Jurassic World: Dominion Review

The Jurassic franchise has come to an end this past weekend. At least that’s what Universal has been claiming in their advertising of “Jurassic World: Dominion.” If you believe them in this statement, which I most certainly do not, then you can perhaps accurately say that it both went out with a bang and with a pathetic thud, depending on your point of view. Obviously opinions are a personal thing, but on the more objective financial side, it opened to a massive $145 million, only slightly down from the $148 million of “Fallen Kingdom.” It makes sense that neither sequel was quite as high as the $208 million opening of the franchise revival “Jurassic World,” but it’s still very impressive that all three movies were massive financial hits… despite the less than stellar reaction. That leads to the “pathetic thud” side of the coin. “Dominion” scored a franchise low 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, claiming that title of worst reviewed in the franchise by a large margin, below the 47 percent margin of “Fallen Kingdom.” Exiting on that level of toxicity is probably not what Universal was hoping for, but their bank accounts might not care about what the critics or audiences have said.

If you read my June movie preview, you’ll note that I thought “Dominion” was going to fall in between “Jurassic World” and “Fallen Kingdom” in regards to opening weekend, not below both. I think the best explanation is that the heavy negative buzz leading up to release, combined with the continued dominance of “Top Gun: Maverick,” contributed to a certain number of people deciding to pass on the finale, especially if they weren’t a fan of “Fallen Kingdom.” Perhaps they chose to go see “Maverick” again instead. I myself was close to not seeing this movie and only did so out of obligation rather than excitement. I’ve seen and reviewed the others. Might as well complete the set.

That said, fans of the Jurassic World movies might not really take this review seriously, claiming that I was going to hate this no matter what, perhaps accusing me of going in looking for bad things to criticize rather than trying to give it an objective look. To that potential accusation, I say… fair. I’m not going to argue that vehemently. I grudgingly went into a movie that I expected to hate and maybe that affected my experience to a degree. Although perhaps a slightly more accurate way to phrase that was that the movie had a very large hill to climb in order to win me over. I was very mixed to disappointed in “Jurassic World” and I left fuming after “Fallen Kingdom.” I put that as my worst movie of that year. And given that Collin Trevorrow, director of “Jurassic World” and “Dominion,” and writer for all three, was again on board, having been given the keys to the car by Universal to do whatever he pleased, my confidence level in him listening to the complaints of his movies and winning me over with a third one was incredibly low. Sometimes you can predict that a movie will be bad based on the filmography of the director and be right. It’s like going into a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me… five times, shame on me if I thought the result was going to be any different.

And thus we get Collin Trevorrow. A man who does not know how to direct a movie. And I’m supposed to believe he can turn things around and match Spielberg’s epic “Jurassic Park” in this third and final movie in the Jurassic World series? I feel this was less of me being a grumpy pessimist and more of me knowing what this was going to be and not allowing myself to get disappointed once again. I’d rather be surprised that he proved me wrong rather than get my hopes up only to have my heart ripped out again.

As such, it’s been quite interesting trying to digest and analyze my specific thoughts about “Dominion” after walking out of it. When you’ve successfully not let yourself get excited for a movie over the course of the past four years and it turns out that you successfully predicted it would be an awful movie, you can’t exactly experience that feeling of disappointment. Being disappointed comes with the connotation that something did not meet your expectations or hopes. When one did not have hopes, one cannot be disappointed. Thus this movie did not disappoint me. It also did not surprise me. It was, simply, par for the course. A bad movie that I fully expected to be bad. One could say I was numb to the experience.

And thus in a strange and somewhat contradicting turn of events, my approach to this undoubtedly bad movie allowed me to have a certain degree of entertainment that I did not have with the previous two movies in this Jurassic World trilogy. I was highly amused during most of the movie and laughed quite a bit. But it was most definitely not a degree of entertainment that was intentional from the vantage point of the filmmakers. I was laughing at the movie, not with the movie. And thus I honestly think this dives into the realm of being “so bad that it’s hilarious.” A movie where you can put on with a group of friends and laugh at how atrocious the whole thing is in a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” sort of way.

And I can promise you that this was not the movie’s intentions. I genuinely got the feel that they were trying to make a good Jurassic World movie. I just found entertainment at the wrong parts.

Case in point, there is a sequence in the movie where Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard got caught in some sort of ring of scandalous dinosaur trafficking mischief. Again. And there’s a point where the generically evil people are using the laser-trained dinosaurs that “Fallen Kingdom” set up to try to kill Chris and Bryce. And thus there is a long sequence where our two heroes are running from these raptors that are trying to eat them for dinner. The theory behind this sequence is that the audience would feel a degree of tension as they worried for the lives of their beloved main characters. For me, though, when the raptors started chasing them, I was, like, “Get them!” I was definitely on Team Dino. And I found a degree of entertainment from the movie as I was hoping that these dinos would kill and eat our main characters.

There was another moment where Bryce Dallas Howard nearly plunged to her death after evacuating an airplane, only to find herself alone in the jungle with a giant bird dinosaur thing that was chasing her. She hid in the water and the dino was inches away from getting her. At this point, I found a level of morbid amusement because, instead of feeling tension similar to the original “Jurassic Park,” I gained excitement at the idea of this dino reaching down a few feet further and biting her head off.

Again, this was not the intention of the filmmakers. They were trying to make intense sequences where the audiences feared for the lives of the main characters. Instead of feeling that emotion, I gained a level of adrenaline at the idea of wanting our main characters to get eaten alive. They did such a horrible job at writing these characters over these three movies that the only level of satisfaction I would get is if their arcs ended with them becoming dinner. And you know you’ve failed miserably as a screenwriter when I’m cheering for the main characters to die. Yet their failures provided me with entertainment that I most certainly did not have after leaving the other two movies. So in a weird way this is kinda the best of the three even though it is also easily the worst of the three?

The only slight glimmer of hope that I had for this movie that I most certainly suppressed is the idea that Collin Trevorrow openly admitted that he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs ran freely across the world and essentially treated the two movies leading up to this as a bridge movie to get to his final destination. In which case, I suppose there’s a chance that the two previous movies were bad because the writer/director literally didn’t care about them and only used them as a means to get to his desired destination. And maybe that would lead the final movie to being a good movie because it’s the movie that the Trevorrow actually cared about?

The result of this particular glimmer of hope lead to… confusion. Again, not disappointment. This movie was not eligible to disappoint me. But Trevorrow spent years of his life teasing this particular premise for this movie only to not take advantage of the premise?

Because, yeah, outside a few random shots of dinosaurs living and roaming in random places in the world, usually through cliché news footage sequences, this is not that movie. A very strong majority of this movie takes place at the headquarters of an evil massive corporation and the immediate jungle surrounding this movie. A total area that is probably smaller than the area of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. The whole time through this premise, I was, like, “THIS was your end game, Trevorrow?”

Not to mention, the biggest conflict of this dinosaur movie did not even involve dinosaurs. There’s a plague of giant, prehistoric locusts that are starting to swarm the Earth and deplete the planet’s food supply. These locusts are secretly released by this evil corporation, who of course via advertising are making themselves look like the good guys, so that they can gain huge financial increase by being the one source of the world’s food supply when the planet runs out. And because of this conflict, Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are brought back in an attempt to stop this plan and get rid of the giant locusts.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard get roped into this because their adopted clone child from “Fallen Kingdom” gets kidnapped by this evil organization. And somehow the baby of Chris Pratt’s pet raptor also gets taken, so Pratt makes a promise to his pet raptor that he would bring the baby raptor back. Somehow they end up at a detour to this other place where they got chased by laser-trained raptors before getting rescued by DeWanda Wise’s character, meet a half dozen other characters that are brought in to do nothing, and the whole gang is united at the headquarters of the evil organization to fulfill their plans that I just talked about in these paragraphs.

And, oh yeah, they randomly run into some dinosaurs along the way.

That’s it. That’s the movie. The more I think about this specific plot, the more I am extremely confused as to how professional screenwriters wrote these plot points. Screenwriters who have dedicated their lives to the art of filmmaking and most likely spent many years of school studying these things and writing them. And this is what they came up with? Even more confusing is how the drafts of this screenplay wound up on the desks of the humans at Universal and the humans at Universal looked at this screenplay and greenlit the thing.

I’m not saying I could make a better movie. Filmmaking is not something I have ever pursued and I have mad respect for people who have. I’m just saying as one who has spent the last decade plus watching and critiquing movies as a hobby, this is just one of those movies that is extremely confusing as to how it became a thing.

What I will say is that, despite the baffling incompetence of the screenwriters of this movie, there did seem to be a lot of people involved in the technical aspects of the movie that did their job proficiently. The movie looks great. The CGI dinosaurs might not be as magical as the original Jurassic Park, but they look great, nonetheless. The movie has a great score. It’s edited just fine. The cinematography and camera work are great. And for the most part it seems like the actors involved in the movie look like they cared about performing their roles well. Chris Pratt is the one that seems like he’s bored and checked out. And bless her heart, Bryce Dallas Howard is trying. I’m a fan of hers and I think she has a great career ahead of her in both acting and directing. But her character is written atrociously, which is why I wanted her eaten. But the clone girl is great. The original trio of Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, and Laura Dern seemed like they had a lot of fun returning. DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie played great side characters. Even Campbell Scott as random, evil CEO dude seemed like he was having fun, even though his character was the most generic bad guy ever.

What I’m getting at here is that there was a lot of pieces in play from professionals who were doing a great job at what they’ve been paid to do. And it’s really unfortunate that their talents were completely wasted due to the gross incompetence of the man steering the ship. This movie’s failure is 100 percent on the feet of Collin Trevorrow in my opinion. And he should feel all the shame in completely destroying one of cinema’s best franchises.

Another moment of me giving credit where credit is due is that the dinosaur sequences in the final act of the movie are genuinely the best dinosaur sequences in the entire Jurassic World trilogy. It’s again a missed opportunity that the dinosaurs were more of the side obstacles to overcome rather than the main conflict. And the specific instances of dinosaur terror were extremely random rather than being calculated incidents that the movie built towards. But nevertheless, if you isolate the individual moments and ignore the rest, those are good moments that deserve praise.

But it still doesn’t all add up to something that is worthwhile. And it’s still extremely disappointing in general that so much potential was squandered with this trilogy as a whole because Collin Trevorrow seemingly has no idea what made “Jurassic Park” so effective in the first place. It is also disappointing that Universal gratefully and willingly gave him the keys to the car and were perfectly happy with him driving that car off a cliff. This could’ve been special. But instead it’s a big waste of time and money.

My closing recommendation is that you skip this movie in theaters. Wait until it comes to streaming or until it is cheap enough to rent. Then get together with a group of friends and have fun laughing at it. Through that, entertainment can be had. But I don’t give the movie credit for that because, even though I enjoyed this movie in a weird way, the idea that the Jurassic franchise has devolved to the point where it falls into “so bad it’s good” territory is extremely depressing because that’s not what a Jurassic movie is supposed to be.

Grade: 3/10

Movie Preview: June 2022

It’s beginning to feel like normal at the box office. Sure, it’s felt like that for several months now, so this is not necessarily breaking news, but the first month of our first traditional summer movie season since 2019 definitely lived up to the hype and that’s quite refreshing. The month was bookended by two massive $100 million openings as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” started the month off with a $187 million opening weekend, while “Top Gun: Maverick” finished the month off with a $160 million debut over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend. The latter was a new Memorial Day weekend record while the former shows the box office prowess of Marvel as that was only the seventh highest opening for an MCU film. 

June is already here and so technically this is a weekend late, but yours truly got a bit tied up in things and didn’t get this out on time. Although in this instance I don’t feel too bad as there weren’t any new wide releases in the first weekend of June. And that there is a tad bit reflective of how the June box office looks. Not a whole lot in terms of quantity, but two more massive summer blockbusters that most studios are staying clear of. 

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are subject to change.

June 3 – 5

Neon's "Crimes of the Future"

As mentioned, there weren’t any new wide releases this weekend. And by wide in this instance, I mean movies that opened in at least 1,000 theaters. Neon released the new David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future in 773 theaters, while IFC Midnight released the psychological thriller Watcher in 764 theaters. The two movies placed 9th and 10th at the weekend box office, pulling in $1.1 million and $826,775 respectively. Among the fans of indie filmmaking, a new Cronenberg film was definitely the buzz of the weekend. He’s most notable for his body horror films and is often seen as one of the originators of the subgenre. Perhaps his most well-known film is the 1986 remake of “The Fly,” but Cronenberg fans have been raving about his work for six decades now and they haven’t had anything since 2014, which is another reason why “Crimes of the Future” is a bit of a big deal.

The real storyline of this weekend, though, was “Top Gun: Maverick” yet again. After breaking the Memorial Day weekend record, previously held by the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie way back in 2007, it set another record in its second weekend. The smallest drop ever for a movie to open north of $100 million. If I were to post this before the weekend, I would’ve taken an educated guess of about $60-70 million for weekend 2. That would’ve been a very normal and healthy 50 percent drop. But instead it scored $90 million, a drop of just 29 percent from its 3-day opening of $126.7 million. For perspective, there have now been 71 movies to open north of $100 million. Of those 71, prior to “Maverick,” only three had dropped less than 40 percent: 2002’s “Spider-Man” (38 percent), 2004’s “Shrek 2” (33 percent), and 2019’s “Frozen 2” (33 percent). As you can see, “Maverick” is now alone as the only to drop less than 30 percent after opening above $100 million. And that specific stat is a development since the weekend estimates on Sunday, which had it at a 32 percent drop. What this really goes to show is how insanely strong the word of mouth is on this film. It’s more than just a hit. It’s become a global phenomenon and should continue to do well over the whole summer despite some… Jurassic competition in its third weekend coming up.

June 10 – 12

Universal’s "Jurassic World: Dominion"

Yes, as noted in that purposely bad pun in the end of that last paragraph, while Tom Cruise continues to soar high, dinosaurs will be taking over the world in the third and final entry in the Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion. I don’t need to educate anyone on the history of the Jurassic franchise as a whole. Everyone and their dog is very well aware that “Jurassic Park” is a thing that exists. In fact, that movie is so well-loved that it has now spawned five sequels over the course of the last 25 years and audiences have continued to show up in droves despite each ensuing entry having less than stellar reaction. The Jurassic World movies specifically have proven very critic proof. “Jurassic World” only scored a 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and its sequel, “Fallen Kingdom” fell negative at 47 percent. Yet nostalgia pushed “Jurassic World” in 2015 to a then opening weekend record of $208.8 million, topping 2012’s “The Avengers.” That only lasted a few months until “The Force Awakens” came out, but it’s still notable that it held that prestigious record for a period of time. And despite the aforementioned negative reviews from both critics and audiences, “Fallen Kingdom” still managed an opening of $148 million, with a finish of $417 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide. Not bad for a fairly divisive film.

So what does all of that mean for “Dominion”? One could look at the previous Jurassic Park trilogy and note that each movie had diminishing returns. Mixed reviews held “Lost World” back from topping the original, while “Jurassic Park III” plummeted even more. However, I think it’s quite possible that “Dominion” reverses course and improves upon “Fallen Kingdom.” For one, “Dominion” is advertising itself as the final movie in the franchise. Whether or not that will remain true is up for debate, but that has often been a successful marketing ploy. Fans of a popular franchise will typically show up if they think it could be the last hurrah. Also, director Colin Trevorrow has long since said he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs run free across the whole Earth instead of just it being an isolated incident on one island. And “Dominion” is just that. That premise could be intriguing enough for people to show up, even if they didn’t like one or both of the Jurassic World movies. And finally, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern are all reprising their roles from the original “Jurassic Park,” teaming up with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard from the two Jurassic World movies, which makes this a Jurassic reunion that could also attract any fence sitters. Box Office Pro projected $180 million in their last long range forecast, but this could realistically fall anywhere on the spectrum of $150-200 million. In other words, anywhere in between the previous two.

A Jurassic movie requires a Jurassic analysis, especially with a limited number of releases this month, but there is another movie that is theoretically getting released this weekend and that’s a movie called Block Party. The poster claims that this is the first ever Juneteenth family comedy. I’ll let you decide what exactly that means and whether or not it’s accurate. Juneteenth is, of course, on June 19th, so this is targeted as a family comedy leading up to that now federally recognized holiday (as of last year). But I don’t know if awareness is high. For a movie that’s supposed to come out this week, and actually on Wednesday the 8th, an internet search will lead you to other things and I couldn’t find a trailer that had more than a couple of thousand views. Said trailer did say it’s coming in theaters on June 8th and on BET+ on June 16th, which typically reflects a smaller theatrical release, but the-numbers.com does list this as a wide release. Whether or not that’s a wide release of more than 1,000 theaters or a release in about 500-700 theaters is something that we’ll find out here in a few days. My guess is the latter. At most. But we might find that out even before some of you read this. 

June 17 – 19

Pixar’s "Lightyear"

The second massive blockbuster of the month that I referred to at the beginning of this post is Pixar’s Lightyear. As crazy as it may seem, this is the first Pixar movie to get a theatrical release since before the pandemic. “Onward” was their most recent one to get the theatrical treatment and that had the unfortunate timing of getting its run cut short by the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Since then, Disney has released both “Raya” and “Encanto” in theaters from their own animation studio, but Pixar has gotten the shaft, with “Soul,” “Luca” and this year’s “Turning Red” all going straight to Disney+. One can attribute it to Disney running out of patience and not wanting to continue to postpone their entire release, but whatever the case be, Pixar finally gets to have a traditional release and there’s no better way to get back on track in that manner than to have another movie in the Toy Story realm. In fact, “Toy Story 4” was the last Pixar movie to get released in theaters that wasn’t impacted by the pandemic, that back in Summer 2019, so it’s a bit poetic, you might say.

Now what this movie is has probably been the biggest point of confusion. It’s not a Toy Story sequel and only kinda a spin-off of the franchise. And it’s not really a prequel or Buzz Lightyear origin story, either. It’s the movie inside the Toy Story realm that Buzz Lightyear was based off of. And the easiest way to simplify that is to say it’s the movie that Andy and his Mom could’ve potentially gone to that could’ve resulted in Andy getting his own Buzz Lightyear toy in the original Toy Story, which is why Chris Evans is voicing Buzz instead of Tim Allen. And that’s a bit of an outside-the-box idea for Pixar, but reaction to the trailers has been very positive and people have proven multiple times over that if you say Toy Story, they are showing up. Even if they’re skeptic of the movie being necessary (“Toy Story 4”). To me that says they’re showing up again for “Lightyear,” even if they’re confused about what the movie is. “Toy Story 3” and “Toy Story 4” both opened above $100 million. I think “Lightyear” could do so as well, especially if reviews end up positive. And very early whispers suggest they will be.

June 24 – 26

Warner Bros.' "Elvis"

The final weekend of June has a big chance of being won by “Lightyear,” but there are two movies that will enter into the race, both of which have at least some breakout potential. Either could theoretically be the bigger of the two, but the one with the highest ceiling is Elvis, the latest in a long string of musical biopics. Starring as the King himself will be Austin Butler, who is not a complete newcomer, but this will certainly be his huge breakout role. Early reaction out of Cannes Film Festival gives his performance very high praise, with mixed but positive leaning reaction towards the rest of the movie. The movie also has director Baz Luhrmann coming out of hiding with his first directed film since “The Great Gatsby” in 2013. Luhrmann has a distinct and somewhat divisive style, but also has a very short discography and he’s very selective with his film choices, which always makes a new film from a bit of an event.

There are many potential directions that “Elvis” can take and lots to compare it to. Obviously Mr. Presley was one of the biggest music stars ever, but will that translate into box office success in the way that a “Bohemian Rhapsody” did? That opened to $51.1 million and held incredibly well, finishing with $216.3 million domestically and almost $900 million worldwide. But yet it also played during the holiday season at the end of the year. Perhaps a more comparable film will be “Rocketman,” which came out six months later in May 2019, opening with $25.7 million and finishing with $96.3 million domestically. That also had a summer release, a popular star in Elton John, and mostly positive reviews. Yet there is also the chance of a performance like “RESPECT” from last year, which, despite having Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, only managed an $8.8 million opening and a $24.3 million total. Has fatigue set in with these musical biopics or are audiences ready to rock with Elvis?

The other film coming in is the horror film The Black Phone. Horror films are even harder to predict. They can range from completely dead on arrival to a breakout smash. The premise here is that a 13-year-old boy gets abducted by a child killer and starts receiving phone calls from the killer’s previous victims on a disconnected phone. The elephant in the room is that maybe some might not be interested in such a premise after the recent shooting at an elementary school in Texas. If that’s not an issue, another obstacle is that Jordan Peele’s “Nope” comes out just a few weeks later in July. Some horror fans might simply wait for that one. If neither of those things ends up as an issue, the positive things going for this movie is great response from the trailers as well as positive reviews out of Fantastic Fest last year when the movie premiered. It’s also directed by Scott Derrickson, who directed the first “Doctor Strange” and was set to direct the sequel from last month before dropping out. Before his Marvel turn, Derrickson was known for his horror films such as “Sinister,” “Deliver Us from Evil” and “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” so he’s going back to his roots with this film. Could that lead to an upset finish over “Elvis”? I’m not betting on it right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review (SPOILERS)

Rumor has it a Marvel movie came out this past weekend. Evidence seems to show that a lot of people went out to see it. About 20 million people, in fact. Domestically, that is. Even more worldwide. It managed to open to $187.4 million domestically and $450 million worldwide. That’s a tad bit lower than I was expecting, if you read my May movie preview. But that’s still nothing to scoff at, of course. It’s the 11th highest opening weekend ever and 7th highest opening weekend for an MCU film out of the now 28 in their library, below only the four Avengers films, “Black Panther,” and the most recent “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” However, despite such a massive turnout, social media suggests that there was a lot of divisiveness surrounding this movie, some not even realizing what genre they were going into. And that’s caused a lot of discussion points to be swirling around in my head over the weekend. Not every Marvel movie requires a spoiler discussion, but this one definitely does. So if you haven’t yet seen the movie, but you want to, then this might not be the blog post that you want to be reading. You’ve been warning. Come back to this when you’ve seen it.

I’ll say right off the bat that this also wasn’t quite the movie I was expecting, either. For some reason, I was under the impression that this was going to be more of an event film in terms of the content in it. I concluded this based on the multiverse setup that “WandaVision,” “Loki” and “Now Way Home” all seemed to be setting up. It seemed like this was going to be the culmination of all of that and this multiverse story arc for Phase 4 would really get kicked into full gear. And based on the title of the movie including “Multiverse of Madness,” it didn’t seem like that was too crazy of an assumption to be made.

On top of that, the multiverse story arc in the comics is one that I’m quite familiar with. Marvel and DC have both been toying with this idea for ages. My specific point of reference that I had in mind was the major “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover even in the Arrowverse in 2019. All of their shows connected together for this massive event, which not only led to a really fun plot line with lots of action that was the best of the Arrowverse, but the cameos and Easter eggs came fast and furious, bringing pure joy to us comic book fans. The Arrowverse has since kinda fallen apart, but that crossover event will still be forever remembered. And I was excited to finally see Marvel’s version of this madness. And I assume that many others were excited for this as well, which is why I think the hype was so high.

In hindsight, it thus makes sense that this didn’t hit the rather bullish heights that many had for it. Had I known that this wasn’t the massive, crowd-pleasing multiverse event that many expected it to be, maybe I would’ve tempered my expectations a bit in terms of my May preview. And had I looked at the actual reviews prior to going in, maybe I would’ve been clued in. But I thought there was going to be massive spoilers on the docket, so ain’t no way I was going to accidentally subject myself to that. So yeah, it makes sense that reaction was mixed and thus word of mouth hurt the movie a bit over the course of the weekend, leading to what almost seems like a disappointing $187 million, which is a weird thought.

But is Marvel really to blame here? Was there any level of false advertising that tricked us all? And if so, is it even fair to judge a movie based on it not being what we expected or should we be judging the movie based on what we actually saw?

And this is a recent set of conundrums that Marvel is very familiar with at this point. I know a lot of people who were disappointed with the “WandaVision” finale because it didn’t deliver what many fans were wanting. Yet if you look at everything in hindsight, Marvel never promised any of that. The fan theories just spiraled out of control to the point that there was almost no way to satisfy everyone, especially since the show itself was already written and filmed. But after that debacle, Marvel actually did manage to deliver what people were expecting with “Loki” and “No Way Home,” so there was definitely a certain expectation leading to this movie that people assume was going to be delivered.

And yes, I was initially among the dumbfounded crowd, at least while watching this movie. Why would they spend so much time setting up a giant multiverse arc in these previous mentioned movies and shows and not deliver in a movie that had multiverse in the title?

Then the realization hit me. COVID messed this whole timeline up. So instead of complaining at Marvel for aimlessly wandering during this Phase 4 and not really building to anything, I think it’s more important to realize how this was supposed to go. The initial schedule of movies was supposed to be “Black Widow” in May 2020, “Eternals” in November 2020, “Shang-Chi” in February 2021, “Doctor Strange 2” in May 2021, then “No Way Home” in July 2021. As far as the Disney+ shows, I’m pretty sure those came out on time, given that theaters were not required. So that would mean “WandaVision” would come out right before “Shang-Chi,” “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” right after “Shang-Chi,” then “Loki” and “What If?” all after “Doctor Strange 2.” But instead the Disney+ shows started things off while the movies kept getting pushed back. Which also explains the fact that the post credits scene from “Black Widow” was supposed to tease a certain appearance in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” instead of awkwardly having the tease come after the show.

So the real takeaway here is that if we put things into proper context of how the timeline was supposed to play out, “Multiverse of Madness” was supposed to come out directly after “WandaVision,” but before “Loki,” “What If” and “No Way Home.” So with that in mind, it makes sense as to why this seemed a bit anticlimactic and didn’t follow up on those because it was supposed to be part of the build-up and not the culmination of everything. In terms of blame, yeah it’s their own fault for debuting the Disney+ shows first, but I don’t know if you can really blame Disney on that one as they wanted to give their fans SOMETHING to hold them over until they can actually release their big movies. And remember with Spider-Man, Sony is the distributor there, so Disney’s hands are tied a bit in that regard. If Sony wanted to release their movie before it made sense to do so in regards to the timeline, then Disney just had to adjust accordingly.

Of course I am just one person with no actual insight into how all of this went down, but to me I think it was important to dive into all of this because understanding context is critical to understanding decisions they made in this movie. Yeah, sure, they wrote things in to adjust. Like a throwaway Spider-Man line that actually doesn’t make much sense because Doctor Strange is supposed to not know who Spider-Man is. And, sure, why not a cameo from Captain Carter as part of the movie’s Illuminati. But for the most part it kinda makes sense as to why this movie doesn’t acknowledge the existence from anything in “Loki” and mostly nothing from “No Way Home.” It wasn’t supposed to be the follow-up to those movies. It was supposed to be the direct follow-up to “WandaVision” that perhaps sets up the idea of the multiverse rather than being the movie that resolves the conflict of the multiverse going out of whack.

In judging it based on the context of what this is supposed to be, I think this movie does a really good job of accomplishing those goals. I personally think it’s a fantastic follow-up to “WandaVision,” providing a devastating and horrifying tale.

The idea here is that Doctor Strange runs into a teen girl named America Chavez, who has the powers of multiverse travel that she has the inability to control. America is being chased down by some evil witch or sorcerer who wants to take her powers to perhaps wreak havoc on the multiverse. So to potentially solve this conundrum, Doctor Strange says that, “Hey I know a girl that can help us” and pays Wanda Maximoff a visit. And… whoops. He learns that Wanda is not the friend that can help him, but rather is the witch that is hunting America down to take her powers. The Scarlet Witch. The most powerful being in the multiverse. And she’s become corrupted by the Darkhold and is using it to try to reunite herself with her two kids, whom she invented in the events of “WandaVision,” but whom actually exist in other universes in the multiverse. If she can take America’s powers and take control of one of the other Wandas, she can have that happy ending that she so desires.

As she says, “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother.”

Outside the movie not being the giant event film that many expected, this is perhaps the other point of controversy of the film. Wanda is the villain of this movie. And she’s an absolutely terrifying villain, one of the best in all of the MCU.

And yet there’s a lot of people who fell in love with Wanda following “WandaVision” that don’t like the idea that she’s now become a villain. And that’s a valid argument as to why maybe some don’t like the direction that this movie went. Others think that perhaps this movie just regurgitates her arc from “WandaVision,” which is also a valid critique, although one that I don’t really fall in line with.

I don’t remember the exact timeline of my thoughts, but at some point during “WandaVision” or perhaps shortly after, I thought that this series was leading us to Wanda being the next major Marvel villain. And I think that she could’ve become the Thanos of Phase 4, so to speak. A villain that would require more than just one Avenger to stop her. And thus while maybe she’s not that big of a villain, her villainous turn is not one that surprised or disappointed me. And no, I don’t think that it’s a regurgitation of her arc. “WandaVision” was all about her becoming the Scarlet Witch. Her intense levels of grief is what created her ficitionalized universe in “WandaVision.” And she kinda did all of that by accident. The series’ culmination was her finally becoming the Scarlet Witch and learning to control her powers. And yeah, sure, she finally freed that town that she had essentially enslaved, but was her grief actually resolved? And were her actions ever justified? Maybe she was trying to do better, but she still got a lot of angry looks and she walked out of that town. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be totally redeemed at the end and be this good, positive Avenger.

In fact, while Agatha Harkness was the antagonist of “WandaVision,” I think there’s a solid argument that Wanda wasn’t ever the hero. She may have been a main character, but the heroes of the story were the likes of Monica Rambeau and Vision. Those were the two that were trying to stop Wanda. And sure, Wanda wasn’t this crazy, evil character, but the best villains are the ones that you can sympathize with to a degree. You can understand where they are coming from and you can see the motivation behind what they are doing, even if you don’t agree with how the react and what they do, like enslaving a whole town just so they can live a fantasy with a husband and kids that don’t actually exist.

And lest we forget the final post credits scene of the entire series, Wanda was off in her isolated cabin reading that evil book figuring out how she can be reunited with her kids. Sure, she realized that the current plan of enslaving the whole town was not the answer, but not once did she ever drop the idea of somehow being reunited with her kids. She started the series being emotionally fragile, but she wasn’t ever fully composed by the end. As one knows, grief is not something that easily goes away. Instead, she was still a fragile human who now had access to a whole bunch of powers that she learned how to finally use. Even if she experienced a slight relapse, to me that makes perfect sense and is not a betrayal of what we saw at the end of the series, especially since she found that Darkhold, which the movie explains does a great job of corrupting your mind if you get to invested in it. And if it can do some serious damage to a mind that is decently strong, it makes sense to me that it can take Wanda down an even darker path when her mind was very unstable to begin with.

And all of that is even ignoring the fact that this is a comic book accurate story arc for Wanda. Granted, I’m not one that is super attached to the comics in a way that I will get mad at the MCU or any comic book movie for not being a perfect adaptation. The MCU as a whole has always had a very loose interpretation of the comics as the use those as a mere guideline to help them tell their own stories. But this is a particular story arc that I was excited to see play out in the MCU, especially since this is essentially the Dark Phoenix story arc from X-Men, applied to Wanda instead of Jean Grey. After seeing Fox fall flat on their face… twice… when trying to adapt this into film, I was excited to see Marvel do it right with Wanda. And I would’ve been among the disappointed crowd if they DIDN’T do this with Wanda.

Instead, I am among the very satisfied crowd that we got a movie that showcased Wanda at her absolute worst. Because if we’re doing Marvel’s first horror film, having the villain of that horror film be the most powerful being in the multiverse completely off her rocker is perhaps the perfect content for that Marvel horror film.

And speaking of which, I think it’s appropriate to quickly dive into a side rant of me being very satisfied that this movie was as dark and as violent as it was. One of the biggest critiques of Marvel of late is that they’ve become a bit boring and stale. They have their formula down well and their target audience eats that content up, but we’re 28 movies in and sticking so strictly to the formula is only going to last so long. Despite all the struggles DC has had over the last decade, one of their current advantages they have over Marvel is that they’re not bound to a specific formula and they don’t feel the need to have every one of their movies have a four-quadrant appeal. They can do something dark like “Joker.” They can do something insanely comedically violent like “The Suicide Squad.” They can target something directly at young kids like “DC League of Super Pets.” They can do a new adaptation of Batman that is even more dark and gritty than most other Batman movies. And in the midst of all of that, they can also have movies like “Wonder Woman” that do appeal to everyone.

I personally think that’s a healthy way of going about things. Don’t just make the same exact movie for the same exact audience 28 times in a row. Continue to please that audience while also letting other demographics in on the party every once in a while. Go all out on a “Deadpool 3” in the MCU. Let Sam Raimi put his style into a Doctor Strange sequel. Embrace “Daredevil” and put it on Disney+. Don’t be afraid of slightly adult-targeted content in “Eternals.” The best thing that Fox ever did with their X-Men franchise was letting Wolverine loose in the very hard R “Logan.” And more of that is a good thing for fans of the comics who want that. And if you know it’s not going to be a $2 billion earner, give it a smaller budget and let filmmakers have fun. We’re at the point in the MCU where people are really paying attention to Marvel as a brand and that can allow them to dive into some obscure characters and weird stories. If everything is the same exact thing targeted at the same exact audience, there will be a lot of missed opportunities in this stage of Marvel.

I get that there are a lot of parents who might be disappointed that they can’t take their kids to this movie. Or they did and their kids got scarred for life. It might be a fun tradition for many to take their kids to every new Marvel movie and having that tradition get a little bump in the road is disappointing. But not every Marvel movie needs to be or should be catered towards your 8-year-old. Continuing on that path forever will be the death of Marvel because eventually people will stop showing up if their interest continues to wane. So you need to do something that freshen up the market maintain these healthy levels of media consumption.

If we had a watered down version of this story, the impact of the emotion wouldn’t have hit as hard as it did. It would’ve been like what Sony has done recently with an extremely watered down version of the villain Carnage in their Venom sequel or their story of the vampire Michael Morbius that avoided the R-rating so hard that it was painful to watch them purposely aiming for a light PG-13 in a story that lent itself to a hard R. Yeah, sure, the kids can safely go to these movies with their parents. But it was an extreme betrayal of Carnage and Morbius for those who know those characters and have waited their whole life for their big screen portrayal, only to see Sony toss them in the trash because they were too concerned about making a kid-friendly movie that would make them some money.

“Deadpool” and “Logan” have proven that the rating doesn’t matter if you have a good film that people are excited for. “Birds of Prey” and “The Suicide Squad” unfortunately show that that’s not going to work every time and that other factors will play into the financials, but studios shouldn’t be scared to make the movie they want to make even if it isn’t able to connect with every person on the planet. And I’m personally glad that Marvel hired Sam Raimi and clearly let him have the freedom to make the action/horror that he wanted to make. Sure, they probably had a few checklist items for him to meet, but the majority of this second and third act was very much in his wheelhouse. His style is naturally a bit divisive, but the Raimi fans who were watching this movie were mostly very pleased at how much of his style showed up in this film. Having also done the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies, he’s also very well aware of how to make a good comic book movie. And thus he is perhaps the perfect choice for someone to make this film as I’m sure he’s well aware of how effectively implementing horror styles can massively improve the quality of the action in the film.

And the best example of this is the best scene of this movie. How are we going to showcase the pure, raw power of the Scarlet Witch and the horror that she can be when she’s completely lost her mind? Not with a generic, bland action scene. But we’ll show her walking into Earth-838’s Illuminati with covered with blood from her previous fight and completely take down this powerful group, blowing up the head of Blackagar Boltgon, savagely killing Captain Carter with her own shield, turning Reed Richards into licorice, snapping the neck of Charles Xavier after mentally overpowering him, and effortlessly overpowering the overpowered Maria Rambeau version of Captain Marvel.

Can you imagine if that scene was instead a generic fight scene with no blood and no gore and no horror involved, because they instead wanted to make a movie to please your 8-year-old? Can you imagine if the most powerful character in the universe wasn’t allowed to showcase her power because the studio was too scared to do so? What a waste that would’ve been of such a great story arc.

As far as the Doctor Strange of it all, I don’t know if this really felt like a truly satisfactory Doctor Strange movie. I’m one of the weird ones who think that 2016 movie is actually one of the best in the MCU. That movie had so much fun messing with rules of reality to create a completely bonkers Inception-like visual treat, while also having a fantastic arc for him. And there was so much more that this movie could’ve done with his abilities that they really didn’t do, especially since they had the whole multiverse to play around with. And if you saw the completely non-Marvel related indie film “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” you know how bonkers they can get with the multiverse while still having the emotional core of the film intact. And this movie kinda shied away from implementing the multiverse into the film. They just went through a bunch of different universes for 20 seconds before balancing between Earth-616 (our main MCU universe) and Earth-838 (this movie’s alternate universe). And that gave them the excuse to kill off the Earth-838 characters, while giving Wanda an alternate family to try to insert herself into. But outside that, there were missed opportunities in this multiverse adventure that I wish we would’ve explored more. But maybe that’s further down the line.

As an isolated Sam Raimi action/horror film that was more of a WandaVision 2 than a Doctor Strange 2, I think this movie was excellent. And as a fan of horror who thinks that horror is often very misunderstood, I was very pleased at how much they leaned into that genre and how much the pushed the line of what could be in a PG-13 movie instead of being line Sony and being terrified of that line. And I think this is a movie that I will appreciate even more on a second watch now that I know what it is. And if we’re saving our actual multiverse madness stuff for a future Marvel movie, then I won’t feel the need to declare this movie as a missed opportunity. And as I said, I can forgive Marvel at the moment for not seeming to have a direction they’re going for in Phase 4 given how COVID scrambled things, but that excuse won’t carry on forever. They’ll eventually need to pull things together to give us a satisfying Phase 4 direction. But I suppose those are bridges we can cross at a later date.

Despite this being a very long spoiler review that I will be surprised if many people actually get through, I’ll mention that this wasn’t meant as a play-by-play of the movie. There are still a lot of elements of this movie that I didn’t get to, nor was I ever really intending to hit everything. I just wanted to get out my main thoughts on a few things that I had been stewing over and I feel like I accomplished that to my personal satisfaction. But I will say real quick that I love how they ended Wanda’s arc in this. They weren’t ever going to beat her in a physical fight, but America outsmarting her and discovering her weakness was genius. That weakness being her kids. Show those Earth-838 kids that she was trying to mother what she had become and have them be terrified of her. Her realization after those events that she actually had become a monster was exactly what she needed to snap out of it and destroy all copies of the Darkhold.

Did she sacrifice herself in the process? I don’t know. That part felt a bit vague. I think she’ll be back. And with the multiverse, of course there are ways to let Elizabeth Olsen back into the party, but we’ll see what Marvel has in store. In theory, if this is the end of this character, what a treat it’s been to have Elizabeth Olsen in the MCU. Marvel doesn’t get acting Oscars or even nominations with their films, but this is probably the best argument they’ve had for someone who deserves one. The Emmys gave her a nomination for “WandaVision” and I think she’s even better in this movie, so it would be nice if there was a world in which the Oscars decided to reward her with at least a nomination. But I guess trophies aren’t everything. But she’d get one in my book. And I just hope she has more opportunities to play this character.

As I said, plenty more to talk about with this movie. And I’ll leave the rest of that up to you. If there’s any discussion I missed that you really want to know my take on or if you have counterarguments to what I’ve said, let me know. Just make sure to be respectful of other people who maybe haven’t had the opportunity to see this yet and don’t want to be spoiled. I’ll decide at a later date exactly where this fits in my MCU rankings, but it definitely gets my personal stamp of approval and should at least be in the upper echelon.

Grade: 9/10

Movie Preview: May 2022

Summer officially begins on Tuesday, June 21 if you go by the summer solstice. If you go by when school gets out, you might say it begins in June. Or perhaps around Memorial Day. But in Hollywoodland, summer begins on the first weekend of May. And tradition has it that we start the summer off with a big Marvel movie. Why is it the way that it is? That’s a good question. It just simply is what it is. And this year is the first year that we’ve had a full, proper summer movie season since 2019 as 2020 summer movie season was canceled by COVID and last summer was only half a summer with studios still a bit hesitant with their major blockbuster releases. But the performances of movies such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “The Batman” have squelched any such concerns about movies still being able to perform at the box office, so we have full green lights ahead. And, as tradition mandates, we are indeed starting with a giant Marvel, so let’s dive right into this first month of Summer 2022. 

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

May 6 – 8

Marvel's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"

It will not be the least bit of breaking news if I inform you that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is coming out this weekend. What will be breaking news throughout the weekend is the updates on how high this movie’s box office will soar. For the sake of context, “Doctor Strange” opened in 2016 to $85 million and finished with $232 million total domestically. Not bad for a solo Marvel adventure, especially in the case of an origin story of a lesser known character. While reaction was positive, it may not have had the near universal praise that something like “Iron Man” or “Guardians of the Galaxy” received. Normally one might look to something like “Ant-Man and the Wasp” as a potential comparison to see how the Doctor Strange sequel would perform. And normally six years between movies is not the best sign of a positive performance. So how exactly then have we arrived to the point where “Multiverse of Madness” is poised for a potential $200 million opening weekend, getting close to surpassing the entire run of the first film in just three days?

The answer is that this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And unlike normal franchises, everything in the now 14-year run of the MCU is like one giant TV show. So this is not merely a sequel to a six-year-old movie. This is the event that Marvel has been building up to for the entire Phase IV… the multiverse. Which has been either teased or instigated in “WandaVision,” “Loki,” “What If?” and most recently “Spider-Man: Now Way Home.” And even though Benedict Cumberbatch’s Stephen Strange hasn’t had his own movie since 2016, he’s been a major player in just about every Marvel event since, which includes “Infinity War,” “Endgame” and “No Way Home,” three of the highest grossing movies ever, Marvel or not. And this will officially be the seventh Marvel property, movie or series, that Cumberbatch has officially received credit.

So yeah, not just a “Doctor Strange” sequel here. And while the concept of the Multiverse is far from being a new one, excitement is currently through the roof for Marvel to officially jump into full-on Multiverse mode, especially after “No Way Home” made nearly $2 billion worldwide… without even having a release in China. Also attached onto that excitement is the fact that this is one of those MCU films that demands people to see it as soon as possible to avoid the many potential spoilers that will be hard to keep away. Initial tracking a few months back had it at around a $150 million opening, which would be a win in and of itself. But that tracking has only continued to increase in the weeks and months leading up to the release. Box Office Pro’s official weekend forecast now has it at a $210 million opening, which would break the May record set a decade ago by “The Avengers” of 207.4 million. Notably, “Infinity War” and “Endgame” opened at the end of April, which is why “The Avengers” still has the May record. Another mark to look out for outside seeing if it can break the $232 million domestic total of the first “Doctor Strange” in one weekend is the $260 million opening of “No Way Home.” I don’t imagine it will get that high, but it will be interesting to see how close it gets.   

May 13 – 15

Universal’s "Firestarter"

The story again in weekend two of May will be the second weekend of “Multiverse of Madness.” Marvel movies are always good at attracting a major portion of its audience in the first weekend, anyways. But the urgency to see this one as soon as possible to avoid spoilers puts it in the realm of “Endgame” and “No Way Home,” which means a sharp second weekend drop. “Endgame” fell 59 percent and “No Way Home” fell 67 percent. That means “Multiverse of Madness” is probably looking at a $70-80 million second weekend, depending on how high it ends up getting. Which could mean it could come close to or even match the $85 million opening weekend of the first film in its second weekend, which would be impressive.  

There are two movies scheduled to open up in the shadow of Doctor Strange, although neither provides any real competition. Major studios are smartly getting out of the way. But the movie that hopes to catch the most stragglers will be the horror film Firestarter. The marketing on this one has been fairly aggressive in the past few weeks and the official trailer on YouTube has even accumulated 18 million views, which means some people are at least curious. Also helping it is that it’s an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name from 1980, which was adapted into a movie in 1984 with Drew Barrymore, David Keith, and George C. Scott. So there’s definitely brand name recognition here. The story is about a girl who gains the power to set things on fire with her mind. The lead role played by Barrymore in 1984 will be played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong in this movie and will have Zac Effort as her co-star. While this is certainly not on the level of “IT” in terms of Stephen King adaptations, 2019’s “Pet Sematary” might be a realistic goal. That opened to $24.5 million. Maybe that’s slightly optimistic, but it’s still within reach if everything falls the movie’s way.

The second movie of the weekend will most likely have a more quieter release and that is the family-friendly film by Roadside Attractions called Family Camp. This is the first movie for The Skit Guys, a duo consisting of Tommy Woodard and Eddie James, who, according to their website, teach God’s Word using comedy and drama, providing Christian videos, church skits, plays, drama scripts, and other Christian church media. Their YouTube channel has 229,000 subscribers and their top video, published 10 years ago, has 2 million views, so they have at least some built in Christian audience who is aware of them. The movie is about a family who decides to go on vacation to a church camp called Camp Katokwah where they’re forced to camp together with a very opposite family and compete for the camp trophy. Compared to the 18 million of the “Firestarter” trailer, the “Family Camp” trailer has only 1.1 million views, so awareness isn’t super high in comparison. And it’ll probably be more of a moderate release targeted towards specific markets more willing to consume Christian movies. So it’s not looking at a huge debut, but will be an option for some markets.  

May 20 – 22

Focus Features' "Downton Abbey: A New Era"

The third weekend will provide Doctor Strange with its first bit of competition of the month and that is Downton Abbey: A New Era. This is also a franchise that probably doesn’t need a whole lot of introduction, but nevertheless it’s a British historical drama series set in the early 20th century that began airing in the U.K. in September 2010 and ran for six seasons, or six series rather, while airing in the U.S. on PBS. The TV series finished in December 2015, but the franchise got revived via movie in 2019. That movie, simply titled “Downton Abbey,” was a surprise success, opening to $31 million domestically, finishing with $97 million. It doubled that overseas, finishing with around $195 million total worldwide, proving that there is still an audience for this franchise, which “A New Era” hopes to build off of. If Doctor Strange were to open on the slightly lower end of expectations, it might be around $30-40 million in weekend three, which could at least make this a close race if “A New Era” matched the opening of the first movie. “A New Era” already opened in several international countries, including its home country of the U.K., with mostly positive reactions, so that’s a good sign.

May 27 – 30  

Paramount's "Top Gun: Maverick"

The final weekend of May has the month’s other major release and that is Top Gun: Maverick finally seeing the light of day. This is another movie delayed quite a bit by the pandemic as it was ready for release in June 2020 before COVID hit. Paramount bounced it around the calendar quite a bit before finally settling on this date two years later. The movie is the sequel to the very popular 1986 film “Top Gun,” which was the No. 1 movie that year at the domestic box office with $180.5 million. Adjusted for ticket price inflation, that would equate to about $446 million with 2022 ticket prices. How popular the movie has held up 36 years later remains to be seen, although Tom Cruise himself is at the top of his game with the immensely popular “Mission: Impossible” franchise that he’s led, which has seemingly gotten even more popular as its gone on, with Cruise famously doing all his own stunts in those movie, which have gotten more daring as they’ve gone on. So regardless of how popular “Top Gun” is with the current generation, Tom Cruise’s massive popularity combined with the nostalgia from the generation who grew up in the 80s should lead this to decent success at the least.

In terms of the movie’s box office potential, I was going to take the easy comparison and look at the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. In which case, “Rogue Nation” opened to $55.5 million in 2015 and “Fallout” opened to $61.2 million in 2018. So an opening around that $50 million would’ve made sense to me, but Box Office Pro’s long range forecast was extremely more optimistic than that, pegging it around $95-125 million for the 3-day weekend alone. So this could very well be our second $100 million debut of the month. Paramount has also been extremely confident with its release, debuting the movie at CinemaCon last month and then to critics in San Diego earlier this week, which has resulted in very high praise, many declaring it as a must see in theaters movie event. It’s also playing at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 before its theatrical release on Memorial Day weekend. This confidently aggressive rollout could work out very well for Paramount if hype continues to be strong.

While the major fanfare regarding Memorial Day weekend will mainly be surrounding “Top Gun: Maverick,” The Bob’s Burgers Movie will be attempting to attract some sort of audience. Like “Maverick,” this was also initially scheduled for a summer 2020 release date before being bounced around and settling here. But unlike “Maverick,” the anticipation hasn’t really built over the course of the delays, if there was much anticipation to begin with. “Bob’s Burgers” is a decently popular animated adult sitcom, but I don’t know if it’s reached the notoriety of something like “The Simpsons” or “Family Guy.” Fan of the “Bob’s Burgers” TV show will likely show up, but I’m not sure if it will hit beyond that particular target audience. Box Office Pro has projected it at an opening of around $7-12 million for the 3-day weekend.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Review

I remember when it was a huge deal every time a new entry in the Harry Potter franchise was released, whether it be book or movie. The books were first released when I was in Elementary School. The final book came the summer after my senior year in High School. It was such a magical experience going to Barnes and Noble at midnight on the release of a new book. I was 12 years old when the first movie was released in theaters and going to that theater with my friend was one of the most memorable theatrical experiences I’ve had. And then it was so fun going to the midnight showings of each ensuing movie, which at that time period was an absolute party and riot waiting in line for the whole evening, bringing games and snacks to keep yourself busy while you waiting.

I also remember being in college and seeing the release of “The Deathly Hallows: Part 2” in theaters. On the drive home I think my friend was complaining at certain changes that were made to the finale, which was understandable. But I was overcome with emotion because it felt like it was truly the end of an era.

Then the Fantastic Beasts movies came out.

Oh boy.

As a friend of mine always says, never believe Hollywood when they say something is the final chapter. And when you have access to a world that is as expansive and popular as the Wizarding World, you find ways to continue, but it’s been a very bumpy and messy ride to say the least. A Broadway show called “The Cursed Child” was released. And while my theater friends claim the show itself is incredible, I read that book version of what the play is and that is an ugly nightmare that felt like an atrociously written fan fiction. J.K. Rowling, our beloved creator of this particular fictional universe, has potentially proven that she caught lightning in a bottle because none of her ensuing works have panned out. And she won’t shut up on Twitter as she’s constantly bullying and harassing the transgender community.

And, of course, there’s these Fantastic Beasts film. Which I’ve gotta say that I really enjoyed the first movie. It wasn’t towards the top of my Harry Potter movie rankings. It was somewhere in the middle. But it was still a very enjoyable movie that explored a new area in the Wizarding World with some different characters and unique ideas. I was on board with the direction it was heading. Until I felt like I got clocked in the face so hard with the “Crimes of Grindelwald” sequel. Not only was that a massive nothing of a movie that existed solely as a bridge film to set up the next movie, but they did an excellent job of insulting the intelligence of all of us Potter fans by having some massive continuity errors that showed that J.K. Rowling, the screenwriter for the movie, had no idea how well us fans knew her world. Or perhaps she just didn’t care. Some of these continuity errors are actually completely retconned in this new movie, which I find absolutely hilarious as it shows to me that they are completely making this up as they go. Which, sure, that’s always the case when you’re writing fiction. But what I mean is that it doesn’t seem like there’s a plan. The best storytelling often involves having a final destination and at least an outline of what you want to do before you actually do it. When you decide to play a game of telephone with your series and/or aimlessly make things up as you go, the final results aren’t typically going to work out for you.

And on top of all that, there’s even more behind-the-scenes drama as they have fired Johnny Depp as Grindelwald. And I know the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard situation is a giant mess, but if one does their best to objectively look into the facts of the case instead of having a knee-jerk reaction to the media reports, one might come to realize that it’s Depp that’s the victim here with Heard as abuser. Not the other way around. Yet Depp loses his job and Heard still gets her role in Aquaman 2. So there remains an ugly stench about the whole thing. Perhaps its karma that Ezra Miller has now been arrested twice in the last month for assault, with a whole bunch of other additional allegations on top of that? It’s now a double mess watching this movie with Ezra Miller in this movie, Johnny Depp not in this movie, and knowing that Heard and Miller both have major roles in upcoming DC movies.

Yet it’s important to note with all of this behind-the-scenes drama that I’m not in a position to want to boycott any of these movies. Sure, the Depp/Heard, Ezra Miller, and J.K. Rowling situations are rather gross, but there are so many others who worked so hard on these projects to give us all quality entertainment. It’s not fair to them to get punished for things beyond their control. Which is why I still gave this movie a fair shot and tried my hardest to enjoy it. When push comes to shove, it’s the quality of the final product that matters the most.

And in terms of the final product, I can sadly tell you that if you did choose to skip this movie for whatever reason, whether it be Rowling’s tweets, Depp’s firing, or just a lack of interest following the atrocities of the second film, you’re not missing anything.

To the credit of this third movie, I do think there was an honest effort to try to take a turn and make a movie that the fans would enjoy. And I can say that almost solely based on the end credits stating that this movie was written by Steve Kloves and J.K. Rowling, based on a screenplay by J.K. Rowling. That’s some curious wording right there. I would be very interested to know more about how exactly everything went down, but initial reports seem to suggest that Rowling had the screenplay for this third movie written very shortly after the second movie was released. And she was the sole credited writer on both of the first two Fantastic Beasts movies, which is an issue in and of itself as writing a screenplay for a movie is a much different task than writing a novel. Two very different skillsets. But yet the fact that this is the first in the Fantastic Beasts franchise to include Steve Kloves as a writer and uses that wording of “Based on a screenplay by…” suggests some massive rewrites to the screenplay after they saw the reaction to the second movie and then read what Rowling had in mind for the third movie. And to that I give them credit for trying to steer the ship in the proper direction. I just don’t think they were successful enough to have completely saved the movie.

In fact, it now just feels even messier in hindsight, even if this specific movie is probably not as bad as it could’ve been. It just screams of conflicting ideas that didn’t quite work out. And as much as it pains me to say this, I think it’s time to drop Rowling from her own universe and it’s time to just end the Fantastic Beasts franchise and try something different. With fresh eyes and a different perspective. And no, I’m not saying end this franchise by making one final film, I’m saying end the franchise right here with this third movie. And given that there’s new ownership at the top of Warner Bros. with them not being owned by AT&T and merging with Discovery, I could realistically see the rest of this franchise being canceled, especially with the atrocious box office receipts so far. And I’m not going to be upset one bit.

But the movie, Adam. The movie. The details of the movie. Yeah, this is not a review I labeled as a spoiler review, so I will try to be somewhat vague with certain thoughts. But at the same time, the movie has now been out for a week, so those of you that were planning on seeing it most likely already have. If you do want to see it and just haven’t been able to yet, feel free to skim this review or come back later. If you’ve already seen it or you don’t care, then proceed. Again, not full spoilers, but I might go in slightly more depth than I would’ve otherwise to fully express what it is that I’m talking about here.

I honestly think in hindsight that the biggest problem that this movie has is that of an identity crisis. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a Fantastic Beasts movie or a Dumbledore vs. Grindelwald prequel. I don’t know what the original idea was vs. the re-writes, but I could see a scenario where Rowling was fully on board with the Dumbledore prequel, but the re-writes made it more about Fantastic Beasts. Maybe I’m completely wrong with that, but one of the many complaints about “Crimes of Grindelwald” was that it nearly abandoned the idea of the Fantastic Beasts, which was one of the more fun and unique elements of the first movie. Regardless of who had what idea, there does seem to be a bit of an overcorrection for this movie while also having it do the Dumbledore story. And the final result is a movie revolving around Grindelwald running to be the head, or Supreme Mugwump, of the International Confederation of Wizards, an election that’s almost completely decided by a fantastical creature called a Qilin that sees into your soul and bows to you if you’re worthy.

There are a number of questions I have about that, but it’s mainly confusing to me that a society of wizards that’s so advanced runs an election that’s so old-fashioned. Sure, the people still decide who they want. But they seem to put all their trust into which candidate this creature bows in front of. And that idea doesn’t make much sense to me. I think the only reason why they included it is that they had to make this a Fantastic Beasts movie. Unnecessary convolution based on fans complaining that there weren’t enough fantastic beasts in the last Fantastic Beasts movie.

And yet I’m not 100 percent sure that this will perfectly satisfy those wanting more fantastic beasts due to the brutal nature of this movie’s introduction. There’s some stuff with Dumbledore and Grindelwald to start the movie off, but then it leads into a very brutal scene where Newt Scamander tries to rescue a mother Quilin and her new baby twins, but has to watch as the mother gets killed and one of the babies gets kidnapped, then killed. Grindelwald uses some dark magic to make the dead baby they kidnapped walk around and do his bidding and thus fool the wizards voting in this election. If you were wanting more fantastic beasts, is this the fantastic beasts plot you were really hoping for? Of course the saving grace in the eyes of the movie is that one of the twins is kept alive and hidden in Newt’s magical suitcase. And they’re trying to eventually get to the point where they can stop Grindelwald from being elected, a thing that Dumbledore can’t do himself due to a blood pact that he made with Grindelwald earlier in life. But it’s still a bit more brutal and dark than it needed to be.

I’m also not really sure if I’m that interested in a fantasy movie where the main plot is revolved around an illegitimate election where one party completely rigs the election to get the supposed support of the people and the main heroes of the movie trying overturn or prevent the votes in order to get the right person in charge. And that’s not a matter of a political opinion one way or the other. It’s just a bit too on the nose. If I’m going to dive into the Wizarding World, I want that to be an escape from reality, not a direct reflection of all the frustratingly maddening political shenanigans that have been happening in the real world. There’s a time and a place for political dramas and documentaries trying to make a point and correct what’s going on, but inside of the Wizarding World is not that place.

But even if we look past all of that, I think there are more issues with the set-up to all of this. It’s a bit of a bumpy ride that I had a hard time perfectly following. Maybe some of that is my problem for not remembering all of the characters from the franchise and what their individual importance is. But my defense is that the movie should do a better job creating memorable characters that I want to follow. Of course I remember Newt Scamander and his muggle friend Jacob. And obviously a Potter fan does not simply forget about Dumbledore and Grindelwald. But there are so many other side characters involved in these adventures that are really hard to keep track of. And the movie seems so excited to have an Avengers-like team up of these characters joining Dumbledore’s first army of sorts in attacking Grindelwald that it forgets that said concept doesn’t work well if one doesn’t have strong connections to these characters.

Maybe I should’ve re-watched the first two movies prior to going into this new one. But I didn’t care to go back and revisit those. I did watch a “Cram It” video on the Fandom Entertainment YouTube Channel where they summarize the first two movies. But all that did is remind me how much of the specifics here have completely disappeared from my memory. And maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy the whole movie as much as I wanted to or as much as some others have because the connection to these characters is mostly lost on me.

The movie also does a really good job at wandering through a myriad of subplots with many of these characters before we get to this whole election plot that is the main focus. And I couldn’t even spoil this if I wanted to do because the first hour of the movie did a horrible job of keeping my attention. We were going places and doing things. Newt was rescuing his brother from a dungeon thing. I couldn’t remember why his brother was there. I barely remembered that Newt had a brother. We gave Jacob a wand. Why? I don’t know. The only shot of him using the wand in the movie was in the trailer. And it doesn’t work because he’s not a wizard. But they were off doing something with some group of people. And despite the title of the second movie, Grindelwald was forgiven of his crimes for a reason I couldn’t remember. Oh, and did I tell you that the idea of an International Confederation of Wizards is one that was completely lost on me? Am I a bad Potter fan if I have no idea who they even are or why they are that important? Outside the Ministry of Magic in the books, I don’t think the Wizard leadership is explored that much, so now in a third Fantastic Beasts movie and tenth overall movie, I’m supposed to try to care about all of them? And even if I do assume they’re a powerful leadership group of wizards, who are the two other wizards running against Grindelwald in this movie?

There are individual sequences in this movie that work well enough. The sequence right before the election is a fun, fast-paced sequence with lots of magic battles as this group is putting into practice their plan to stop Grindelwald. I can be grumpy that no one ever says the spells they are about to use in this movie. It feels like the movie mostly ignores the rules of magic that the books set in place and just kinda does what it wants, but at least they had sequences that were entertaining scattered throughout. They just didn’t seem connected very well together and the overall direction of the movie with this election plot wasn’t a satisfying direction to go.

The actors all did a good job. Eddie Redmayne has definitely had an interesting career, but I like him as Newt Scamander. Dan Fogler steals most of the scenes he’s in as Jacob Kowalski. Jude Law is again the perfect choice for a young Dumbledore. And even though the firing of Depp leaves a pretty putrid stench, Mads Mikkelsen is the perfect Grindelwald. He makes a solid case that he should’ve been given the role from Day 1. And if we’re inferring a romantic relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, Mads has much better chemistry with Jude Law than Depp did. The two of them actually play it very well as two people who used to care deeply for each other, and still kinda do despite having gone in completely opposite directions. I think if this franchise was specifically committed to being a Dumbledore prequel series from Day 1, that could’ve been an intriguing series, especially with these two actors.

The challenge with that angle is the movie is trying to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants to dive down this rabbit hole, but it also wants to be released in China, which sensors LGTQ content. So they pander to a Chinese audience and dance around the issue for most of the movie and only have a few lines that specifically refer to a thing so they can edit them out for the Chinese release. And that’s not cool. Either commit to the idea or don’t.

But as a whole, this movie is trying to be too many things. It’s trying to please too many people. And even though I appreciate the effort of them trying to do a better job than the second, it just ends up as a big mess. Too much baggage behind this. Not enough intrigue in the movie itself. And of all the directions to take the Wizarding World in the first place, this was probably a long ways down the list among Potter fans and it’s time to cut the losses and do something new. Does the completionist in me want them to officially finish the franchise at the very least? I mean, I wouldn’t hate that. But at the same time, this is a story that we know the ending to. And all that’s left to show is the one thing that we knew about in the first place. And in a way, this movie ends in a fashion that really wraps up everything that it needs to while letting us audiences infer what happens next based on what we already read in the books. I know J.K. Rowling wanted five movies. But we don’t need the final one or two. And based on box office results so far, it doesn’t appear that many people want them, either.

If this is the end of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, it’s kinda sad because it just wound up as a big, giant, ugly mess. A lot of potential completely wasted. But if they decide to continue, then I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. As far as what else could be done, I feel a film adaptation of “The Cursed Child” is inevitable and I’m dreading that. I’d be fine with ignoring that and doing new stories with the next generation of wizarding children. I’d love to see us do more with the Marauders. And I think it would be great if we told the stories of the original Hogwarts founders. And I think with some of these we could do as HBO Max series instead of movies. All of these sound more interesting to me than a fourth Fantastic Beasts movie, but we’ll see where they decide to go next because this is now a second straight film that just didn’t do it for me.

Grade: 5/10