Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Katherine Waterston

Directed by David Yates

The Story:
After dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) escapes his magical prison, he heads to Paris to rise up an army of wizards who share his same ideology - showing superiority over the non-magical people (also known as Muggles), and their desire to rule over them.

Meanwhile in London, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) is tasked by his old teacher Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) to find Grindelwald in Paris.  He heads there with Muggle friend Jacob (Dan Fogler) to not find Grindelwald, but instead reunite with his lost love Tina (Katherine Waterston), who thinks Newt is engaged to Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), although she's engaged to his brother Thesus (Callum Turner).

Not wanting to pick a side, Newt focuses more on Tina than finding Grindelwald, while Grindelwald sets his sights on finding Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), who's also looking for his birth family, because he feels Credence has the power to destroy Dumbledore.  As allegiances and sides shift, Newt is finally forced to make a side, or else he'll die.

The Synopsis:
I'm starting off by saying I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan.  I've never read the books (and never will, those things are long), and I've seen all the movies only once, and can't really recall what happened in them.  I'm not a Potter fanatic who noticed all the small hints they made in this film as nods to the future, but rather just saw the movie as a continuation to 2016's "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them."  After sitting through a little over two hours of the film, I left with more questions than answers, the biggest one being "what was the point?"

Films that serve as a continuation to a series have the inherent problem that there's neither a beginning or an ending, but rather as a piece to a bigger puzzle that will make more sense once all the pieces are in place.  "The Crimes of Grindelwald" was overly long, drawn out, and tried to include too many stories at once, yet somehow managed to not really include anything at all - I couldn't remember a lot of the events of the film after it ended, except for thinking that the effects were nice.

The basic premise is this: Grindelwald wants to create an army of wizards to go against the other wizards and rule over the Muggle world, because they're superior and they have magic, and if Muggles get their way, all that will be is war.  Dumbledore wants to stop Grindelwald, but can't do it himself, so he enlists his favorite student Newt Scamander to do it for him.  Newt doesn't want to take a side, but is forced to in order to survive.  Also, Grindelwald is seeking Credence, who has the power to kill Dumbledore.

Heck, even the basic premise seems long and unnecessary, but there's so many more stories thrown in for good measure:
-Newt wants to get back with Tina, but she thinks Newt is marrying Leta, who's actually marrying Newt's brother, but an incorrect article makes Tina believe the opposite (basically, the 1927 version of "fake news")
-Tina's sister Queenie is still in love with Muggle Jacob, but can't marry him because it's unlawful for wizards to marry Muggles, and this causes a tension between the couple
-Credence goes on a search for his real birth family with the help of shapeshifter Nagini, all the while being followed by Grindelwald
-Leta faces the sins of her past, including memories of being isolated as a student at Hogwarts
-Dumbledore also faces his past as it's revealed why he can't go after Grindelwald himself
-a man named Yusuf wants to kill Credence because he's possibly Leta's brother, and for reasons I can't remember, has to kill him
-there's more, but I can't remember

So with all of these stories trying to be juggled, you're bound to drop some, and director David Yates (who directed the last four "Harry Potter" films) drops more than a few of them.  While there's so much going on, somehow there's little room for actual character development.  As the main protagonist, Eddie Redmayne's Newt doesn't really have anything to work with, and we don't really learn anything new about him.  The same goes for pretty much every character, whose possible depth of characterization was abandoned for more stories and effects.

While Potter diehards were excited to see Jude Law play their beloved Dumbledore - and especially since his presence was pimped out to the extreme in all the trailers - you'd expect to see him on screen for awhile, yet he only seemed to be on screen for about twenty minutes, most of which you saw in the trailers.  Equally they tried to re-ignite the magic of Harry Potter by including scenes at Hogwarts, and for someone who's not a Harry Potter fan, it didn't do much for me - and didn't seem to do much for diehards either.

One issue many people had regarding the film was the inclusion of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, especially due to his real-life issues with his nasty divorce and possible battery of his then-wife.  While I understand the negativity, I looked past that to his performance here, and while I was expecting another off-the-wall performance like he's known to do, he actually played Grindelwald as more a Jim Jones-style character who's charismatic and convincing, and not over-the-top and flamboyant.  Depp really did well in his role here.

When it comes to the effects, this is where the film shines.  It's a beautifully rendered CGI extravaganza, when things actually happen.  The beginning scene of Grindelwald's escape is the most dazzling, then there's a neat little circus scene and then the final moments, but pretty much that's it.  Plus I don't know if it was the theater I was in, but I couldn't really make out a lot of things happening on screen.

The editing in the film was totally off as well.  There's one scene in particular where Newt, Tina, and Leta are at the Ministry of Magic, and then the next moment they're at a cemetery with Credence, with nothing in-between to tell us how they got there.  There's other odd moments of editing, but that one stuck out to me most.

As I said earlier, "The Crimes of Grindelwald" is hindered by the fact that there's no ending, but rather one final shocking moment that will lead audiences back to the theaters for the third installment in 2020.  This shocking moment was easily the most...well...shocking...but also seemed to change the trajectory of the franchise in a whole new direction.

The Summary:
Despite trying to re-capture the love of the "Harry Potter" franchise, "The Crimes of Grindelwald" was bogged down by too many stories, too little development, and shoddy editing that led to some of its magic getting lost in translation.

The Score: B-