Book Review: Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
There are two making-of books for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. One is this 144-page hardcover and the other is the 160-page hardcover The Case of Beasts: Explore the Film Wizardry of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
You can think of this book as the condensed version of The Case of Beasts even though there's only a difference of 16 pages. The narrative here flows more smoothly like an actual book while The Case of Beasts adopts a scrapbook-like presentation. The information within both books are quite similar so the main difference really comes down to the presentation style and narrative flow.
Inside the Magic talks about the film production, characters, setting up the locations, research, the story, Newt's case and a brief coverage on the creatures that appear in the movie.
There's a lot of interesting things to read as all these are behind the scenes. You can find out how they recreated 1920s New York, Macusa, or learn more about the characters, and read what the actors have to say about the characters. The content, text and pictures are also beautifully laid out.
As a standalone book, it's great. But when compared to The Case of Beasts which is also strangely on the film production, this book lacks the depth. The other book has more content. And since there is duplication of content as both books cover the same topic, it's best to get just one, the other one.
Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)
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