Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) - Review
Originally published May 2019When I watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a few years ago, I could not believe that there were going to be four sequels. Having just watched The Crimes of Grindelwald, I'm still in disbelief. I have an easier time accepting this whole world of wizardry and magic is real than the fact that anyone thinks these movies have enough plot to carry them through five movies. The only consolation I get is that, when I see JK Rowling's name appear in the "Writers" section of the credits, I can take a little solace in the fact that she too is human and does not write pure gold all the time. Every writer, even the most successful, writes some rough first drafts every once in a while.
You may have assumed from my subtle elucidation of the Fantastic Beasts franchise that I am, so far, quite unimpressed. If this was your assumption, you are correct! The Harry Potter books were well organized, with steady pacing and clear, but complex, plots that transferred easily to films. This new magical series penned by Rowling, which takes place in the 1920s has yet to really capture my attention in a meaningful way. The first film was a dull affair that I found mostly boring, so the series didn't get going with the strongest start. I guess the main question is: is The Crimes of Grindelwald any better?
Image: Warner Bros.
Pros
Magical special effects look cool
Creature designs are still interesting
Set designs are neat
Costume design seems appropriate
Music is dark but whimsical
Cons
Aimless first half with no real plot throughout that has any urgency
Contrived character dilemmas with unearned conclusions
Motivations of characters is all unconvincing
Pacing of film is slow
No one in the cast has any charisma to make you interested except for Jude Law and Johnny Depp
Plot & Thoughts
The Crimes of Grindelwald opens with the aforementioned villain from the previous film, Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), in custody, and then easily escaping said custody before the title card of the film appears. You might already be aware, either through the film marketing or through references in the Harry Potter stories, that these movies are all supposed to be building towards a confrontation between Grindelwald and Dumbledore (Jude Law). So, a great detail of the conversations in this movie centers around those two characters, which is good because they happen to be the most charismatic people in the film. However, the film's main characters, with whom we spend most of our time, are instead the dull and lame individuals from last time and a few new ones that are mostly irrelevant.
Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is still the eccentric magical-animal lover with a propensity to disobey authority and a longing for his favorite American magical police officer, Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson). Scamander is stuck in the UK, forbidden from international travel after all the trouble he caused in his last adventure. His brother, Theseus (Callum Turner), is an Auror (magic cop) who wants to help Newt but also wants Newt to help hunt down Grindelwald and, more specifically, Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the monstrous emo from the previous film who died at the end but managed to survive somehow. Theseus' fiancé, Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz), is an old friend of Newt and wants to help him too, so she hangs around a lot but I'm not sure what she does most of the time. By the way, Leta has a dark subplot in this movie that's kind of important, but not really, I guess.
Image: Warner Bros.
In addition to all this drama, the best character from the first film, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), suddenly shows up on Newt's doorstep with Queenie Goldstein (Allison Sudol) because he was the best character from the previous film and we need someone to carry this boring story to its conclusion. There's some drama between the two because Queenie wants to get married to Jacob, but it's against the magic law to mix magic and non-magic DNA, and Jacob doesn't want to break the law. Queenie runs off angry to pout about it and to show up again when it's convenient to the plot. Jacob looks for her for a bit and decides to hang with Newt who learns that Tina is apparently on a special mission to find Credence in Paris. Credence is apparently traveling with a circus in hopes of finding out who his parents were. Newt decides to break his proverbial house arrest to find her and patch up their own contrived drama that is based solely on miscommunication like something out of a bad soap opera.
Now, this all happens in the first 30 minutes of the film. If you could follow what happened in the last few paragraphs, did you notice anything in there about a real plot that has any sort of importance or tension? If you had trouble, I assure you, it's not just my writing ability at fault. The film does a poor job of setting up the main plot in a way that is meaningful, interesting, coherent, or compelling. Like last time, it all centers on people looking for people who are looking for people. There's no urgency to this task, however. The Crimes of Grindelwald is just aimless for the first half when everyone is just looking for each other.
Image: Warner Bros.
Unfortunately, when the characters start finding each other, it doesn't get much better. The poorly-written "conflicts" between characters that are based entirely on miscommunication are quickly resolved (because they should never have been a thing in the first place). Then, extra character arcs pop up, like the ones involving Leta Lestrange or Queenie, which are supposed to be emotional or surprising. However, the movie does nothing to make those moments or stories have any real significance or impact. There are also double-crosses from characters we barely know that are supposed to be surprising, I guess.
The movie is trying to do too much in too short of time. I don't quite know what the rush is since there are supposed to be three more movies after this one. There are too many characters with their own stories that are not fully developed, so when the big moments of tragedy or betrayal occur, it's meaningless. The characters from the first movie were not compelling to begin with, but they were at least developed a little in that movie. Here, there was practically no time for them to grow and the movie is more than 2 hours long!
Image: Warner Bros.
All the new characters eat up a lot of screen time, but they aren't able to develop much either. Leta Lestrange is the one that gets the most attention, but it's still a pretty empty character arc by the end. If the filmmakers really wanted to make so many of these movies with such a thin plot thread, they should have just had the characters from the first movie less involved and focused more on Leta, Theseus, Credence, Grindelwald, and Dumbledore entirely. They're clearly the ones who are supposed to be most important in this movie, but all of their stories are cannibalized by the "main" characters' lame plots.
It is undoubtedly difficult to follow up the Harry Potter films with a story filled with bombastic moments and special effects that can stupefy and captivate new and old audiences. Kids who were born when the first film came out will be old enough to vote in the US this year, so there must be countless people who grew up with those movies, and who are ready to eat up any new stories that JK Rowling has crafted in the hopes that she has something up her sleeve to wow them. Yet, watching these films just reminds me of watching Episodes I, II, and III of Star Wars for the first time. While the Fantastic Beasts films deal with more complicated adult themes than the Star Wars prequel trilogy and are not so clearly marketed towards children, the quality of the stories and the dullness of the characters have similarly been disappointing thus far.
Image: Warner Bros.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a long, dull, aimless adventure that lacks any significance or urgency until the last 30 minutes. In that climax, however, all the big important moments are neither surprising nor emotionally significant. There are simply too many characters with too many stories getting in the way of the big story, which has the potential for something deep or meaningful but will likely be underutilized by the end of this saga. If you're going to really make more of these movies and keep introducing more characters, stop wasting everyone's time with soap opera conflicts that are contrived, meaningless affairs centered around dull characters. Develop the characters and the conflict to make the two hours pass faster next time.
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