Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. ❤️

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

kottke.org posts about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

posted by Jason Kottke

The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander

In an episode of Pop Culture Detective, Jonathan McIntosh discusses The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander. Scamander is the hero of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie that takes place in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Many reviews of the film found Scamander to be a weak hero, but McIntosh argues that the character offers a view of masculinity that we don’t often see in movies, “a gentle empathetic version of heroic masculinity”. Scamander is not The Chosen One (like Harry or Luke Skywalker)…he’s a male hero who is emotional and nurturing and whose strengths are vulnerability, sincerity, and sensitivity.

It’s funny, when I was reading Harry Potter with my kids, we talked a lot about the flaws in Harry’s heroism, e.g. how his hotheadedness frequently put him and his friends into danger. But I didn’t notice how much of strong and vulnerable hero Scamander was. I’m gonna have to go back and watch this again.

posted by Jason Kottke

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them teaser trailer

The most teasing of teaser trailers is out for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the Harry Potter prequel that everyone insists isn’t a prequel. Out November 2016. (via trailer town)

Update: Toooootally a prequel…Dumbledore gets name-dropped in this one:

Update: The full trailer has been released:

posted by Jason Kottke

New Harry Potter film! New Harry Potter film?

Well, sort of. Rowling is writing a screenplay for Warner Bros. based on a Hogwart’s textbook called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world. The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt’s story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry’s gets underway.