Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #395, What We Noticed In ‘Grindelwald’ The Second Time
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 395. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: It’s just the three of us this week, but we are going to hear many of you later in the episode. Not only do we have voicemails concerning The Crimes of Grindelwald, we’re also going to have some of our listeners call in. We haven’t done a live call-in in years, so I’m a little scared, but I think it’ll go well. We have a lot to get to today. We originally weren’t going to do an episode over Thanksgiving week, but as Micah rightly pointed out, we should do an episode right after The Crimes of Grindelwald comes out. [laughs]
Eric: That’s kind of big news.
Micah: We thought we’re so cool that we got the opportunity to see it early and do a review show, but got to give everybody the opportunity to go and see it on opening weekend, and then we can sit down, because it’s about the listeners, Andrew, isn’t it?
Andrew: That is so true.
Micah: This is all for them, and I’m going to stay positive the entire episode. I’m not going to say one negative thing about this movie.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: We did get some people saying to us, “Wow, you were hard on Crimes of Grindelwald,” and look, we’re just sharing our feelings. But I think we’ve all had more time to sit with it. Eric and I have seen the film twice now. Micah has read the script, as have I.
Micah: Why torture yourself twice? I mean… oh, I’m sorry.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: So much for Micah’s commitment there.
Andrew: Yeah, geez. I actually… so I have lots of good things to say about it, actually. I enjoyed seeing it a second time, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.
The Crimes of Grindelwald discussion
Andrew: We’re going to start with our box office predictions, because that’s a big factor. For WB, at least. [laughs] A few episodes ago, we all made predictions: How much would the movie make over opening weekend in the US? Micah, what did you say?
Micah: I said, “Despite Dumbledore, despite Nagini, there’s a lot of controversy around this film. We’ve talked about it on the show. I think certain people won’t go see it because of Johnny Depp. I also think the second film doesn’t fare as well as the first, so I’m going to go with $68 million.”
Andrew: Thank you to Eric, by the way, for transcribing what we said a few weeks ago. [laughs]
Eric: It was so weird. It was so weird hearing him recite what I transcribed him saying back in the… [laughs] It’s the same thing as…
Micah: I thought we were advanced enough on this show to play the audio clip, but apparently…
Eric: Well, I didn’t want to trouble Andrew with it. [laughs]
Andrew: That sounds like a lot of work. I said, “I agree. It’s not going to hit the same amount that the first film did. I’ll be a little more ambitious and say $72 million. Nagini…” This cracks me up. “Nagini alone now probably adds $3 million to opening weekend.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Why did I say that?
Eric: That was the first quote I pulled, and I did a “- Andrew Sims” behind it. I was like, “This is amazing.” So you said $72 million. I said, “I’d like to believe the film will score less, even though they’ve thrown all this stuff against it. More people are excited about this film than were about the last one, and there’s tons of general audience Johnny Depp fans who are going to come out. Maybe they’re quiet, but they’re going to come out. So I think the film will make $80 million in opening weekend.”
Andrew: So Micah actually won. The movie made…
Micah: Well, none of us did. We all went over. [laughs]
Andrew: Well, but you were closest.
Micah: Okay, I’ll take it.
Andrew: It made $62 million over opening weekend. By comparison, the first Fantastic Beasts movie made $75 over opening weekend. So that’s a $13 million difference. That actually really surprised me; I didn’t think it would make in the low 60s. There was a lot of pent-up demand for the first Fantastic Beasts movie after it been so long since Deathly Hallows – Part 2, so that was definitely a factor. And yeah, I don’t know. Actually, I’m really surprised by that number. Are you two?
Eric: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. It performed under the tracking poll that you mentioned four episodes ago; the tracking poll had it between $65 and $75 million, I think, and it’s even under that. So I actually can’t account for… it seems like just fewer people turned up, and even fewer general audience members that you’d expect to just come to the latest big blockbuster.
Andrew: Some listeners – or some fans, including some of our listeners – were avoiding seeing it over opening weekend because of Johnny Depp; they kind of wanted to send a message, so that may have been a factor. Not a $13 million factor, but maybe a million dollar factor.
Eric: Well, that’s your Nagini factor right there.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It cancels out the $3 million extra that they would have gotten for having Nagini.
Andrew: Oh no, what character is J.K. Rowling going to bring back for number three to try to fix this box office number?
Eric: Oh, don’t ask that question. I don’t want to know.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: But overseas, it did do very well; it made $191 million, so all told, it made well over $200 million over opening weekend. Its budget was $200 million, so you could argue it’s made $253 million. But I’ve also heard that… so there’s the production budget, which is $200 million. I’ve heard that studios spend that same amount just promoting the movie, so there’s maybe another $200 million in promotions across the globe.
Eric: Okay.
Andrew: So look, it’s going to make its money back. But it is interesting that it didn’t do as well as people were expecting over opening weekend in the US.
Micah: Do you think, though, that as these movie totals come out for Crimes of Grindelwald and moving forward, that it would ever put the series in jeopardy? Or you think five films, no matter what?
Andrew: That’s a good question. Well, they might reconsider how much they’re spending on the production budget and the promotional budget, but no, I don’t think they’re going to call up J.K. Rowling and be like, “Hey, we can’t afford to do a fifth film.”
Eric: Yeah. I’ve heard some friends who are really worried about that, or they really do believe that the series is in jeopardy now. And I think it’s possible, but I just hope that the message that they’re receiving is the one that we’re sending, which is fans, the hardcore fans that made the first film and literally every Harry Potter film a success, we want a different type of movie for the next game. Maybe they adjust what they’re going for, or make a film that just has a concrete audience. This one didn’t. If even the hardcore fans are confused and general audiences can’t keep up, who is this movie for? So hopefully they don’t feel too bad about it, because this film already surpassed its budget on the first three days alone; that’s fine. It’s doing fine. But I hope that they work to produce better results next time.
Micah: I am surprised – I mean, not really, because I was the closest to getting the opening weekend total correct…
Eric: It’s Price Is Right rules, Micah. [laughs]
Micah: Yeah, that’s what I was saying, so we’re all out of the running. But what surprises me about this is that the first film, you’re going back to the wizarding world, and so yes, that’s a huge draw; as you mentioned, Andrew, the gap prior to with Deathly Hallows – Part 2 being as long as it was. With this film, though, you’re actually going back to Hogwarts, and you get Dumbledore and more of his story, so I would think that in and of itself, for Potter fans, would be a huge draw, and I’m actually surprised that the number isn’t larger than what most of us thought it would be.
Andrew: That is a good point. Hogwarts wasn’t a huge part of the film, and I think a lot of people knew that, so that may be why it wasn’t as huge of a draw. By the way, the first movie worldwide ended up making $814 million; Crimes of Grindelwald is probably going to do about the same. So they’re not going to cancel these movies or… nothing’s really going to change it, but it is going to look a little awkward and embarrassing if with each film, the opening box office is in decline.
Micah: What is the trend there, though? Because if you look at sequels to films, don’t they generally not perform as well as the original?
Andrew: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it depends on the series, but probably with the fifth movie, there’s going to be a big tick up because, “Oh my God, it’s the grand finale; how’s this going to end?”
Eric: Yeah, climactic battle, Grindelwald and Dumbledore, that kind of thing. We mentioned the Marvel movies, which I think the sequels sometimes surpass the original. But a good example I saw on BoxOfficeMojo.com was The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, which was the third one in the Hobbit trilogy. I don’t know what the production budget or the promotion budget on that was, because it seemed like there were no billboards, no banners; the film was just allowed to fail. But the third and final film of that trilogy just did absolutely the worst by a big sum of money.
Andrew: Yeah, a lot of people say that just wasn’t a good story they were doing, and it shouldn’t have been three movies. That franchise was originally going to be two, then they turned it into three. But yeah, okay. And by the way, we did a Patreon poll a few weeks ago as well, and the majority of supporters believed that the movie would make $65-70 million, so everybody in general was wrong. We did mention reviews. There have been mixed reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; it’s averaging… God, is it down to 40%? Is that right? [laughs]
Eric: Oh, man!
Andrew: Let me look. Oh yeah, it’s sitting at 40% on the Tomato Meter. That’s pretty bad. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a lot more generous; it’s at 70%, and it received a B+ CinemaScore. This is the score… so people ask moviegoers after they see the movie, “Hey, what’d you think of the movie?” And overall, the movie scored a B+. The first movie, for reference, got an A. So yeah, the critics have been very mixed. If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, it paints a pretty grim picture. But look, some people did like it, even critics. CNN’s review was positive. USA Today’s review was positive. Other prominent outlets. I know people on Hypable were pretty mixed about it. One of our writers, Mekal, she wrote a great piece on how Dumbledore was the standout in this film, and I think a lot of people would agree with that. That was one of the bright points for everybody.
Micah: I thought the Zouwu was the standout, quite honestly.
Eric: Ooh.
Andrew: Well, why don’t you write an article, Micah, on how the Zouwu has stolen the franchise?
Micah: Will I get real estate on Hypable?
Andrew: Real Estate? You mean, like, money?
Micah: No, will you post the article if I write it?
Andrew: If it’s really good, yeah. [laughs]
Micah: Well, one thing I did want to say, though, because going back to your point about how some found the episode that we did last week to be a little bit on the negative side: We’re a Potter podcast, and we’re going to dive deep into the actual story, and I think if there are some issues that we’re taking with how the story is developing, I think that’s fair. I don’t think we were overly critical of the movie itself; I found it to be an entertaining movie from start to finish. I know I mentioned that. Unless you feel differently, and you both saw it a second time. It’s just the nature of what we do.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: The second time I saw it, I came out of the theater thinking it was a masterpiece. Seriously.
Andrew: Really?
Eric: Yeah, no, that was the word that my brain presented to me. Because the second time watching it… I don’t know what changed. I still had problems with whatever I had problems with the first time, but I just didn’t care. I was able to appreciate the… it felt like it flowed much better? I don’t understand, and it doesn’t mean that any of the thoughts that I presented on last week’s episode were wrong or invalid, or that I disagree with myself. I don’t. But something about watching it the second time changed it, and I could see… maybe it’s because I felt like part of the in club knowing the story, because I mean, it’s less of a shock. But also, once you know the story, you can see why only certain amount of screen time was given to certain threads.
Andrew: I think that’s right, and I experience this with every movie I see. You’re kind of overwhelmed the first time you see any movie, because you don’t know what to expect. I feel this way with Star Wars in particular, because there’s a lot happening, and then this. So the second time seeing Crimes of Grindelwald, I knew what was coming so I could kind of pace everything in my mind better. I’m like, “Okay, Dumbledore said that because this is happening later,” and “Oh, I get another look at the Mirror of Erised scene. Let me study this more closely.” And then the end part, I was talking in the last episode about how my mind just went numb.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: My mind still went a little numb, but not as numb, [laughs] because I was able to follow this info dump a little better. And I will also say that both times I saw the movie, I didn’t think there was a slow point at all. It moves very fast. It feels like I’m sitting there for about 90 minutes, when in reality, it’s two hours and 20 minutes, and that’s a good thing, because one of the worst things that can happen when you’re seeing a movie is you’re like, “Oh my God, is this over yet?” But I just did not feel that way with Crimes of Grindelwald, to J.K. Rowling’s credit.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I’ve yet to read the script book, but I did receive it, and I’m excited for all the insights. I know we’re going to talk a little bit about the insights that you and Micah both gleaned from reading it, because you do get some answers that aren’t made clear in the film, even just something like as the year in which a scene or flashback occurs.
Micah: Definitely. And Andrew, did you read the script book before going to see it the second time? Or had you not gotten it yet?
Andrew: I hadn’t gotten it yet. So I saw it Thursday night, and actually, so the script book came out Friday. So I got home Thursday night, and I was all excited after seeing it again. And at 11:00 p.m. central, I downloaded, I bought a digital copy of the screenplay, even though I was receiving a physical copy during the day on Friday, because I couldn’t wait! I wanted to dig back into it. I wanted to see what J.K. Rowling wrote in this.
Eric: That’s how you got that article up so fast.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I was wondering, because my copy didn’t even come till 1:00 p.m., and Hypable had an article about it three hours earlier. [laughs]
Andrew: Oh yeah, I was sitting there on my iPad making notes. I was like, “Brooklyn, sorry, we can’t go to bed yet. I’ve got to finish reading the script.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It’s also very easy to read a script; you can do it pretty quick. It took maybe two and a half hours to read it.
Eric: Oh, wow.
Micah: Yeah, it is a very, very quick read. And speaking of books, do you think that the fact that we don’t have a book to compare this to leads to our criticisms? Or maybe leads to a lack of criticism? Just because if you go back to the Potter series, anytime a movie came out, we knew the plot going in. We knew what to, for the most part, expect. Obviously, things were going to be cut along the way, but by and large, we knew the characters, we knew what was going to happen, and so there was an expectation coming in, whereas now we have no real basis of comparison.
Eric: I think the way I think of it is the first time that super, super hardcore fans, such as ourselves – and all our friends who went and saw it with us and all that – went and saw it, we were trying to figure out how it fit into the large picture, and everything that had to do with the film fitting into the large picture felt out of left field, jarring, not well set up. The second time we saw the film, I, for one, was able to see it as a standalone, or my brain focused on, “Okay, this film is its own entity, what’s going on, what works, what doesn’t,” and I found that largely that view of it worked. So that might be a difference between the Harry Potter films, which had the books first, where we were judging it basically as an adaptation, whereas this film… I still can’t see those films as standalone. I can’t. And with Fantastic Beasts, I’m forced to. So it is different. There is something different going on there.
Micah: Yeah, because for example, if you take the big reveal at the end of the movie with Aurelius Dumbledore, would it have been an easier pill to swallow if you had had a book The Crimes of Grindelwald, where throughout more of those little clues were being laid throughout the course of the story, and you had a 300-400 page book to be able to really fully comprehend? Which, in my mind, is what J.K. Rowling has, right? She probably has hundreds and hundreds of pages that never made it into this film. And so to have that available to you makes a huge difference, I think, versus just going and seeing it in theaters and knowing that there’s probably some information that was left on the cutting room floor that would have made this all a little bit more easier to buy.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, and this is why the fandom is so alive right now, because we had no clue what to expect, and suddenly it’s dropped on us very quickly. I love how alive the fandom is right now. For better or for worse, people are speculating like crazy over that Credence twist, and it reminds us of the Order of the Phoenix/Half-Blood Prince days when we didn’t know what’s ahead. So everybody should really appreciate the fact that this does feel like we’re in the mid 2000s again.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, definitely. But there are certain things that would never happen if this was a book series, though; I mean, certain bad things that the film fails to convey that would not happen if it were a book. I think part of the surprise of this film is just how many subplots are tried to be woven in in a short time, and based on even the stuff that was in the trailer that was cut from the film. Remember the ball scene? There was a costume ball, or everybody was formal and it looked like it was the Ministry?
Andrew: Yes, I saw that this morning. There was a close shot of Leta.
Eric: Where would that be in this film? It got filmed, but the film as we know it, I don’t see anywhere in the story where there could be a ball.
Andrew: I have no clue.
Eric: And that made it so far into the film, far enough to be shot, so there’s clearly so much else going on that was maybe even almost in this movie. And in a book, there would be a place for it, whereas with a movie, you’re constantly running up against runtime and all of the… what’s the word? Just the flow of each of the plots. So a book would’ve… even the question of – I saw on Facebook – what makes Leta Lestrange a taker? Because Queenie, in the first movie, says to Newt, “Oh, she’s a taker. You need a giver, honey.” It’s unclear, because that level of character development is not achieved before Leta dies in this film. So there’s all these open questions that I think would just be better addressed in a book; you’d be able to get a little bit more backstory, or at the very least character motivations, which do not come across as easily over film, unless the film uses exposition to convey it, and the film had plenty of exposition as it was.
Andrew: Yeah. One thing I want to do, speaking of that scene that was left on the cutting room floor of that ball that Leta is at or some fancy event, we need to talk about all the unanswered questions. I’m looking at the cover of the Crimes of Grindelwald screenplay right now, and there’s a lock with Nicholas Flamel’s initials on it. What is that? Is it that box that he opened? That doesn’t seem totally what it could be referencing. The Sorcerer’s Stone is front and center on the cover, but it was a blink and you’ll miss it moment in the movie, so was there more there that was originally in it? We see the blood pact item, by the way, on the cover, so we know what that is, at least.
Eric: Amazing.
Andrew: But then there’s other questions, and we’ll go into that in the future. So getting back to our doc here, Eric, you had mentioned something kind of interesting. Speaking of left on the cutting room floor, what beast did you remember that was cut?
Eric: So I think I predicted Movie 3 right now. I think that I stumbled upon something that might help us predict a future Fantastic Beasts film. I was partially wrong right from the get-go, because you know how in the movie, it’s not really stated what the boat is that Leta is on? And some people were really wondering if that was the Titanic, because it’s a British maritime waterliner going from Britain to America. People were questioning. According to the script book, the boat sank in 1901, so not 1912 like the Titanic. But the Titanic hit an iceberg, and so when I was thinking about it the second time I watched the film, I was like, “What if this really is the Titanic? It could be,” and then I remembered on the very first Fantastic Beasts Blu-ray there’s a special feature called “Meet the Beasts,” and it’s only four minutes long, because all the special features… there was maybe 30 minutes total on that movie. But they did all this concept art of beasts that either almost made the cut of the first film or in general. The VFX guy, Pablo Grillo, says, “We did a bunch of beasts that we kind of worked with to try and illustrate beasts that could have naturally evolved in the world.” Anyway, it’s a whole thing. But keeping it short, there’s an iceberg beast.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: And I remember seeing this. It goes by real quick because they’re doing storyboards, and there’s a picture and it just goes by quick. But I remember this because this was my favorite beast when I saw this behind-the-scenes, and it’s a beast where above the water is a fin, but it looks like an actual iceberg that you’d find just roaming the Atlantic, and underneath is a giant whale creature. And it’s just like J.K. Rowling, in my opinion, to make a naturally occurring thing turn out later to have been a magical thing. So if the boat Leta was on – even though it’s not the Titanic – was hit by an iceberg, and that’s why it sank, then I bet a beast was involved, and we’ve seen it because the creators of these films have already designed the concept art, and I think it’s just like J.K. Rowling to hide an Easter egg like that into a special feature of a previous film. What do you think?
Micah: That’s Corvus, right?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: That’s Corvus!
Andrew: The iceberg beast? Ice beast?
Eric: That beast probably saved Corvus, because if it eats him, Corvus can survive in the belly of the whale because there’s air in there.
Andrew: Oh my God, we figured it out.
Eric: Moby Dick! It’s Moby Corvus!
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: So I think it’s kind of a coincidence that they dreamed up an iceberg beast. It sounds like they dreamed it up without J.K. Rowling’s input.
Eric: Possibly.
Andrew: But if they decided to work this iceberg beast into the explanation, into the boat story, that could help tie this Fantastic Beasts title into what’s happening in this story. [laughs] Because sometimes we still go, “Well, why is this called Fantastic Beasts? This has very little to do with Newt’s book.” That could help.
Eric: Right.
Micah: It could. And if you read the foreword in the script book by David Yates, he says that he first got the Crimes of Grindelwald script back in 2016, which is when the first film came out. Now, when in 2016 he received the script, maybe that informed some of this artwork that was put into play.
Eric: Yeah, well, I think J.K. Rowling probably went into a meeting and was like, “Here’s the general rules for Fantastic Beasts in my magical world.” I mean, because David Yates is seen talking in that same featurette about how they wanted to make them realistic and believable from the start, so they probably created a catalog of potential beasts that are all ideas probably based directly on J.K. Rowling conversations. But I like the idea of the whale saving baby Corvus. But one thing people are pointing out is that if Credence really is a Dumbledore, Corvus still needs to be alive, because this film states that Leta is the last Lestrange, or the last of her line, and she dies, and eventually there does need to be a Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: So Corvus has to come back or Leta is not really dead, in order for there to be a Bellatrix Lestrange marrying Rodolphus and Rabastan. So I’m blown away.
Andrew: Yeah, there definitely needs to be connections. There are some family trees out there on the Harry Potter wiki. There’s some good Lestrange family trees, but none of them connect all the bloodlines into one, and you need that to connect all the Lestranges.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: It’s an excellent point, though, Eric, that you raise about the future Lestranges that we all know, because they wouldn’t be able to exist if Corvus was, in fact, the last male member of the Lestrange family and perished in this shipwreck. The other thing to bring up, too, is Yusuf, and I know we touched a little bit on this in our previous episode: Why would he still be beholden to an Unbreakable Vow if Corvus is, in fact, dead?
Andrew: Right.
Micah: So that would add to your argument.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Something’s going on here, guys. We’ve been hoodwinked, but in a good way, in a good J.K. Rowling way.
Micah: One other thing I just wanted to bring up – and this was going back to when we were talking a little bit earlier about Leta – it made me think of something when you mentioned the wedding scene that seemed to have been omitted. And you can both correct me because you’ve seen the movie twice now, but Newt mentions something to Tina when they’re talking in the Ministry that is in the script book that I don’t think I remember hearing in the actual film, but I could be wrong. He says to her, “It was a mistake in a stupid magazine. My brother’s marrying Leta, June the 6th. I’m supposed to be best man, which is sort of mildly hilarious.”
Eric: Yes, he does say it. I remember him saying June 6, and I only heard it the second time, and it’s the very standard, at this point, Eddie Redmayne mumble, so it happens too fast.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Did he say that he was going to be best man, though?
Eric: Yes.
Andrew: Yeah, I remember that too.
Micah: Okay, never mind then.
[Ad break]
Andrew: So a couple things I noticed on my second watch. First of all, and this is something else… this is another unanswered question. The Deathly Hallows. Those were a very big part of the first movie, and even in the promotional material for the second movie we’re seeing the Deathly Hallows a lot, and yet in the movie, there’s really no references to the Deathly Hallows. I thought there was zero, but then on the second watch, I noticed that when Leta is at Hogwarts, present day, she opens up a desk – I assume her old desk – and there is a Deathly Hallows symbol inside of it. I don’t know if that was supposed to mean something, or the production designers just wanted to get it in there just for kicks, but I did find it interesting that that was, as far as I know, the sole reference to the Deathly Hallows in this movie.
Eric: Where was it? I was looking for it. Somebody said that it was on the desk, and I was like, “Oh my God, oh my God,” but the second time I saw it, I couldn’t find it.
Andrew: She opens the desk, and it’s etched into the desk. There’s a lot of symbols, so it doesn’t necessarily stand out unless you happen to catch it.
Eric: What direction? Because I was predominantly focused on the lower right, and there’s the letters MN, like MuggleNet, so I was really happy…
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: That was what I saw. I didn’t see the… I was looking for the Deathly Hallows and I couldn’t find it.
Andrew: It’s there. I mean, I can’t remember where, but I guess centered.
Eric: Okay.
Micah: It’s funny you say that, though, because there is sort of that moment between Grindelwald and Leta in the mausoleum where there’s a familiarity. Because doesn’t he say, “Oh, this one I know”? I wonder is there a little bit of history going on there?
Eric: Yeah, and he has her number, right? He’s like, “The least loved by wizards and friends alike,” and all that other thing he says to her. And killing her when she attacks him – or presumably killing her, allegedly killing her – upsets him so much that he literally says, “I hate Paris.” [laughs] I think it’s after he had to kill her. He was like, “I hate Paris. This didn’t go the way I wanted it to.” So I think there was definitely a plot there.
Andrew: I thought that was a classic Johnny Depp moment. “I hate Paris.” I felt like I was watching Jack Sparrow in that moment.
Micah: I was just going to add to that that I know we’re staying positive this episode, but I didn’t really like that line at all.
Andrew: Yeah, it didn’t really fit with Grindelwald, right? Was it supposed to be funny? Or lighthearted? But there was no place for that because he just killed Leta.
Eric: That’s why it works for me. As far as its specific… if we tie him saying that to the fact that he killed Leta, we can infer that he didn’t really want to kill Leta, which infers that there’s more to Leta than we saw in the film.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s fair.
Eric: But it’s a very movie-ism of just… and he just killed a bunch of people; he shouldn’t be quipping or making jokes like that. They’re still fighting the demon upstairs.
Micah: But he’s that demented. Maybe that’s the reason why.
Eric: Yeah, maybe.
Andrew: I just read that scene as “Things aren’t working out as I intended. I hate Paris.”
Eric: Right.
Micah: Your next point though, Andrew, I really like it, and I want to expand upon it once you…
Andrew: Yeah, so actually, related to what we’re just talking about here – and this is a benefit of reading the movie or watching it again; you get to see the setups earlier in the movie that are foreshadowing something later on – Dumbledore at the beginning of the movie… or not the beginning of the movie. When Theseus and the Ministry come to Hogwarts, they start heading out, and then Dumbledore tries to warn Theseus about going to one of Grindelwald’s rallies. Dumbledore said if one happens, “Don’t try to break it up. Don’t let Travers send you in there. If you ever trust me…” and then he kind of trails off. Is this because Dumbledore knew he’d be manipulating people at the rally? And to the point where they would not be able to control themselves, kind of like what may have happened to Queenie or Leta?
Micah: I think he knows it’s a trap. And there’s another line similar to that later on in the film, when Nicolas Flamel is talking with Professor Eulalie, and Nicholas Flamel says, “Exactly what he said would happen,” and he’s referring to what he had just seen in the crystal ball. And my question is, who is “he”? Dumbledore? So has Dumbledore not necessarily seen the future, but what does he know? How is he so aware of what is going on that he not only tells Theseus, but clearly he’s had a conversation prior to that with Flamel?
Eric: I’ll sort of play devil’s advocate and say it’s sort of predictable that Grindelwald, after being imprisoned, will want to call a rally and will want to basically go back to what he was said to be doing in the first Fantastic Beasts film, where he’s persuasive. And his arguments “for the greater good,” that was well known at that point, so he must have held rallies before. And it just makes sense in the future that now that he’s out of prison and has had a couple months to recoup, that he would do a rally. So maybe it’s not special insight that Dumbledore has, but it feels like it, especially when he says to Theseus, “Oh, just on the off chance that Grindelwald calls a rally, don’t go,” so it does feel very magical and special.
Andrew: Well, first of all, we know that Dumbledore knows that Grindelwald is a manipulator, but this group that has formed the Rolodex of members are in this book with a phoenix on it. And by the way, the script book does confirm what you can catch a glimpse of in the movie; there’s a phoenix on the cover of this book, where Professor Eulalie is inside of. And another thing the screenplay revealed – and I’m kind of jumping ahead here – but the screenplay mentions that in this book, there’s a page for Dumbledore as well. In the movie, you do not see Dumbledore’s page. You might if you pause the movie, but obviously we can’t do that when we’re watching it in a theater. [laughs] When you do see Professor Eulalie, if you look closely, you can see her name, but it’s very small. So anyway, we know that Dumbledore is in this book. My guess is that it’s already that they have this well-established group that is trying to fight Grindelwald, and it may have been around for a while, because maybe Dumbledore knew that this was coming. When I say moment, I’m not referring only to what happens at the end of Crimes of Grindelwald, but also what is going to happen in a couple more movies.
Eric: Yeah, it is fun to entertain the idea that Dumbledore is already establishing a secret society or a network of people. I mean, Dumbledore has always been a networker. I think Book 7 said that he was… I mean, he met Nicholas Flamel when he was still a student at Hogwarts and Nicholas Flamel was 480 years old or whatever, and super, super important and prominent still. So Dumbledore made all these contacts long ago; it makes sense he’d do basically an Order of the Phoenix kind of thing for Grindelwald. But it’s interesting that he can’t really move against Grindelwald directly because of the blood pact, so I think this was probably the next best thing.
Micah: So the Order of the Phoenix is, in fact, even older than we presumed it to be.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Well, I don’t necessarily believe that this is the Order of the Phoenix.
Eric: But it’s on the book!
Andrew: A phoenix is on the book, yeah. I would be disappointed if J.K. Rowling is wedging in another reference. Do something with a phoenix, sure, but let’s not do something with the Order of the Phoenix title exactly. Let’s come up with something new. The Members of the Phoenix. The Gang of the Phoenix.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: The Posse of the Phoenix.
Micah: So when the next movie title is revealed to be Fantastic Beasts: The Order of the Phoenix, what are you going to do?
Andrew: [laughs] I’m going to cry.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Fantastic Beasts: The Book of the Phoenix. Something with “phoenix” would be… there’s going to be “phoenix” in the title at some point, right?
Eric: Yes. Guaranteed.
Andrew: Movie 3, Movie 4, Movie 5. I mean, this movie was all about birds.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Fantastic Birds: The Order of the Phoenix. I’ll tell you what, though; we were talking about this box office earlier. I meant to say this earlier: I don’t think Grindelwald’s name is going to be in a title again.
Eric: Oh, I hope not. Let’s have gotten that over with.
Andrew: Just because I think the title isn’t helping the box office, and Americans are very weary about Johnny Depp. A lot of Americans are. Overseas I think he’s more well received than he is in America. But look, they didn’t have a premiere in the US for this movie. Why? May have had to do with Johnny Depp.
Micah: That is surprising, though, because didn’t they say that you could win a trip to the New York premiere?
Andrew: Yes! Maybe they sent that winner to Paris after all.
Eric: There was an LA premiere.
Andrew: No.
Eric: I was pretty sure. Huh.
Micah: Well, it would have been New York, not Los Angeles. I mean, keeping it consistent with…
Eric: The sweepstakes.
Micah: Well, the sweepstakes and the locations of the films.
Eric: Well, I wonder what… the person who won the trip to the premiere, then, in the US, [laughs] I wonder what they won.
Andrew: Eh, they sent them to Paris.
Micah: I also saw that they recently gave away a walk-on role in the next movie?
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: Did you win?
Eric: You get to be Dumbledore’s other brother.
Andrew: [laughs] I want to be a person in that book.
Eric: Oh, yeah, that’s a place of prominence. That’s a slow burn, dude, because you’d have a really cool role that nobody ever finds out about. [laughs]
Andrew: Right. “Flamel, it’s as bad as we thought! Quick, we need to get the Order together again.” “The Order of the Phoenix?” “Yes, it’s what the movie is named after.” Okay, so couple other things I noticed on my second watch. We were debating in the first episode what was going on in the Mirror of Erised. Dumbledore looks into the mirror and sees younger him and Grindelwald making the blood pact, so I’m wondering if his greatest desire is to undo the blood pact.
Eric: Hmm.
Andrew: Does that make sense? Because – and we’ll get to this in a little bit – in the script, J.K. Rowling really highlights just how painful this whole Grindelwald situation is for Dumbledore.
Micah: Yeah. And one other thing I noted about that in the script book is that this is actually happening in the Room of Requirement, which I would not have known just watching the film.
Andrew: Oh, it says that? I missed that.
Eric: The script says it.
Micah: Yeah, the script book says that.
Andrew: Oh, wow.
Eric: That means… this is a game changer. This is bigger than Minerva McGonagall being in this movie for me, because it means that Dumbledore explicitly knew about the Room of Requirement for the entire Potter series, and he previously joked about it once to Harry. But it is unclear… especially in Order of the Phoenix when they’re doing Dumbledore’s Army, it’s unclear… it’s clear he supports the notion of that, but it’s way unclear if he knows anything about the Room of Requirement. I think it changes your read of the books in a big, big way if he knows about that room.
Andrew: Hmm. Yeah, I don’t know what to make of that.
Eric: What else does he use that room for, do you think?
Andrew: [laughs] Crying over Grindelwald.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: “I require Grindelwald. Where is he?” Okay, so that’s what I got for my second watch. I may actually go see it a third time over Thanksgiving, because I don’t really have anything else to do, and I got a movie theater close to me, so…
Eric: Bring the gross up from $62 million to $62,000,015.
Andrew: [laughs] I’m going to do it myself.
Micah: Take the family.
Andrew: I’m going to see the movie a million times just so I can win our little bet that we made.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Actually, it’s too late; opening weekend’s over. Micah, what else did you glean from the screenplay?
Micah: I mentioned the foreword by David Yates. It’s a nice read; he talks about just the world overall and how he was introduced to The Crimes of Grindelwald. Nothing worth calling out, but just thought that it was cool that it was there. One question I had reading that opening breakout scene from the prison is the chupacabra ends up biting Spielman, and I was just curious as to whether or not that was going to have any effect on him long term. We don’t really see him much until the end of the movie, but… well, we do see him in the Ministry when Newt is being interrogated, but I just wondered if that would have any impact. Probably not.
Andrew: Maybe Grindelwald can have some sort of additional control over him?
Micah: Maybe.
Eric: Maybe he’s slowly turning into a chupacabra.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I don’t know what the effects of being bitten by a chupacabra are.
Eric: You know what I will say that I loved, seeing the film a second time: Jacob has still a little scar from his Murtlap bite.
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: You can only really see it in the very first scene where he’s under the love potion, and right… it’s a close-up shot when the love potion’s gone, and you can see it’s three little… like somebody took an eyeliner brush and just did a little [makes dabbing noises] kind of thing on him, and it’s the Murtlap bite. It’s on his neck, right in the same place. And I loved that that was still… that’s a scar now, basically.
Andrew: We have a lot of people listening live right now on Patreon, and Nolan says, “Was it ever explained why the hell that chupacabra was even in the cell with Grindelwald?” That is surprising, because it’s like, why would they let him have a pet in there?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t read like a pet in the beginning-beginning, but that’s only because it’s actually not really Grindelwald. If that chupacabra was next to Grindelwald, it would not have been able to contain its shit. That thing was in love with him.
Andrew: Yeah, and you would have assumed that Grindelwald loved that pet too, because he has him in there, but then he throws him to his death.
Eric: It was designed to be a security measure. This is my guess: It was designed to be a security measure that unfortunately Grindelwald, with his silver tongue and charming personality, was able to fit right through. And also, the other thing is that Grindelwald was Graves for at least a year or something. He knows all the Ministry’s protocols; there’s no way he didn’t already prepare for the contingency of being interrogated by US wizards, so it’s no surprise to me, in general, that he figured out how to escape.
Andrew: It would have been interesting if the chupacabra helped him escape. I would have been more into that, because this is Fantastic Beasts.
Eric: It’s more of a Newt thing to do, though, is to use your beasts’ specific nature to your advantage.
Andrew: True.
Eric: If Grindelwald started doing that, I would call bullshit on it, I think.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I feel like there was an explanation for that somewhere. Might have to take a look after getting through this section. But one of the other things that drew my attention – and actually, there’s another related point to it a little bit further on here – but in the hideout, once Grindelwald makes it to Paris, he tells Nagel to go to the circus and give Credence a note to start him on his journey. And I completely missed this the first time I saw the film; I don’t know if the second time you both saw it, that you were able to identify this scene, but it just makes me believe more and more that Grindelwald is playing Credence.
Eric: Yeah, he deliberately says, “Set the plan in motion,” and you don’t see him give whatever to Credence, but the scene where you see Credence at the circus, I think, for the first time, he brings a note to Nagini and says, “It’s tonight. We gotta get out of here tonight.” So when I was watching the film a second time, I tried to read the note, and it is kind of obscured by his right thumb, but I think it says, “Meet blank under the bridge,” or it’s the address of his supposed mother, the elf woman. Looking at the film, the only thing you can guess that the point is, is they needed Credence to go to the… what is she called in the script? Is it the nursemaid or midwife, or the assistant or…?
Micah: She has a name. Trying to look it up.
Eric: Irma.
Micah: Irma, yes.
Eric: So Grindelwald wanted Credence to go to Irma. Irma would presumably not tell him everything in the first five seconds, the only seconds that they have together, and then… because Grimmson was supposed to kill her, but they needed Credence there so that he could say he missed. So it accomplishes a couple things, because Credence gets to meet the only person who really knows who he is, or might, and then she’s also simultaneously, in one fell swoop, silenced from telling him more. Now Credence believes that he is somebody important, and also Grindelwald gets to control the narrative now that she’s dead.
Micah: Right. Yeah, there’s too many things that you’re able to pick up on that could lend to the belief that Grindelwald is really manipulating Credence, especially once we get to the end. I mean, he’s essentially putting all of this into motion to lead up to Credence and others showing up at the mausoleum later on in the film, and it’s taking away anybody who could potentially disprove the fact that Credence is a Dumbledore, right? That woman, Irma, may hold much more information than what she was able to give Credence in that very, very short period of time. But speaking of Credence, later on in the script book, it’s mentioned that – and there’s this very brief scene of him and Nagini walking through a market, and it’s just prior to them being up on the roof and him feeding the bird – he actually takes bird seed from the market.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: And I didn’t notice this at all in the film. Wondering again if this is something either of you saw.
Andrew: I can’t remember. I remember him interacting with seed, maybe to feed the bird, but I don’t remember if we see him actually pulling bird seed. I will say the script book, once again, just like with the first one, it didn’t have any deleted scenes in it, so this has to be very close to the final cut of the film. They’re doing that on purpose, so I would guess that it is there, Micah; it might not just be very obvious.
Eric: Yeah, I don’t remember seeing it. I remember seeing that it was a marketplace, but the camera pretty quickly cuts to Grimmson following them. So yeah, I don’t know. That would have been… Ezra Miller must be the world’s most accomplished pickpocket there.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Right. And again, we’re presented with that scene where Credence is feeding this bird that looks very much like the baby raven that we see in the flashback scene, but turns out to be a phoenix. However, coincidentally, not long after that, we see Grindelwald just hanging out on the rooftop, so there’s a lot of suspicious activity going on here.
Andrew: That bird – and the script book heavily implies this – the bird that Credence has at the end of the movie, when he’s with Grindelwald, is the same bird – it’s referred to as a chick in the screenplay – is the same chick as the one that we were just talking about here. So that, to me, tells me Grindelwald is not lying, that Credence really is Aurelius Dumbledore.
Eric: The one thing I saw… because I can’t explain the phoenix either. If Credence isn’t a Dumbledore, I don’t know how a phoenix just appears to somebody. But the people who had pointed out that the phoenix is only ever around when Grindelwald is not too far away, fits in with Muggle Mail that we got from Nicole and Doug, and both of them said… we’ll read the full email later, but regarding the chick, I found this amazing. She said, “If it is a real phoenix, I don’t think it’s coming to Credence at all, but rather to Grindelwald because he has Dumbledore’s blood running through his veins.”
Andrew: Interesting.
Eric: So if the blood pact that they have mixes their blood, or means that Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s blood is now the same blood, or fused blood of some sort, hypothetically, Grindelwald would be able to get a phoenix if he figured out what the myth of needing to be “in need” meant, and that is the first and only thing that I think can explain why Grindelwald could continue with this sort of manipulation if Credence isn’t really a Dumbledore.
Andrew: I will add to that by pointing out that the chick does not turn into a phoenix until Grindelwald throws the bird up into the air, so Credence isn’t doing anything to make that turn into a phoenix.
Micah: And that line from Dumbledore in the movie, he says, “Well, I’ve always felt an affinity with the great magical birds. There’s a story in my family that a phoenix will come to any Dumbledore who is in desperate need. They say my great-great-grandfather had one, but that it took flight when he died, never to return.”
Eric: Such a beautiful line, because we know Fawkes sings and cries and then disappears forever once Dumbledore dies.
Andrew: And I actually did a little research into that. I can’t remember if I brought this up on the last episode, but J.K. Rowling once said that Fawkes has only ever been Dumbledore’s; he was never anywhere else. And I looked into that, because that does look like Fawkes at the end of the movie. Now, we have to be honest: J.K. Rowling is changing things, so it’s very possible that that actually was Fawkes after all.
Eric: That he was Credence’s first and is a hand-me-down phoenix.
Andrew: Something else that that Micah brought up was that all the Dumbledore kids start with the letter A. Their names start with the letter A. Ariana, Aberforth, Albus, Aurelius…
Eric: Abernathy.
Andrew: [laughs] Abernathy.
Micah: Uh, no.
Eric: That’s a surname. That’s a surname. It doesn’t work. Don’t worry. Don’t worry.
Micah: Oh, okay. Good, good.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But that’s interesting, and if Grindelwald is lying, I guess he had to take that into consideration as well. “See? You’re definitely a Dumbledore, kid, because your name starts with an A too.”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: There’s no proof whatsoever in this film that anything that Grindelwald says at the end is true.
Eric: Right. And did you notice that the crypt opens right as the end of Leta’s story is told? The full totality? She finishes the whole backstory just as the door opens. It’s so convenient for the plot, whether Grindelwald was listening, or that Yusuf… pretty much everybody gets…
Micah: “No more time for discussion.”
Eric: Yep.
Andrew: That’s how movies go. That’s how TV shows go. Get a phone call at just the right time. The person walks in through the door at just the right time.
Micah: True.
Eric: You’re right. No downtime at all.
Micah: One other thing that I wanted to bring up, another quote from Dumbledore that is worth investigating a little bit more. It’s when they’re talking about the Obscurus and they’re talking about Credence specifically, and why so many people are after him and his connection to the Lestranges. And Dumbledore says, “That’s what they’re whispering. Pure-blood or not, I know this: An Obscurus grows in the absence of love as a dark twin, an only friend. If Credence has a real brother or sister out there who can take its place, he might yet be saved.”
Andrew: So…
Micah: So does…? Yeah, go ahead.
Andrew: Well, okay, a couple questions here. First of all, does Dumbledore know about his brother?
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: That’s an important question we need answered.
Eric: It is. It is, yeah.
Andrew: [laughs] And on top of that, is…? So let’s say Dumbledore knows about this other brother. Why is Dumbledore lying to Newt? Is it because it’s just such shocking information that he’s not ready to reveal it? We know Dumbledore purposely withholds information until the right time.
Micah: To me, it’s impossible for Grindelwald to know about Credence, but not for Dumbledore to know about him.
Eric: Ah.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: That’s fair.
Andrew: So we’ll assume Dumbledore is lying again.
Eric: Ugh. Or really making it up; Grindelwald is really, really, really making it up. There’s not a lot Dumbledore doesn’t know, but it doesn’t make sense to me that Albus would tell Newt that this kid’s a Lestrange if he had some brother that went missing that he knew about. But it is a question that will need… that’s one of the ones that – let’s all be real – that will need to be answered whether Dumbledore knew, when all is revealed.
Micah: Well, he’s talking about a sibling taking the place of the Obscurus, and if that happens, it seems like the other sibling can live. And they use the word “twin” in there, too, I believe, so that gets into a lot more of the conversation I’m sure we’ll have later. Are Credence and Ariana twins? Is Ariana’s Obscurus inside of Credence? And how the hell did that happen if that’s the case?
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But also later on in this book – and again, I only got it on read-through – it’s when Leta and Dumbledore are speaking at Hogwarts, and Leta says back to Dumbledore when he’s talking to her about what she saw as her boggart. She says, “Not unless you had a brother who died too,” and he responds by saying, “In my case, it was my sister,” but curious that that line would be in there and directed directly at Dumbledore.
Andrew: That is one of those scenes I think we’re going to look back on in a movie or two and realize then how important that scene was. That was one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
Eric: Yeah, it’s good also for me because he’s talking to a student as their professor, right? It’s the teacher/student role that we’ve seen Dumbledore and Harry have. Very few people get the prominence that Harry has with Dumbledore, but Leta has that. Leta has that kind of a relationship. She gets him to be very candid and very personal and presumably truthful in a very short amount of time.
Micah: And then just a few other points on different things that I picked up on, because I know Andrew, in your article on Hypable, you mentioned that the Augury’s caw is mentioned as being mournful in the script book when Jacob first encounters it, and could that be a foretelling of the future for Jacob? Sure, but I took it a little bit more literally, because Jacob is just coming off of this horrific fight with Queenie, and I think that the Augury’s caw is more related to the fact that it knows that that relationship may now be damaged forever.
Andrew: Oh, interesting.
Micah: It can foresee what is going to happen between the two of them, and maybe that she goes over to the dark side with Grindelwald. But I’d like to think of it that way for now.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: Isn’t it a misdirect that…? Wasn’t it disproven that Auguries can tell anything about the future? That they’re just weather-sensing birds or something?
Andrew: Well, so we had learned through an Entertainment Weekly article, actually – I think this was the original source – but they got this from WB. They wrote a definition of the Augury, saying that its cry is said to foretell death. There may be another source for that, but that’s where…
Eric: Well, Cursed Child says that.
Andrew: Okay. Well, so it just seems like classic J.K. Rowling foreshadowing to me. First of all, in the movie, it’s not… the Augury doesn’t make much of a cry, but in the script, it is emphasized that he does.
Micah: Right. And the Augury doesn’t really look that ominous. It’s kind of like a goofy-looking Muppet.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: It is.
Micah: Whose name is Patrick, by the way.
Andrew: It is.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: That was one of the great things about reading the script book in Newt’s basement, is that you get all these names for all these different beasts that you really don’t get in the actual film.
Andrew: By the way, I like that theory about Ariana living inside of Credence. That is the one way I can accept this twist, because it’s J.K. Rowling just misleading us.
Eric: Oh, wait, so instead of the Obscurus part being Ariana’s Obscurus, it’s actually Ariana? Like, her and her Obscurus switched or something somehow?
Andrew: No, so it’s Ariana’s Obscurus that is now living inside of Credence. That’s the theory.
Eric: Oh, okay.
Andrew: That’s why Grindelwald is saying, “Your family misled you.” Grindelwald says, “You have suffered the most heinous of betrayals, most purposely bestowed upon you by your own blood. Your own flesh and blood. And just as he celebrated your torment, your brother seeks to destroy you.” That’s the only time he uses the word brother, and people are thinking maybe he’s actually speaking to Ariana’s Obscurus.
Eric: But does it make sense that Ariana’s Obscurus would be in Credence if Credence wasn’t in fact blood-related to her?
Andrew: Yeah, that is the question. How did…?
Micah: That’s the mystery, though.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Credence just happened to be nearby when all this was going on? That’s where a lot more detective work needs to happen.
Eric: It’s just weird, because I don’t think being a secret Dumbledore makes me more interested or less interested in Credence at all. I liked Credence in the first film, and I thought it was interesting, and it worked just as being that he’s this guy who is older than you should be to still be able to be both of these things and alive. Him being a secret Dumbledore doesn’t really affect, for me, whether or not I love him as a character. It’s almost excessive because I already liked him.
Micah: That’s a fair point.
[Ad break]
Micah: So just rounding out this list that I had here… and I’m assuming we’re going to jump into this prophecy or predictions of Tycho Dodonus a little bit later on…
Eric: That’s like a Star Wars name. “Tycho Dodonus.”
Micah: Yeah, I’m wondering can you rearrange the letters? Is this really somebody else that…?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh my God, is it an anagram? I’m going to… okay, I’m searching the anagram database.
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: “I… am… Credence… Barebone…”
[Eric laughs]
Micah: But we didn’t spend much time on this last episode because we didn’t know what the predictions were exactly, because none of us could remember it from the film, and we didn’t have the book yet. So it says,
“A son cruelly banished
Despair of the daughter
Return, great avenger
With wings from the water.”
Andrew: Well, there’s a bunch of different theories here. So the son cruelly banished would be Aurelius, right?
Micah: Or is it Corvus?
Andrew: It could be. Despair of the daughter could be Ariana. I don’t… there’s so many different options for these different people. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah. Well, in the crypt, Yustus… bleh. Yufus… wow. Mr. Kama says; he points to Leta and is like, “You’re the daughter! Wings from the water.” He points to Credence and is like, “You’re the…” So he thinks he’s figured it out, but you’re right. Ultimately, there’s multiple interpretations here.
Micah: It’s going to take some time to decipher all this, and I think we need another movie in order to be able to do that, honestly. We just don’t have all the pieces, and more to come. But we mentioned the deleted wedding scene. There’s also the deleted sewer wall scene with Yusuf standing in front of it. I think that would have been helpful to moviegoers to be able to see how he was connecting all the dots between all these different people.
Eric: What does the script book say as far as what’s on the wall?
Andrew: Doesn’t say anything.
Micah: It doesn’t go into detail.
Eric: That bothers me a lot because even Tina, while trapped there for a period of half a day, would have looked behind her. She’s an Auror, she’s a detective, and right behind her is the full… it is a family tree. You can make it out in the movie that there is the word “Lestrange” up there. You would think that she would have some profound new insight after looking at it.
Micah: There’s a couple of other scenes that we saw in trailers and other promotional videos that didn’t end up making the final film, so maybe they’ll be in deleted scenes. The last thing that I have here is that in the script book, it says that “The fire engulfs Leta.” It never says that she dies.
Andrew: So Nolan – again, who’s listening live – he brought up a theory in here about what if at the beginning of Fantastic Beasts 3 Leta is actually at Nurmengard, along with the Aurors?
Eric: Imprisoned, do you think?
Andrew: Maybe. But look, these fake-outs are a big no-no in movies. We already potentially have a big one here with Aurelius; he might not actually be a Dumbledore. We’re led to believe… for the next two years we are to be thinking that he might be a Dumbledore. If he’s not, what was the point of that cliffhanger? And let’s say Leta is actually alive. Oh, surprise, she hasn’t been dead all this time. They cannot be doing all these fake-outs. Maybe one, but I think it pisses off moviegoers.
Eric: Yeah, you shouldn’t play with the emotions of people as cavalierly as it would mean that these guys are doing, these creators. If Leta is still alive, if Credence isn’t a Dumbledore after all, and it was just misdirection, these kinds of things… you’re right, you’re exactly… I completely agree.
Andrew: One or two. And the reason I’m mad about this is because it reminds me of what happened with The Walking Dead the TV show a few years ago. They fake killed Glenn, and then they brought him back. The viewers were pissed about it, and the viewership was dropping every week after that. You just… there’s some things you can’t do. You cannot fake out the people who are consuming your story, because it just… it makes your storytelling rocky if people can just come back.
Eric: I agree. I mean, I think it’s perfectly easy for somebody of JKR’s considerable skill and talent to figure out another way to be clever – because there are so many examples of it in the Harry Potter books – without actively showing people die who show up later. She used it a good amount in the Harry Potter books, and not overused, so yeah.
Micah: And especially because we’ve had so many characters in this series already who are not who they seem to be with all the Polyjuice and other impersonations that have been going on. It’s so hard sometimes to be able to follow all the different angles of who is who. And I think to your point, Andrew, it is a no-no, because we have to think about so many different characters at this point that could potentially be alive. It’s not just Leta; what about Corvus? There’s no reason at this point to think that he is actually dead. There’s too many other plot lines to follow that would indicate that he is still alive. And it goes to what was mentioned earlier, Eric, the fact that you have Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, that are actual people that exist in the future that we know about from the Potter series, so there’s no possible way that this character can be dead.
Eric: Well, okay, devil’s advocate again, real quick: the fire thing with it not specifically saying that she’s dead, because it says she’s consumed by fire, do you think that’s because the script already established that when you hit the fire, you die? So J.K. Rowling doesn’t need to specifically write “the fire engulfs Leta as she dies”?
Andrew: Fair question, but I don’t think the script really clarifies what’s going on with the fire. It said… well, no, I have to back up further.
Eric: Because if one Auror steps into the flame and the script writes “The Auror dies,” then it’s established enough for the purposes of having a script that when you hit the fire, you die. So in the future, she only needs to say, “The fire hits this person, the fire hits this person.” It’s just established. Basically, screenplays are not meant to be viewed by the public in general; it just has to show the movie what to do. So it doesn’t… yeah.
Micah: Well, one example here is Krall, right? Who is earlier in the movie questioned by Grindelwald in terms of whether or not he’s actually on his side, and he walks into the flames and it said, “is consumed.”
Andrew: Ah.
Micah: So maybe we’re just getting creative here with the words that we’re using, and maybe she is in fact gone and not coming back. But that’s just one other example.
Andrew: Because the lesson with him was that if you’re not loyal, you’re gone. That’s what Krall taught us in this movie; that’s why we don’t really need to know much more about the blue flame, because we saw him wavering earlier in the film.
Eric: Right. But was he not an Auror brought there by Theseus? Is he playing double agent? Is that why he died? Because I thought he had a top hat on or something in the final scene. I thought maybe it was…
Andrew: [laughs] Does a top hat designate you as an Auror?
Eric: Yeah, only Aurors wear top hats, you guys. Yes, absolutely.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I don’t think that he was a double agent. I could be wrong.
Andrew: I don’t think so either.
Eric: Okay.
Micah: I think he just tried to cross and he wasn’t fully loyal. He didn’t believe in the cause.
Eric: You guys, my anagram results came back from Inge’s Anagram Generator. I typed in “The predictions of Tycho Dodonus,” and the anagram that it came out was “Orthodontist confided chop suey.”
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Oh my God, a Hermione Granger connection!
Eric: [laughs] And if you just type in “Prediction Tycho Dodonus,” it comes up with “Conduced thyroid options” – again, something about the throat, something about the mouth – “Coincided hound post troy,” and “Conduced torpidity shoon.”
Andrew: Troy? High School Musical connections now. Wow, I can’t handle this.
Eric: It was Greek too. It’s Helen of Troy. Very, very important.
Andrew: Lucas disagrees with you, Micah. He says, “Corvus is definitely dead because of that family tree. The script makes it even more clear where it seems to imply that Leta’s flower kills Corvus.”
Eric: Oh, I forgot about that. But was that her dad? Because she’s talking about her dad when that happens.
Andrew: Right, there’s like, 80 Corvuses in the family tree.
Eric: [laughs] It’s a popular name.
Micah: Well, I’m still holding on to the fact that he’s alive because you have other Lestranges that exist in the future. If he’s the last of the family line, then they don’t exist in the future. And also, we talked about this earlier, but the Unbreakable Vow. Why is Yusuf still beholden to an Unbreakable Vow if this kid died 20 years ago?
Andrew: Maybe there’s another Lestrange that we’re going to find out about.
Micah: The other theory that I heard, though, is that – let’s presume Leta is still alive – that because of the relationship that existed between her and her father, where she was the child that he didn’t really want, a good way for her to be able to get back at him is to continue on the Lestrange family, keeping the name but on the female side, and it’s almost like for Corvus Senior a punch in the face or a punch in the gut for his daughter to continue on the family name. So I don’t know; there’s a lot of questions to answer. I don’t disagree with Lucas. It’s a fair point, but…
Eric: Well, Lucas saw the movie three times now, so we should probably just listen to him on everything.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, well, what does he make of it? How are there Lestranges in the future then?
Andrew: Yeah, Lucas.
Eric: What’s your answer, Lucas? We said it was a live call-in show, but really it’s a call-out show.
Andrew: [laughs] We’re just going to talk crap on our listeners. Come on, Mr. Expert.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I’m going to go see it after this. We’re talking about it so much, I feel like I need to see this movie again.
Micah: And by the way, that book that had that tree was also in the hands of Abernathy and Rosier, so who knows what they did to it?
Eric: They could’ve messed with it, yeah.
Andrew: Ah, some dark magic on it. So okay, couple things I noticed in the script book. Some of them were the same things Micah noticed, so might just be down to a couple of things here. Dumbledore’s feelings for Grindelwald. I think I said this earlier in the episode; they are really highlighted by J.K. Rowling. For example, when Dumbledore is confronted by Travers about Grindelwald at Hogwarts, Rowling writes, “Dumbledore is looking at the pictures. These memories are agony. He is full of remorse, but almost worse: nostalgia for the only time in his life he felt fully understood.” Aww.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s freaking deep, isn’t it?
Eric: It’s deep for a screenplay, first of all. And yeah, the idea that Dumbledore feels deep down misunderstood, or just not fully understood, is huge.
Andrew: Yeah, and that Grindelwald is the only character that fully understood him. Oh my gosh, that’s tragic.
Eric: What does that mean for…? I mean, if this horrible monster understands you, you must think yourself somewhat of a horrible monster.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, he apparently has treated Aurelius like shit, according to Grindelwald.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Am I pronouncing his name right? How do you guys pronounce it?
Eric: Aurelius? Yeah.
Andrew: Aurelius? I always get tongue-tied. This is like my new “Deathly Hallows,” where I was pronouncing… where I was saying “Hollows” for the first three years.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: People would write in and get so mad. [laughs]
Micah: You know what somebody should do, though? Just thinking about this, can we pull up the Black family tree and look at the Lestrange side of it?
Eric: Let’s look.
Andrew: So if you go on the Wikia, too, they’ve got text versions of the family trees, which I find very helpful instead of looking at the MinaLima artwork. I also wanted to mention that at the end, when Leta is about to die, it’s not clear in the movie if she’s saying to Newt or Theseus, “I love you,” because there’s some camera play going on where we see Theseus, then it cuts to Leta, she says, “I love you,” and we go back and it looks like she might actually be looking at Newt. Well, that was actually on purpose, that confusion, because in the script book, it says, “She looks toward both Theseus and Newt, who are watching her, stunned. Leta: I love you.” So J.K. Rowling purposely wrote that to mean she’s saying “I love you” to both of them. That’s pretty interesting.
Eric: Yeah, I love Yates’s interpre… I love how it appears in the film because you first see Newt.
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: The camera is on Newt, and she says, “I love you,” and then it pans back and it’s a further away shot, so you can see they’re both standing there. That’s brilliant, because I think the audience has a little bit more of an investment in Newt.
Andrew: [laughs] One of our listeners, Jenny, appears to be in denial. She just wrote in all caps, “IT WAS FOR SURE TO NEWT!!1”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I’m sorry, but J.K. Rowling has spoken, and it was to both of them.
Eric: Maybe in a later film she’ll change it. She’ll change what she wrote, because she’s doing that a lot now.
Andrew: I also think “love” might mean different things. She doesn’t have much time here, so she can’t say, “I love you, Newt. I love you, Theseus.” She can only say it once. It means something to Theseus, and it means something else to Newt. Like, “I love you in a friendly way, Newt. I love you in a romantic way, Theseus.”
Eric: Or the opposite; she could be telling her fiancé, “I love you in a friendly way,” and telling Newt, “I love you in a romantic way.” [laughs] You know what just occurred to me…
Andrew: And the sad thing is we don’t truly… we’ll never know what she actually meant.
Eric: She is such a smart wizard, a smart witch; she’s so intelligent. Just hypothetically, why would she feel the need to cast a spell to Grindelwald that would provoke him into killing her? It doesn’t actually… the more you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense that… because she’s actively giving up. I mean, that is clearly suicide. When I was watching the film a second time, I saw that it’s difficult to escape the flames; the few Aurors that try and Apparate get killed while they’re in the stupid smoke form of Apparition that shouldn’t freaking exist. And Grindelwald is pretty much controlling who can leave, but Leta showed her cards in the most obvious sort of way, so why would she do that? And does she have something to gain from losing her physical form? Is this an Obi-Wan Kenobi sort of thing? Like, “Strike me down, and I’ll become more powerful than you can ever imagine”?
Andrew: So her…
Micah: I have a question.
Andrew: Go ahead.
Micah: In the movie, does Leta’s spell destroy the skull hookah?
Eric: I think it just knocks it out of the way.
Andrew: Yeah, I can’t remember. There’s a lot happening in that scene.
Micah: Because again, I only saw it once, but I’m reading from the script book here. It says, “She points her wand at the skull in Rosier’s hands, which explodes. Rosier is knocked backward, and Grindelwald is momentarily obscured in a world of chaos.”
Eric: Hmm.
Andrew: Okay.
Eric: In the film it just looked like it bounced a couple times and it stopped doing what it was doing, which was, I guess, emitting the smoke?
Andrew: Well, it doesn’t really matter what happens in the movie, so long as J.K. Rowling wrote it in the screenplay.
Eric: I guess that’s true.
Andrew: Screenplay should take priority if we’re talking about what happened.
Micah: I just thought she tried to attack him. I didn’t think she was trying to attack the hookah.
Eric: And it didn’t work, nevertheless, because the dragon that escapes is still there after she dies.
Andrew: Stephanie says, “Maybe she thought that her sacrifice would give the Scamander brothers enough time to escape because Grindelwald would be focused on her?”
Eric: Maybe, but he made really short work of her.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, it was quick.
Eric: So that was a really dumb kind of a thing. [laughs] I like the idea that she knew what she was doing and is either still alive somehow, or maybe he only made it look like he killed her by secretly transporting her and it looked like she was consumed. Because actually, back in the beginning of Prisoner of Azkaban when Harry is doing his homework about witch burnings, there were some flames you could cast a spell that it felt like it was tickling you instead of actually burning you alive, and wizards have done that. So I mean, that’d be some old school magic for it to turn out that Grindelwald was actually just imprisoning them in Nurmengard far away somehow.
Andrew: One more thing I want to bring up from my list: Dumbledore regrets making the blood pact. In the discussion between Newt and Dumbledore at the end of the movie, Rowling writes that Dumbledore regretted it. So there’s that line from Newt: “It’s a blood pact, isn’t it? You swore not to fight each other.” Then J.K. Rowling writes, “Bitterly, ashamed, Dumbledore nods.”
Eric: “Bitterly ashamed.”
Andrew: Yes, yes.
Eric: I love that. Good point out there.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. That’ll probably come into play later on, when Dumbledore finally starts talking about all this.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So that’s what I got. One other thing I wanted to bring… oh, well, a couple other odds and ends. So this is kind of a reference to the Harry Potter books, maybe. So in the movie, we see that the Ministry uses owls for communication. Ryan and a couple of others brought up that line from Arthur Weasley in Order of the Phoenix: “We used to use owls, but the mess was unbelievable… droppings all over the desks.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: So Rowling may have been referencing that line from Order of the Phoenix. If so, nice one.
Eric: I love that so much.
Andrew: Speaking of classic J.K. Rowling, she’s actually been hinting at Aurelius Dumbledore, or the Aurelius twist, for two years now. So thank you to Victor for pointing this out: On JKRowling.com, she has her answers page – it’s like her modern FAQ page – and there’s a banner at the top with a photo of her desk, and one of the things on her desk is a copy of the writings of Marcus Aurelius. So she’s been studying this for a while now. How do I know it’s been a while? Because I went digging in the source code…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: … and the image was uploaded in October 2016, and that’s before the first Fantastic Beasts movie came out. So that’s classic Jo hinting at something to come way in advance.
Eric: And Marcus Aurelius, by the way, we got an email about him, I mentioned from Nicole and Greg, Classics majors. Marcus Aurelius was a good dude, and he’s very famous. He wrote a book that is sort of just musings, and he was a big practicer of stoicism. If you want to Google stoicism to find out more about it, it’s some good stuff.
Andrew: Yeah, we’ll read that email in a little bit.
Dancing With the Stars update
Andrew: We would be remiss if we did not include a Dancing With the Stars update.
Eric: It’s the last one. Well, second to last one, because this week is the finals. Evanna Lynch and Keo Motsepe have made it to the Dancing With the Stars finals. I’ve got to tell you guys, I’m home in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. My mom gets ABC. I’m going to watch this live.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I’m literally sitting… I haven’t been able to; I don’t have cable at home, so I’ve been watching the recaps and stuff. Micah, are you tuning in tonight?
Micah: Sure, I’ll take a look.
Eric: There you go! So Micah and I are going to do a watch party. I’m going to live tweet it. It’s going to be great.
Andrew: I’ll be at Crimes of Grindelwald for the third time.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Hey, priorities. I’m sure Evy would understand. She made it as far as one person can without winning, and maybe she’ll win. It’s up in the air, so super excited. She’s actually dancing to a song I know called “It’s Oh So Quiet,” and specifically the Björk version of that song, and she’s doing a freestyle dance. So I think we’re all just… when we started this Dancing With the Stars update, it was maybe partially tongue-in-cheek, but also to support a friend of the podcast. She’s known us and listened to us forever. She bought the original MuggleCast shadows shirt from us, the iPod shadow shirt. Evy has been a long time fan of this. It’s been amazing to watch her in the movies; it’s been amazing to watch her… we had her on for our Newt Scamander discussion after the first movie came out, and just seeing her really learn and practice and work real hard at this has been a great joy. Nothing but the biggest congratulations to Evanna for making it to Dancing With the Stars finals.
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.
Micah: Yeah, it’s been very impressive. I know I’ve said this before, but it really is. When you know somebody and to see them take on something new like that and just excel at it and grow and develop, it’s been very, very impressive.
Voicemails and Muggle Mail
Andrew: So this is a special episode, actually. Not only is it during Thanksgiving week – and Happy Thanksgiving to everybody who celebrates – but this is purposely a two-hour live show. It is a direct result of our 777 challenge earlier this year over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We said if we hit 777 patrons, we would do a couple of things, one of which was this two-hour live show. So thank you to everybody who has been supporting us over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast; there’s good things to come there in the weeks and months ahead. We use your money not only to support the three of us, but to put together cool things like the mugs, and we got new album art, which we’ll talk a little more about at the end of today’s show. But one of the features of this live show is we’re going to be taking some calls from our listeners, but before we do that, we have some voicemails to listen to. This first one is just very quick. It’s from somebody who called inside the theater. It was the only one I found so far, so I just had to feature it.
[Eric laughs]
[Voicemail plays]
“MuggleCast, oh my God. The new Fantastic Beasts is so good. I just watched it. I don’t know if you can hear, but the credits are still rolling. Oh. My. God. Whoa!”
[Voicemail ends]
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: I’m just imagining somebody sitting on their phone in the movie theater, and everybody’s looking at her like, “Whoa, what’s she doing?”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Freaking out to a podcast.
Eric: I love it.
Andrew: All right, let’s go overseas for our next voicemail.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. It’s Ryan here, coming from sunny England. I’ve just got out of seeing the new film, and yeah, my general thought is it wasn’t an amazing film. It was quite disjointed at times. It felt like it was jumping left, right, and center. Couple of things I did like: As a Harry Potter fan, I liked all the nods to the Ministry of Magic. Using owls rather than paper airplanes; as Arthur Weasley said in Order of the Phoenix, the owls became too messy. I liked seeing the Philosopher’s Stone in Nicholas Flamel’s safe. My general thing at the end: I think – I hope – that Grindelwald is lying to Credence and he’s not a Dumbledore, because I’m scared to think what that means for canon. And also, I’m confused about… they kept talking about the Lestrange and how they were the last of their line, or how the boy was going to be the last of his line. And how did Rodolphus, or Rodolfo – whatever his name is – Lestrange come to be then? Anyway, I haven’t listened to your smaller review yet. I’ll have a listen to that later. Keep on with good work. Love the show, bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: All right.
Micah: Yeah, Lucas, why don’t you answer Ryan’s question?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Again, this is our two-hour call-out show. We’re calling out Lucas Laske.
Micah: I can’t wait for Lucas to call in later.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: “You guys are mean.” All right, here’s our next voicemail:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. This is Laura from Pennsylvania. I just saw The Crimes of Grindelwald yesterday, and I had to crack up when Credence was on the rooftop saying, ‘I want to know who I am,’ because it’s been such a running joke on the show for the past couple weeks, and I think you guys have hit the mimic of it so well. I was the only person in the theater chuckling, and my boyfriend looked at me like I was crazy, and I had to explain after the movie why I was chuckling so much at that line. But I just really liked the movie in general, and I can’t wait for the rest of the series. Thanks, bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Here’s one about Queenie’s allegiance:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. It’s Karishma here. I just saw the movie for the first time yesterday, and I could literally talk about it forever, but I guess I just wanted to touch upon Queenie’s allegiance to Grindelwald a little bit, and how it really just makes a lot of sense when you look at how she’s treated Jacob, particularly in this film. So when you look at Queenie enchanting Jacob, it really reminds me of the theme of control, coercion, and rape with Merope and Tom Riddle, Sr. She loves Jacob, but her enchanting him shows that she thinks of him as lesser than her, so this really shows that she actually aligns with Grindelwald’s ideology. And to add to that, she already seems really easily manipulated and naive and childlike in a way, and I think it adds a good bit of complexity to that factor. But I also think it’s important to remember how the Nazi ideology is a really strong parallel to this movie, and Queenie’s choice should be criticized as well. But I really hope that we see her come back to the good side, but I don’t know if that will happen in Movie 3, or 5, or if it will at all. But yeah, that’s just my thoughts, and you guys are doing great. Thanks so much, bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I don’t think it’ll happen in 3, but I think she’s going to come back because it’ll be a huge payoff.
Eric: Yeah, at some point I want to ask you guys about time jumps, because we have 16 years still to cover in only three movies, whereas this movie picked up right after Movie 1. So there’s got to be some kind of… at some point… I mean, I want the next film to take place the next day, but there’s going to be either a five or ten year… five or greater year gap between each of the following films, so I wonder how that will affect Queenie’s relationship with the quartet, because to us, it’s so freshly severed, but in five years’ time, they may all just kind of deal with the fact that she does, as this listener points out, believe in the greater good, just like Grindelwald does.
Micah: Yeah, and I was surprised that there wasn’t more of a fallout that was created between the two sisters. I thought that we were going to get a little bit more of that, and there really wasn’t a whole lot done on the part of Tina to try and save Queenie. She yells out to her when she’s walking through the flames, but that’s about the extent of it, and I was just surprised by that.
Andrew: Yeah. Actually, somebody else called in with a similar opinion, and we’ll get to that in a moment. Here’s another voicemail:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, MuggleCast. Ted from Canada. Just got out of seeing Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, and guys, stuff went down!”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
“You go in and you think, ‘Okay, trailers, I can kind of piece together what’s going on,’ and then all of a sudden, new stuff starts going up, and you’re just like, ‘Whoa, bro.’ Okay, so my whole feeling about the movie is very Empire Strikes Back. A lot of battle, not really a heck of a lot happened magical-wise, but at the same time, a lot of plot, that now you’re just like, ‘Okay, where are they going to go?’ And I’m excited to see where it is. Love the show. Talk to you guys soon, bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I saw an interesting critique of the film that this film is all about the undercurrents, but there’s no overcurrents, so to speak.
Eric: Huh.
Andrew: There’s not one clear premise; it’s just everything happening beneath the surface. And that’s all going to come up at some point, but it wasn’t in this movie.
Eric: Yeah, I heard a comment that this film doesn’t stand alone, and I don’t know that I necessarily disagree, at least as far as compared to the first film. The first film, it did a little bit more stand alone.
Micah: Does Ted know the Dobby guy?
Andrew: [laughs] “Whoa, bro.”
Eric: “Whoa, man! It went downnn.”
Andrew: Here’s that voicemail with the Tina comment:
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi guys, love the show. I just have a couple thoughts about the new movie. Did you guys also think it was weird that they didn’t show Tina’s reaction to Queenie siding with Grindelwald? I think we heard her call out Queenie’s name, but that was it. With all the random and unnecessary stuff they included in this film, I think it was an oversight to not at least include a shot of her reaction when Queenie went through the fire. I also found Leta and Nagini very compelling characters, which I wasn’t expecting, which then makes it all the more sad that they were really underutilized in this film. I mean, credit where credit is due; a lot of that might have just been Zoë Kravitz and Claudia Kim being excellent actresses. I also think it was strange they included a plot point such as Grimmson, the guy hunting Credence, and even Yusuf’s trap and eye infection, gave those so much screen time when they could have spent more time with building up these other characters or spending time with more established ones. And I think Yusuf and Grimmson’s plot could have been merged together, or he could have remained a stalking figure in the background until the reveal in the graveyard. I’m sure a lot of other stuff was left in so they could lead up to the other films, but there must have been a better way to do it. But maybe some people are right: This was just a two-hour long prologue for the next film. Thanks, guys.”
[Voicemail ends]
Eric: The script book sheds a little bit more light into Tina’s character at that moment. So Queenie passes through the flames, and Tina shouts her name, “Queenie,” Queenie Disapparates, and then it says, “Tina retaliates, throwing a curse at Grindelwald, but the circle of fire…” So she cares that her sister is just gone, but there’s just no time devoted to it in the movie.
Andrew: This is why we need the screenplay, why we love having these screenplays published. We would be so lost without them. [laughs]
Eric: I’d like a book that’s inside Tina’s head when this happens, but I’ll settle for the screenplay.
Andrew: Yeah. One more voicemail, short and sweet:
[Voicemail plays]
“Oh my God. [censored] you, Abernathy.”
[Voicemail ends]
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: May have been the same person who yelled, “Nicholas Flamel, bitches!”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: I don’t know for sure, though.
Micah: Wow.
Andrew: We’ll censor that. That was a very inappropriate word for J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world.
Micah: Yeah, I can’t believe she said “Abernathy.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: All right, so we did get this email, Eric, that we…
Micah: Can I…? One other thing I wanted to bring up.
Andrew: Yeah?
Micah: Just coming off of all these voicemails, I know there’s been talking about it being the prologue to the next film, about canon. But what surprised me… and I, again, missed this on the first watch of the movie. Somebody brought this up; I’ve seen it on social media. Why was it that the American Ministry of Magic was not referred to as MACUSA in the opening scene?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Yep, J.K. Rowling is not doubling down on her unique tendencies. She’s almost shying away from keeping what she’s already established, which is…
Micah: But we were browbeaten with “MACUSA” the entire first film.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: We were. Yes, “browbeat” is the exact word for it. Everybody says it.
Micah: And it opens up and it says, “American Ministry of Magic.”
Andrew: [laughs] You guys… well, first of all, I think it’s to help clarify for the viewers that, okay, there’s the American Ministry of Magic, there’s the British Ministry of Magic… I think it’s trying to… it’s to ease people’s minds in that way, to make it easier to understand. But I saw an amazing tweet about this. This is from Angie Han; she writes for Mashable. She says, “Crimes of Grindelwald‘s crimes against canon are obvious from the very first frame, when a building is captioned ‘American Ministry of Magic’ like we didn’t just spend an entire movie making everyone say ‘MACUSA.’ It’s a small detail, but one that immediately establishes that this movie could not give less of a [censored] about anything that happened in the last one.”
Eric: Wow.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I read her article, so I give her credit for that.
Andrew: It’s savage, but it’s true, and it is frustrating. On this show, we were like, “MACUSA? Is that how you pronounce it? That’s cute and funny. MACUSA.”
Micah: “Mac USA?”
Eric: “Mac USA,” yeah. Mac machine. We’re getting money out. Well, the one reference to Fantastic Beasts 1 that I found was Grindelwald does say, “No-Maj, Muggle, non-magique.” He connects the threads of the cultural differences there in his speech.
Andrew: So help us. Well, now that they’ve switched back to American Ministry of Magic, so help us if they try to use MACUSA again. [laughs] It would have been different if MACUSA was short for Ministry of Magic USA, or something like that. But “Magical Congress.” Not “Ministry.”
Eric: It’s very much not a Ministry. It is run differently. It is a congress that elects a president. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, so this email that we keep referencing, Eric. Who’s this from, and what’s it say?
Eric: Okay, yeah, we’ll go through this, but this is what the classics majors Doug and Nicole have to say about several of the plot twists and characters in this movie. You’re going to love it. On Aurelius Dumbledore, they say,
“We believe that Grindelwald is lying. If you look at the name Aurelius, it comes from the Latin word for gold, and literally means ‘golden’ or ‘of gold’… how fitting is it for Grindelwald to call Credence his ‘golden boy,’ especially if he can/will use and manipulate his powers/Obscurus? Also, there was a Roman emperor called Marcus Aurelius, known as the Philosopher King. He famously practiced stoicism, which in a nutshell is the belief that showing excessive emotion is no good… in the last episode you all critiqued Johnny Depp’s performance for being rather emotionless, but if Grindelwald respected Marcus Aurelius and stoicism, he wouldn’t give overly emotional responses, or emotional responses whatsoever at that.”
So Marcus Aurelius believed that showing too much emotion was bad. I think this ties into Credence very much because I think Credence is going to have to learn to control all that rage inside him.
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. But he is able to channel it already because of that spell.
Eric: The spell that he casts and it blows up the mountain? Yeah, he’s definitely grown a lot as a person. So anyway, moving on.
“Credence: The name comes from the Latin verb ‘credo,’ that means ‘to believe.’ Credence will believe any story concerning his identity because he just wants AN identity.”
That’s kind of interesting. And then this is the longest one:
“Corvus Lestrange: I believe that Credence is Corvus Lestrange V. Firstly, the name Corvus literally means raven.”
Oh, wow. So that’s cool.
“On a lighter note, I think that Credence looks kind of raven-y.”
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Thank you very much.
Eric: Yeah.
“Also, we heard only pieces of a prophecy concerning the Lestrange family. If we take precedent from prophecies we know from the HP series, if you believe a prophecy is going to happen, it will. Perhaps Corvus IV acted upon the prophecy after having heard only some of it (hmm, who does that remind us of?) If so, I believe that by Corvus IV taking action to prevent the prophecy from happening (sending the kids to America), he actually set it in motion.”
This is a reference to Oedipus from Classical mythology, which happens and,
“We know that young wizards can use magic to save themselves from lethal situations.”
Such as when Neville bounces after being thrown out the window.
“The baby who appears drowning actually uses powers to escape from the water and survive.”
And then also, one thing about the first film:
“When Marylou Barebone says she saved Credence from that ‘wicked woman’ in the first movie, we don’t actually know who that woman is. Maybe it was the woman who brought the children to America, maybe it’s someone else. But there has to be a surviving Lestrange in the future of this series to continue the family tree down to Rodolphus and Rabastan.”
That comes up a lot, actually.
Micah: One thing to note… hold on.
Eric: And then the final part… go on.
Micah: In the script book, it does say that the person on the boat with Credence is Credence’s aunt.
Eric: Okay, so the woman who is on the boat watching over the Credence baby is Credence’s aunt?
Micah: Yes.
Eric: Okay, that’s interesting.
Andrew: Allegedly.
Eric: So if he’s a Dumbledore, it also means it’s Dumbledore’s aunt as well. So Kendra’s sister… what’s his father’s name?
Micah: Percival.
Eric: Percival, yeah. Percival’s sister, Kendra’s sister. Or if Ariana is his mother, then Dumbledore has to… oh, that’s why that doesn’t work. Ariana can’t be Credence’s mother because Credence’s aunt would be a secret Dumbledore sister. Anyway, anyway. Okay, I digress. Yeah. The end of this email says,
“The chick: If it is a real phoenix, I don’t think it’s coming to Credence at all…”
Oh, this is the one.
“… but rather to Grindelwald because he has Dumbledore’s blood running through his veins. Sincerely, Nicole and Doug.”
I mean, cool stuff. J.K. Rowling hasn’t lost her touch for using names to inform either what we know or what becomes canon of these characters’ arcs and journeys.
Andrew: Yeah, and we’ll be able to look back at Aurelius Dumbledore at some point and make connections to Marcus Aurelius, the guy that J.K. Rowling has been studying. She bought that book because she’s studying him very closely. And by the way, you can buy that book on Amazon if you want to get inside what J.K. Rowling is planning. [laughs]
Listener call-ins
Andrew: So listeners, those of you who are tuned in live now, you can call us. I left a phone number in the Patreon, so feel free to call now. I asked everybody to come prepared with a question or comment…
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Oh, and here is one now. Hey, who’s this?
Dani: My name is Dani.
Andrew: Hey, Dani.
Dani: Hi. I want to talk about Nagini. I was really excited when I saw the trailer and found out that Nagini was first a person, and I really looked forward to finding out her story, but then in the movie she wasn’t important, like, at all. Also, she is seen as good here, but obviously in Harry Potter, she’s bad. What do you think? Do you think they’ll include more about their story in the future movies?
Andrew: I think this is one of those undercurrents that I was referring to earlier. She has to explain more about Nagini; otherwise, what is the point of having her in this film? I think Nagini is going to try to bring Credence back over to the good side. What do you guys think?
Eric: Yeah. She is certainly his strongest emotional attachment, it would seem. It kind of annoys me that Newt really didn’t get to interact with Credence, and neither did Tina, because he would surely have remembered them from when they tried to save him in the subway, and maybe it’ll help him remember that Graves was the bad guy, and Grindelwald, who he’s joining, was the bad guy. Ultimately, though, she does appear to be… Nagini is his closest emotional connection, and I think we do need to know how deep that connection goes. And also, who is she as a person? Because unfortunately, Andrew’s prediction was right; she is only sort of his emotional support character in this film.
Dani: Do you think we’ll find any connection to the Harry Potter movies with Nagini? Like how she becomes partners with Voldemort or whatever?
Andrew: God, given how little we found out about her in this one, I’m not feeling so good about that right now, but I think J.K. Rowling has committed to giving us something like that by introducing Nagini, because she definitely did not have to do that. So she’s going to have to eventually do it. Maybe it’s not through the movie. Hopefully it would be through Pottermore or on Twitter. [laughs] I’ll take it wherever she wants to put it, but she has to put it somewhere.
Micah: I tend to agree.
Dani: Thank you.
Andrew: Yeah, thanks, Dani.
Micah: One of the questions that would come off of what was just mentioned was when does Voldemort and Nagini actually meet up with each other? It’s not till the ’90s, right?
Eric: It shouldn’t be… oh, yeah. That’s previous canon.
Andrew: As far as we know. Yeah, previous canon. [laughs]
Micah: So I don’t know that there would be any interaction between the two of them prior to that, unless we’re going to rewrite canon. But there has to be something, though, that would happen in these next couple of movies that’s going to cause her to really go dark side.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: All right, thank you, Dani, and thanks for your support.
Dani: Yeah, thank you.
Andrew: Bye. Dani came prepared. She had a question ready to go.
Eric: Awesome.
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Here’s another one. Hello, who’s this?
Miranda: Hi! This is Miranda.
Andrew: Hi, Miranda. How are you?
Miranda: I am doing well. How are you guys?
Andrew: Good, thank you.
Micah: Good.
Miranda: Sorry, I’m actually at work, so I’m working on getting up to the hallway so that my coworkers don’t hear my conversation.
[Andrew laughs]
Miranda: So the thing that’s been bugging me this whole time is the timeline. I’d heard the Titanic theory, told my husband, and I saw it over the weekend, and he was like, “You know, that was the Titanic,” and it really couldn’t have been, because we did a deep dive and Googled everyone’s birth dates. So Newt and Leta were born in 1897 because they’re the same age. So it couldn’t have been the Titanic, because they would have been 15, so they should have been at school, so there’s no way that she could have even been on the boat. And that would put Credence at 15, and he’s 20 or something. And another thing is… sorry, just basically ran from my desk.
[Andrew laughs]
Miranda: McGonagall. She’s mentioned twice, and she wasn’t even born until 1935, so I don’t know. I guess are we just throwing canon out the window? Just like, “Eh, don’t worry about this. Don’t worry about years, guys.”
[Andrew sighs]
Miranda: I don’t know. I was wondering what you guys… [laughs]
Andrew: Well, the Titanic thing, that’s definitely not happening. And I think we mentioned it earlier this episode, the screenplay kind of cancels that out. But the McGonagall thing, that’s tough, and I think people are having a hard time with that. It’s definitely Minerva McGonagall. I’m sorry, but it is. It says so in the credits; it says so in the screenplay. I got an email from that actress’s publicist – I don’t know how true this is; this may have been the publicist talking up the actress – but she was like, “And she’ll have a bigger role in the forthcoming films.”
Eric: Ooh.
Miranda: Oh my gosh.
Andrew: I think it’s possible she’s lying. [laughs] I mean, but… the publicist is lying. But J.K. Rowling is stepping into some dangerous territory if she does decide to expand McGonagall’s role.
Eric: It means that no birthday ever works. It means that no birthday can ever be trusted until all of the films stop being made.
Miranda: And isn’t…? The Pottermore team is going to have to go back and do some edits, because wasn’t it on Pottermore her birthday is 1935? Because they did a deep dive on her, right? A few years ago.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, her year is not on Pottermore, but you can…
Miranda: Anymore, okay.
Andrew: Yeah, you can figure it out by doing the math between comments that were made to Umbridge in Order of the Phoenix and some stuff on Pottermore. You can figure it out that way.
Miranda: Okay.
Andrew: I was getting angry this morning on Twitter because I had seen that J.K. Rowling said in December 2016 on her own website that Accio only works on inanimate objects, but in this movie, he Accios the Niffler and it works fine. But less than two years ago, J.K. Rowling said that wouldn’t work.
Miranda: Yeah, and then why wouldn’t they Accio the baby falling down through the water there too?
Andrew: Right, why didn’t Harry Accio Voldemort? Why didn’t…? [laughs] So many situations could have been resolved with Accio working on humans.
Eric: Well, and Accio in this movie doesn’t even work all the way. He doesn’t summon it to him. He summons it to the suitcase.
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Eric: So it’s just kind of even weirder that he uses that magic in a new, different way. But she… yeah.
Andrew: So between the Accio thing and the McGonagall thing in particular, if they don’t have this already, they need to do this: J.K. Rowling’s people need to put together a story team that’s vetting everything that she writes. I don’t expect J.K. Rowling to remember everything she’s said and written into canon, but people have to do it for her. The brand is on the line here! We need everything to be dependable.
Eric: I volunteer. I volunteer to be that guy.
Andrew: Yeah, they need a whole team, but the three of us can do it.
Eric: Yeah, fact checkers.
Andrew: And Miranda, you can be involved too. [laughs]
Miranda: Oh, I am a pro Googler. I know way more than I really should. [laughs]
Andrew: You know, we here on MuggleCast depend on canon, and theories and analysis all over the web depend on canon, so it needs to be rock solid, and they need to sort this out now.
Miranda: Right. And they need to know that… I mean, I understand J.K., she is a busy lady. She does not have time to go through and search all this stuff, just like George R.R. Martin, he doesn’t have time to go through and remember everything he wrote. But they need to remember that fans do. You’re absolutely right. They need to have… she’s got to have a team of assistants that won’t steal her memorabilia and credit card, I guess, like the other lady.
Andrew: [laughs] Right. Maybe that’s what happened and they had to fire that girl, and that girl was doing all the vetting.
Miranda: There it is. All that work out the window.
Andrew: [laughs] Yep. All right, thank you, Miranda.
Miranda: Thank you.
Andrew: Bye.
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Here’s another one. Hey, who’s this?
Mackenzie: Hello?
Andrew: Hi, who’s this?
Mackenzie: Hi, this is Mackenzie from Ohio.
Andrew: Hi, Mackenzie. I saw that the Fantastic Beasts screenplay was dedicated to you.
Mackenzie: Well, I truly appreciate that. Thanks, Joanne, for getting my email.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: It says, “To Kenzie,” which is her daughter, but we’ll pretend it’s you.
Mackenzie: Well, you know what? I also go by Kenzie, so surprise!
Andrew: Are you her daughter?
Mackenzie: Who are you telling? I wish.
[Andrew laughs]
Mackenzie: That would be everything. But I am instilling Harry Potter in my daughter, so I guess, maybe?
Andrew: There you go.
Mackenzie: No, doesn’t work.
[Andrew laughs]
Mackenzie: Well, thanks for… I can’t believe I’m on right now. Thanks for taking my call.
Andrew: Absolutely.
Mackenzie: I just have a comment that I, seriously, the whole film, was sitting there going, “Oh my God, if it turns out that there was a Time-Turner used to go back and get Dumbledore’s father to have a baby with someone else, I swear I’m going to freak out.”
[Andrew laughs]
Mackenzie: That has become such a fallback, and I doubt that it’s going to happen, but literally the whole movie, I could not stop thinking about “If there’s Time-Turners involved, that honestly, it’s just going to disappoint me.” And like I said, I doubt it’s going to happen, but I thought it was a funny comment.
Andrew: Yeah. So I’ve seen other people guessing that Time-Turners can be involved here. No! J.K. Rowling has learned her lesson with Time-Turners. It was a big mistake bringing them back in Cursed Child. If she goes back to Time-Turners again, I think all of our heads are going to explode. [laughs]
Mackenzie: Yeah, so that was basically my only comment. Other than that, I really wish we were getting more Leta, but I’m not going to get my hopes up, especially after you guys have talked about The Walking Dead, the whole Glenn thing. I just… I don’t even know that I can handle it.
Andrew: Yeah, no fake-outs, right? So were you…? You previously thought that she might be alive still?
Mackenzie: I have thought about it because, like you had mentioned with Bellatrix disappearing – and honestly, we never know if Lavender died in the movies – it’s not necessarily a different thing for the series, but I don’t know. Overall, I think she’s gone, sadly.
Andrew: All right. Well, thank you, J.K. Rowling’s daughter. Very kind of you to call in, Mackenzie.
Mackenzie: Hey, no problem, guys. Thanks so much for this show.
Eric: Nice American accent, by the way.
Mackenzie: Hey, you know what? I’ve been working on it.
Andrew: [laughs] All right, have a good one.
Mackenzie: Thanks, you too.
Andrew: Bye.
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Oh, they’re coming in hot! Hey, who’s this?
Olivia: Hey, this is Olivia.
Andrew: Hi, Olivia.
Olivia: [laughs] I am calling from… I’m calling from Houston, Texas.
Andrew: I thought you forgot for a second. I was getting a little scared.
Olivia: I did forget for a second.
[Andrew and Olivia laugh]
Andrew: What’s up?
Olivia: I wanted to call because I had this theory that came to me while I was listening to you guys talk about Grindelwald and Dumbledore’s relationship, and how Dumbledore’s talking about being… warning people about Grindelwald and about his rallies and things like that. And so I had sort of this idea that there’s a possibility that when Dumbledore and Grindelwald were trying to do the Deathly Hallows thing and plan their future and all of that, that there’s a possibility that Dumbledore actually planned this sort of speaking tour, if you will, that Grindelwald is on right now, and that he is actually the orchestrator of all of this. And so when he’s warning people, he actually knows what’s coming, and so he’s trying to advise those closest to him to watch their backs and be careful.
Eric: So it’s like Dumbledore was shared on Grindelwald’s personal Google Calendar, and knows what the upcoming events are.
Andrew: Well, or…
Olivia: Right, but way back in the day, when they were kids together and they were planning how to…
Eric: Oh, before Google.
[Andrew laughs]
Olivia: Yeah, planning how to take over the world.
Andrew: So you’re saying that Dumbledore may have been like, “Hey, you should tour this idea. You should give some rallies.”
Olivia: [laughs] Kind of.
Andrew: I think that’s an interesting idea. I mean, we know that since they were so close, they were in agreement about things back in the day. So yeah, Dumbledore may be responsible for encouraging some of this behavior, or for sharing this message with the greater wizarding world.
Olivia: Right.
Eric: Yeah, and according to Rita Skeeter’s writing, for a period of time Dumbledore really did buy into the Kool-Aid of subverting and subjugating Muggles, so it makes sense that they would have planned to, “Okay, now that we both believe this, how do we spread the word?”
Olivia: Exactly.
Eric: I think that this is a very plausible idea,
Olivia: Right, and just some of the tricks, or some of the backhanded ways that he was trying to get people on his side, or things that may have been come up with together, and so kind of like he stole Dumbledore’s ideas, I guess, in a way.
Eric: Two heads are better than one.
Olivia: And then just has now continued to manipulate people with them.
Andrew: Or it reminds me of what J.K. Rowling wrote in the screenplay about regretting… she didn’t write “regret” exactly; I can’t remember what word it was. But you get the impression that Dumbledore regretted making that blood pact with Grindelwald, and this could tie into what you’re saying. Nice.
Olivia: Yeah, just something to think about.
Andrew: Awesome, Olivia. Well, thank you for calling in with that.
Olivia: Thank you so much, guys. I love the show.
Andrew: Thank you. Bye.
Olivia: Bye.
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Hey, who’s this?
Amanda: Hello?
Andrew: Hello, who’s this?
Amanda: Oh, this is Amanda. How are you?
Andrew: Good. How are you, Amanda?
Amanda: Pretty good.
Andrew: What are your thoughts on Grindelwald?
Amanda: So I just was wondering what you guys were thinking about Queenie? Because I felt like she was off for the entire film, and I know that on the episode you guys recorded on Wednesday, I think Eric said that she just seemed kind of stupid, which I felt like that was the case. I felt like she was just talking differently, and I don’t necessarily think Alison is a bad actor, so I was confused about what her motivations were, and I was thinking that maybe Grindelwald got to her sooner than we thought because he definitely had some kind of weird control going on with Abernathy, so I figured maybe he might have used him to get to Queenie, because he probably knows that she’s a Legilimens and that he could use that.
Andrew: Yeah, because it does seem weird that Grindelwald’s assistant comes up to Queenie. Like, why her?
Amanda: Right.
Andrew: Was Queenie already on their radar? What do you two think?
Micah: It’s definitely possible. I always found that very suspicious, that Rosier just happens across her. Maybe she saw her just prior, when she was in the Ministry and they were making their way down to the archives, because that’s when they go in and switch the books or do whatever they did there. So maybe she saw Queenie walking up to the desk and then follows her. But also, it’s very suspicious activity inside of the hideout with the tea – I know we talked about that last week – and so I don’t necessarily think that Queenie is doing what she’s doing of her own will. Maybe there’s something more at play here, and time will tell, I guess. But it just does seem off. She seems off even going back to Newt’s apartment, right?
Amanda: That’s what I thought, too.
Micah: Yeah, why is she casting the spell on Jacob? There’s got to be a way they could have worked this out between the two of them without her casting a spell on him.
Eric: It was for the greater good, Micah.
[Andrew and Olivia laugh]
Micah: Yeah, clearly.
Eric: No, I mean, people find it really problematic. She’s basically… if she joins Grindelwald, and Grindelwald is a Hitler allegory, then she’s a Jewish Nazi, basically. And so it is uncertain. This is a question we shouldn’t be asking, shouldn’t have to ask, because it’s a question regarding the motivations of one of the main four characters. The movie should just be… it should just be clear, overt. Instead it’s some sort of a mystery, bordering on just the film not caring about it. And actually, I read a quote from Alison Sudol that said the number one thing she was most concerned about was the movie not being able to fully show Queenie’s arc and why she’s doing what she’s doing. Guess what, Alison Sudol? Your worst fears came complete.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: She said she talked to Yates about it. She said she had extensive meetings. Unfortunately, I think the end result is that we’re a little bit lost about her, but I don’t think the character’s dead.
Andrew: Cindy Hughes listening live says, “Grindelwald sent Queenie the postcard. That’s why they couldn’t find Tina’s name at the French Ministry.”
Amanda: Huh.
Andrew: That’s an interesting idea.
Eric: Yeah, that seems plausible. And in his capacity as Graves, Grindelwald 100% would have known about Queenie’s abilities, presuming… although we speculated whether or not she told the Ministry that she was a Legilimens.
Andrew: All right, Amanda, thank you for calling in.
Amanda: Thanks for taking the call.
Andrew: Absolutely. Bye.
Amanda: Bye.
Andrew: And Micah, we have to say goodbye to you since it’s a work day, and two hours of Harry Potter podcasting is enough!
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
[Skype phone rings]
Micah: Uh-oh, call coming in. If that’s Lucas, see you later.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: You guys can handle him.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Well, Micah… goodbye.
Micah: Goodbye.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Good luck with the rest of the episode. I’m sure you guys can handle it.
Eric: Yeah, good talking to you. Thank you for all those notes about the script, man. That was awesome.
Micah: No problem.
Andrew: I mean, mine were better, but thanks for yours as well.
Micah: Yeah, that’s true.
Andrew: All right, bye, Micah.
Eric: Take care.
Andrew: Hey, who’s this?
Sam: Hey, this is Sam from Massachusetts.
Andrew: Hey, Sam. Are you Sam K. in the comments?
Sam: Yeah, that’s me.
Andrew: Nice. What’s your question? Go ahead.
Sam: Yeah, so we talked a little bit about Queenie, and again, I think Eric referenced her. It seemed like she’d lost about 40 IQ points from the first film.
Eric: There it is repeated.
Sam: [laughs] I guess I had kind of a crackpot theory, maybe, but I thought that maybe the motivation for why she’s acting so irrationally in this film, as opposed to the other ones, was because that perhaps she’s pregnant? It’s been a few months since the events of the first film, so I thought she’s had time with Jacob – presumably they’ve gotten intimate, things like that – and now she’s feeling this time crunch. Because we don’t know currently what happens to children of Muggles and wizards in America, so she could be thinking, “Wow, I really need to get something done. I don’t have time to argue with Jacob about this, because in nine months we’re going to have a baby. I don’t know if I should even tell him at this point, and I might be in jail, he’ll be Oliviated, and who knows what will happen to our kid?”
Eric: My one question is, why wouldn’t she just mention it? Because that’s a super… that’s an important card to play. If you’re trying to convince somebody, the whole “We’re going to start a family, we’re going to have a family,” is one of the best motivators of all time. I think Jacob would have just been like, “Oh, okay, I get it. Let’s get married.” She wouldn’t have needed to side with Grindelwald, or even if she did, there would have been more of a motivation there.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s definitely an argument to be made for that, but I think there’s also an argument to be made that J.K. Rowling certainly isn’t adverse to secret babies nowadays.
Eric: Well, secret rape babies, right? I mean, if Jacob is under a… if Queenie is pregnant, and depending on how long she’s had Jacob under a potion, then the baby was possibly conceived under duress, and then we’d have another Voldemort situation where you’re unable to love because you were conceived through obfuscation. So I don’t know, but if the next film is a five-year gap or whatever – as I was talking about before, the time jumps are going to have to start happening – and there’s a 5-year-old child running around Nurmengard, we’ve got to be very suspicious about who that child’s parents are. It’s probably Queenie and Jacob.
Andrew: So…
Sam: [laughs] Yeah, I think I was just… oh, keep going.
Andrew: Well, my thought on all this was just that Queenie has found the one, and she’s ready to just settle down and marry Jacob, and Jacob rightfully isn’t ready for the reasons that he outlined in the movie, and that’s why she is quickly switching allegiance and just seems to be so crazy. She’s just… well, I mean, to me, she’s under some sort of effect that Grindelwald has placed on her – maybe through the tea, maybe through something else – but she’s just at a point in her life now where she’s like, “I know what I want, I have what I want, and I’m ready to put a ring on it.”
[Eric and Sam laugh]
Eric: The point is not wanting something, though; the point is wanting something so bad you take other people’s consent away to get it.
Andrew: No, yeah, I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about her general mood in the movie.
Sam: Yeah, I think that my whole theory about her potentially having a child with him – and for some reason unbeknownst to me, not telling him – would for me kind of have justified more of that weird “I’m going to take away Jacob’s consent and give him a love potion and whisk him away to Europe.” I just couldn’t really think of any other reason, other than being under that time crunch for why she would feel the need to expedite this process so much and be “I have to give him a love potion and whisk him away right away.”
Andrew: Yeah. I’ll tell you what, I don’t think Jacob is going to make it through the whole series.
Sam: I don’t either.
Andrew: I think either next movie or Movie 4 he’s going to die, not just because of the Augury, but because it would be tragic to lose the one Muggle character we have in this series. He’s always been in love with the wizarding world since Newt introduced him to it, and losing him would be hard on viewers, and the characters, but for viewers he’s just such a great character, so it would be hard for us, and I think J.K. Rowling wants to do that to us. [laughs]
Eric: You know the one thing they left out of the film, which I would want? We already saw Jacob vision when he’s under the love potion. At the end of the movie, he’s at Hogwarts. We don’t see Jacob vision again to see if he can actually see the castle. He’s legit halfway on the bridge across to the castle.
Andrew: Oooh.
Eric: He should see maybe a ruin with a sign that says, “Dangerous to enter, not safe,” right? According to Hermione.
Andrew: That is interesting.
Sam: Well, not only that, but Newt goes up and has a little private conversation with Dumbledore, Dumbledore asks him for tea, and then they walk off and just leave everyone standing on that bridge.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: What does that look like? What does that look like to Jacob? I need to know, and I need to know yesterday.
Andrew: Maybe… I wonder… I thought it was interesting that Newt and the Niffler head in for tea. I wonder if that means the third movie is going to start with them having a serious conversation in Hogwarts.
Eric: But again, time jump, right? It needs to start sometime.
Sam: Yeah, I think I saw or heard about an interview where Ezra Miller said that the next one is going to have a significant time jump at the beginning. I don’t know, though, but I think I read that.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, I think it’s too early for us to know for sure about that, but we’ll see. Unless there was a recent interview maybe on a red carpet that I missed, but I haven’t heard that one.
Eric: No, yeah, I haven’t either.
Andrew: All right. Well, thank you, Sam, for calling in.
Sam: Thank you guys for having me.
Andrew: Bye.
Eric: Thanks, Sam.
Sam: Have a good one. Bye.
Eric: So Lucas is a no show, huh?
Andrew: [laughs] Lucas is at work.
Eric: Oh. [laughs]
Andrew: He may very well be trying to call. I don’t know. He doesn’t need to defend himself or anything. He’s already on the show.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: See if… take one more. Whoever calls in first. Getting back to Queenie real quick, Mackenzie says, “Okay, so I am surprised at how easily manipulated Queenie is, because she is a skilled Legilimens. Are we to believe that maybe Grindelwald is equally great at Occlumancy and can hide the more hateful parts of his thoughts from her? Or does she know them and agree?” That’s a great point.
Eric: [sighs] It is a good… I mean, she’s spent her whole life knowing that what people say and what people think is profoundly different. She should be the least able to be manipulated person. Hypothetically.
[Skype phone rings]
Andrew: Oh! Shoot. I almost quit Skype. I was a split second away.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Hey, who’s this?
Lisa: It’s Lisa.
Andrew: Hi, Lisa.
Lisa: You just said that and I’m like, “Oh my God, I just realized nobody’s calling.”
Andrew: [laughs] What’s up?
Lisa: And I just put this in the comments, but what if…? Did Credence not know that Grindelwald was Graves? I mean, it’s like… or so that if he doesn’t know that, it explains why he’s trusting him so much. But why would he trust him after the way he treated him?
Andrew: So I’m trying to remember the end of the movie. Does the Obscurus fly out before Graves transforms?
Lisa: Right, that’s what I’m thinking.
Eric: Yes? But if Credence read a newspaper anywhere but… and we know Credence reads the paper. For three months, he would have known that Grindelwald was captured, and that Grindelwald was, in fact, Graves. That would have come out.
Andrew: So let’s assume…
Lisa: Right, so why would he trust him at all?
Andrew: Well, because he still was showing a big interest in him as Graves, so he’s still been wanted this whole time. So I don’t know if Graves/Grindelwald did anything that Credence didn’t like.
Eric: Well, he told him he was useless and he pathetic.
Lisa: He was so mean.
Eric: Yeah, I mean, the words that they exchanged were very fueled. I just think this movie’s biggest crime might be just not incorporating events that should have been pretty easy to incorporate – especially as far as character motivations – from the first film. Queenie, Tina, and Credence should all be well aware of Graves and Grindelwald.
Lisa: Well, right, and the Queenie thing – I just thought about this a minute ago as we’re driving in the car – what if Abernathy, Grindelwald as Abernathy, got to Queenie in the Ministry, since he was her boss?
Andrew: Maybe.
Lisa: He Imperiused her.
Eric: Yeah, so Grindelwald was doing double time, posing as Graves for most people, and then Abernathy for Queenie?
Lisa: Well, just before he was taken away, he was Abernathy. You know that because that’s what he did. So what if then Abernathy…? Right before he escaped.
Eric: Okay, so after… yeah, I like that. Okay. Because Queenie would be averse to Grindelwald, and when she sees him in this movie, she raises her wand right away. But if he was Abernathy… after Grindelwald was first captured, became Abernathy and started wooing Queenie…
Andrew: Getting back to… we also have to remember that in this movie, Grindelwald is promising Credence that he can show Credence who he really is, and that’s what Credence seems to want more than anything, so that alone might be enough to convince Credence to hang out with Grindelwald. But I had forgotten about those insulting remarks that he had made to Credence.
Lisa: I mean, at first my mind was completely blown at the end of the movie, and then I started thinking, “He’s got to be lying.” I don’t know.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s interesting. All right, well, thank you for calling in.
Lisa: Thanks, guys.
Andrew: Being our last call of the day.
Eric: Yeah, saved by the bell.
Andrew: [laughs] Have a good one. Bye. One other thing I just want to read real quick… this is not the first one that I’ve… Cindy is not the first person to bring this up. She says, “I want to know if anyone spotted the phoenix book on Credence’s aunt’s bed on the ship.”
Eric: [gasps] What?
Andrew: That phoenix book that Nicholas Flamel and Professor Eulalie and Dumbledore all use. Now, on my third watch – I’m going back later today, I’ve convinced myself [laughs] – I’m going to look out for this, the phoenix book. Because if that means it existed when Credence was still a baby, this group, whatever it is, has existed for a good 20 years.
Eric: Or they repurposed the book.
Andrew: [laughs] Repurposed the book.
Eric: Well, don’t blink when you go back to the movie a third time during the boat scene.
Andrew: I won’t.
Eric: Just pry your eyes open, because I swear you’ll probably miss it. That’s insane. That’s amazing.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. We’ll keep an eye out for it. All right, well, thank you, everybody, for listening today.
Quizzitch
Andrew: Eric, who were the Quizzitch winners this week?
Eric: Yeah, so we did an interesting Quizzitch question, because people only had three hours to answer it. The question was: What is the opening weekend domestic box office total of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald? As we talked about at the top of our show, it’s $62 million. Specifically, $62.2 million dollars. And the winners who submitted this either… most of them did the exact 62.2 answer. Michele D., King of Kings, Franzi J., an ad for Best Buy actually participated in Quizzitch, or showed up when I did it.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: You know how they do sponsored ads, even on search results now? Anyway. Lillian B., Rachel White, and our friend Kyle the Hufflepuff teacher was the first to win, and his display name currently reads “Crimes of Nifflers.”
Andrew: [laughs] How dare you.
Eric: As a reminder, we play this game on Twitter, although that didn’t stop Amber Watson from playing on Patreon with her comment. She did also get the correct answer, and actually reminded me to go check Twitter this morning, so thanks, Amber, for commenting where you weren’t supposed to. And this following week’s question for next episode of MuggleCast is: According to the Crimes of Grindelwald screenplay and film, what is Travers’s official position at the Ministry of Magic? He says it. He says what he is, what he does.
Andrew: Okay.
Eric: Submit your answers on Twitter. Be sure to use hashtag “Quizzitch” when you @ MuggleCast.
Andrew: If you are a new listener, first of all, thanks for tuning in. Maybe you tuned in to get our thoughts on Crimes of Grindelwald. Check out the MuggleCast website; you can get our complete episode archive over there. You can jump into our Chapter by Chapter discussions; it’s easy to find a particular chapter you might want to hear our analysis on, because we have a Chapter by Chapter page. We’d also like if you followed us on social media, Facebook.com/MuggleCast and Twitter.com/MuggleCast. That’s how you’ll stay up to date on the latest episode releases. By the way, whether you’re a new listener or an old one, we would appreciate a review on iTunes. Your review can accompany our new album art, designed by Anna. We’ve been working with her over the past few months. We have album art for the first time in our history that does not use official Harry Potter book art.
Eric: That’s right.
Andrew: We got something made from scratch.
Eric: It’s truly unbelievable, and the response has been extremely, overwhelmingly positive. We’re all extremely happy with it. It’s just gorgeous; it’s gorgeous artwork. And the justification for it, sort of the byline of we invite people to travel back with us to the wizarding world regularly, really gets spoken to by having the flying car approach Hogwarts.
Andrew: Yeah, and we know those sights evoke positive memories for everybody, so we just wanted to create a scene that made people feel good, and it feels good for us to have something that is uniquely ours. And Anna was so good that we actually had her do two pieces of art for us because we couldn’t decide which one should be our album art, so you can see another piece with references to the show on MuggleCast.com and in the cover art for our Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon. [laughs] So lots of original work, and thank you again to Anna. And yeah, finally, just a plug for our Patreon: Patreon.com/MuggleCast. The support of listeners is why we are doing the show weekly. And we’re about to crack another big milestone; we’re closing in on 900 patrons.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: And we’ll be doing things through the end of this year and into 2019 that we think will keep our supporters very happy. We have lots of cool benefits in the works. If you pledge on Patreon, you will get bonus audio material. You will get a physical gift every year. You can be a part of our exclusive Facebook group. You can also access our recording studio as we’re recording; and there are 32 people tuned in right now, listening to us record on Monday afternoon.
Eric: Amazing.
Andrew: This has been a long episode. I have to pee really bad, and I think I’m kind of losing my voice.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So probably time to start wrapping it up.
Eric: Okay, well, I’ll run in with the assist then. Did you give the voicemail number and the mailing address?
Andrew: I didn’t. [hoarsely] Please help me.
Eric: Okay. [laughs] The MuggleCast voicemail line, for those of you who’d like to leave us a voicemail, 1-920-3-MUGGLE in the USA, or 1-920-368-4453. And our mailing address for snail mail is MuggleCast at 4044 North Lincoln Avenue, number #144, Chicago, IL 60618. And people were asking about what email address they can send emails to – it’s actually very simple – MuggleCast@gmail.com. And you can actually use the website as well; there’s a contact form on the website, but if people just want to direct email, MuggleCast@gmail.com.
Andrew: Great. All right, thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Andrew: [in a deep voice] And I’m Micah.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Goodbye, everybody.
Eric: Bye!