YMMV / Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

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• Arc Fatigue: With the controversial reception to this film, many begun to feel this for the Fantastic Beasts films, since there are still three films remaining, as well as nearly two decades of in-universe time since this film takes place in 1927 and Grindelwald won't be defeated until 1945.
• Ass Pull: Credence's true identity as a long-lost member of the Dumbledore family. There's no build-up or foreshadowing and it comes out of nowhere. The family's history would seem to not contain any chance for this to happen, and it doesn't seem to have any effect on the Wizarding World by Harry's time. The information comes from a Consummate Liar, though, making it ambiguous on whether or not it's the truth — especially since the extended cut reveals that Grindelwald's obsession with Credence is fuelled by a vision he had of an Obscurial killing Dumbledore.
• Awesome Music:
  • The "Flight Of The Bumblebee"-esque violins that play in the third trailer are fantastic.
  • The San Diego Comic-Con trailer has an unsettling ticking clock sound effect, setting the tone for a Darker and Edgier film.
  • "Salamander Eyes", a beautiful and light instrumental piece. Many see it as an excellent love theme for Newt and Tina.
  • "Wands into the Earth," the score as Newt and company fight back Grindelwald's Protego Diabolica, perfectly conveys the fight to the death that the protagonists are locked into.
• Better on DVD: The extended cut has been much better received than the theatrical version. It adds seven minutes that had been cut out that add a lot to the backstory and make the story comprehensible. The movie is still contentious, but the extended cut is at least easier to follow.
• Contested Sequel: A large portion of the fandom have decried this instalment due to what they see as inconsistencies with existing lore, and problematic story decisions and character choices, not to mention many others. Still, it has its defenders, due to the complex and layered plot, prescient themes, excellent design and production value, characters, and the brief return to the Hogwarts setting.
• Continuity Lockout: Crimes of Grindelwald is heavy on backstory, exposition, and lore that's nigh-impenetrable to anyone who doesn't have a Ph.D. in Wizarding World mythology. This is cited as one of the reasons Warner Bros. halted production on the third to give Rowling more time to figure out how to remedy this.
• Cry for the Devil: Let's face it, no one ever expected to feel sympathy for Nagini of all characters. Yet with this backstory, plus the ambiguity of whether or not she was a willing accomplice to Voldemort, it's hard to not view her with some degree of pity, especially considering her characterization as a human.
• Ending Fatigue: Fans and critics alike have both expressed that the sheer mass of subplots regarding character backstories that had to be resolved left them impatient for the movie to end before the final confrontation with Grindelwald even started.
• Evil Is Cool: Say what you will of the film as a whole, but Grindelwald shows why he is the most dangerous wizard before Voldemort. He's an accomplished wizard that absolutely oozes style in his spells, with a charismatic personality that inspires loyalty more than fear and a silver tongue that draws people to his cause, including Queenie, and even has to have his guard changed three times while he was imprisoned because they were swayed by his words. And even then he wasn't truly imprisoned to begin with, only waiting for the right moment.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • This film introduces the concept of the Maledictus, a woman cursed to turn into a beast, to the series, and Nagini turns out to be a Maledictus. This sparked fan theories that discussed the possibility of the other female animals seen throughout the franchise actually being Maledictuses in their final forms.
  • Given Newt's reaction to seeing Grimmson, it's clear they're enemies, but no further explanation for their history is provided.
  • The questions surrounding Credence's identity, at least until this is fleshed out more in future movies, are rife for this.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: An alternate opening showing Credence reforming from the single wisp of the Obscurus that the Aurors failed to destroy, returning to the ruins of his foster home and finding his adoption papers saying he was originally from Paris and later him boarding the boat to Europe with the Circus Arcanus. This isn't included in the extended cut even though it adds much needed cohesion to Credence's subplot.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Like in the previous film, Grindelwald’s outfit and hairstyle is extremely jarring from the rest of the cast whose attire are pretty accurate to the time period.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The revelation of Nagini being a human who turned into a snake makes some sense if you know the etymology of her name. In Hindu and Buddhist mythology, a “Nagini” is the female counterpart of a “Naga”, a creature who is half-snake and half-human.
  • The French Ministry having a whole department of genealogical records; French nationalists are infamous for their obsession of "jus sanguinis" — right of blood to prove they are "legitimately" French by way of their family trees, not unlike pure-blood wizard supremacists that exist in Rowling's world.
  • The chupacabra that helps the manipulative psychopath escape from custody is wearing a muzzle akin to that worn by Hannibal Lecter. What's the name of this chupacabra? Antonio.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The reveal that Queenie cast a love spell on Jacob to force him to marry her (which is treated more sympathetically than Corvus Lestrange's similar use of the Imperius Curse in his backstory) becomes this given Rowling's increasingly transphobic posts, a number of which indicate a bigoted attitude towards men by stereotyping them as predators.
• He Really Can Act: More an example of "He Can Finally Act Again". Despite the poor critical reception, many reviewers praised Johnny Depp's portrayal of Grindelwald, feeling that he has finally learned how to play an atypical or "quirky" character that isn't a retool of Captain Jack Sparrow.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: With Jude Law cast as Dumbledore, this means that all three of Heath Ledger's alternate actors from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus are now part of the Wizarding World franchise. Even more amusingly, Law's character has a canonical crush on a character portrayed by both Depp and Farrell.
• Ho Yay: Vinda meets Queenie using tactics right out of the Stranger Danger playbook. She finds an attractive, vulnerable young woman all alone and invites her home. Queenie gets uncomfortable and tries to leave, but Vinda pressures her to stay. She also keeps pouring Queenie tea even after she refuses, mirroring how real-life people manipulate politeness to slip someone a spiked drink.
• I Knew It!:
  • The reveal of Nagini being the Maledictus was a fan theory when the character was first revealed.
  • On that note, Nagini being a venomous constrictor has generally been handwaved by fans as her not being a normal snake. This film confirms that Nagini is indeed not an ordinary snake.
• Improved by the Re-Cut: The extended version of the film included on the Blu-Ray is widely considered to be a huge step up from the theatrical version. The extended version of the film contains about fourteen minutes of cut content that goes a long way to make the story more comprehensible and easier to follow. The cut content is almost exclusively exposition that helps to explain certain character who were victims of the condensed runtimes’ choices. The Credence and Nagini subplot in particular stands out as much more understandable than in the theatrical cut, although Queenie’s subplot is also markedly improved. What is widely considered to be the most baffling cut scene is the extended version of Newt and Dumbledore’s conversation early on about why Grindelwald was looking for an obscurial since it directly explains why he’d sent Newt to New York in the first movie. What’s even more baffling is that it only clocks in at 40 seconds. The longer runtime also helps to smooth out the pacing, especially in the second act, by giving the film some room to breathe. The extended cut is by no means considered a masterpiece but the sum of the parts do come together to form a whole, cohesive story rather than the theatrical cut being a series of scenes strung together that starts and finishes strong but suffers from a chaotic middle that drags down the entire product.
• Memetic Mutation: Many reviews said the biggest crime was the movie itself.
• Misaimed Fandom:This video offers the idea that various scenes were meant to contrast Grindelwald as a foil to Voldemort, such as being unable to kill a baby himself when the latter did (tried to, anyway) with no hesitation, but flew over peoples' heads (likely because they watched the original movies so long ago they had forgotten the details).
• Mis-blamed: Upon release, the film was considered poorly written and most people blamed J. K. Rowling for it being confusing and hard to follow. However with the release of the extended cut, that view has changed to the film being poorly edited and the victim of Executive Meddling more than anything. Since the extended cut is mostly cut exposition that gives more context, the consensus is now that the foundation of the story is fine but that said foundation was cut out from under it by a massacre in the editing room. Most people who’ve seen the extended cut will believe that ultimately Warner Bros. and then CEO Kevin Tsujihara are the real ones to blame for mandating a film be chopped up at the last minute to meet an arbitrary runtime limit against the creatives’ vision. Tsujihara famously and similarly forced Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to have a whole half hour cut after it was already done because he believed that long movies made less money because they could play less often. He was ultimately fired from WB shortly after this film came out after he was found to have been promising roles and auditions to the woman he was having an extramarital affair with.
• Moral Event Horizon: Corvus Lestrange is revealed to have crossed it years ago when he used the Imperius curse on a married witch to have her for himself, having a child with her in what is essentially rape.
• Narm:
  • After an admittedly impressive scene where Grindelwald breaks free of custody, showing off just how dangerous he really is, he ends the scene by throwing his loyal, pet Chupacabra out of his carriage to its death for no reason. It just comes off as gratuitous mustache-twirling villainy, as if, without the animal abuse, the audience wouldn't get he's the bad guy, when the movie is already called The Crimes of Grindelwald.
  • Similarly to the above, one of Grindelwald's followers, Krall, is shown to be reluctant about the cause they're working toward early in the film. This goes nowhere until the climax, when he tries to pass through the Protego Diabolica fire and gets immolated due to his disloyalty. Let it be known that the fire was already meant to ensure unquestionable loyalty from Grindelwald's followers, so the fact they threw in a superfluous character and then killed him off just to drive that point home was seen as trying too hard.
  • The true identity of Credence is rather blunted by how the movie had already thrown up several possibilities and discarded them in quick succession, leaving us little reason to be any more invested in this one. Plus, we already know from the main Harry Potter series that the total impact this reveal will have on the Wizarding World is approximately jack squat.
  • Grindelwald referring to non-magic people as "Can't-Spells", which makes it sounds like he's insulting their inability to spell words rather than to do magic.
  • Grindelwald's army's motto "For the greater good" is meant to be ominous, though some would find it unintentionally goofy since fans would be reminded of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance, who used a similar motto.
  • Grindelwald shows a vision of the horrors of the upcoming World War II to his supporters as well as the heroes. While it should be a chilling scene, especially for WWI veteran Jacob, and may still be for some people, Grindelwald conjured up the imagery in the first place by smoking what looks like a skull bong.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • Johnny Depp's involvement in the franchise became this due to the allegations made by ex-wife Amber Heard of abuse. While his appearance in the first film was relegated to a surprise cameo, the expansion of his role (and replacement of Colin Farrell) in the second film initially generated a significant amount of negative press from audiences, critics, and media alike, although his role was mostly praised once the film was released. However, in early November 2020, Depp lost a libel against The Sun for calling him a "wife beater." The judge ruled that he abused her in 12 of 14 instances, meaning "wife beater" was not libellous. He ended up leaving the role of Grindelwald altogether after this, at Warner Bros.' request.
  • Similarly, the film became infamous for revealing that Nagini was actually an East Asian woman who was transformed into a snake due to a curse, which many Asian-American people criticized.
• Padding: Many viewers felt that the entire movie's purpose was merely to fill up the gap between the first film and the next film.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Credence's birth name is one of these. No, he's not a Lestrange. He's a Dumbledore, and and the baby bird he's had throughout the film is a phoenix, perhaps even Fawkes himself.
  • The reveal of Claudia Kim's character's name: Nagini. No, it's not a coincidence. She's that one.
• Signature Scene: The opening scene where Grindelwald escapes from MACUSA, showcasing how dangerous and powerful he truly is.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: A primary criticism of the film is that the movie takes its own sweet time dealing with subplots that hurt the movie’s pacing, and it’s only at the third act that it finally picks up.
• Special Effect Failure: For all the good-looking effects in the movie, the matagots stand out as particularly poorly rendered.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • For all the hype (and controversy) surrounding Nagini, she has very little to do in the story besides being Credence's friend while he searches for the truth about his family who tries to keep him from being seduced by Grindelwald. She then firmly rejects Grindelwald and joins the heroes that she doesn't even know.
  • Leta Lestrange, for some people. It seemed to be that they were setting her up to be both a romantic rival to Tina and, if not an antagonist, then a morally ambiguous Wild Card whose story arc and internal conflict would span most—if not all—of the pentalogy. But in this film, there doesn't seem to be much trace of the person Queenie describes. She's unambiguously The Atoner and the Dark Secret is far and away in her past (although it does affect her and the story in the present). Her one interaction with Tina amounted to an awkward hello, and although she gets her backstory, it's burned through in the space of one film with all the subtlety of a drunk mountain troll, with little explaining how the girl Newt knew in Hogwarts became the woman we finally meet in the second movie—or, for that matter, how she ended up engaged to Theseus, who she likely wouldn't have known at Hogwarts as he is several years older than she is. It wouldn't be as bad if she became a recurring supporting character in future movies, if only they didn't kill her off at the end.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • For a movie that’s titled The Crimes of Grindelwald, the movie doesn’t do much to explain on Grindelwald’s backstory or motivations (at least for movie-goers not too familiar with the series lore). Instead, the movie dabbles in sub-plots that unnecessarily pad out the movie. In fact, Grindelwald doesn’t have much focus in the first two acts of the movie, only being the centre of the third act.
  • Prior to this film, it had been implied that the reason Dumbledore declined to fight Grindelwald for such a long time was because he feared that Grindelwald would reveal that Dumbledore himself was responsible for the death of his sister Ariana. Many fans thought this was a much more interesting reason than the blood pact that was created for this film.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Jenny Nicholson felt that Jude Law was the saving grace of the film, absolutely nailing Michael Gambon's mannerisms and being very believable as a young Dumbledore.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Much of the movie's runtime focuses more on its subplots that end up going nowhere rather than on the actual main story. The biggest offender would be Yusuf Kama's subplot which merely served to mislead the audience regarding Credence's true identity.
• Unexpected Character:
  • In a prequel, did anyone actually expect that, of all characters, Nagini, Voldemort's snake, would show up?
  • Minerva McGonagall showing up as a teacher at Hogwarts; in the book she stated that she had been teaching at Hogwarts for 39 years, implying that she started in 1956, almost thirty years after the events of this film.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Newt for his negative treatment of Theseus. Though Newt says they have a complicated relationship, Theseus is never shown being anything but kind to Newt in the movie.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: As per usual for a film in the Wizarding World franchise, this film doesn't disappoint, showing many memorable scenes such as:
  • The beginning scene where Grindelwald escapes from a flying carriage.
  • Newt handling the beasts in his basement, particularly taming the kelpie in a magically-contained water tank.
  • Newt, Tina, Theseus, Nicolas Flamel, Yusuf, and all the surviving Aurors casting protective spells to contain and combat Grindelwald's Protego Diabolica curse and prevent it from destroying Paris.
  • The shots of Hogwarts from a distance, as always.
• The Woobie: Poor Jacob has it hard in this movie. Just after getting his memories back, he ends up scuttling his relationship with Queenie because of his own fear that she would be persecuted for their relationship, not helping matters is that he spent most of the time under the influence of a love enchantment. He also discovers from Grindelwald the possibility of another World War (mind you, he was a World War I veteran), and loses Queenie, who joins with Grindelwald. By the end of the movie, he looks absolutely broken.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Promotional images show the cast in muted period-appropriate dress — except for Grindelwald, who looks like he's dressed as the front-man of an '80s punk-rock band.

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