The film's opening explains the film far better than what we've seen in the trailers so far. There's a lot of information in just a few scenes, and it gives you the impression that this movie will be dark, quickly-paced and action-heavy, making it much more like the later Potter films than the early ones.

The film, like the original Harry Potter, opens with tragedy. We see a brutal attack by the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, who fans of the books will remember as a sort of proto-Voldemort, who was making trouble (read: chaos, mayhem and bloodshed) in Europe before Dumbledore defeated him in a duel in 1945.

All is not right in the wizarding world in 1926, when the film is set. And the newspaper clippings that fly across the screen confirm this, mentioning tighter security at Hogwarts, terror attacks by Grindelwald and anti-magical sentiment in the U.S. being at an all-time high. Bonus:We learn that the New York wizarding newspaper is called The New York Ghost.

Colin Farrell shows up as Percival Graves, who inspects the scene of a collapsed building while muggles (sorry, we're just not used to the term "No-Maj" and we won't be for a while) talk about witnesses seeing a "black cloud" doing all the damage. Then something cracks the building next door and rips up the street like it's tunneling through the cobbles, although we never see what it looks like.

We also meet Newt, as we've seen in the trailers, going through U.S. Customs with his case full of magical creatures. He bumbles around New York once he makes it into the city, and stumbles into a meeting of what appears to be an anti-magical group of muggles shouting about witches living among them. Dan Fogler's Jacob Kowalski trips over Newt's magical case on his way to the bank. Newt also bumps into Tina (Katherine Waterston), who is eating a hot dog, thus firmly establishing the New York setting. At the meeting, the little adorable niffler we met in the most recent trailer gets out of the case, going after coins in a beggar's hat. So far, that monster is officially our favorite part of the movie.