Movie Review - Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald

[evandar]

So. I saw the new Fantastic Beasts on Friday and again on Saturday, and I’ve been left with thoughts. Many, many thoughts. And I’ll freely admit that I’d watch it again to see if there’s anything that I’ve overlooked, but that’s going to have to wait since cinema tickets are fucking expensive.

Anyway, many of the reviews that I’ve read on this film have been mixed and, of course, there was a lot of controversy heading up to the release. The casting of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald disappointed a lot of people – myself included. He’s…not a great decision, and there’ll be more on my thoughts under the cut. There was also the Nagini reveal, which has some horrendous racist connotations and some very ugly implications for the Harry Potter series – again, more under the cut. So with all of that up in the air before the release, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going into it. In all honesty, I felt slightly dubious, and official write-ups of the movie have been…eh. The Mary Sue keeps crossing my Facebook feed, and they’ve been particularly scathing, but the general overview seems to be that it’s a decent enough watch but over-stuffed with plots and some quite unpleasant twists. I can’t say that this review is going to be any different.

It's also long. So very long.

So spoilers under the cut!



Where to begin? I’m not going to recap the film because, let’s face it, most of you are probably going to watch it anyway and quite frankly I don’t have the patience. I’m going to go straight in with casting.

SOMEONE EXPLAIN JOHNNY DEPP TO ME. SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHY HE WAS THERE AND WHY THIS WAS THE HILL J.K. ROWLING AND DAVID YATES CHOSE TO DIE ON.

*cough*

Johnny Depp is awful in this movie. We are told throughout the whole thing that Grindelwald is hugely charismatic. That he’s capable of bewitching his followers through words alone. That he can convince people of anything. But the problem is, we’re told that. And yeah, some of the characters actually act like he can too but more on that later. But. BUT. Is there charisma? Is there fuck. He’s so… I don’t want to call him wooden because I’ve honestly seen trees that have more charisma than Depp in this movie. He’s just there. Was he drunk? Was he high? Was he aware of how much no one wanted him there and just mentally checked out for every scene? I’ve met strung-out spice addicts who could rally followers more convincingly.

Given all of the controversy that followed his casting and the staunch defence he received from both Rowling and David Yates, his performance is actually offensive. It’s bland. Boring. It’s beige.

Also, what the hell is his character design? Just. ?????? Also, Grindelwald’s American now, guys, because sod even trying hard enough to do an accent.

That said, I like that they made Grindelwald a Seer. It’s an aspect of his character that I wasn’t expecting going into the first Fantastic Beasts, but that I appreciated. It was explored more in this movie, in two scenes of what The Mary Sue has dubbed skull-vaping. In the movie, Grindelwald uses smoke from a magical artefact (it’s a skull bong, basically, not gonna lie) to project his visions for other people to see. The first vision is one of Credence, which he uses to “explain” to his inner circle why he wants Credence recruited. I’ve used inverted commas there because it’s not a great explanation by any definition. The second is one that he projects at the rally at the end, and it’s imagery of the World War II. We, and the wizards and witches in his audience, are shown soldiers and tanks, Blitzkrieg, prisoners lined up in a concentration camp, and the detonation of the atom bomb. It’s pretty horrifying, but it’s also perfect for the situation. And I realise that this is likely going to be an unpopular opinion, but in the context of what Grindelwald is trying to do, it makes perfect sense.

I mean, let’s face it. If you were an amoral Dark Lord with the ability to project visions of the future and a desire to enslave/massacre Muggles, World War II would be the thing you’d choose to show, wouldn’t it. Especially given that, from the first movie, we know that wizards fought in World War I. Newt was on the Eastern front working with dragons. So they were involved in some capacity, although to what degree the Muggle and wizarding world intersected, we don’t know. We’re never told. It’s doubtful that wizards would be completely oblivious, however.

Grindelwald’s line in the aftermath, “This is what we’re fighting. Their arrogance.”

Arrogance at causing a war. Arrogance at threatening wizarding lives. It’s rhetoric that matches both what we know of Grindelwald’s character and the historical context. It’s similar enough rhetoric to what was in the Weimar Republic at the time as well. The “I don’t hate Muggles. They are simply Other” message that he started with, followed by the vision, followed by the line about arrogance, works as a radicalising technique – as does the command to not use violence against the Aurors in the room. It exemplified his message of “for the Greater Good”. It’s for their good that we need to intervene and prove ourselves greater: a line that’s been used by every single Empire ever. The call to not use violence while reminding supporters that they may want to seek revenge was also a radicalising technique and, in the case of the Red-Haired Witch, it worked. She was killed and framed as a martyr by Grindelwald afterwards – “take this brave warrior home to her family and tell the world that we are not the violent ones.”

It’s a scene that has a huge amount hinging on it. This is how Grindelwald recruits his supporters. This is why he’s so feared. Not just for his powerful magic, but for his silver tongue. The whole film has been ramping up to this. Thus, Johnny Depp’s near-catatonic performance was gutting. It was just weird. Everyone else in the scene was acting. Hell, they were acting like Johnny Depp was acting. It’s just…he wasn’t. My Granny could have acted that scene better than he did, and we cremated her in 2012.

WHAT WAS SO GREAT ABOUT THIS ONE PERSON THAT YOU HAD TO ALIENATE HALF YOUR FANBASE OVER HIM, JO???

But, other than Depp, the casting of this movie was actually pretty decent. I liked Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore – he’s got the wit and the sophistication and the twinkle in his eye that you need. Zoe Kravitz is amazing as Leta Lestrange. Eddie Redmayne remains adorable as Newt Scamander, and Dan Fogler’s Jacob Kowalski is both wonderfully relatable and, in my opinion, the best-realised character in the whole thing. Also adorable. I want Jacob to have all the nice things in the world.

I have more I want to say about the rally scene and the symbolism used, but first it’s time to discuss the other big scandal in the film: Nagini is a cursed WoC. Hoooo, boy.

Disclaimer: I’m white. I’m white and British and the school I went to had a really disturbing habit of glossing over the fact that colonialism was really fucking bad for, like, EVERYONE except us. I try to be as much of an ally as I can, but obviously my perspective is from a privileged position, so feel free to school me on this.

The idea that Nagini is not, in fact, a snake, but a Maledictus, is a multifaceted turd right at the heart of the franchise. That’s not to say that Claudia Kim isn’t a good actress – she actually came across as really sympathetic, and while her lines were limited, she played the role with far more gravitas than it deserved. I say that because, ultimately, Nagini is a Sexy Lamp. The most she does is help Credence escape the circus. Other than that, she’s just kind of there? A vague love interest for Credence that’s never fully realised, and who doesn’t actually do anything except touch his shoulder comfortingly and gaze at him with adoring eyes.

Which, ugh. UGH.

One of the biggest criticisms of Nagini turning out to be a person – particularly a person of colour – was that it gave her role as Voldemort’s familiar in Harry Potter racist overtones. A woman of colour whose life revolves around serving a white man – even to the point of carrying a part of his soul. The outcry was both immediate and well-deserved. JKR, as you can see if you click the link above, defended the decision – poorly – and so it goes. The problem is that Nagini’s role is, basically, the exact thing that people were criticising Rowling for when the reveal came out. In this film, she exists to tag alongside Credence. The only active thing she does is help him escape. That’s it. That’s really just it. And worse still, when she’s not looking at Credence, she’s usually looking at the floor.

In the film, Maledicti are referred to as “under-beings”. They’re lesser. In one of her few lines, Nagini tells Credence “[purebloods] kill people like us”. This, when combined with her race, is horrifying, particularly given the stereotype of submissive Asian women – silent, obedient, and there only to serve the men in their lives. And given that her romantic-ish relationship with Credence is so vague, it’s worse; it’s like she latched on to his character for being kind to her and decided to serve him, and he accepted that service only to, at the end, ditch her in favour of joining Grindelwald, leaving her to die in blue fire. She doesn’t die, obviously, but Credence also doesn’t care that she doesn’t join him. We’re told that he’s questioning his decision at the end, but again, it’s told to us rather than shown. In the scene where he ignores Nagini’s pleas and goes to join Grindelwald, he doesn’t look back. He discards her, chooses the white fascist over her, and while she doesn’t die in that scene, it’s very clear that she could have and Credence probably wouldn’t have noticed. It’s appalling and it’s everything that critics of the reveal feared.

Also, the fact that she’s Nagini is spectacularly irrelevant. She could literally have been anyone else and it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of a difference. So. That kind of begs the question as to why she was there. Like, at all.

There was no visible security at the circus. Credence probably could have just vanished into the crowd and called it a day. Instead, we got to watch Nagini be turned into a spectacle: a lesser being, but isn’t she so beautiful, this Asian woman who turns into a cold-blooded snake – please excuse me while I wash the taste of this bullshit out of my mouth. The circus scene is ugly, made worse by the fact that Nagini is unnecessary here. Why have her here? Why have a Maledictus character at all? It seems like she was put in to the film purely as a reference to the Harry Potter franchise, but she’s not even a good one.

Nagini ends the film standing, in silence, on the bridge leading to Hogwarts. She’s side by side with the good guys. I hope that she has a bigger role in the next three films. I hope that she has a role that makes her inclusion in the Fantastic Beasts franchise more than a moment of masturbatory self-congratulation on JKR’s part. I mean, I doubt it, but I can hope.

I say I doubt it because I’ve completely lost faith in JKR’s ability to represent anyone other than white people because WoC are not treated kindly in this film at all. At all. As discussed, Nagini is horribly racially stereotyped and should have remained a fucking snake. Leta Lestrange is treated much the same.

Shocked? I’m shocked. So very shocked. Yes.

Not.

Leta is introduced in the first film through her picture. We’re told “she’s a taker” by Queenie, who has never met her and can only glimpse at her through whatever thoughts Newt is having at the time. Newt, who Queenie has admitted having trouble understanding “because of the accent” (or because of his autism?). So yeah. Not the most auspicious of introductions there.

In CoG (fuck it, abbreviations are the way forward), Leta is engaged to Newt’s brother Theseus. Newt is meant to be the best man. It’s deeply awkward because of Feelings ™ - Newt’s implied to have had feelings for her, she clearly still has some sort of feelings for him, Theseus is kind of just there… So yes. There’s a complexity of feelings abounding. It’s all very…tragic romantic subplot. And boring. So boring.

Far more interesting is the role that the Lestrange family plays in the film. Credence’s motivation through the whole film is his desire to find his family, and rumours spring up that he’s the long-lost son of the Lestrange family – Corvus Lestrange V – who supposedly drowned at sea when he was a baby. These rumours are based off of poetry, by the way. Prophetic poetry. And, I mean, come on. I’m all for the Power of Literature, but really?

Really. How many prophecies are we going to have to sit through, JKR? First Trelawney, now Grindelwald and this Tycho Dodonus poet/prophet person who, apparently, absolutely everyone (except Newt) is familiar with and can damn-near quote on command? Really???

Is he wizard!Shakespeare?

"A son cruelly banished
Despair of the daughter
Return, great avenger
With wings from the water."

Nope, not wizard!Shakespeare in the slightest.

Anyway, so, based off a poem, people begin thinking that Credence is Corvus. I, sitting in the cinema, begin to wonder if Nagini is Bellatrix’s mother-in-law.

No. That would have been better than what we got.

Nah, see, Corvus cried a lot on the ship, so Leta swapped him with a random baby and then the ship sank and Corvus drowned while random baby lived on to become Ezra Miller. There’s actual proof in the form of a family tree that only shows men (women are flowers, “beautiful and separate”, and I swear to Circe that the whole ‘Lestrange family has a man-only family tree’ thing was lifted straight from Lisa Roquin’s Hogwarts Apprentices: Gentry Green (not that it’s available online anymore for me to prove it)). And admittedly, the scene where this is revealed is beautifully acted and Zoe Kravitz is brilliant in this role, but. But. There’s a problem with this. See, shortly afterwards, Leta dies in order to save white men.

Not to mention, Leta’s backstory is just…awful. And awfully racist. She’s the product of rape. Everyone hates her apart from the Scamander brothers, and it’s for…reasons? Because of the rape-thing, maybe? Clearly no one knew about her accidentally getting Corvus killed because otherwise the whole poetry subplot wouldn’t have happened. But she’s beautiful and filled with sadness and guilt and spends the entire movie extremely and justifiably upset over these rumours and Newt avoiding her and her confused feelings and, oh, still being ragingly unpopular. And if any of that sad-but-beautiful mixed-race woman who dies to save white people sounds familiar to you, congrats! It’s the utterly vile (and I’m so sorry it’s actually called this) Tragic Mulatto trope, come back from the depths of abolitionist literature to remind us of just how awful white people are.

You know, in a movie about fascism.

Yeah.

The fascism isn’t subtle, by the way. At all. The amount of Nazi symbolism in this movie is quite something, although it appears to be too subtle for some people - though maybe that’s the lack of Nazi-punching.

Right from the start of the Harry Potter franchise, Grindelwald is equated with Hitler. In Philosopher’s Stone, Harry flips over a chocolate frog card and finds out that Albus Dumbledore defeated the Dark Lord Grindelwald in 1945, and with that simple date, everyone on earth goes “ah, Nazis”. Deathly Hallows continues the trend, and so does CoG. Banners draped over buildings summon his followers to a rally. The place where they hold the rally, the Lestrange tomb in Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, and the banners themselves, are marked with a bird with outspread wings. Admittedly, the bird’s a raven instead of an eagle, but it’s very reminiscent. One of Grindelwald’s supporters, Vinda Rosier, is straight-up wearing a magical interpretation of the SS uniform at that rally.

Also, the scene near the start where Grindelwald and his followers murder a family to take their home and their possessions for themselves is pretty reminiscent of the mass looting of Jewish homes during the holocaust. The “Other” are ruthlessly killed, even the toddler, and shipped off in coffins (Grindelwald & co. were posing as undertakers) with mechanical precision. “This will do,” Grindelwald says, “after a thorough cleanse” – implying that the previous inhabitants of the building were dirty and contaminated somehow, even though from their decorations you can see that they were fairly well-off and that the house itself is well cared for.

There are parallels.

The symbolism matches well with Grindelwald’s actions throughout the film. His inner circle are appropriately sycophantic. It’s deeply sinister – and it’s also hidden from the other characters in the film. The ruthlessly efficient murders of random Muggles is not a part of what Grindelwald shows anyone but his closest supporters; to the wizards and witches at the rally, he presents himself more as a revolutionary and freedom fighter. To Queenie, when he meets her after SS Witch brings her home, he emphasises a desire to “love freely” which both implies things about the wizarding world’s attitudes towards same-sex relationships, and appeals to Queenie and her, um, the crisis she’s having in this movie.

Assuming that Grindelwald isn’t lying through his teeth (and given who he is, I’d be deeply sceptical of everything he says, although he seems like the type to twist the truth rather than lie outright), the fact that he’s one of the only characters in the franchise who’s implied to be queer in some way gives his speech another meaning. Is there homophobia in the wizarding world? Probably. We’ve got copious amounts of racism (anti-Muggle, anti-Creature, and as of Leta Lestrange’s backstory, standard real-world racism too). We’ve got sexism (hi, Lestrange family tree!). Why the hell not go the whole way and have homophobia as well? After all, we do know that Dumbledore kept his relationship with Grindelwald a secret – how much of that was because he dated wizard!Hitler and how much was because of public attitudes towards same-sex relationships, I guess we’ll never know.

Still. It’s nice to know that there’s subtext on Grindelwald’s part as well as on Dumbledore’s, even if having the franchise’s only queer characters both be highly manipulative and one of them evil still doesn’t count as good representation.

But this brings me on to my other least favourite part of this film, and that’s Queenie’s story. As I mentioned above, she meets SS Witch and goes back to the stolen house, meets Grindelwald, and gets treated to a speech about how all he wants is freedom to live and love, etc. Queenie doesn’t know about the murders he had his minions commit to get this house. (Implying he knows Occlumency.) She listens to him, despite having fought against him in New York just nine months earlier, and acts as if Johnny Depp manages to be vaguely convincing in his delivery.

Grindelwald’s speech appeals to Queenie so much because of the laws referred to in the first Fantastic Beasts: American witches and wizards cannot have romantic relationships with Muggles. It’s illegal. We find out in CoG that Queenie’s desire to marry Jacob could actually land her in jail.

Presumably, the same jail Grindelwald was held in. You know, the one where they cut his tongue out to stop him from bewitching the guards. Not that it worked…

Jacob, we find out, thinks this is too much of a risk. He doesn’t want to put Queenie in that much danger. She disagrees. She calls him a coward for it. Your mileage may vary on whether it is cowardice or whether Jacob, convinced he’s just an average guy, is being realistic. What completely breaks my support for this ship, though, is Queenie’s response to the disagreement. When we first meet them in the film, they’ve travelled to London together to get married – which would be fine if Queenie hadn’t put Jacob under some kind of love spell/enchantment to get him to agree.

My views on love potions have been explained before. To reiterate:

The love potions in Fred and George's shop may be legal to sell (which gives me serious doubts about the Wizarding World's consumer laws) but they are against school rules. Anticipating this, the Weasley twins are actively engaged in smuggling contraband items into the school by disguising them as something else. That's one thing when you're a student at a school, another entirely when you're a supposedly responsible adult running your own business. It's both reckless and highly irresponsible, regardless of the strength of the potion itself. Remember, they are selling these things to underage students - ostensibly as pranks - and who, perhaps by accident, or even on purpose (I can't have been the only teenager to read the footnotes in my textbooks), may keep the potion past its use-by-date to the point where it becomes more than a mere twenty-four-hour thing. Or maybe the potion's intended recipient has an allergy to one of the ingredients. Or maybe they're on potions that could treat a medical condition and the love potion might react negatively.
Canonically, potions seem to be used primarily to influence the human body or the mind, much like Muggle drugs or medications. There's nothing to say reactions like that are impossible - something the Weasley twins should also, hopefully, be thinking of. Probably not, since if we do go with the theory that potions are similar in usage to Muggle drugs, love potions are essentially date-rape drugs.

And speaking of your 'no more than a day' comment above: twenty-four hours is a long time to spend under the influence of drugs. It's also plenty of time in which to do something you will later regret or be humiliated by. 'Ron beamed at them. Then, very slowly, his grin sagged and vanished, to be replaced by an expression of utmost horror... Ron collapsed into a nearby armchair, looking devastated.' (Rowling, J.K. (2005) Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince. (1st UK Hardcover Edition) London: Bloomsbury, p371) Ron was visibly and understandably upset after having been under the potion's influence for a few minutes. Multiply that by hours, and by the potential emotional consequence of a meeting with the person who gave them the potion, and the results are potentially seriously traumatising.

Whether or not the Weasley twins' love potions are as strong as Amortentia, it doesn't matter. A person under their influence can remember everything they do and be humiliated by it. Nor can they consent.
- from response to a comment on Illusionary

Jacob does not consent to this. He does not consent to being enchanted. His engagement to Queenie is the result of the enchantment, as is the trip to London. When he’s released from the enchantment at Newt’s insistence, he’s upset but willing to forgive Queenie. “You didn’t need to enchant me,” he tells her, “I’m already enchanted.” He’s comforting her, here, even though he’s the one wronged.

The fact that she has to tell him that they’re in London because British wizards are more accepting JESUS and will let them get married kind-of implies that they didn’t have a conversation about potential options before she used some kind of love spell on him. According to Queenie, she just wants what everyone else has. Fine. It’s still no excuse. By refusing to put her in danger, he’s a coward who backed her into a corner and gave her no choice. Um.

So. She retaliates by removing his choices? By effectively kidnapping him? By sexually assaulting him? Jacob. Could NOT consent.

He thinks she’s crazy. She reads his mind. She fucks off to Paris to see Tina who’s already over there on a job. Jacob recruits Newt to go after her to get her back (and Newt agrees because Dumbledore’s asked him to go to Paris to find Credence and, more importantly, he’s just found out that Tina’s there).

At the end of the movie, Jacob manages to catch up with Queenie in the Lestrange tomb. At Grindelwald’s rally. And it’s actually a beautiful moment that a Muggle - one of those Othered beings that Grindelwald and his supporters are so eager to subjugate – manages to stand in that room completely unnoticed. They literally pay no attention to him. No one points out that he’s a Muggle. No one.

Which, without saying a fucking word, points out the utter fallacy in every fascist argument ever.

Jacob, quite understandably, wants to get the fuck out before the rally actually starts. He stays because Queenie asks him to, because she wants to listen to what Grindelwald has to say. And this is what I mean by the other actors in this movie acting like Johnny Depp is acting, because the speech he gave Queenie was delivered in a fashion that was about as charismatic as a congealed Weetabix. It was as impassioned as a love letter from Mike Pence. But regardless of that, Alison Sudol acts like Queenie could find it convincing, and so at the end of the rally, she goes off to become one of Grindelwald’s supporters. She actually tries to convince Jacob to go with her.

Fuck. Off.

I liked Queenie in the first movie. I could get behind her and Jacob – they were cute together. But now? Nope. That ship is sunk for me. Forever.

I mean, there’s probably going to be some kind of redemption arc? But I a) don’t have faith that it could be written believably, and b) have massive issues with the idea that she should be. And while we know that Rowling’s all about the power of love, this is a case where there should be consequences.

There’s a The Mary Sue article that I linked up in the section about Nazi symbolism. Here it is again. The author of the article states that “The heroes must be punished for defending themselves or pushing back against fascism. Really, excellent message to send as fascism continues a worldwide rise.” She’s…not wrong. The current political climate demands a more visceral reaction from our protagonists. Really, any of the protagonists. Leta is the only one to raise her wand against Grindelwald and actually try to curse him. She dies for it. The rest is, sort of, manoeuvring around him, but very little outright condemnation.

The argument in the article does, however, ignore the historical context of the film. The Nazis weren’t met with the universal derision they should have been; they had supporters in Britain, including in government and the Royal family, in France, and in America as well. Hitler was seen as having the correct response to Communism, which was seen as the greatest threat to democracy and the British press were largely on board with this until he invaded Czechoslovakia. One of Hitler’s most powerful supporters in Britain during the 1930s was the owner of the Daily Mail because of course it would be the Daily Mail. Who else? Anti-Semitism was almost certainly known about, but was ignored.

Oh hey, we’re in a time warp.

God, isn’t life wonderful right now?

So.

My point is, the non-violence attitude that’s taken in regards to Grindelwald’s supporters in the film is, at least, historically plausible. Is it a good message to send out now? No. Which is why, given that we apparently can’t have active resistence, we need for Queenie and Credence to both be punished for their decision to join Grindelwald. They shouldn’t have happy endings.

It would also help if they stopped trying to make Grindelwald sympathetic. He’s really, really not.

So how do I, a life-long Harry Potter fan, feel about this movie? Uncomfortable, mostly. Deeply uncomfortable. Aside from the issues that I’ve spelled out above, it’s relentlessly grim-dark. There’s very little humour in it, and practically none of the light-hearted curiosity that was so present in the books and in the majority of the other films. It’s also long and convoluted and so overstuffed with twists and plots that the big reveal at the end – that Credence is, in fact, a long-lost Dumbledore – kind of seems overwhelmed by the rest of it. It’s just…another twist and then the end, and thank fuck I can finally stretch my legs. There’s also a few continuity errors that require flagging.

First, Minerva McGonagall has a cameo in this film despite it being set in 1927 and her being born in 1936. She’s shown in flashbacks as a grown adult too, so apparently she’s the eternal queen of our hearts in every possible way now.

Second, the Credence reveal. Credence is a lot older than I thought he was during the first film supposed to have been born in 1901. Percival and Kendra Dumbledore were both dead by 1899. Grindelwald tells Credence (who’s called Aurelius now) that he’s Albus Dumbledore’s brother. There’s a phoenix that proves it through family legend. Is Grindelwald lying? Is the phoenix fake somehow? Is this timeline fucked up beyond belief?

Third, we find out that Dumbledore and Grindelwald cannot directly attack each other because of a blood-pact that they made when they were together. If this pact was made before the fight that killed Ariana then…??? They ignored the pact and fought anyway? Did Ariana lose control of her magic and kill herself? Or did our two genocidal teenage boyfriends lose control of theirs when they defied the pact they made? I don’t want to harsh too much on this, because a) I kind of like the idea of blood-pacts existing, and b) the theory that Ariana was an Obscurial seemed too neat for me, but still. Whaaaaat.

And now that I’ve spent 5000 words shitting all over this disaster of a movie, here are the things I liked:

1 – The actors who played young!Albus and young!Grindelwald made a comeback for the scenes with the Mirror of Erised. I liked their role reprisal, and I liked the idea that Dumbledore remained caught up in his romance with Grindelwald and the ‘what could have been’s waaaaaay longer than he should have. It ties nicely with the Mirror of Erised scene in Philosopher’s Stone and paves the way for angsty potential. Also, the mirror scenes were pretty damn homoerotic, so while Dumbledore’s sexuality is never made explicit, it’s SUBTEXT.

2 – Aside from Johnny Depp, the casting was fine with me and the performances were also fine.

3 – God help me, I actually liked Dumbledore in this. He’s still a manipulative twat, but everyone – including him – seems to acknowledge it. He’s more of a person, somehow, and certainly less of a saint - even despite Rowling’s insistence that he be right all the time.

4 – The relationships between Newt and Tina and Newt and Jacob. Newt and Tina are so fucking gone on each other it’s ridiculous. There’s some kind of dumb subplot where Tina thinks Newt got engaged to Leta because of a mistake in a magazine, because who needs a love triangle when you can have a goddamn dodecahedron, but that’s neatly tied off by the end of the movie. Newt and Jacob remain the two loveliest cinnamon rolls, and their buddy relationship is the stuff I live for. These relationships aren’t explored nearly enough in the movie, and were pushed aside a little in favour of plot-dumps, but all in all, our remaining three protagonists are in the clear.

5 – Newt remains obviously neuro-divergent and I love him for it.

6 – THE NIFFLER. BABY NIFFLERS. The niffler literally has more significance to the plot than Nagini.

THE ZOUWU. It’s essentially a GIANT KITTEN with super-speed and it’s ADORABLE. LOOK AT IT.



Do all the animals in CoG actually need to be there? Nope, but the scenes in Newt’s magical creature-filled basement are literally the only whimsy that this film permits itself.

7 – Nicholas Flamel’s cameo seemed largely pointless and self-indulgent, although he does provide actual assistance at the end. However, I liked getting a glimpse of his character.

8 - The skull-bong. I like that there's a way to project visions, because given the wizarding world's love of prophecy, they'd totally make one. Also, I like that it connects divination with death, particularly since one of the earliest forms of scrying involved gutting animals and predicting the future from their innards. My own divination teacher drops blood into water while scrying. There's a connection there.

Speaking of divination, do I have predictions for the rest of the series? I mostly don’t want to try and predict things, because I’m fairly sure canon took a left turn somewhere and now we’re teetering over the edge of a cliff. So much was wrong with this movie and, honestly, there’s so many other ways that the franchise could further destroy itself that speculating beyond the obvious gives me a headache. Like, we know that there’s going to be a showdown between Credence/Aurelius and Albus. We know that Albus will, at some point, break the blood-pact. I would bet good money that Achilles Tolliver (the Auror boyfriend that Tina gets herself when she thinks that Newt’s engaged to Leta) appears at some point, and he’ll very likely be unpleasant in Newt’s general direction. Theseus Scamander, having lost his fiancée, is likely to go off the deep-end somehow.

Anything else? Not. Going. To. Think. About. It.

And just to round off my impressions of this movie: someone fucked a House Elf.

Comments

[ruinsplume]

Great review! And now I know for sure I don't want to see the move, which means you've just saved me like $12 USD. Thanks!

[evandar]

Haha, glad you liked it! And glad to be of service too - there are way better things to spend 12USD on. I'm genuinely offended by how much I ended up spending to go and see this movie. Twice. 40GBP just because my best friend and my mother couldn't go on the same day.

[lynndyre]

Finally seen it to read this! (I almost wasn't going to see it, but eventually caved because nifflers- the niffler remains my favourite)

I just... the only way Credence makes sense as a Dumbledore is if he's Ariana's (rape?) baby, but why is Grindelwald saying brother instead of uncle/nephew?

I was mad about Depp and Nagini but knew about them going in -- I'm really upset about Queenie. I was happy, in the first one, that they hadn't made the blonde sister bitchy and evil. (Brunettes get to be competent, blondes get to be airheads or evil. Or now both!) Surely the telepath ought to understand that mind control is bad!

I could see the good writing in the manipulation Grindeldepp was doing in his rally, it was excellently scripted, but... he really did deliver the lines like he was drunk, for some of it.

(Also Credence needed to shave. Like, the entire movie he looked like someone stuck carpet fuzz on his face.)

The Grindelwald/Dumbledore parallels of older men grooming younger people to act for them was just. so. blatant. I kept being creeped out by Dumbledore, even when he was being nice. And the message of it felt all over the place.

....I liked Theseus and Newt hugging. And I still love the niffler. And the zouwu is precious, I want it to have all the feathery chase toys it can destroy.

[lynndyre]

On Leta and Corvus - did it imply Corvus survived? We saw that other woman pick him up from the bassinet after Leta switched them, but was the baby drowning a real thing or Leta's nightmare? Are we going to get an actual Corvus Lestrange later? Do we need to, for there to be Lestranges working for Voldemort later? Or is that a different branch?

I was surprised how much I liked Leta, I hadn't been looking forward to a love triangle story, but she was really well acted and I got to really wanting to know more and see more of her! And then. Yeah. (and I agree entirely on her backstory, sheesh.)

She's the unloved acting out mean Slytherin type that Rowling likes using over and over, but it felt like there was a lot of nuance there, and I really thought they'd do more with it, not just incinerate her. The 'you never met a monster you couldn't love' line should have been her pov, but it felt like the movie expected us to take it seriously as an assessment of her. But they did that in a few places, put in dialogue that was clearly coming from an unreliable narrator as though we should consider it fact.

[evandar]

Nifflers <3 And Zouwu <3 - Oversized magical kitty definitely deserves every jingly toy in the world.

I thought about Aurelius-as-rape-baby too, but... Ariana's attack happened when she was six. She's meant to have been fourteen when she died, which is admittedly old enough to have a baby, but...ew? There's also the problem of Ariana's unstable magic and how that would have reacted to sex/pregnancy, so I'm ruling that out. The Dumbledores did have an aunt Honoria, so I've also considered her as a possible connection, but that still begs the question as to why Grindelwald was using the term 'brother' unless he's intentionally trying to manipulate Credence into fixating on Albus. Oh, wait. XD

Maybe they made Credence grow jaw-fuzz because they realised he came across as about 16-ish in the first movie and were like "oh no, he's meant to be in his late twenties" and decided that a patchy beard-thing was the way to go.

You would think that the telepath would understand that mind-control is bad. You'd also think that the fact she lives in New York City would mean she'd have enough of a handle on her powers to not wig-out in the middle of Paris. French is scary, somehow? Eh. Queenie's story infuriates me so much, and the more I think about it the more I dislike it*. Her character had so much potential, and I liked the ditzy-sweet rule-breaking romance that they had going in the first movie. I just can't help think that there were other solutions to their problems like, oh telling Jacob that they could marry in England and could they pretty-please elope?

There were flashes of good writing throughout this movie, but not nearly enough for me to get over the sheer amount of UGH that they also crammed in. I'll also admit that there's one Grindeldepp visual that I like: the bit where he's conjuring the blue fire and moving like a conductor. I thought that moment, that one moment, was probably the closest Depp got to being Grindelwald in the entire movie.

...yeah, it's not good representation at all when your already token gays like manipulating younger men into doing things for them. Not a great message. 0/10 for effort.

It showed Corvus getting off the boat. It also showed him and the woman carrying him fall overboard and her surfacing without him only to dive back under. It's possible that he was rescued, since it's shown from Leta's POV, but I doubt it. The tree showed that Corvus was dead (although it could have been tampered with by Grindelwald, I guess) but the Atlantic is fucking cold. Seriously fucking cold. And a young baby probably would have died fairly quickly even if nameless woman had managed to haul him out of the water.

I'm going to assume that there's a second branch of Lestranges and that they're the ones who became Death Eaters later on. I'm hoping that this doesn't mean that JKR just ret-conned the existence of some of Voldemort's most famous supporters.

That said, I would love to hear more about the Lestranges. If there is a second branch, where are they in all of this? Corvus IV is running around Paris kidnapping black people and raping them and the rest of the family is...??? "Oh, that's just crazy Uncle Corvus. We don't rape people - that's far too uncivilised. No, we just use crucio."

Leta could have been so interesting, and she was so well acted. I'm genuinely bitter that she wasn't utilised more in this film. I wanted a female Slytherin hero, dammit!

The unloved Slytherin trope can go die in a fire. Like, yes JKR, we get that you hate ambitious people and think that cunning is an automatic disqualifier from the human race. We know. Just. Stop rubbing it in? I thought that the line made sense given that she's responsible for the death of her half-brother (and yes, Newt, she is responsible - it's negligent homicide+) and that she's been feeling guilty over it for such a long time. It's more that it gets no response. From anyone. At all. And is taken as fact in the moments before her death.

Leta's backstory and misuse in this movie make me so angry.

And the use of dialogue coming from an unreliable narrator being taken as absolute is something that happened a lot. Largely from Grindelwald and Dumbledore, but Leta too in that case. Then again, Dumbledore's guilty of it throughout the entire HP series, so I'm guessing that it's something Rowling just does. And it's one thing to expect the characters to just blindly believe it; another thing entirely to expect the viewers to.

*The more I think about this movie as a whole, the more I dislike it. Just UGH.
+The entire cinema snorted when Newt said that. Like, it was a full cinema; it was noticeable. An entire room full of 'what bullshit is this' at what was presumably meant to be an emotional climax.

[digthewriter]

I agree with every single thing in this. I'll have more to point out but I'll say YES TO:

The niffler literally has more significance to the plot than Nagini.