There’s been a tonne of controversy surrounding the production of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald. The movie, based on pre-release trailers and interviews, has rewritten Nagini to be a Maledictus, hasn’t dealt with Dumbledore’s homosexuality properly, and may have introduced Professor McGonagall before she was even born. Oh, and they cast Johnny Depp in a lead role.
Nevertheless, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald manages something remarkable: it’s not just bad in spite of all of the above setbacks, it’s probably worse.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a truly bad movie, born entirely out of the cynical need to milk as much money out of the audience as possible. It’s one of the worst movies in a year that gave us some remarkably bad movies and is easily the worst entry into the Harry Potter-led Wizarding World franchise.
The film’s major flaw is that it sets up around a dozen plot threads and then never weaves anything interesting out of any of them. In the first twenty minutes of the film, we are reintroduced to Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), escaping the American Ministry of Magic, and Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who is banned from international travel by the Ministry of Magic. Also in the Ministry of Magic are Lita Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) and Newt’s brother Theseus (Callum Turner), who are getting married despite Lita still having feelings for Newt.
Meanwhile, Creedence (Ezra Miller) is searching for details about his biological parents, Queenie (Alison Sudol) wants to marry no-maj Jacob Kowalski (Dan Folger), Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) wants Newt to find Grindelwald in Paris for him, which is also where Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) currently is, searching for Creedence, who both find Nagini (Claudia Kim).
If you’re confused right now, I regret to inform you that this isn’t even half of what goes down in this convoluted mess of a film. And that’s not even going into the unexplained decisions, conveniently placed people and objects (right down to fitting the titular “fantastic beasts” in whenever they can) and at least one completely uncharacteristic heel-turn.
It’s hard to say how this film became so muddled. It’s possible that JK Rowling, as the sole screenwriter, probably thought she had as much room to develop her characters’ lives and build her world as she does in the printed word.
It may also be a result of David Yates’ poor direction, with characters walking in and out of the film without any sort of rhyme or reason, and the pacing being so bad you’ll be desperate to look at your watch within minutes. Or maybe – and most likely – executives and producers wanted to stuff this film with as many Easter Eggs and callbacks as possible to keep the franchise afloat.
It’s the latter point – Easter Eggs and callbacks – that spell the nail in the coffin for the film. The film is filled to the brim with so many superfluous details and unnecessary explanations of Wizarding World minutiae that it bogs down every single scene.
A mid-movie flashback to a young Lita and Newt at Hogwarts, for example, exists solely to read out Wikipedia pages of Harry Potter history, whilst returning the audience to a simpler time when this franchise rose above its station. It should also be noted that more than a few of the references on display blatantly contradict established lore, and are sure to be heavily discussed and dissected once spoilers start getting around.
So. Many. References.
The acting talent on display is, admittedly, still top-par: Redmayne remains as charming and bashful as ever as Newt Scamander, and the rest of the ensemble, from Ezra Miller’s tortured Creedence to Katherine Waterston’s pragmatic Tina, are excellent. Notably, Jude Law as Dumbledore is an almost perfect fit. And while the casting remains controversial, Johnny Depp as a blonde-haired fascist demagogue who mistreats others out of a misguided sense of right is more than a little on-the-nose to current-day US politics.
However, even the production and art design, once the saving grace of this series, is missing from this film, with the costumes and sets all looking blander than before. In particular, the setting of Paris, a city notorious for being a character in and of itself, is completely under-utilised.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is this franchise’s answer to Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones: an unnecessary, boring addition to a franchise that has both gone stagnant and is in dire need of fresh ideas.
The best thing it can do, to be frank, is to go away for a while and rework it from the ground up. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.