Poll Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (SPOILERS)

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald



What are your thoughts?

 

Just saw it yesterday. I agree with many reviews that this is not for people who have never watched a Potter movie or read the books before. You will miss a lot of stuff. But for people who are fans of the Potter-world this is a very watchable movie.

But it does have a slight middle movie syndrome. It continues to setup storylines without finishing them. And if they are really planning of doing five of these then I worry about how the other two before the finale will work. Can the series survive that long.

 

The Forbes review calls it "a franchise-killing disaster" and has this lovely bit:

 

Damn. That's brutal.

I'm still hesitant about seeing it because of Depp, but I actually had high hopes for the story because the trailers made it look like a lot of fun.

 

It was okay... that's about the best I can give it.

 

I saw it with my mom and we both really enjoyed it.
Some interesting twists, including a betrayal and massive reveal at the end that I did not see coming.
After some of the thing's I've learned about Johnny Depp I do have issues with him, but I have to admit he actually gave a really good peformance. It was surprisingly subdued and straight forward performance for modern day Johnny Depp. Grindelwald is not another Jack Sparrow, or Willy Wonka.
We got a couple familiar creatures and some cool new ones.

Spoiler: Massive Spoilers, do not read if you do not want to spoil the movie

Queenie's betrayal at the end was a bit of a shock, but we did get some nice build up to it, so it didn't come out of nowhere.
I was a bit surprised that they just brushed off Jacob being obliviated, or not, at the end of the first one.
Clearance being a Dumberldore was a HUGE shock that I did not see coming at all. It will be very interesting to see where that leads him and his brother in the future. So this makes four Dumbledore siblings, Albus, Ableforth, Ariana and Aurelius.

 

I enjoyed the movie but, damn, it was trying to do way too much. The plot had too many moving parts and it often cut corners so it could bring everything together at the end, and honestly it doesn't quite work. It felt more like it was adapting one of the latter, complex Harry Potter books where it had to drop a lot of the nuance and replace it with quick explanations (the Lestrange family history, the Creedance/Dumbledore twist, the Dumbledore/Grindelwald relationship, etc.), except there's no original source for the viewers to fall back on to fill in the blanks.

But the worst sin the script committed was how it failed to adequately present why Queenie chose to follow Grindelwald. Because she had a bad argument with Jacob, couldn't find her sister, and Grindewald's loyal follower just happened to find her on a rainy corner? Because Grindelwald showed her some scary images of the future? No, I don't buy happy-go-lucky Queenie would suddenly turn so darkly because of such surface happenings, just because the script needed her to do so.

The core problem lies in the fact that Rowling is a better long prose writer (and she's far from perfect in that regard) than she is at scriptwriting because her complicated lore is much better suited in books than in films.

The highlights of the film are Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterson, and Dan Folger as their respective characters in their dealings with fantastic beasts. I just wish the film series was more interested in that than forcibly dealing with the Grindelwald conflict.

 

Her whole arc in the movie presented why Queenie ended up following Grindwald. She was becoming increasingly frustrated with the American magical community not allowing her to openly be with Jacob, and she was convinced that if Grindelwald was in charge that would change and she wouldn't have to hide her relationship with Jacob.
I remembered a couple other things I forgot to comment on before.

Spoiler: more spoilers

Grindelwald doing all of this in an attempt to prevent WWII from happening was an interesting reveal, and gave him a nice semi-sympathetic motivation. He's obviously going about it in the worst way possible, but you can see where he's coming from, in a twisted sort of way.
My biggest dissapointment was Nagini, she didn't really do much.

 

I agree that the film provided "reasons" for her turning.

I disagree that those reasons were anything but superficial and superfluous fluff. Just because it provided reasons doesn't mean they automatically make sense for why she would turn, and as I already pointed out, none of them make any sense for the character we had already seen. She wasn't happy with the American magical rules about marriage, so she decided to join forces with a pureblood maniac? Spare me. That doesn't make a lick of sense.

 

"I hate Paris." -

I liked it. Depp's character is basically just Magneto. I can already picture the final scene of this series. With him and Dumbledore playing chess in prison.
I look forward to see his "Brotherhood" cause some havoc in the next movie.

 

People assume that he's his brother but he could easily be a cousin. A cousin would make more sense with the established lore.

 

I just saw this movie with my kids, and I needed my son to explain parts of it to me. It's been ten years since I finished the Potter series and I don't think I ever re-watched the Half-Blood Prince or the Deathly Hollows. I also haven't re-watched the first Fantastic Beasts movie. This installment is certainly for hardcore fans only if you want to understand the details.

For example, it never dawned on me that Aurelius wasn't the brother we had seen originally because I forgot most of the details of Dumbledore's backstory. I had completely forgotten any details about Creedence and there really wasn't a lot to go on from the movie to fill in the gaps. It makes me wonder how those more casual viewers/non-readers approached the film.

I was also unaware that the movie was going to end on a cliffhanger, thinking it to be a more or less self-contained story like the first movie. I was honestly expecting there to be a final confrontation, counting the plot threads that needed to be tied up and checking my watch regarding the running time--then the move just ended and the credits rolled. I now know how some people felt watching The Lord of the Rings.

I don't think this installment is as bad as some of the reviews from this thread are saying, I don't think the plot is any more disjointed than some of the Potter movies. The disadvantage that this movie has is that it has to stand on its own without a supporting novel to flesh out the details.

 

Rowling NEEDS to work with an actual screenwriter on the next one. Get Steve Kloves if she has to. Because these movies meander like nobody's business. This was an absolute mess. Frustrating, because there's a lot here to sink your teeth into but she jumps around too much. While watching it I was reminded of HP and the Chamber of Secrets being like 160 minutes long. This movie needed to be that. There's too much stuffed in here for the 125 minutes (without credits).

I think the most effective part of the film was Grindelwald's rally and the "flash forward" to WW2. They're really pushing the Hitler parallels (even giving him a Berchtesgaden-style house) despite him implying he wants to prevent Hitler and the war and him saying he doesn't "hate" muggles. But I'm just wondering what the heck we're going to be doing for the next 3 movies, since we know already that in 1945, Dumbledore and Grindelwald have their huge 3-hour duel and Dumbledore wins. That's 18 years from this movie.

From a personal standpoint I guess I will enjoy watching the world change as the characters age and we move from the 1920's into the 1940's. That was my favorite part of the last movie and the thing I enjoyed most about this one....the new setting. I don't really care about Newt. I mean, I do appreciate the fact that he's a reluctant and unlikely hero, being an aloof Hufflepuff, but in this film the "fantastic beasts" seemed tacked on and we know that he's not powerful enough to take on Grindelwald, so Rowling has got to figure out a way to keep him a viable protagonist. Right now he seems, to me anyway, a spectator to events.

That'd be funny, but nah. I'd bet that the last scene is a young Tom Riddle attending class at Hogwarts, or creating his first Horcrux, and ominous music plays.

 

Yeah, I mostly agree with this. It seemed arbitrary. Like Rowling said "I need one of our characters to join Grindelwald" so she made it happen. It wasn't really fleshed out. Besides, Queenie can read minds. It would've made more sense had she said "You don't really love me, I can sense it" or "You're afraid of me" to Jacob...and then left. But then...what about her sister? Queenie was THAT taken with Grindelwald's spiel that she'd just leave her sister and boyfriend and be by his side? Just because of what MAY happen 12 years in the future?

The only thing I can think of is maybe Queenie makes snap decisions. She enchanted Jacob under a love spell to get him to London (or was it Paris?), after all. She did stomp off after not even a bad fight. Maybe the next movie will show her staying with Grindelwald out of fear?

 

Watched it last night, thought it was pretty "ok", I doubt it will set the box-office on fire, but visually it was stunning and seeing the full power of the Elder Wand was impressive.

As for the new "bumblebee" my guess, either a son of Aberforth or the son of a cousin of Albus and him. He's too young to be another brother and I doubt Rowling will actually shit all over the fact Albus is gay - although of course, that doesn't stop him from having children.

You are forgetting one minor piece of information. MEDUSA cut "his" tongue out.

Grindelwald can be very convincing and with Queenie being madly in love (she put a love potion on Jacob to get him to marry her and we all know what happens when a child is born under one of those) and being pissed off with the rules around marrying non-magical folk, coupled with Grindelwald claiming to get rid of those laws when he is in power, that's what made her join him. - Plus she is rather impressionable.

You may not like it, but it was mapped out across the entire film.

I suspect in the grand scheme of things, this will be seen in a way that Chamber of Secrets is by some (well by me anyway) and even though on the surface it doesn't seem important and it's Harry versus Voldermort (again) it's actually very important to the bigger picture.

 

For the most part, I thought it was decent, and I definitely enjoyed the first FB much better than this. The problem with this film is NOT that there's a lot going on, but quite the opposite - there's very little substance in the way of storytelling.

Scamander is reprimanded by the Ministry following the events in New York. He's smitten with Tina and goes looking for her with Jacob, who's also searching for his sweetheart Queenie. Tina Goldstein goes to Paris to look for Credence Barebone, who's on the quest to find his family origin. The titular character Grindelwald escapes from captivity, who's amassing followers in Paris, also goes looking for Credence. Everything else in between seems like background noise or fluff. The movie ranks about the same level of Half Blood Prince, which is my least favorite film of the Potter series.

 

After my last post I started wondering how well Credence being another Dumbledore sibling would fit with what we know of the family. From what you guys have said, it does sound like him being a cousin or some type of relative would be more likely.

It worked for me.

 

Rather like the charm and humor of the first entry. Going dark and grim made it more intense, but less fun. I'm interested in seeing how this plays out. But in one sense New Scamander has already made the decisive play getting the blood pact jewel. The rest is complications, and it's not clear they'll matter.

The revolution motif is very strong with this one. Something in the air? It's not clear at all whether it will be like Continuum and give the revolutionaries a fair shake or whether they'll just all be EEEVil a la The Gifted or Alphas. I doubt they'll finesse it like they did The 4400 leaving it in the air.

 

Tor.com has an excellent article about some of the issues with FB2. (I loved the first movie; won't be seeing this one in the theater.) Beware, SPOILERS ABOUND:
https://www.tor.com/2018/11/19/the-crimes-of-the-crimes-of-grindelwald/#comment-775699

 

Re the tor article, #10 is I think the author's real objection. Personally I think it many ways it would be desirable if actors could be put into boxes between roles, as they are irrelevant to the role. Other people invest in the actor instead and will respond differently. I don't think this is an aesthetic issue at all.

Of the rest, #5,6, 7 and 9 are moot, because this is very much a chapter. Also, they are continuity issues. Alas, not all of us are so committed to continuity. Even if some or all end in a ret-con, I haven't quit watching anything just because of a ret-con.

#3 may count as a ret-con, but it is true Nagini is underused...in this chapter. I know people like to ignore bad endings to praise early episodes or entries in a series, but it seems a bit much to condemn the entire series without thinking about the ending at all. Especially when the complaint about Nagini is that she's so unimportant here, how can this ruin the movie? It's not a big enough part.

#4 and #8 advise things to go faster, and to go slower, respectively. There might be a way to reconcile these, but plainly the review is not even thought out if we have to guess how this is supposed to be done. As is, #8 is close to that emperor in the movie Amadeus who complained Mozart put in "too many notes."

#2 is just embarrassing for the author, because it doesn't even correctly describe Leta's arc, which includes accidentally drowning her half-brother Corvus. That kind of guilt means you just can't assume Leta sacrificed herself for either or both of the Scamander brothers, or that her resentment of Dumbledore is just about bullying.

#1 is at least actually about something which is a major part of the movie, unlike the rest. Unfortunately, I think the question is wrong. The real question is why won't Jaco marry Queenie? Or, at the end, why Jacob won't walk with her? For the first, the reasons Jacob gives are feeble and hard to believe, which is exactly why Queenie enchanting Jacob is more like knocking down a pretense than abuse. Intermarriage is legal in Europe according to the dialogue. The author even mentions "gaslighting" yet can't manage to connect "You're crazy" to Queenie's turn.

As to the second question, I'm not quite sure.