Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Review

It's time once again to dive into the wonderful wizarding world of, well, not Harry Potter this time around, but Newt Scamander and the rest of the people around in the 1920's, just over 50 years before the dreadful day when Lord Voldemort killed Harry's parents. "The Crimes of Grindelwald" is now our 10th movie in this franchise, which is a fun milestone. Like most people who call themselves millennials, "Harry Potter" was a huge part of my growing up years and is still important to me this day. As far as the books go, I was eight years old when "The Sorcerer's Stone" was released in 1997 and had just graduated high school a few months before "The Deathly Hallows" was released in 2007. Tack on the movies beginning in 2001 when I was 12 years old and finishing (with the original series that is) in 2011 when I was 22 years old. I'm even in the same age range as Daniel Radcliffe (born in 1989), Emma Watson (born in 1990) and Rupert Grint (born in 1988). So there's been no franchise that's been this important to me as I've spent most of my life looking forward to the next book or the next movie. So of course "The Crimes of Grindelwald" was one of my most anticipated movies of 2018. This was my franchise and I was excited to go back and explore it some more.

The 40 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes? Yeah, I didn't care. That should've been a warning sign to me. But it wasn't. The 40-70 percent range is what I call mixed reviews. Even though the first "Fantastic Beasts" wound up as positive on the tomatometer, that one had very mixed reactions among fans and I wound up on the positive side there. In fact, I thought "Fantastic Beasts" was a clever way to get us all back into the franchise. Back in 2011, after seeing "The Deathly Hallows - Part 2" in theaters, I was emotionally crushed because I felt this part of my life was coming to a close. I didn't know how to react to the idea of not having something Harry Potter related to look forward to. Thus after a five year wait, I was relieved when said chapter wasn't actually ending. There was still more movies to look forward to. Granted, I was initially worried as to how they were going to turn a Harry Potter textbook into a movie, but it turns out the beasts themselves weren't the real focus here. The focus was on what was happening in the wizarding world when Newt Scamander, author of said textbook, was a young man. J.K. Rowling has said she's been attached to this character for a while and now she's been excited to finally tell his stories to the world. I was totally on board with this.

Sure, "Fantastic Beasts" was far from a perfect film. I think the biggest problem is that the storyline in the movie as a whole isn't super memorable and not all of the characters connected as well with me as our main Harry Potter saga. But it was an excellent introduction to this new generation of movies in the wizarding world. The most exciting thing that the movie brought to the table is the promise for the future by diving into the story of Grindelwald. I remember Johnny Depp as Grindelwald was rumored to show up eventually, which is why I was taken by surprise when Colin Farrell's character ended up being Depp's Grindelwald in disguise. Yeah, I just spoiled that first movie for you, but I kinda had to in order to talk about this sequel because this second movie is about the rise of Grindelwald, as the title suggests. Ever since the seventh book, I've found this story to be rather fascinating. Dumbledore and Grindelwald were childhood friends until a huge falling out turned them into enemies. Grindelwald then experiments in the dark arts and becomes a powerful dark wizard, second only to Voldemort in power, until he was defeated by Dumbledore in 1945. Well, we're in 1927 in this movie and I was excited to see the beginning of this rise to power.

Which is why I found this movie to be so disappointing. I was extremely excited for this movie and I was quite bullish when it came to the reaction. If "Fantastic Beasts" was a solid intro to this universe, "The Crimes of Grindelwald" had the potential to blossom into a grand and glorious chapter of the wizarding world, building on what that first movie set up. And, well, I still have hope that the future of this franchise will be great. But that's the thing. The potential has not yet been reached. Instead of blossoming into something beautiful, this second chapter sputtered out and dragged it's feet, making a lot of confusing and baffling choices along the way. Thus I've been greatly troubled in my mind over the last day or so as I have no idea what to do with this. To be fair, though, this is not a bad movie. In fact, there's a skeleton of something great with some phenomenal performances holding this up. Leading the way with these performances are the two big arch rivals, Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Jude Law plays a young Dumbledore and he really captures the spirit of what makes Dumbledore so great. Standing opposite of him, Johnny Depp genuinely does a great job as the sinister and cunning Grindelwald. This is the beginnings of something great that I hope really pays off.

However, despite pulling off great performances, these two really aren't given much to do here. Dumbledore is there to provide support and have some excellent conversations with our characters. But he's not an integral part of this plot. He's there as a tease for what we could be in store for later. And Grindelwald has an excellent opening sequences and a really powerful final sequence, but in between all that he's a character in the shadows, lurking around with his two partners as they quietly wreak havoc. And I'm not even sure what the "crimes" are that the title is referring to. This is actually the first time in the entire Potterverse that the title hasn't made a whole lot sense. Carrying this movie for most of it is in fact Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander. I really enjoy this character. Newt is a very socially awkward individual who has a great moral compass, yet has no desire to get involved in anything. But he's thrown into this almost against his will, this time by Dumbledore as Dumbledore commissions Newt to go stop Grindelwald in Paris because Dumbledore can't do it himself. So after Grindelwald escapes, Newt is off to Paris, which I think was a solid idea after an intense opening. I was ready for some sort of big conflict as Newt tried to spoil Grindelwald's plans.

Yet that's where the movie started to slip away from me. I was waiting for something to happen, but all I got was an overabundance of characters all doing things that I really wasn't invested in. And speaking of this overabundance of characters, the movie really tested my brain power on who they all were. Despite being a Potter fan for the majority of my life and being well-versed in the lore, I had the haunting feeling while watching that I forgot to do my homework. It's like going into a test, looking at the questions and being filled with dread because you didn't study hard enough or you studied the wrong material. I should've re-watched the first "Fantastic Beasts" movie because I quickly realized that I forgot about who most of the characters were in that movie. I knew Newt Scamander. I knew Jacob Kowalski. I vaguely remember Queenie and Tina Goldstein. And I obviously knew Grindelwald. That's about it as concerning returning characters. With all the other people, as they came on the screen, I was doing my best to remember who they were while keeping track of what they were doing in this movie. Plus there's a whole bunch of new characters I had to learn and several that I completely forgot existed. All of this unfortunately started to hurt my brain.

Then we have the actual plot. Or, well, the main plot that was scattered throughout all of the wandering side plots. What that boils down to is that everyone is searching for Credence, a character who I embarrassingly have to admit that I completely forgot about. The movie made it loud and clear that he was extremely important as Grindelwald was desperately searching for him while a lot of the others were I believe were trying to stop Grindelwald from finding him. Thus the title of this movie could've been called "Fantastic Beasts: The Search for Credence." Or better yet, since the fantastic beasts are even less important to this movie's plot than they were in the first movie, we might as well just call it "Newt Scamander and the Search for Credence." Yet despite the movie bashing over our heads that Credence was extremely important, the movie refused to tell us why. All we know on Credence's side of things is that he has no idea who he is and he really wants to know why. OK, so that means we're in for a big reveal of some sorts, but the movie decided to drag that on for as long as humanly possibly instead of simply revealing it towards the beginning or middle and spending the rest of the movie making said reveal make sense, thus giving us an actual story to care about.

Maybe it's because I've been watching too much of the Arrowverse, but this style of mystery box reveal where they string you along for way too long has really gotten under my nerves. In "The Flash" season 3, around 90 percent of the drama was the mystery of who the masked Savitar was. They didn't reveal the identity until the very end of the season because they apparently thought it was a fun game to play with viewers. I hated it. In "Arrow" season 4, the started out revealing that a main character was going to die this season, but it was apparent that the writers had no idea who it was when they started the season. They just wanted to play that game with their viewers. When it was finally revealed towards the end of the season, I felt like throwing my computer at a wall because I was upset that they played that game with me for so long and said reveal wasn't even worth it. My feelings here were similar. "The Crimes of Grindelwald," in essence, is a movie that straps you in like a donkey and dangles a carrot in front of you the whole film, forcing you to follow it, but not letting you eat it until the journey is over. Much like "Arrow" season 4, when said reveal finally happens, it winds up being extremely confusing as it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Instead of walking out of the theater feeling extremely satisfied with another journey into the wizarding world, I walked out with a laundry list of questions for J.K. Rowling, who did indeed write the screenplay for this movie. Even if they all end up making sense, this still leaves us in the position of this movie only existing to set up future movies. When it comes to the Harry Potter books themselves, two of my favorite books are "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and "The Goblet of Fire" because the individual stories in those books are so interesting and entertaining. In both situations, but especially in "The Goblet of Fire," J.K. Rowling managed to progress the plot of the whole series forward while also providing a story that stands well on its own. That's what a Potterverse book or movie SHOULD do. So the fact that "The Crimes of Grindelwald" only exists to set up drama in future movies is extremely disappointing in its own right. Thus it could be compared to my least favorite book, "The Half-Blood Prince," which I would argue only exists to build the bridge between the first five books and the grand finale. But even that book had great moments in it. "The Crimes of Grindelwald" is extremely lacking in interesting content outside a thrilling beginning and final battle.

On top of that underwhelming structure to this movie, there is a huge laundry list of other questions that J.K. Rowling sparked in my brain. It was obvious that she relied heavily on Easter eggs from the Potterverse to please fans when a lot of those Easter eggs didn't provide anything worthwhile to the plot. And there's several of these that made me wonder if J.K. Rowling fact-checked her own books to make sure what she was doing made sense because it doesn't seem like she did. I can't dive into all of these due to spoilers, but one example that I think is safe to bring up is the inclusion of Professor McGonagall, who is indeed a professor at Hogwarts in this movie. What's the problem with that? Well, if you dive into her story, or look up her Wikia, it can solidly be determined that she was born in 1935. Yet this movie takes place in 1927. Not only that, she's also still a professor during flashbacks to the early 1900's. See the problem there? It sadly reminded me a lot of George Lucas' Star Wars prequels. In the original trilogy, Leia says she remembers her mother. But in the prequels, Padme dies giving birth to Luke and Leia. Whoops! You forgot about that detail Mr. Lucas. There's several examples like this in both the Star Wars prequels and "The Crimes of Grindelwald."

Then we have characters included here like Nagini and Nicholas Flamel. There's no continuity errors with them, but their inclusion in the movie is completely pointless. And no, I don't consider bringing up either character a spoiler because they are both in the trailer and are introduced fairly early in the movie. With Nagini, we learn that she was a human who was doomed to be permanently turned into a snake. I don't know why we needed to learn that. All that it accomplishes is making Nagini's story in the Potter books a bit disturbing when she eats a human being and kinda depressing when Neville decapitates her. What does she do in this movie? Nothing. She's pointless. Maybe she'll have use in the future, but at this point in time her inclusion in the story is solely to make fans of the books happy. Same goes with Nicholas Flamel. Yeah, it was kinda cool to see him on the big screen for the first time. But does his character do anything to progress the plot forward? No. He has absolutely no purpose in the film. J.K. Rowling simply decided to bring characters in for fan recognition rather than actually giving them something to do. This whole thing made me feel like she should've been attached to this movie as a consultant rather being the one who wrote the screenplay.

So how do I grade this? This isn't a question that I should be this troubled over because the grade shouldn't be what matters here. But yet it has been. Due to all of these complaints that I've had, there's a part of me that's wanted to completely rip into this movie, calling it the worst Harry Potter film in the whole franchise and one of the worst movies of 2018. But then there's the other part of me that has quietly called out, reminding me that there are a lot of elements that I enjoyed. Johnny Depp as Grindelwald was excellent. He gets a great scene at the beginning and an even better one at the end. Jude Law as Dumbledore was an inspired casting choice. The returning cast members from the previous film also gave it their all, especially Eddie Redmayne as Newt. He's an excellent character and he has some great support around him. And yes it is true that there's a chance that my opinion could improve if I go back and watch the first movie, then re-watch this one. There's also a possibility that some questions could be answered in future movies that will ease my troubled mind, causing this movie to get better in hindsight. But there's also the chance that the exact opposite happens, so I don't know what to do. For now I'll split the difference and give this a 6/10.