Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Okay so I don't imagine I'm doing anything but treading well-worn ground by this point, this film is pretty well covered already, but I haven't put out a blog post in a while, so why not?

Okay, so, I'll begin by saying that I actually really enjoyed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I was always of the opinion that the world of Harry Potter was far more interesting than anyone in it, or any of their struggles, so essentially, the first Fantastic Beasts film was exactly what I wanted in a spin-off. It gave an expansion of that world, a look at different parts of wizarding society, and some really inventive creature designs, all wrapped up in a nice package of special effects and Eddie Redmayne doing his best Matt Smith impression. I've heard that film described as "Doctor Who: Pokemon Trainer" before, and it was said in a derogatory manner, but what can I say? I thought that was a good mix. I never expected it to win any awards or blow anyone away but it was a perfectly pleasant way to kill a couple of hours.

So, a few years, and what seems like an eternity of headlines and furious fan-debates later, and so arrives Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald which...completely pushes everything I liked about the first one into the background while devoting all the attention to the rise of not-Voldemort and the troubles of characters that haven't really been developed enough for me to care about and completely mishandling one of the few I liked...oh dear.


The entire plot is essentially a bunch of contrivances loosely strung together around the rise of the titular baddie, Ezra Miller's character Credence is still alive (it's never explained how) and is now suddenly obsessed with the secret of his identity, which he never cared about before, and the audience has no reason to care about now. Nagini's there too...she's a woman now, because this is Warner Brothers, and for some reason they like turning previously established monsters into human women *coughshelobcough.* J.K Rowling, as usual, pretends to have always had that in mind, but much like Dumbledore being gay, there is no implication of that anywhere in the source material before she wanted credit for having written it. Speaking of, Dumbledore is in this, Jude Law's pretty good as a young Dumbledore, and for those wondering, yes, they do acknowledge his sexuality...well...it's pretty heavily implied at the very least, he never outright says it, but then this is set in 1927, so I imagine he wouldn't have been that forthcoming with it, perhaps even wizards weren't accepting of homosexuality back then, who knows?

The Dumbledore scenes honestly feel like they come out of a different, better film, any Potterheads reading this should just look those up on YouTube and you'll have seen the best parts this film has to offer.  you'll notice I haven't mentioned much of the story yet and that's because there isn't much of one. No! shut up! No there isn't! Exposition and worldbuilding is not a story, it's supposed to come with one! Nagini got a lot of media attention for the aforementioned being a human woman. Not in the style of an unregistered animagus, she apparently carries a blood curse, which means she can transform into a snake, and does so in her sleep, but before long she'll be stuck as one forever. This would be tragic, but it's treated as a footnote, she's barely even in the film, she's there so that Credence has someone to escape with from the freakshow he works for, and he's only there so that Nagini can be there. After the escape she just sort of, stands around, saying and doing nothing.

Jacob and Queenie are back, I liked them in the first one, but their characters are completely butchered, also, Jacob has his memories back...somehow, apparently memory charms only effect bad memories...even though we've seen them work to the contrary SEVERAL times, wow, Hermione's parents must've REALLY hated her. So he remembers things, basically because the plot needs comic relief, and Queenie is trying to magic-roofie him into marrying her in England which is all kinds of wrong, I mean, at least Newt made her lift the enchantment but still, the fact that she did it at all...
also, not to spoil, but there's a decision she makes at the end of the movie that goes against everything she wants, for no reason but so that there can be dramatic stakes. In fact she abandons her sole reason for doing the thing in order to do the thing because...reasons I suppose? Yeah the writing isn't great.

Also, the Credence's identity thing contains two plot-twists, I'm going to reveal what they are in a few lines so if you haven't seen the film, stop reading at the upcoming space between lines, I'll leave a wide enough gap, but suffice it, for now to say that neither twist makes sense, and the second one actively flies in the face of continuity. if this is where you stop reading, then TL:DR: Crimes of Grindlewald is a bit shit really, the writers seem to think worldbuilding counts as it's own story, it's franchise management disguised as filmmaking, what story is there is contrived as all hell, if I may borrow a line from BoJack Horseman "it has nothing to say, and it says that nothing badly" if you're still going to see it, just manage your expectations.










Okay, so the Credence twists. There's a lead-up to a big reveal, which, we're led to believe is going to be that he is the thought-to-be-lost Corvus Lestrange, but, it turns out he's not, Corvus Lestrange's older sister switches him for another baby in a sinking ship because he's crying, y'know...as one does...you know, just because it's a fantasy story doesn't mean it doesn't have to be believable, there's such a thing as internal logic. Anyway, so it turns out Credence is actually just some guy...But wait!

Once he goes to Grindelwald...for answers...even though, as far as he knows he knows he already has them, it turns out no! he's not just some guy, he's actually a Dumbledore!

WHAT!?

that's even less believable than the whole Lestrange thing! I think we're supposed to believe the Lestranges are bad people, because Bellatrix, but even then, they would at least care about their own family, given the obsession with bloodlines (especially with the villains) in this universe. But, not only does the only other Lestrange we see, not actually seem like a bad person, that is. until she arbitrarily switches her baby brother with another one because the plot demanded it. But now we're expected to believe a Dumbledore was just abandoned as a baby on a sinking ship? I know Albus didn't end up being the best person despite appearances, and we don't know much else about the family, but it's enough of a name that there must be some sort of dynasty to it, because in this world if there wasn't, people wouldn't know the name. Yet we're supposed to believe one was just left there to die, just because? Didn't anyone proof-read this fucking script?

I'm gonna get flak for expecting "a kids film" to make sense, but the target audience has never been an excuse, especially since that isn't actually the target audience, Harry Potter has always gone for broad appeal, and even if it hadn't the fans of the original books and movies, which you must assume are part of the target demographic here, are all adults now. Even if they weren't, even if there were "for the kids" that's not an excuse to slack off, that's accepting a responsibility to try harder, kids deserve good stories to grow up with.

Anyway that's another rant for another post, I guess the point I took so long to arrive at is, I didn't care for Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed the last one, oh well.