Two new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Clip Follow Positive Early Reviews

The early reviews for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them are in, and they’re very good. Currently sitting at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, the first film to be scripted by J.K. Rowling herself is being hailed as “sheer magic” by Newsday’s Rafer Guzman, a surprisingly dark origin story that will appear more to grownups than youngsters by Us Weekly’s Mara Reinstein, and film that has a “spellbinding polish” by indieWIRE’s Eric Kohn (to call out just a few.) With the release date quickly approaching, Warner Bros. Pictures is making a final push to make sure folks are aware that the world of Harry Potter is being expanded by Rowling and director David Yates in what will be the first of five new Fantastic Beast films.

The two clips offer up some intriguing new details about magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), as well as one of the creatures in his possession. We also get to see Scamander go head-to-head with two worthy adversaries; Colin Farrell‘s character Percival Graves, an Auror for MACUSA’s Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Ron Perlman's gangster goblin.

We're starting to learn a lot more about why Newt Scamander is so suspicious to the MACUSA Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Because the dark wizard Grindelwald followers are trying to expose the magical community in order to incite a war between wizards and No-Majs (the American version of Muggles), someone like Scamander, with his case full of weird and wild beasts, is certainly someone they might be able to exploit.

The second clip gives us a much richer look at the wizarding world in the 1920s. Who better to portray a goblin gangster than Ron Perlman? And what's more, this world is radically differnet from Hogwarts and the contemporary wizarding world we saw in the Potter franchise. While Newt might be a Brit, the world he's trying to operate in is decidedly American.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hits theaters on November 18.