Astounding and fun, and only slightly flawed

I don't really understand why there are all of these detailed fields in this review system, so I'll just keep it simple. I think most of us who know the World of Harry Potter love it so much because J.K. Rowling has added so much texture and humanity to this place that is instantly familiar whilst wholly divergent. The characters are living, breathing people who have a past, feel the same emotions as we, and act based on their personal morality.

Fantastic Beasts appears to be a tale of Newt Scamander arriving in America around the turn of the century, but it's really more about peeling back more layers of The Wizarding World and discovering that there's a hell of a lot more to it than just Hogwarts. I will liken it, to a degree, to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in that there is so much detail the MCU has to pull from and tons of shared reality. Of course, the MCU was grown organically over decades and decades of comic books, whereas Rowling simply pulled this out of her proverbial Sorting Hat. Maybe it's more like J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth in it's impossibly wide scope and scale.

Regardless of where it comes from, however, it is an enormously entertaining film with wonderful characters. If there is one flaw, it is with the proposed villainy. What the bad people plan to do and who the bad people even are feels muddled and incomplete, despite looking amazing. Yes, the twist at the end is shocking, but I don't feel it added to the overall comprehension of the antagonist plotline.

Otherwise, it's a fantastic start to what I hope will be a very, very long spate of fine, fine films to come.