Culture Crash: Hype for The Crimes of Grindelwald and Jude Law as young Dumbledore

This year has no shortage of movies with a lot of hype. Already, Black Panther has dominated online conversation, shattered box office records, and given us an early contender for next year’s award season.

And fans are already buzzing for the April 27 release of Avengers: Infinity War and the May 18 unveiling of Deadpool 2.

Now, Warner Brothers has pushed JK Rowling’s latest Wizarding World film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald into that fray. Though fans will have to wait until November, the much-anticipated sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has fans eagerly anticipating its release because the new entry will feature something the previous installment didn’t: Jude Law as a young Professor Dumbledore.

Law’s Dumbledore made his debut in the teaser trailer, and, if the trailer is to believed, he will be the linchpin of the story, firmly tying the Fantastic Beasts series to the Harry Potter series set in the same Wizarding World expanded universe.

Fans have been wondering what the character would look and sound like in this series, and Law’s starring role in the trailer have answered some of those questions. In the trailer, Law delivers his lines slowly and calculating, letting every character in the room, and every viewer watching the trailer, that he is up to much more than he’s letting on.

It’s an exciting feeling for fans delving deeper into the magical universe they know and love so well. After years of waiting, we finally get to see Dumbledore up to his old tricks and surely, at the height of his magical powers.

It’s not as if the trailer is without issue, though: there was an uproar online at the fact that it appears ministry officials apparate right onto Hogwarts grounds, which Hermione would remind us isn’t possible.

But in all, Potterheads are whipping themselves into a frenzy analyzing the short, 1 minute and 57 second trailer.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald will be released November 16, but there were surely be more trailers to analyze in the meantime.

I’m Evan Rook.