"Just because you're allowed to use magic now does not mean you have to whip your wands out for everything!"
In the fifth chapter of J.K. Rowling's iconic Harry Potter series, Molly Weasley says this to Fred and George as they apparate around the house, taking full advantage of their new magical privileges. It's just a funny throwaway moment in the David Yates-directed adaptation of Order of the Phoenix, but at a certain point in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (also directed by Yates), it came to mind in a not-so-amusing way. Divorced from the constraints of Hogwarts, magic is an omnipresent force in these new Wizarding World installments; everyone is constantly casting spells, doing magical things, letting creatures roam free, etc. So many moments are imbued with a sense of forced whimsy and wonder, but the fun has been drained from the material. To paraphrase an even more famous movie quote, "When everything's magical, nothing is."
The Crimes of Grindelwald, the hotly-anticipated (by who?) follow-up to 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has not been well-received, and it's all too easy to see why. In what has to be considered a worst case scenario for the series, the magical sequel has drawn comparisons to the boogeyman of pop culture touchstones- the Star Wars prequels. The Atlantic's David Sims said that Rowling had gone "full George Lucas" on Letterboxd, while others made the more direct analogy to the dreadful Attack of the Clones. Amusingly, the film's ceaseless blitz of magical garbage has a direct link to Lucas' notorious trilogy- anybody remember the Red Letter Media reviews? One of their main complaints is that Lucas inundates the screen so excessively with lightsabers that they're rendered meaningless. Wands are the new lightsabers, I guess.
Disregarding the Star Wars comparison for a moment, it must be acknowledged that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a terrible, terrible film (the two "terrible"s are very much warranted). As a fan of the Harry Potter series from a young age, it gives me no pleasure to report that we've reached this point. Equipped with an arsenal of one-dimensional characters and a truly tedious script from Rowling herself, this follow-up expands the Beasts universe in all of the wrong ways. This is 30 minutes of story progress stretched to an interminable 134 minutes, with pointlessly silly interludes and unnecessary backstory filling in the gaps. From what I'd heard from friends and critics, I expected Crimes of Grindelwald to be a bit of a mess; I never thought it would be the biggest blockbuster slog of the year.
Things pick up pretty shortly after the end of the first chapter, with Johnny Depp's Gellert Grindelwald in prison under the control of the American Ministry of Magic. Of course, it doesn't stay that way for long- Grindelwald enlists the help of a clueless ministry official to stage his escape. With the villainous wizard making his way to Paris to recruit the troubled Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), Hogwarts legend Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) begins to execute his own plan. The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is incapable of taking on Grindelwald alone (for reasons we only learn later), but he enlists Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to do his bidding for him. Newt is currently unable to leave England because of the havoc wreaked on New York, a travel ban that even brother Theseus (Callum Turner) and former flame Lela Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) can't change. But under Dumbledore's influence, Newt makes the move to Paris.
All things considered, this is not a bad set-up for a sequel; the stakes are high, the opening action scene is thrilling (if a little too frenetic), and the narrative path seems clear. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. The film gets bogged down in an excess of subplots and characters, muddling the action beyond repair. When Newt returns to Paris, he's reunited with Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), who are now engaged in a whirlwind romance that may or may not involve a powerful hex. When Queenie runs away and gets involved with Grindelwald, Jacob decides to stick with Newt as he continues his quest.
But wait, there's more! Former Lestrange rival Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) and Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) are also in pursuit of Credence with vastly different goals in mind, crossing paths with Newt and company as the journey continues. Finally, we're introduced to a few crucial characters from Potter lore- legendary alchemist Nicolas Flamel (Brontis Jodorowsky) and the shape-shifting Nagini (Claudia Kim).
Essentially, the film serves to accomplish two primary tasks- get Newt to pick a side in the battle between the wizarding world and Grindelwald, and allow the evil wizard to build his massive army. When you're attempting to stretch a franchise to five films, I guess this makes a certain level of sense. But in practice, you're in a tough spot, saddled with a story that is as stagnant as it is tiresome to watch. As the two-hour mark approaches, you'll likely come to the realization that virtually nothing has happened so far; director Yates and Rowling set up a variety of predicaments, but they drag out the process of solving these issues as long as humanly possible. In the moments in between, the focus is shifted to characters we don't care about and outrageously convoluted attempts at family mythology. To be blunt, this is not a formula for success.
Let's talk about the characters for a moment, shall we? For starters, there are just too many of them. We knew this would be a problem when Rowling decided to expand the focus from Newt and friends to the conflict between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, but it's even worse in execution than I feared. As Queenie, Jacob, Tina, Newt, and an even broader assortment of supporting players dash around Paris, the narrative glut makes it near-impossible to care about anything. But there's an even more troublesome issue in play- Grindelwald is an empty villain. Depp does his usual garish, spooky thing, but Grindelwald is too weird to be seductively villainous and too ordinary to be truly fearsome. His logic is shaky at best, and he doesn't have enough screen time to emerge as a three-dimensional character. And no matter how Jude Law and Rowling want to spin it, the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald is poorly handled. In a film with this much fat, there's no excuse to not explore that further.
Yet in a weird way, Grindelwald's lack of depth can be explained by the fact that he's basically a stand-in for none other than Donald Trump himself. Yes, The Crimes of Grindelwald is very much a Trump-era parable, and it's not a subtle one at that. This is a film that ends with a magical Trump rally, where Grindelwald and his followers assemble to deliver their statement of purpose in a graveyard, no less. And when an Auror kills a follower of the dark wizard, Grindelwald gets up and gives a speech about the intolerance of the wizard left. It's hilariously on-the-nose, and it's almost as if Rowling somehow believes that obvious political posturing makes up for the film's other shortcomings. Yeah, not quite.
Most surprisingly of all, the core problem of the original Fantastic Beasts carries over- the odd tension between the serious, politically minded story and the goofy prevalence of magical creatures. Newt is a magizoologist, so I suppose it was silly of me to expect all of this to vanish in the first sequel. Still, it just highlights the franchise's lack of a consistent identity, the overall dearth of an overarching tone and purpose. In the absence of that focus, beasts run amok, family drama is unearthed, and characters inch slowly to their destiny. By the time all is said and done, we're not much further along in this new epic story than we were two hours away.
There's always something going on in The Crimes of Grindelwald, but nothing's ever really happening.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (3.8/10)
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
In the fifth chapter of J.K. Rowling's iconic Harry Potter series, Molly Weasley says this to Fred and George as they apparate around the house, taking full advantage of their new magical privileges. It's just a funny throwaway moment in the David Yates-directed adaptation of Order of the Phoenix, but at a certain point in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (also directed by Yates), it came to mind in a not-so-amusing way. Divorced from the constraints of Hogwarts, magic is an omnipresent force in these new Wizarding World installments; everyone is constantly casting spells, doing magical things, letting creatures roam free, etc. So many moments are imbued with a sense of forced whimsy and wonder, but the fun has been drained from the material. To paraphrase an even more famous movie quote, "When everything's magical, nothing is."
The Crimes of Grindelwald, the hotly-anticipated (by who?) follow-up to 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has not been well-received, and it's all too easy to see why. In what has to be considered a worst case scenario for the series, the magical sequel has drawn comparisons to the boogeyman of pop culture touchstones- the Star Wars prequels. The Atlantic's David Sims said that Rowling had gone "full George Lucas" on Letterboxd, while others made the more direct analogy to the dreadful Attack of the Clones. Amusingly, the film's ceaseless blitz of magical garbage has a direct link to Lucas' notorious trilogy- anybody remember the Red Letter Media reviews? One of their main complaints is that Lucas inundates the screen so excessively with lightsabers that they're rendered meaningless. Wands are the new lightsabers, I guess.
Disregarding the Star Wars comparison for a moment, it must be acknowledged that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a terrible, terrible film (the two "terrible"s are very much warranted). As a fan of the Harry Potter series from a young age, it gives me no pleasure to report that we've reached this point. Equipped with an arsenal of one-dimensional characters and a truly tedious script from Rowling herself, this follow-up expands the Beasts universe in all of the wrong ways. This is 30 minutes of story progress stretched to an interminable 134 minutes, with pointlessly silly interludes and unnecessary backstory filling in the gaps. From what I'd heard from friends and critics, I expected Crimes of Grindelwald to be a bit of a mess; I never thought it would be the biggest blockbuster slog of the year.
Things pick up pretty shortly after the end of the first chapter, with Johnny Depp's Gellert Grindelwald in prison under the control of the American Ministry of Magic. Of course, it doesn't stay that way for long- Grindelwald enlists the help of a clueless ministry official to stage his escape. With the villainous wizard making his way to Paris to recruit the troubled Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), Hogwarts legend Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) begins to execute his own plan. The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is incapable of taking on Grindelwald alone (for reasons we only learn later), but he enlists Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to do his bidding for him. Newt is currently unable to leave England because of the havoc wreaked on New York, a travel ban that even brother Theseus (Callum Turner) and former flame Lela Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) can't change. But under Dumbledore's influence, Newt makes the move to Paris.
All things considered, this is not a bad set-up for a sequel; the stakes are high, the opening action scene is thrilling (if a little too frenetic), and the narrative path seems clear. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. The film gets bogged down in an excess of subplots and characters, muddling the action beyond repair. When Newt returns to Paris, he's reunited with Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), who are now engaged in a whirlwind romance that may or may not involve a powerful hex. When Queenie runs away and gets involved with Grindelwald, Jacob decides to stick with Newt as he continues his quest.
But wait, there's more! Former Lestrange rival Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) and Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) are also in pursuit of Credence with vastly different goals in mind, crossing paths with Newt and company as the journey continues. Finally, we're introduced to a few crucial characters from Potter lore- legendary alchemist Nicolas Flamel (Brontis Jodorowsky) and the shape-shifting Nagini (Claudia Kim).
Essentially, the film serves to accomplish two primary tasks- get Newt to pick a side in the battle between the wizarding world and Grindelwald, and allow the evil wizard to build his massive army. When you're attempting to stretch a franchise to five films, I guess this makes a certain level of sense. But in practice, you're in a tough spot, saddled with a story that is as stagnant as it is tiresome to watch. As the two-hour mark approaches, you'll likely come to the realization that virtually nothing has happened so far; director Yates and Rowling set up a variety of predicaments, but they drag out the process of solving these issues as long as humanly possible. In the moments in between, the focus is shifted to characters we don't care about and outrageously convoluted attempts at family mythology. To be blunt, this is not a formula for success.
Let's talk about the characters for a moment, shall we? For starters, there are just too many of them. We knew this would be a problem when Rowling decided to expand the focus from Newt and friends to the conflict between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, but it's even worse in execution than I feared. As Queenie, Jacob, Tina, Newt, and an even broader assortment of supporting players dash around Paris, the narrative glut makes it near-impossible to care about anything. But there's an even more troublesome issue in play- Grindelwald is an empty villain. Depp does his usual garish, spooky thing, but Grindelwald is too weird to be seductively villainous and too ordinary to be truly fearsome. His logic is shaky at best, and he doesn't have enough screen time to emerge as a three-dimensional character. And no matter how Jude Law and Rowling want to spin it, the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald is poorly handled. In a film with this much fat, there's no excuse to not explore that further.
Yet in a weird way, Grindelwald's lack of depth can be explained by the fact that he's basically a stand-in for none other than Donald Trump himself. Yes, The Crimes of Grindelwald is very much a Trump-era parable, and it's not a subtle one at that. This is a film that ends with a magical Trump rally, where Grindelwald and his followers assemble to deliver their statement of purpose in a graveyard, no less. And when an Auror kills a follower of the dark wizard, Grindelwald gets up and gives a speech about the intolerance of the wizard left. It's hilariously on-the-nose, and it's almost as if Rowling somehow believes that obvious political posturing makes up for the film's other shortcomings. Yeah, not quite.
Most surprisingly of all, the core problem of the original Fantastic Beasts carries over- the odd tension between the serious, politically minded story and the goofy prevalence of magical creatures. Newt is a magizoologist, so I suppose it was silly of me to expect all of this to vanish in the first sequel. Still, it just highlights the franchise's lack of a consistent identity, the overall dearth of an overarching tone and purpose. In the absence of that focus, beasts run amok, family drama is unearthed, and characters inch slowly to their destiny. By the time all is said and done, we're not much further along in this new epic story than we were two hours away.
There's always something going on in The Crimes of Grindelwald, but nothing's ever really happening.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (3.8/10)
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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