Fantastic Beasts : The Crimes of Grindelwald

November 16, 20187 min

Harry Potter has been a part of my life for for over twenty years now and I am not ashamed. I may have been older (23) when the series first was released and all it took was reading that first novel for me to be ‘all aboard’ the Hogwarts Express. Seven novels later and eleven movies later, I think its pretty safe to say I am way into the forest when it comes to that world. It was once said by a smarter man than me, that all good things must come to an end and while the Harry Potter world is still putting out stories, the part where they are entertaining might be over.

I, like most was excited to get back in that world with the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and while it wasn’t original Potter it was still better than nothing. Well that opinion just changed as Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), Queen (Alison Sudol), Jacob (Dan Fogler) and Tina (Katherine Waterston) are back once again, not that you will care much by the time it’s all over. Now that the wizard world is safe again after the capture of Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) or so it seemed. Grindelwald has supporters and with the help of them he escaped during a prison transfer, which if you watch movies ever, all the bad people escape during those. So now he is loose and Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) asks Newt to help capture him, because he can’t himself for some reason. The request takes Newt to Paris, where he comes across the trial of someone that might be able to lead him to Tina, who Newt has spoken to in a while. With the help of Jacob who only seems to be there for the laughs, Newt finds Tina and discovers an even more tangled web than he knew. Grindelwald you see has one mission and that is to have Credence (Ezra Miller) come to him so that he can tell him who he really is and it will take Newt and everyone he knows to try and stop him.

For me getting more Potter is a good thing and in the case of “The Crimes of Grindelwald” , I mean the gang is back in both David Yates, who directed most of the Potter films, and creator J.K. Rowling herself writing the screenplay, I mean what could go wrong? Well it turns out everything. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” is not so much about crimes he commits, but instead it must refer to the crime of this being part of the Potter universe in anyway. I mean sure we get a younger Dumbledore and a trip back to Hogwarts (cue the John Williams theme in your head now) , but its more just a tease of what you once had and will never get again. This chapter of this story introduces a bunch of new characters that only add to the ones you already have nothing invested in since the last film.

With nothing there you have no dog in this fight and could care less what happens, because I mean you already know how it all ends. The pace is incredibly slow with a little action here and there to wake you up, but everything that remotely worked in the first film is all but gone this time. And just when you think the ending would actually be a good thing,  what they hit you with is such a disappointment that even with the film being over you are still scratching your head. There is nothing good here for you to see and this is coming from a fan, a fan who wants to erase the memory if seeing this film so that this series isn’t tainted. However with this ending there looks like there is little chance of that happening. I will not hold this against the original Potter films, because they are still there to enjoy, but I know this isn’t the end to this series, but it should be because this is something I am not on board with at all, just plain bored.

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