"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" suffers from many of the same problems as its predecessor. Those problems mainly stem from an identity crisis, in that it does not really know what it wants to be, and the tone of the movie is therefore all over the place. It wants to be a more kid-friendly movie about cute magical beasts that cause all kinds of mischief, while at the same time being a dark and gritty tale that works as a prequel to the Harry Potter series. What it does better than the first movie, is that those two different worlds gel better in "Crimes of Grindelwald", and feel less like two completely separated storylines awkwardly mashed together. The actions of Newt Scamander are much more closely related to the Grindelwald storyline than it did before.
However, the movie still struggles to balance all the different storylines it presents, and those storylines still awkwardly converge to the same story point. Their main purpose is to get the characters in the same place at the same time, and the plot stumbles forward at a snail's pace. If you look at the "main" storyline, that of Grindelwald's rise to power, there really is barely anything that happens in the 2+ hour runtime. It starts with Grindelwald escaping, and ends with him summoning potential followers and having a showdown with our protagonists. Those two events could easily be much closer to each other in a more focused and less bloated movie, but it feels like Rowling had to cram in a lot of somewhat irrelevant things in order to fill the runtime and make room for the other three movies that are still planned in this series. Also, for a movie sub-titled "The Crimes of Grindelwald" there really is very little to no focus on those crimes.
All of those things being said, I still found myself very much enjoying this movie. It was a bit meandering at times, and somewhat light on action, but what action there was, once again looked stunning. It did a great job of expanding on this beautiful magical world, and visually it was quite spectacular. There were enough little nods to the Harry Potter stories we know and love to satisfy me without it feeling solely as fan service.
The individual storylines, while together lacking focus, on their own were engaging enough to keep me interested all throughout the movie. I enjoyed all the interactions between the main characters, and all the actors did a great job. Special props to Johnny Depp, who has gotten a lot of flack for his casting, but in my opinion gave a terrific performance; part sympathetic and part terrifying, which was exactly the point. I wish we had gotten a little more of the Dumbledore-Grindelwald backstory, but I guess the world as a whole is not entirely ready for a central homosexual lovestory in a major blockbuster. For now, we gotta do with some handlocking, and honestly, I'll take what I can get at this point. They handled it delicately and with subtlety, while not ignoring it entirely, and I can't have too many complaints about that.
Overall, I went in with somewhat lower expectations due to some of the negativity surrounding the movie, which has worked beneficially to my enjoyment of it. I hope the next movies can learn from the mistakes of its predeccesors and present a more unified story. This is going to be a tricky thing to accomplish since it would need to stray further away from the titular fantastic beasts, but hopefully my faith in Rowling will be rewarded in the end.Falls into the same traps as the first movie, but solidly entertaining nonetheless
However, the movie still struggles to balance all the different storylines it presents, and those storylines still awkwardly converge to the same story point. Their main purpose is to get the characters in the same place at the same time, and the plot stumbles forward at a snail's pace. If you look at the "main" storyline, that of Grindelwald's rise to power, there really is barely anything that happens in the 2+ hour runtime. It starts with Grindelwald escaping, and ends with him summoning potential followers and having a showdown with our protagonists. Those two events could easily be much closer to each other in a more focused and less bloated movie, but it feels like Rowling had to cram in a lot of somewhat irrelevant things in order to fill the runtime and make room for the other three movies that are still planned in this series. Also, for a movie sub-titled "The Crimes of Grindelwald" there really is very little to no focus on those crimes.
All of those things being said, I still found myself very much enjoying this movie. It was a bit meandering at times, and somewhat light on action, but what action there was, once again looked stunning. It did a great job of expanding on this beautiful magical world, and visually it was quite spectacular. There were enough little nods to the Harry Potter stories we know and love to satisfy me without it feeling solely as fan service.
The individual storylines, while together lacking focus, on their own were engaging enough to keep me interested all throughout the movie. I enjoyed all the interactions between the main characters, and all the actors did a great job. Special props to Johnny Depp, who has gotten a lot of flack for his casting, but in my opinion gave a terrific performance; part sympathetic and part terrifying, which was exactly the point. I wish we had gotten a little more of the Dumbledore-Grindelwald backstory, but I guess the world as a whole is not entirely ready for a central homosexual lovestory in a major blockbuster. For now, we gotta do with some handlocking, and honestly, I'll take what I can get at this point. They handled it delicately and with subtlety, while not ignoring it entirely, and I can't have too many complaints about that.
Overall, I went in with somewhat lower expectations due to some of the negativity surrounding the movie, which has worked beneficially to my enjoyment of it. I hope the next movies can learn from the mistakes of its predeccesors and present a more unified story. This is going to be a tricky thing to accomplish since it would need to stray further away from the titular fantastic beasts, but hopefully my faith in Rowling will be rewarded in the end.Falls into the same traps as the first movie, but solidly entertaining nonetheless