Movies

Following The Footsteps of Fantastic Beasts

One of the true pleasures of losing yourself in JK Rowling’s wizarding world is the richness of the background detail – and the suspenseful feeling that it could become important foreground detail at any moment. This is why it was pretty exciting for Harry Potter geeks to welcome the appearance of spin-off flick Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them this fall. Creatures that previously lurked in the shadows of the existing novels and films, or which were described with quasi-scientific seriousness in Newt Scamander’s 2001 textbook of the same name, were suddenly given center stage – a stage that was erected with a $180 million budget!

Mr Scamander is himself, of course, something of a fantastic beast, given that he is both fictional and rather marvelous. In this ‘adaptation’ of his textbook, which had itself previously existed as a passing detail adding to the richness of Hogwarts lore, Scamander loses a suitcase-load of magical creatures, launching a chain of events that will jeopardize the sanctity of the wizards’ secret world.

Over the course of the adventures that follow, we encounter such wondrous critters as the niffler, a hunter of shiny things, and the storm-making Thunderbird, as Newt and his companions desperately try to recapture his fantastic beasts and avert disaster. Ultimately, wizards and muggles alike must work with the beasts if they are to sustain the balance of power between our cultures.

The people at Sykes Cottages were so inspired by all this magic and adventure that they decided to create a series of themed posters around their favorite beasts of the wizarding world. They’re great for your desktop, but they’ve also been engineered in hi-res pdf format so you can print them out for your meatspace walls. They are rather lovely designs that provide one artist’s idea of how these creatures might appear if encountered in their natural habitats – and now they can become background details to your own personal habitat!

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