Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Well, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald might be where the magic has worn off. Once again directed by David Yates who has handled all of the wizarding world films starting with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and once again starring Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald, Ezra Miller as Creedence, and introducing Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore, Crimes of Grindelwald takes us on the journey of Newt Scamander who has been given the task by Dumbledore to go and find Creedence before he can cause any more harm to himself and to others. I have seen every wizarding world movie up to this point. I loved the original eight Harry Potter tales. I thought Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was a fun, whimsical tale and a good prequel, but something felt off here. Crimes of Grindelwald starts off hot with a fantastic opener, and it concludes with a solid ending, but the rest of the film feels muddy and stagnant.

            Once again, David Yates did a fantastic job directing. He adds a great dark element to these films that is executed perfectly. His direction is a bright spot here. Another bright spot is Redmayne’s performance as Newt Scamander. Redmayne does a great job at portraying Scamander as someone to sympathize with and root for. Johnny Depp is fine as Gellert Grindelwald. He’s not exceptional, but he’s serviceable. Zoë Kravitz does a wonderful job playing the troubled Leta Lestrange. Her character and her story were something noteworthy within the film that you definitely wanted to know more of. By far the best part of this film was Jude Law’s portrayal of the great wizard, Albus Dumbledore. Law radiates charm and charisma here and grabs the spotlight in any scene that he was in. The scene involving the mirror of erised was the highlight of this film. Such a powerful scene that helps you understand the turmoil within the seemingly perfect Dumbledore. His story and Leta’s were something that this movie needed so much more of.

            My biggest problem with this film, though, is that it drags. There is a solid twenty-five minutes that seems to not need to be there. The story is clustered by several characters and plot points that feel like they’re there at random. Characters like Nagini seem to just be there as callbacks for nostalgia. Other than giving her a slight origin, she has nothing to do throughout the film, which is saying something because the film does have dead moments that could’ve either been cut or used to further the development of some of these characters. There are also easter eggs in here that are sure to annoy the diehard fans quite a bit, and they seem to just be there for shock factor. I won’t count out Rowling recovering on this or expanding it all to make sense because up until now she has been great with her attention to detail, but for this film it just didn’t make sense. The title also doesn’t make sense. You would think that with a title like The Crimes of Grindelwald, he’d be prominently featured here, but he doesn’t really do much. Where are these crimes? Overall, this was a disappointment. Is it a bad movie? No. Does it pale in comparison to the other nine? Absolutely. The first bad egg in an otherwise great franchise, I have to give Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald a 6.5/10.