Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (on Twitter)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (on Twitter)Imme van OudheusdenBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingJan 12Newt ScamanderThe Wizarding World has been a long ongoing trend that has intrigued many millennials ever since the first book was released in 1997 up until the latest Fantastic Beasts movie in 2018.

It is one of the most impactful phenomena of the last two decades and has gathered a large following.

However, since the second Fantastic Beasts movie was released there seems to be more backlash than ever before on the franchise.

It has even led to some parts of the fandom developing an anti-fandom mindset (Garner, 2018), which means that fans will disassociate themselves from a specific part of a franchise because they dislike it that much.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald isn’t the first movie in a massive franchise to receive backlash, this happened with other famous movies such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi only two years ago.

It was seen by many fans as a failure and this movie received tons of hate online from both critics and fans (Forbes, 2018 & Express, 2018), however when a study by Morton Bay (2018) was performed on Twitter, only 21.

9% of the comments were negative.

Thus, the question arises if this could be the same scenario for Fantastic Beasts and because most people have an affinity with the Wizarding World franchise, we want to give our readers a general overview of the fandom’s opinions towards the new movies (with some magical visualisations).

This article was written for general readers with an interest in one of the biggest franchises and fandoms in the world, as well as for the fans themselves.

The exposure of the Wizarding World has been enormous throughout the years and can be described as an ongoing trend.

By showing Google Trends, an insight of how popular the new franchise is compared to the Harry Potter franchise can be put into perspective.

 It doesn’t take long to see that Harry Potter is still way more popular than Fantastic Beasts currently is, although Fantastic Beasts isn’t doing quite bad either.

Google TrendsIt is mentionable that Harry Potter has been establishing itself since 1997 and Fantastic Beasts only got released back in 2016, however the original Harry Potter movies acquired tons of fans and money when the first movie was released.

So, when it was announced that the fans would be getting a prequel many fans were excited, as this was seen as their “extension” of the Wizarding World, and this was also seen in the BOX Office reports.

BOX Office Results Bar ChartBOX Office Results Pie ChartFantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them brought in more than the Prisoner of Azkaban, hereby indicating that it is surely not the lowest earning movie in the franchises.

However, with the second movie being out in the cinema for two months now, it is both earning a bad reputation and significantly less money.

The new movies became a hot topic for critics, such as The Telegraph (2016), Buzzfeed (2016) and Forbes (2016), ever since Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance at the end of the movie back in 2016 as Grindelwald.

More insights regarding the Johnny Depp situation will be given later in this article.

Tweet 1: Popular Negative OpinionsWith these fans having very different opinions in regards to the Fantastic Beasts franchise, research was done to portray why these fans liked or disliked the movies.

For this research, we turned to the platform where everybody loves oversharing: Twitter.

Per movie 250 tweets were analysed in the timespan of when the first teasers were released up until the movie stopped playing in cinemas.

Thus, resulting in 2016–06–01 until 2017–04–30 for Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and 2018–11–01 until 2019–01–07 for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald.

By just scrolling through these Tweets it was already noticeable that the negative comments surrounded topics such as the actors included in the movie and clear plot holes, however later on we will elaborate on these topics and see if there is a specific reason why people disliked the second movie.

To sort out the chaos (that consisted of 500 Tweets), the posts were divided multiple times into different categories to give a brief overview of how much positivity and negativity was present on Twitter.

The first main categories were decided by the amount of negative, positive or marketing-related Tweets, which resulted in the following findings:Fantastic Beasts 1 and Fantastic Beasts 2 Divide of CommentsOut of the 500 Tweets, more than half were marketing-related, 251 to be exact, hereby indicating the hashtags that were being used for the movies were heavily commercialised.

The remaining Tweets seemed quite positive for both movies, with very little negativity being present towards the first movie (only 2 comments out of the 105) and around a third of the total comments for The Crimes of Grindelwald movie was negative (35 out of 144).

 However, these main categories still do not give us more information on why the Crimes of Grindelwald is described as “the movie that tarnished the Harry Potter Legacy.

” (Forbes, 2018)So, after taking a look at the non-marketing related Tweets, it was visible that the fans on Twitter seemed to have a great interest (both negatively and positively) in the characters of the movie, as well as the actors and showed this through their words, fan-art and fan-fiction.

Some of the remaining Tweets also included users mentioning they were planning to see the movie or just watched the movie without stating an actual opinion.

These Tweets were labelled as Movie Experience and not taken into account while doing more research.

Histogram Discussed TopicsBar Chart Characters FB 1 & 2We will start with what the fans loved most on Twitter, which were the characters.

As shown in the video above, the fans were head over heels for Newt Scamander in Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Although, this wasn’t a surprise since he was the main lead in the movies and he was one of the first male characters to be more caring and gentle, plus the fact that he is a Hufflepuff (and, everybody loves a Hufflepuff).

The other characters that were popular on Twitter included Dumbledore (or more the lack of his presence in the movie) and Credence.

All these male characters also received quite a bit of fan-art.

Tweet 2: Fan showing love towards Newt ScamanderIn the Crimes of Grindelwald the spotlight was taken away from Newt, the new love of the fandom seemed to have shifted towards the antagonist of the movie; Grindelwald.

This was both because he turned into the lead of the second movie and he was a part of the Grindeldore couple, this also explains why the young Dumbledore (#Dumbledamn) was mentioned often in comments.

Although fans were still visibly disappointed with the lack of the romance between the two (The Guardian, 2018).

Tweet 3: Complaints about lack of GrindeldoreTweet 4 : Support for GrindeldorePie Chart Characters FB 1 & 2Then another heavily debated topic on Twitter were the actors of the movies, especially since there have been multiple issues surrounding them.

When looking at the Tweets of the first movie in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, only two actors and an actress were really talked about; Redmayne (Newt), Depp (Grindelwald) and Sudol (Queenie).

What was noticeable in these Tweets was that all of the users had positive reactions towards the movie stars.

Actors mentioned in Tweets FB 1Tweet 5: Fan showing love towards actorsHowever for the second movie, more actors were mentioned.

This time, Jude Law, who played Dumbledore, and Ezra Miller, who played Credence, got their fair share of appreciation.

Actors mentioned in Tweets FB 2All but one actor received nothing but praise for their appearance in the movies: Johnny Depp.

Out of the 28 posts that he was mentioned in, 5 of them were negative.

These all mentioned the allegations of him abusing his wife, although the remaining 23 positive posts all defended him or simply stated they did not care for his personal life but did love his acting.

Tweet 6 about the Johnny Depp situationTo actually find out what was loved or hated about the movies, the Tweets were also analysed based on remarks about the plot.

For Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, we found that all of the comments were set in a positive tone.

However many of the comments did not mention why they loved the movie, only 5 comments specified what they loved about the actual plot and these all had to do with the storyline having a darker undertone and just being “good” or the time-set and stunning visuals that were used.

Infographic Plot FB 1Tweet 7: Positive opinion about plot FB 1For Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald the opinions seemed to differ, there was still love towards the movie (66% of the comments were still positive), however fans barely indicated why they loved it.

The people who disliked the plot (luckily) mentioned why and most of the comments referred back to the storyline being incomplete or incorrect, which made the movie very confusing to follow.

These results already indicated a divide in the fandom’s mindset and how there seem to be different sub-cultures emerging based on the matter if they liked the Fantastic Beasts franchise or not.

Infographic Plot FB 2Tweet 8: Negative opinion about plot FB 2Another way the fans were expressing themselves on Twitter was through posting fan-art, fan-theories and fan-fiction.

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them had 21 out of 105 posts that included fan creations.

The posts mainly revolved around the Grindeldore couple (Grindelwald and Dumbledore), Newt himself and Newtina (Newt and Tina) and in all of the fan-art it was noticeable that the couples were loved amongst fans all around the world, as some was even posted in Thai, Russian and Japanese.

Tweet 9 & 10: Japanese fan-art about Newtina and other Fantastic Beasts CharactersThe Tweets revolving around the second movie contained more fan creations, out of the 144 posts 41 contained fan-art and fan-fiction.

Almost all of these posts revolved around the same couples and Newt Scamander individually.

The creation of the different fan-art clearly shows the investment of the fans with specific character couples and fits well with what the Wizarding World fandom has been doing for years; if they cannot get enough of something, they will create more of it themselves.

Tweet 11 & 12: Containing fan-art of the Grindeldore coupleAfter analysing Twitter, it was very clear that the hashtags that were made for the movies were also heavily used for marketing purposes.

Since the Wizarding World franchise has literally made billions of dollars it is not surprising that a commercial space is emerging.

With 251 out of the 500 Tweets being marketing-related it is clear that more and more companies are aware that this magical franchise is something they can make money off.

Then there are also the official fan-sites such as Pottermore and MuggleNet, which are mainly fan-driven, but still seen as neutral and commercial since they send out a lot of promotions for the movie.

The corporate companies try to heavily influence this market and they either do this by Tweeting about give-aways or promotions for the movies, such as posting more facts, events with actors, merchandise or links to ticket websites.

Tweet 13: Give-away by popular account OriginalFunkoTweet 14: Promotional post by the original Fantastic Beasts accountOne of the biggest issues that people had with the Fantastic Beasts movies was the casting of Johnny Depp, he was and is a controversial figure as he has been accused of abuse by his ex-wife and this was widely criticised by various media outlets (Variety, 2018 & The Guardian, 2018).

In the sequel Johnny Depp appeared more and around the time The Crimes of Grindelwald was released conversations (or allegations), were sparked once more.

The opinions on this were very visible on Twitter and media outlets, with many fans being angry at the actor and J.

K.

Rowling for the casting.

Through looking at the most used hashtags to either show support (#JohnnyDeppIsInnocent) or hate (#BoycottJohnnyDepp) for the actor on Twitter, we saw some very outspoken users on the platform.

Especially in Korea the actor wasn’t popular, with there being separate Korean Hashtags being created to criticise him.

However, the support for Johnny Depp was still a majority on the platform, with around 2 out 3 of the comments being positive and tons of people still expressed their loved for him.

Tweet 15: Negative Johnny Depp OpinionWord-clouds on researched HashtagsSince the Twitter users are very outspoken about topics like these, it has led to another phenomenon taking place in the wizarding community: multiple fan-subcultures are emerging within the original fandom.

Most of the fans are very out-spoken about their standpoints and this is creating gaps between fan communities.

With some anti-fans highly criticising the fans who like Johnny Depp or the Fantastic Beasts franchise in general.

Tweet 16 & 17: Criticising other fansFantastic Beasts vs Harry PotterWith all the results that were gathered, we can clearly see that the Wizarding World is no longer one big community but rather multiple smaller communities.

And all of these communities have very different standpoints on the new Fantastic Beasts movies and the actors being included in them.

The famous Boy-Who-Lived has been enchanting fans for longer than two decades now and what fascinated people into the whole phenomenon (such as the houses and incredibly written plots) seems to be pushed aside by J.

K.

Rowling.

With the new movies not being based on books and not revolving around Harry Potter, Hermione Granger or Ron Weasley, it intrigued less fans because it took away what made Harry Potter magical.

 So, after the airing of the new franchise, it brings the question if Rowling isn’t actually destroying her magic by trying to fit so many franchises into her Wizarding World.

This can be answered through some of the research of today; yes, she might be destroying some parts of her world but the fandom has gotten so incredibly big that there will be a large portion that will support her no matter what she releases.

 The current situation relates back to the Last Jedi movie, online it is made to look like this movie is receiving tons of backlash but when it is put into perspective, the actual hate online is relatively little.

The actual negative Tweets surrounding the whole Fantastic Beasts franchise was online 14,8% out of all the 249 Tweets that were made by fans.

Although this does not hide the fact that both The Last Jedi and Fantastic Beasts achieved the goal to make fans very confused and disappointed.

What we fully recommend you do is to decide for yourself what you think of the new franchise, especially since there are so many mixed opinions and this is only the sequel in a total of 5 movies.

Thus, waiting until the next movie for answers wouldn’t be a bad option either.

J.

K.

Rowling has been known to be a master at creating magnificent storylines, so for now, the best we can do is have a little bit more faith in her (and the whole marketing team behind her) and hope she can use her magic to turn Fantastic Beasts into the franchise the fans deserve.

There is no doubt that the upcoming Fantastic Beasts movies will renew the love for magic, either for or a new generation or an older one.

Maybe this won’t be the same love for magic that Harry Potter taught us ever since 1997, but Newt Scamander definitely has more fantastic beasts for us to love.

APA References:Bay, M.

(2018).

Weaponizing the haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation.

Los Angeles: USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Bennett, A.

(2016, November 2).

Harry Potter Fans Are Livid Over Johnny Depp’s Casting In “Fantastic Beasts”.

Retrieved from BuzzFeed: https://www.

buzzfeed.

com/alannabennett/johnny-depp-fantastic-beastsChuba, K.

(2018, October 10).

Amber Heard Reads Letter About Johnny Depp Abuse Allegations at #MeToo Anniversary Event.

Retrieved from Variety: https://variety.

com/2018/scene/news/amber-heard-johnny-depp-open-letter-me-too-1202975127/Garner, R.

(2018).

A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies.

In Not My Lifeblood: Autoethnography, Affective Fluctuations and Popular Music Anti-fandom (p.

Chapter 6).

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 .

Hawkes, R.

(2016, November 9).

Johnny Depp confirmed as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts — but not everyone is happy.

Retrieved from The Telegraph: https://www.

telegraph.

co.

uk/films/2016/11/09/johnny-depp-confirmed-as-grindelwald-in-fantastic-beasts—but-n/Kyriazis, S.

(2018, July 10).

Star Wars Last Jedi backlash and fan boycott: Director WARNS there will be consequences.

Retrieved from Express: https://www.

express.

co.

uk/entertainment/films/986642/Star-Wars-Last-Jedi-backlash-fan-boycott-Han-Solo-flop-Kathleen-Kennedy-Rian-JohnsonMendelson, S.

(2016, November 2).

Why Johnny Depp Doesn’t Help ‘Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them’.

Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.

forbes.

com/sites/scottmendelson/2016/11/02/why-johnny-depp-doesnt-help-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them/#19e400442e44Mendelson, S.

(2018, November 14).

Review: ‘Fantastic Beasts 2’ Is A Franchise-Killing Disaster.

Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.

forbes.

com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/11/14/review-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald-franchise-killing-disaster-jk-rowling-johnny-depp/#ad50acf31803Mendelson, S.

(2018, June 26).

‘Star Wars 9’s Big Problem Won’t Be ‘Last Jedi’ Backlash Or ‘Solo’ Failure.

Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.

forbes.

com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/06/26/star-wars-9-last-jedi-netflix-solo-force-awakens-wonder-woman-1984-frozen-2-jumanji-james-bond-box-office/#4014ae3c3d17Pulver, A.

(2018, October 4).

Amber Heard’s legal team condemns Johnny Depp abuse denials.

Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.

theguardian.

com/film/2018/oct/04/amber-heards-legal-team-condemns-johnny-depp-abuse-denialsNewt Scamander Picture was retrieved from: https://t1.

daumcdn.

net/movie/0161e246399349cba68d8f1f9c5c15c41540263032405Fantastic Beasts vs Harry Potter Picture was retrieved from: http://ovicio.

com.

br/wp-content/uploads/eg2tsrg5bvaybfnqc0ql.

jpgNewt Scamander and Bowtruckle Gif was retrieved from: https://68.

media.

tumblr.

com/715c11d0ceb1812c878afd81f20c8e83/tumblr_oh069mPDCQ1vpj1fho1_500.

gifMischief Managed Picture was retrieved from: https://juststickers.

in/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/mischief-managed.

pngAll Tweets:Tweet 1: Posted by user @JennyENicholson on 20/07/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/JennyENicholson/status/1020406911676502016Tweet 2: Posted by user @prettymessygurl on 1/12/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/prettymessygurl/status/1068947380379230209Tweet 3: Posted by user @deppheadgang on 23/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/deppheadgang/status/1065945167058935809Tweet 4: Posted by user @deppheadgang on 02/01/2019Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/deppheadgang/status/1080454573192548352Tweet 5: Posted by user @magicalGicques on 09/12/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/magicalGicques/status/1071788822264930305Tweet 6: Posted by user @cindispy00 on 03/12/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/Cindispy00/status/1080966882553942016Tweet 7: Posted by user @wyattyhalpert on 20/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/wyattyhalpert/status/800275977871863808Tweet 8: Posted by user @ryanmeft on 16/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/RyanmEft/status/1063672113293377536Tweet 9: Posted by user @tapioccat on 27/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/tapioccat/status/1078439397618380800Tweet 10: Posted by user @osatou_tw on 03/01/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/osatou_tw/status/1081087335159087104Tweet 11: Posted by user @decembristsson on 04/01/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/decembristsson/status/1081190992567549952Tweet 12: Posted by user @dichi71 on 05/01/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/DiChi71/status/1081659007750807552Tweet 13: Posted by user @originalfunko on 22/12/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/OriginalFunko/status/1063976339114471424Tweet 14: Posted by user @fantasticbeasts on 30/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/FantasticBeasts/status/1068671018628079617Tweet 15: Posted by user @sukuraai on 26/09/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/SakuraAi/status/1044586020572778498Tweet 16: Posted by user @mathewkearney on 16/11/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/mathewkearney/status/1063553558556155904Tweet 17: Posted by user @kyloporg on 25/08/2018Retrieved from: https://twitter.

com/kyloporg/status/1044616526681329664.

. More details

Leave a Reply