Fantastic Beasts And Where to Find Them is the first part of the tongue-twisty named series that’s set in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. With the release of the trailer of Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald, I thought it’d be an appropriate time to do a small recap of all the strange things that are going on with this series, just so you can prepare for the following four movies.

Written by JK Rowling and directed by David Yates, the man who directed the last batch of Harry Potter films, Fantastic Beasts is filled to the brim with magic, offering a glimpse of the magical world outside of the restraints of Britain and outside of High School. This magical world in New York features adults, strange beasts and some darker themes.

While Fantastic Beasts is bound to make a ton of money, the fan reception of the series could prove to be more complicated; there are few sagas in the world that are more beloved than Harry Potter, and following that up will surely be a big climb.

With that said, here are 20 of the most inappropriate things that we could find on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them:

20 The (Not So Subtle) Tension

Via Pinterest

While the tension between Credence and Graves is there, a lot of people thought that there could be a possibility of something more between the two. Different critics believe that the main theme within Fantastic Beasts is repression, which when festered becomes a literal monster called the Obscurus, having the power to end people and destroy buildings.

By the end of the film, when it’s revealed that Graves is really Grindelwald in disguise, it’s pretty difficult to ignore all of the subtext.

JK Rowling confirmed that Dumbledore was gay, and that he was in love with Grindelwald. She didn't explain Grindelwald's feelings, but many people think that he's a master manipulator, and that he takes advantage of those who are easily impressed, including Credence and a young and in love Dumbledore.

19 How Many Movies?

Via Crosswalk.com

When the Fantastic Beasts series was announced, creators claimed that it'd be a trilogy of films that were based on J.K. Rowling's short book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The book was released in 2001 and proceeds were donated to different foundations.

After this announcement, Rowling claimed that there was too much material to be covered in just three films.

Now there would be five movies that would follow a cast of characters and that would show the Wizarding World through different countries and perspectives.

Would the protagonist be Dumbledore instead of Newt? Considering the fact that the main bad guy is Grindelwald, and that the final confrontation will be between him and Dumbledore, people believe that Newt will later fade a bit more into the background.

18 Eddie Redmayne Auditioned For Another Role

Eddie Redmayne auditioned for the role of Tom Riddle when he was a very young actor, but he didn't get the part. Years later, he was expecting for the Harry Potter crew to call him to become a Weasley sibling, but no such luck. Later, when he seemingly lost all hope to work on Harry Potter, everything changed with one unexpected phone call.

JK Rowling called him and told him that he was the only option for the role of Newt, and that she'd written the character with him in mind.

Redmayne didn’t even have to audition and he accepted the role of Newt gladly. He also had input on the other character's casting decisions, since tons of actors were auditioned for all of them. All of the possible actors tested with Redmayne, since the director considered him the anchor of the film.

17 The Embarrassing Dance Was A Big Deal

Via Youtube

The worst scene in the movie, where Newt does a sort of mating dance to retrieve and calm down an Erumpent, a magical creature that's running wild in Central Park, was actually choreographed by Eddie Redmayne and a professional dancer.

Redmayne’s longtime collaborator Alexandra Reynolds, choreographer of films such as the Theory of Everything and The Danish Girl, recorded him and worked the dance through with him as he did several movements while they were animal watching, imitating what they were looking and trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.

These clips and snippets of dance were sent to director David Yates, who offered notes and suggestions and explained his and JK Rowling's vision. The final version of the dance is a collaboration between all four of them that took a surprising amount of work.

16 Credence's Doomed Adoptive Family

Via Youtube user Flicks And The City Clips

Pulling a very dark move for a studio feature, Credence Barebone, one of the film's antagonists and most interesting characters, is bullied and abused by his adoptive mother, making him lose control of his very powerful Obscurus. In doing this, he inadvertently ends most of the people inside the house.

Granted, even though his adoptive family was pretty awful to him, it’s still surprising to that no one got out unscathed in a Harry Potter movie. 

It's kind of a dark relief when Mary Lou, Credence adoptive mother, is stopped by the Obscurus, because through out the movie she was extremely mean and resentful towards anyone who showed some magical capabilities. On a second watch of the film, I noticed that Chastity, Credence adoptive sister, also disappeared due to the Obscurus' outburst.

15 His Brother's Girlfriend?

Via nopemaj.tumblr.com

Weirdly enough, Newt is in love with a Lestrange, who in turn is dating his brother Theseus. We only catch a glimpse of Leta Lestrange on Fantastic Beasts 1, where she pops up on a photo that Newt carries around. In this scene, Queenie tells Newt that Leta is a “taker”, and that he needs to be involved in a relationship with a person who gives, hint: it's Tina.

According to JK Rowling, Leta is the reason why Newt got expelled from Hogwarts.

While they were both at school they were close friends and bonded over their passion for animals. When Leta got in trouble for possessing a forbidden pet and endangering the life of a student, Newt decided to take the blame.

14 There Were Some Errors In Design

Via DailyExpress.com

According to IMDB, several people noticed that there were some inaccuracies on the set of Fantastic Beasts, especially when it comes to the fact that the movie is supposed to be set in New York during the late 1920’s.

On the scene where the mayor of the US is making a speech, he's standing in front of the American US flag, which contains 50 stars instead of the 48 that it’s supposed to have according to history and that time period. There’s also another scene where they show the Statue of Liberty, where the torch is shown on its current state. During the late 1920’s, the torch looked different, made of a copper framework with glass, and it was also illuminated from within.

13 Low-Key Second Class Citizens

The subject of Elf subjugation was explored on the original Harry Potter films and in much more depth in the books, with Hermione and SPEW. But never forget, it’s still sad to see most of the elves being poorly treated on Fantastic Beasts.

While some elves are having a pretty bad time in New York, there's one scene in particular where an elf is singing and dancing on a magical and hidden bar.

This can give us hope. With this information, maybe we can assume that some American elves manage to stay hidden and maintain their freedom, have a job and a life. This is unlike the elves in London that are mostly bound to a magical family, working for them for generations.

12 Newt Was Also Expelled From Hogwarts

Via Youtube user MuggleNetVid

Unlike Hagrid who was stripped of his wand when he was expelled from Hogwarts, Newt managed to keep his own, and was able to do magic legally for most of his life. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, even though Newt was expelled from Hogwarts, he still managed to carve a pretty successful career, backed by Dumbledore who advocated for his innocence.

Newt worked for the Ministry of Magic, for the office of House-Elf relocation, and later joined the Beast Division.

For his work in Magizoology, he was awarded the Order of Merlin and he earned the right to appear on a Chocolate Frog Card, which, as we all know, is the highest honor a wizard can have.

11 What Beasts?

Via DigitalSpy.com

While the official name of the saga is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the creatures have little to do with the overall plot. Once Newt gets to New York, the beasts are only a source for troubles for him and his friends, playing cute and sometimes useful roles that aren’t completely related to the overall story and conflict with Credence, Graves and Grindelwald.

While the creatures are very sweet and beautiful, they do not actually constitute the real plot of the film.

There’s a little badger mole-looking animal that steals gold (he's the best), there’s a cute little twig that hangs around Newt and that provides for a very sad scene, and finally there’s that Thunderbird that in the end manages to erase all of the muggles - excuse me, No-Majs - memories, flying away to Arizona to live happily ever after.

10 Our Jacob Is Not A Dumb Muggle!

Speaking of No-Majs; they still don't notice a thing, no matter their country of origin. On this movie, No-Majs don't notice the dozens of creatures that pop out of a magical suitcase, or the dark cloud of evilness that attacks buildings and ends dozens of people.

The one thing that Fantastic Beasts does better than the entire Harry Potter franchise is to give more than 5 lines of dialogue to a non-magical character.

They even make him relatable! This movie spends a lot of time with the character of Jacob, developing his friendship with Newt, and using him as a vehicle to introduce the audience to the wizarding world of the United States. He even has a romantic subplot that's pretty important and great. And his bakery is the best. I love Jacob.

Art by SimonaBonafiniDA.

9 A 128-Page Book = 5-Part Movie Saga

Via Youtube user Asela Sebastian

The original Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a 128 page book written by JK Rowling, and it makes several appearances on the Harry Potter Saga. It's written in the form of a Hogwarts textbook, written by Newt Scamander, and the cover design of it claims that it belongs to Harry Potter.

The textbook includes several inscriptions and doodles of characters such as Ron, Harry and Hermione.

The movie is not based on JK's book, it simply uses the character of Newt Scamander and all the different beasts it describes, to introduce us to the plot of the story, which discusses the years where Grindelwald was living in the United States and when Newt was able to imprison him.

8 Newt In Past Books!

Well, not really, but almost. His name appears on the Marauder's Map when Harry is looking at it in the middle of the night, which is all sorts of crazy because it means that, for some reason, Newt was wondering around Hogwarts while he was 80 years old. Also, the Prisoner of Azkaban was released during June 2004, and the book was published during July 1999, making us believe that Newt was a big character since these movies were even thought of.

This Easter Egg might refer to Newt Scamander visiting Dumbledore for the inscription of the Muggle edition of Fantastic Beasts.

Is JK Rowling aware of everything she does and of all of her crazy characters, or does she later fix things so that the different plots and threads of her stories look like they were planned all along? I'm so impressed. Icons only.

7 A Documentary About Newt

Via Youtube user Flickering Myth

David Heyman, one of the producers of the film and of the entire Harry Potter franchise, suggested that Fantastic Beasts should be a documentary about Newt Scamander and his travels and encounters with all sorts of animals and magical creatures, taking the original textbook format of JK Rowling's book pretty literally.

It was Rowling who later came up with the idea of fleshing out the characters.

She wanted to introduce new ones, to come up with different magical schools located throughout the world, and introduce the wizarding world from other countries and perspectives that weren't British. She also decided to make the fight between Dumbledore and Grindelwald the center of the series. Both of these characters are very interesting and mysterious, with a story that was heavily teased on the Harry Potter books.

6 Zookeepers And Animal Handlers

Via Thestranger.com

According to different sources, Eddie Redmayne worked for 6 months straight with different zookeepers and animal handlers to get inside Newt's head, and to understand him more. Redmayne also spent a lot of his free time with animals, to be able to transmit Newt's love for them and to do the best possible job as someone who's really passionate about all sorts of creatures.

He also worked out for months for a topless scene that was in the original script of the film, where the audience would get to see all of the scars he gathered from his work with all sorts of wild creatures that he's encountered.

Sadly, this scene was cut from the final version of the film, and all his exercise went unseen.

5 Not Even On Location

Via Moviehole.com

Even though the movie does a fairly good job of depicting New York in the 1920's, drawing inspiration from iconic spots such as the Woolworth Building, Old City Hall Station, The Tenement Museum, and Times Square, most of the film was actually shot indoors, on a Warner Bros. studios set located on England.

The scenes that needed outdoor surroundings were shot in London or on different parts of England.

IMDB reports that there's a couple of scenes where you can tell that the crew is using a green screen to recreate some of New York's landmarks, and that at one point, someone's driving on the wrong side of the car. Or the right one, since they're actually shooting in the UK.

4 Ilvermorny’s Secret Anthem

Via Bookstr.com

There's a scene in the script where Tina and Queenie sing Ilvermorny's anthem, presumably after they argue with Newt about the best schools in the world. This anthem was written by JK Rowling, and the scene was cut from the final version of the film to cut some of the feature length.

Hogwarts also had an anthem that was pretty prominent in the books, that was sung every year, but that never made an appearance on the films.

All of the songs and anthems were written by JK Rowling, but none of the directors and script writers seemed to want to feature any singing on the Harry Potter movies. Give us a song, guys! There were some really good songs in there, and we're sad that we'll never get to hear them.

3 Jacob Kowalski = Ron Weasley 

Via Pottermore

According to Dan Fogler, the actor who plays Jacob, JK Rowling said that Jacob was one of her favorite characters and that he reminds her of Ron, who's kind hearted, a little funny, and very loyal to all of his friends.

Fogler also expressed that his character was a way of introducing Newt to the city, and to introduce audiences to the wizarding world of the US.

Jacob is a very real and "human" character, who feels puzzled, scared and wondered by this crazy world, who gets swept up into an unimaginable adventure, and thus, he becomes the most relatable one out of the entire movie. His scenes during the closing minutes of the film are the most moving and special ones out of the entire movie.

2 The Saga Spans 19 Years

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set in 1926, the year where Voldemort is born, and will span over 19 years. This means that maybe we could get a glimpse of a very young Voldemort, or one who's on his early teens and is about to join Hogwarts.

With the introduction of Dumbledore on the following film, people have wondered if the main cast will remain as important for the entire 5 movies, very much like the original Harry Potter movies that had clear cut protagonists.

To know this, we'll have to see which characters survive in the following movies, and the importance of the new characters that'll be introduced, which will surely take screen time from other characters.

1 JK Rowling's First Screenplay

Via Medium.com

Even though JK Rowling has written 7 Harry Potter books, countless different length stories published under pseudonyms, one play that was performed in Broadway and in London, and 8 movies under her belt, Fantastic Beasts is the first screenplay she's ever written.

She claims that writing screenplays is completely different than writing a book or a play, and that she learned the craft and process as she was doing it.

I'd say she was pretty successful, and even if there are those who'd argue against it, she still has time to perfect her craft; there are 4 more Fantastic Beasts films coming to theaters in the near future, and we're sure she'll work out their kinks.