How JK Rowling Ruined Her Own Franchise

[Music] it's September 2013. you're a chairman working at Warner Brothers you're feeling good about yourself you're on the back of overseeing the completion of The Dark Knight trilogy and the Harry Potter films two of your biggest and most successful properties with each film making well a considerable amount of money but Deathly Hallows Part 2 just grossed 1.3 billion dollars worldwide making it the third highest grossing film of all time and the reaction from the fans looks extremely positive life is good one day the author of those very same books that made you that big old chunk of cheddar come see with a script a prequel to The Harry Potter films Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them I think we can see am I allowed to say that David yes so I've now done the plotting properly so we're pretty sure it's going to be five movies a whole new expansion of The Wizarding World is in order and for the first time in her career JK Rowling will be writing the screenplay you need someone to direct the film someone you can trust behind the camera who can carry the weight of one of the biggest franchises in the world well what about David Yates the guy who directed every Potter film since the Order of the Phoenix he's pretty good you then round up a star-stud cast including Eddie Redmayne Colin Farrell Johnny Depp Ezra Miller Catherine Waterston you're sitting on a jackpot it can't go wrong and it didn't in fact it went extremely well Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a box office success grossing over 800 million dollars worldwide the film commercially was a hit and the general consensus from fans was pretty positive although there were some complaints about the film feeling over plotted and totally um inconsistent let's say the question after Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was well what next a few months later JK Rowling hands you another script the crimes of Grindelwald you give her a pat on the back and send her on her way you sign on David Yates to direct again as well as the rest of the cast with a few additions most notably Jude Law for the trailer you sprinkle in some Dumbledore some Hogwarts and some familiar scenes from the Harry Potter films just to soak up every bit of nostalgia possible after two years of production the film released in November 2018 expecting an opening weekend gross of between 65 and 75 million dollars but only making 62. 16 dropped from its predecessor and marking the worst opening of any film in The Wizarding World franchise the cracks have started to emerge but I think it was a privilege it was extraordinary I knew in 2000 it would Nev nothing I wrote I remember thinking in the year 2000 nothing will ever come close to this and you know what that's fine now for all of the success of the Harry Potter films JK Rowling was barely a part of it she had some opinions about casting and consulted on various decisions but in the writing process she was merely an advisor the main writing role was left to this guy Steve clothes the man who solely adapted the books and wrote the scripts for all but one Potter film and in many ways was the unsung hero of the series so naturally for the first two Fantastic Beasts Steve clothes would seem like the perfect fit for writing the scripts or at least assisting in the process but he wasn't even asked so that left first time screenwriter JK Rowling an author known for an expansive World building and plots left to her own accord without anyone helping or anyone looking over her shoulder and well her script drowned in her own ideas the crimes of Grindelwald received heavy criticism with the majority of complaints directed at JK Rowling's bloated an exposition heavy script where some potentially interesting ideas and themes will get lost in a narrative that has an overabundance of plots and an overabundance of characters is this starting to sound familiar trouble disjointed seems like a lot of short scenes but it's bold in terms of jerking people around but far in a few places after George Lucas wrote and directed Star Wars A New Hope to critical Acclaim and unprecedented success he did something for the sequel which would go on to help it become one of the greatest Blockbusters of all time he stepped aside but not completely Lucas had the envisioned story and plot points in his head for the sequel to A New Hope but to help fill in the blanks he hired lay Brackett a Sci-Fi and Western novelist turn screenwriter with previous Works in films such as the long goodbye the big sleep and Rio Bravo and just two weeks after finishing writing the first draft of the script lay bracket passed away leaving George Lucas a draft of the film he wasn't entirely happy with and one he didn't necessarily want to approve upon himself subsequently though Lucas did go on to complete a second draft but it needed some tidying up and to do that he turned to Lawrence Kasdan the person who did the same thing for another of Lucas's Stories the Raiders of the Lost Ark I had just written Raiders The Last Story and I took the script up to George handed over to him in a very ceremonial way and he said let's go out to lunch and he said I'm in real trouble in The Next Star Wars would you write it and I said don't you want to read Traders first he said I'm going to read it tonight if I don't like it I'll take back this off Tustin and Lucas ended up writing another three drafts for The Empire Strikes Back with Lucas providing the central story and kazdan improving dialogue and the pacing as well as focusing the script on character development and relationships Lucas also stepped aside on the directing front after persuading Irvin kashner to take the reins he would do the same for the final film in the trilogy Return of the Jedi with kazdan continuing his writing role and with Richard marquin replacing kirschner as director the trilogy would go on to become one of the most influential and most beloved pieces of Cinema stamping its mark on pop culture and the Sci-Fi genre as a whole with a large piece of that credit going to George Lucas for not only the initial idea and story but for also hiring the right people to help in the process although this all changed in 1994. when E3 I do these three then that's finished I've kind of done the story and I I feel I've accomplished what I set out to do originally even more so because what I really set up to do was the first three eleven years after the completion of the Star Wars Trilogy George Lucas picks up the pen and starts writing his envisioned prequel trilogy to direct the film he turned to some of the best in the business at the time with the likes of Steven Spielberg Ron Howard and Robert zemeckis who all turned down the offer stating the project was too daunting and should be helmed by Lucas himself so Lucas did exactly that and with it an ambitious expansion of the Star Wars story was in motion and this time Lucas would be doing it alone and on May 19 1999 the film opened and yeah things didn't go to plan an overuse of CGI questionable acting Exposition heavy slow-moving scenes with wooden dialogue it was everything the original trilogy wasn't but it's everything the original trilogy could have been I'm not sure and it was so hard a lot of times it's a true story Harrison Ford who plays the space pirate in the film at one point threatened to tie George up and and make him say his own lines at gunpoint the dialogue was a little bit difficult I remember there was one line that I just begged him to take out of the screen plane he finally did it was just coming upon the exploded planet of the princess and Harrison says look kid I've done my part of the bargain when I get to an asteroid you the old man and the droids get dropped off and my line was but we can't turn back fear is their greatest defense I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on aqualiers and what there is is most likely directly towards a large scale of soil and I thought who talks like this George you see like George Lucas JK Rowling is first and foremost a Storyteller one who has an incredible ability at crafting believable layered and vastly expansive worlds where every character object and location has a backstory that could fill its own set of books but when translating too much of that depth and tangibility into a screenplay one that is only a couple hundred pages long and written for a two-hour movie the film can start to feel bloated slow and subsequently tedious to get through writing a script doesn't give you as much time or freedom to be able to pause the story in order to fill the audience in on information that isn't necessary to the narrative and it's something that for George Lucas and JK Rowling writers who both know their words and characters inside and out sometimes require a Lawrence Kirsten or a Steve close to to help reel in and refine the script and in November of 2019 it was announced that for the third Fantastic Beasts film Steve close was hired to do just that for the franchise defining film one that if it failed would see the end of the Fantastic Beasts series Steve close was brought in to improve upon an already written script by JK Rowling so on the 16th of March 2020 principal photography was set to begin and on that very same day the global pandemic would hit and postpone production couple this with delays in production Johnny Depp resigning from his role due to sexual assault allegations Ezra Miller being arrested and JK Rowling receiving heavy backlash for some comments made on Twitter and what you are left with is a masterful production and a film destined to fail which it did releasing nearly a year later than initially scheduled the secrets of Dumbledore gross the total of 405 million dollars 250 million dollars less than its predecessor and taking the Reigns as the least successful film made in The Wizarding World and in November of this year it was announced by Warner Brothers themselves that the plans to complete the series of films had been scrapped leaving JK Rowling's ambitious Wizarding World expansion unfinished unwanted and ultimately a satisfying thank you for watching and uh yeah have a good one is their greatest defense I doubt that the actual security there is much greater than an apple I or Solace and what there is is most likely directed towards a large scale of songs it's not a game you know well how many more systems have to get blown away before you have no place to hide your Force to fight don't you realize what's going on

Channel: Essential Cinema

Views: 1,493,721

Keywords: jk Rowling, harry potter, fantastic beasts, fantastic beasts and where to find them, fantastic beasts the crimes of Grindelwald, fantastic beasts the secrets of Dumbledore, George Lucas, Star Wars, newt scamander, Grindelwald, Eddie redmayne, Johnny depp, amber heard, mads mikkelsen, Zoe kravitz, Jude law, Warner bros, video essay, movie review, film, trailer, fantastic beasts trailer

Id: rXubbdkaRzs

Length: 10min 20sec (620 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022