Review: 'Fantastic Beasts The Crimes of Grindelwald'

Spoilers!

Okay I’ll start off by saying I did enjoy the movie but it has its list of problems or well in my opinion it did, I just found the film overall awkward, convoluted, and convenient, this actually doesn’t apply to Dumbledore and Grindelwald I really enjoyed their performance and story.

But this movie does a lot that makes no sense, ruins the established lore and is totally the fans' fault because J.K.Rowling can do no wrong, apparently.

Visuals

This film was visually stunning, I’m a huge fan of the dark atmosphere mixed with vibrant aesthetic of the era that is the 1920’s and I’ll praise that as the movie goes on the colour palette grows darker, intentional or not this parallels with Grindelwald’s plan moving forward and becoming a shadow on the world.

The CGI was incredible, literally the beasts were fantastic, bringing life to the film but their inclusion seemed a bit forced just to remind you ‘Fantastic Beasts’ is in the title.

Characters

There was only one issue I had with Dumbledore and Grindelwald. There wasn’t enough of them! Their story is so interesting, the relationship they have of mutual admiration and the different ideologies they have should be the only thing happening in this film. Instead they are afterthoughts but for the little time they were in the film definitely the best part of it, Jude Laws performance as Dumbledore is just incredible.

The rest of the characters were there I guess, Eddie Redmayne’s ‘lovable’ Newt Scamander is exactly the same as in the first one and our eyes in this adventure, I still can’t tell if he’s an amazing actor or just the worst, I’m still not compelled by his character.

For the rest of the characters, though they were okay, I can’t really say much they weren’t bad but they didn’t do much either few comedic moments but mostly just awkward dialogue.

I liked the inclusion of Nicolas Flamel because that one made sense, however.

Just why was Nagini there? It made no sense; she’s a person now? She’s good and opposes Grindelwald? You would think he would be right up her ally as she ends up being Voldemort’s left hand gal, that puzzled me, knowing J.K.Rowling she’ll make up some weird excuse why it makes sense and blame the fans for ‘not getting’ it rather than admit her bad writing.

Another addition she included to connect it to Harry Potter was Professor McGonagall which makes no sense because in the 20’s she hadn’t been born yet but yeah, Harry Potter woo I seen that movie I know that character!

Plot

Okay this is a mess.

I can’t even simply put what the plot is it’s all over the place and is messy, I think J.K. was confusing packing a film full of stuff and thinking it’s compelling depth. It’s not.

Okay so the whole plot (I think) was a whole ploy by Grindelwald to try and get Credence to follow him? That’s referring to when Credence finally joins Grindelwald and he says ‘this has all been for you’, this is because Credence is the only one powerful enough to take out Dumbledore, who is the biggest threat to Grindelwald.

I am not a fan of the character Credence. It’s awful and the film decides to have this back and forth about the importance and backstory of Credence who died in the first one but he’s back so yeah that happened, but it has this back and forth of trying to figure out his identify, is he a LeStrange? Is he a nobody? This happens for awhile before they finally come to a decision. He’s a Dumbledore? Yep. Just what? Why? How?

Oh also the characters from the first one are in it too, it’s almost as if this film is trying to be two films, the story of Grindelwald and Dumbledore (which should be the focus because it’s an intriguing, interesting story) and Newt’s antics with whatever new creature these films decide to throw at us but they’re mashed together to create an awkward mess.

But like I said a lot so far Dumbledore and Grindlewald, just give me more. I really liked the last act of the film in and around the tomb where Grindlewald is hosting a rally, really shows his character and actually did a good job of making the good guys look like the bad guys adding fuel to the fire.

This whole film is a build up and I hope that the next films just focus on Dumbledore and Grindelwald that’s what is interesting, that’s what we want to see, the rest is just an awkward mess.