I'm genuinely disappointed that the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is officially titled Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
JKR had already established a wonderful pattern: that each prequel movie set in the Wizarding World could be named after a textbook.
Instead, the name of the franchise is now Fantastic Beasts, leaving us with 2 problems:
1) "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is simply too long (it's so long that I copied and pasted it that time). We usually abbreviate it Fantastic Beasts, but that doesn't mean Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied and pasted again) anymore. That name refers to the franchise as a whole. It's a similar problem to when Star Wars got retitled Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Years later, people still hear Star Wars and don't know if it's talking about the franchise or the film. Hopefully, people will start calling Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied and pasted for the 3rd time because the title is just so long) "Fantastic Beasts 1".
2) If the franchise is called Fantastic Beasts, that implies that the franchise (not just the first movie) will have something to do with magical animals, not just wizards. The name of the franchise usually has something to do with the content in the franchise. Take a look at Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, and The Terminator. I seriously doubt the Fantastic Beasts franchise as a whole will be about magical animals, but it's entirely possible. If it isn't, it will really confuse the normal people who watch Fantastic Beasts 3 at a friend's house for movie night and wonder "Where are the beasts?"
Better naming schemes for this 5-part series might include:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Hunt Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Train Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Sell Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Identify Them
This has the benefit of tying the series together and tying the series together with the Harry Potter series, like the naming system "Harry Potter and the ____" did.
But it has the detriment of limiting the franchise to having something to do with the beasts.
(My personal favorite naming scheme:)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
Quidditch Through the Ages
The Standard Book of Spells
A History of Magic
This has the benefit of being flexible enough to deal with anything from Quidditch to history to Dumbledore, and fits with several plot points we already know, including Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's involvement in the second installment. Best of all, it follows the pattern set by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied for the 4th time in this post).
I'm just glad the series is not titled:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fan2stic Beasts
Fantastic 3sts
Fant4stic Beasts (pronounced "fant-FOUR-stick")
5tastic Beasts (pronounced "five-TAS-tick")
This has the benefit of telling you the order the movies go in, because let's be honest: When you give something a title like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and you mention "Harry Potter 6" to someone who doesn't know the series very well, they don't know which one that is.
The problem is: If the title doesn't give you any plot information, how are you going to remember which one had which event?
An actor was once quizzed on the events of a franchise he played in. A scene was described in vivid detail. All he had to do say which film had that scene. The problem is: the films were only denoted by their number: I, II, III, IV, V, and VI. He got about half the scenes wrong and had to basically guess on all of them.
Which Fast and Furious movie had the giant safe rolling down the road? The title Fast Five doesn't answer that question, even though that's essentially the plot of the entire movie.
Even vague plot information isn't good enough. Does Tom Cruise's character hang off the edge of a building in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, or Mission: Impossible - Fallout? That's the most prominent scene of the movie, but you wouldn't know which one it is from the title, because the title only gives you extremely vague plot information that you only understand after watching the movie. It's almost a Word Salad Title (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordSaladTitle), and that doesn't help us know which movie we're watching.
Of course, we don't want every movie to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin), but having a little bit of plot information that we can easily retain would be really nice, just so we know which movie is which.
But as long as they're calling the second one by such a clumsy title, I'm using this naming system.
In case you're curious, my favorite naming system is the one from the original Star Trek films. The naming system goes like this:
Franchise Title [number]: Subtitle
I say the one from Star Trek because I'd like that subtitle to have to do with the general plot like The Search for Spock, The Curse of the Black Pearl, or The Winter Soldier. Not to be seemingly random words like Reloaded, Beyond, or Salvation. And not to be words that only indirectly talk about the plot or only talk about a scene or two like Ragnarok, The Phantom Menace, or At World's End.
JKR had already established a wonderful pattern: that each prequel movie set in the Wizarding World could be named after a textbook.
Instead, the name of the franchise is now Fantastic Beasts, leaving us with 2 problems:
1) "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is simply too long (it's so long that I copied and pasted it that time). We usually abbreviate it Fantastic Beasts, but that doesn't mean Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied and pasted again) anymore. That name refers to the franchise as a whole. It's a similar problem to when Star Wars got retitled Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Years later, people still hear Star Wars and don't know if it's talking about the franchise or the film. Hopefully, people will start calling Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied and pasted for the 3rd time because the title is just so long) "Fantastic Beasts 1".
2) If the franchise is called Fantastic Beasts, that implies that the franchise (not just the first movie) will have something to do with magical animals, not just wizards. The name of the franchise usually has something to do with the content in the franchise. Take a look at Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, and The Terminator. I seriously doubt the Fantastic Beasts franchise as a whole will be about magical animals, but it's entirely possible. If it isn't, it will really confuse the normal people who watch Fantastic Beasts 3 at a friend's house for movie night and wonder "Where are the beasts?"
Better naming schemes for this 5-part series might include:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Hunt Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Train Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Sell Them
Fantastic Beasts and How to Identify Them
This has the benefit of tying the series together and tying the series together with the Harry Potter series, like the naming system "Harry Potter and the ____" did.
But it has the detriment of limiting the franchise to having something to do with the beasts.
(My personal favorite naming scheme:)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
Quidditch Through the Ages
The Standard Book of Spells
A History of Magic
This has the benefit of being flexible enough to deal with anything from Quidditch to history to Dumbledore, and fits with several plot points we already know, including Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's involvement in the second installment. Best of all, it follows the pattern set by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (copied for the 4th time in this post).
I'm just glad the series is not titled:
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fan2stic Beasts
Fantastic 3sts
Fant4stic Beasts (pronounced "fant-FOUR-stick")
5tastic Beasts (pronounced "five-TAS-tick")
This has the benefit of telling you the order the movies go in, because let's be honest: When you give something a title like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and you mention "Harry Potter 6" to someone who doesn't know the series very well, they don't know which one that is.
The problem is: If the title doesn't give you any plot information, how are you going to remember which one had which event?
An actor was once quizzed on the events of a franchise he played in. A scene was described in vivid detail. All he had to do say which film had that scene. The problem is: the films were only denoted by their number: I, II, III, IV, V, and VI. He got about half the scenes wrong and had to basically guess on all of them.
Which Fast and Furious movie had the giant safe rolling down the road? The title Fast Five doesn't answer that question, even though that's essentially the plot of the entire movie.
Even vague plot information isn't good enough. Does Tom Cruise's character hang off the edge of a building in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, or Mission: Impossible - Fallout? That's the most prominent scene of the movie, but you wouldn't know which one it is from the title, because the title only gives you extremely vague plot information that you only understand after watching the movie. It's almost a Word Salad Title (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordSaladTitle), and that doesn't help us know which movie we're watching.
Of course, we don't want every movie to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin), but having a little bit of plot information that we can easily retain would be really nice, just so we know which movie is which.
But as long as they're calling the second one by such a clumsy title, I'm using this naming system.
In case you're curious, my favorite naming system is the one from the original Star Trek films. The naming system goes like this:
Franchise Title [number]: Subtitle
I say the one from Star Trek because I'd like that subtitle to have to do with the general plot like The Search for Spock, The Curse of the Black Pearl, or The Winter Soldier. Not to be seemingly random words like Reloaded, Beyond, or Salvation. And not to be words that only indirectly talk about the plot or only talk about a scene or two like Ragnarok, The Phantom Menace, or At World's End.
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