompting the lost Lestrange boy’s given name of Corvus, their shared biological family. The name is also the crow constellation, linking to the old families’ love of Latin star names like Scorpius and Sirius. To Babylonians, the Raven Constellation, sitting on a serpent’s tail, marked the gateway to the underworld, as Credence and Nagini may finally do – ushering Grindelwald to defeat with their choices.  Odin, god king of Norse myth, was known for the two ravens, Hugin and Mugin (Thought and Memory), which advised him, setting them in a dark counterpart to wise leader Dumbledore and his future beloved phoenix, Fawkes. While Leta is lost and Credence disproven as a Lestrange, the image of Grindelwald surrounded by dark birds would not be shocking. [Read more…]