Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I have a feeling that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald will divide all but the most hardcore of Harry Potter fanatics.  I also have a feeling that this was the intention of author and screenwriter, J.K. Rowling.  In the past with her stories, she has shown a deft hand at mixing fantastic spectacle, warm and witty humor, and serious subject matter into grand stories.  But this time around, she's so fixated on world building and diving head-first into her increasingly convoluted narrative of her prequel story, that she kind of forgets about everything else.

There is obviously an audience out there who want to know everything about Rowling's fantasy world, and they will no doubt devour and analyze every story thread this movie throws at them.  But for me, as a somewhat casual fan (a somewhat casual fan who spent way too much money to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts 1 and 2 on Broadway next month, mind you), it got to be a bit much.  The plot, which often plays out like fantasy soap opera, is so dense that it pretty much eclipses everything else in the movie.  There is little time for spectacle, joy, wonder, or even for the titular Fantastic Beasts, who seem to be making mere cameos in their own namesake movie.  Instead, too much time is devoted to having the actors stand around, trying to explain what's going on.  Like I said, there is an audience for this, and you already know what you think.  There are some moments that work here, but they are surrounded by lengthy segments where Rowling seems to be trying to cram too much into her own narrative.

Like a lot of prequels, the movie revels in connecting this story to the earlier films.  We go to Hogwarts to meet a young Albus Dumbledore (played here by Jude Law), we see a few familiar creatures and hear some famous names, and there are callbacks a plenty.  When watching a prequel, I often wonder why filmmakers bend over backwards to connect these stories set earlier in the timeline to the original franchise.  Not everything and everyone needs a backstory.  What's wrong with just creating a new stand-alone story in the same world?  Regardless, just like before, our guide through this world (set in the late 1920s) is Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne, more mannered and low key than ever before), a wizard who does not want to choose sides in an upcoming war, but would rather travel the world, collecting and studying the magical beasts that inhabit it.  The scenes where Newt is with his creatures are some of the best in the film, but they are not the focus this time.  Rather, the central focus is on villain Gellert Grindelwald, who was introduced near the end of the last movie, and pretty much drives the plot this time around.

Played by Johnny Depp with ice-white hair and a menacing soft-spoken manner, the film opens with Gellert's daring prison escape, which is one of the few sequences in the movie that is truly thrilling and full of spectacle.  Now free, he wants to gather up all the pureblood wizards from all over the world, and start a war with the non-magics.  His ultimate goal is to conquer both the world of magic and the everyday world.  Newt is tasked by Dumbledore to track Grindelwald down before he can gather an army of followers and begin his conquest.  Unfortunately, it's not that simple.  During his mission, Newt must deal with the fact that he has been banned from traveling due to events that happened in New York in the last film, so he has to find a way to travel undetected.  He also reunites with Tina (Katherine Waterston), also from the last movie, and tries to rekindle a romance with her.

Speaking of romance, there's a lot of subplots concerning couples this time around.  We have Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), Newt's classmate from Hogwarts, who is involved with Newt's brother Theseus (Callum Turner).  It turns out Theseus is on the Ministry of Magic, and is one of those people who wants Newt to choose a side when it comes to the upcoming war.  There is also Tina's ditzy sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), who is still involved with Muggle Jacob (Dan Fogler).  Queenie and Jacob pretty much exist for rare moments of comic relief when needed, and honestly, the movie could have used a bit more, as the tone of the film is very grim, dour, and lovelorn.  All this, and I have not mentioned Credence Barebone (Erza Miller), who is seeking his identity, and who is being tracked down by Grindlewald, because he is supposedly a key element to his plans for conquests. 

Again, I'm sure all of this will be thrilling to certain people, but as The Crimes of Grindelwald bounced these various plots, characters, relationships, and multiple settings (usually London and Paris), I found it harder to care much about what was going on, and who wanted to hook up with whom, and who was doing what or looking for what or who.  This is simply an overstuffed movie that could have benefited from some simplicity, and a lot more spectacle that would help us feel transported into the film's world.  It's surprising, because it's not like the people behind these films are stranger to the franchise or the world.  The film's director is David Yates, and this is his sixth time working with the Harry Potter universe.  He's shown a deft hand at mixing plot and adventure before, but there's just a very slow atmosphere here that makes this more of a slog than an adventure.  And yet, there are some moments here that capture the greatness and fun of earlier films, my favorite being a sequence where a circus packs itself up when it's time to move onto another city.  And when the Fantastic Beasts do show up, they're as much fun as they were before.  They just are given less importance and less to do.

I think the problem here is that Rowling is treating this film series like a novel, and is trying to cram so much plot and information that it simply overwhelms.  It doesn't help that Redmayne is not exactly a hero driven by personality, and he frequently mumbles his lines here.  There's still things to enjoy here, but this entry felt like a little bit more of a chore to sit through than previous films.  I can only hope any future films employ a bit more of a lighter touch when it comes to plotting and fitting everything together, though I have my doubts.

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