If Harry Potter is about minorities then Fantastic Beasts expands on this idea which J.K Rowling has been trying to convey for years.
It is not a coincident Rowling wrote the Fantastic Beasts, if the world of magic is a metaphor of homosexuality (or any minority) then the beasts in the Fantastic Beasts are the outcasts within the outcasts. From the beginning of the film, they make it clear that the magical world/ culture is different between England and the States where they are not supposed to make any contact with no-maj’. The premise of the film is about Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who is on a journey to write a book about the Fantastic Beasts and try to get people to understand them instead of killing them, travels to New York and accidentally his pets run away. Scamander represents an utopia for the mythical creatures, a sanctuary where they shouldn’t be needing it in the first place. It is just like any fights on equal rights, we should even need to flight for them in the first place.
The concept of “Obscurus” is somehow literate and interesting. It refers to people, mainly kids, who are oppressed/ denied their ability in magic and for some reasons they become the prefect host for the “virus” obscurus where dark magic takes over and they could no longer control their power and could even be consumed by the virus. Doesn’t it ring a bell? Orlando shooting, the shooter was raised in a conservative background where he was told being gay was not normal to a point he even believed it and took action on it (of course it was just a hypothesis) but it fits perfectly here.
The idea of outcast is amplified with the characters, Scamander was expelled from school and have no friends, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) was reassigned to a different department in MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) was an outcast of the working class, and we have Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), Langdon Shaw (Ronan Raftery) just to name a few. The Fantastic Beasts is basically a propaganda for the minorities, stop fighting within ourselves, we should get together and fight for a better life.
The message behind was overshadowed for years but the Fantastic Beasts brought it back to the limelight. The special effects are as good as usual. It was really a delight watching it.
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