Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

My money is on Grindelwald lying.

I just think it looks stupid to lie at this point and this is a really novice writing mistake. If its true, no one will like it because it messes with canon and you run head first into one of the biggest Prequel Problems; "Why did this never come up before now?". I worry we'll end up jumping through hoops trying to make sure NO ONE knows who Credence is which makes it... not very important or convoluted. If its a lie, you just made our grand dramatic cliffhanger a complete waste of time and undermine its emotional and shocking resonance when, well, whoop, sorry, I lied. Also, it's only going to look like a cop out if you come into the third movie and instantly "Retcon it" and it'll look like the creators realized their mistake, regardless if that's accurate or not.

I feel like this can only really end badly.

...Okay, yeah, any interest I might've had left is definitely gone now. If I see this, I won't be the one paying for it (but I'm not sure I really want to see it in theaters now).

Honestly, all I wanted from a Fantastic Beasts movie was like... Magical Steve Irwin. Not... what we've gotten so far.

Obviously, you weren't familiar with Steve Irwin's work in international espionage...not that he ever did any such work...stop asking questions...

Edited by Eagal on Nov 16th 2018 at 8:34:16 AM

That's... another question I have about this series. I don't know why Newt is the protagonist. I mean, I don't MIND Newt as the protagonist because I think the actor is great and Newt has a pretty good character. I just... don't know why Newt is played as this man of espionage when it seems clear he'd rather be studying his animals. He doesn't have much character development. I don't think Grindlewald or the plot in general challenges him much. This isn't to say I think he's a BAD protagonist, but I don't think he's the right guy. Dumbledore tries to handwave it as "Newt does things because they're right, not because of power or money" but that feels a bit flimsy. Hermionie didn't do things for either of those reasons and I thought she was well challenged by the original series.

Newt was better suited when the goal of the story was "Fantastic beasts are loose in New York. We need to round them up in a single night. Let's go". The original, which I thought was more or less ok, suited Newt because it was a smaller scale story. It was a one-shot and I liked that about it. This one sets up this whole larger scale and bigger stakes to the international level that... I don't think suits Newt very well.

I always thought that it's baffling that Tina isn't the protagonist of these films. She's the one who has the most emotional invetment in all this. She's the one who lost her job because she assaulted Ms Barebone, she's the aurora investigating Grindelwald, and as of tCoG her sister is the one who's at risk of being radicalised by him

Newt is only useful because in the first one he knows what an obscuri is, and in the second because he knows only slightly less about the lestrange family than Leta Lestrange.

Newt was key in capturing Grindlewald in the first movie.

That was the whole point of his character-people underestimate him because he's weird, and they underestimate his creatures because they don't understand them (and don't want to).

Newt is basically an Outside Context Hero.

Re: McGonagall: That can’t be her, and it can’t be her mother. The McGonagall name came from her muggle father, who her mother left the wizarding community to be with. Minerva herself wasn’t born until 1935, and she says herself OOTP that she’s been teaching for 39 years, IINM

Edited by TheAirman on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:04:47 PM

It has to be. They just name drop her in two or three scenes and, what's even stranger, is that they NEVER show a close up of her or ever have her in direct frame. Its not even a 'we're obscuring this character from view because mystery', she's just not focused on. Also, the writers are either stupid or incompetent if they name drop an important character from the original, NEVER really identify her outside of the name drop, and then go 'No guys, its not the same character. Y'all are being stupid". And I genuinely mean that insult. You cannot write that name drop FOUR TIMES and NOT know how it reads to fans.

Obviously Minerva has access to a time turner. She just spun it 700,800 times in order to be a teacher at Hogwarts before she was born.

So....after largely ignoring everything related to the movie, I have just watched it and...

call me crazy, I actually liked it.

Now, I still have a few concerns...I am kind of iffy about the way they are dancing around the whole Albus was in love with Grindlewald issue. I mean they are basically saying it but without really SAYING it. And I have the feeling that they might..adjust...the dialogue in some countries.

I am still soso about Nagini. I don't think that they really did anything outright offensive with her so far, in fact, I would like to know more about her. And that is pretty much the problem, because they really didn't spend any time on the character whatsoever aside of introducing the bullet point.

The revelation at the end...comes with Nagini on the "must know more to judge" pile.

And I am still hating Yates direction, because, dammit, why can't this guy allow a moment to breath properly? But I guess that will never change so I will have to live with it and focus on the writing.

Now...a small reminder: The first Harry Potter books were all basically crime story with Harry, Ron and Hermione the ones who had to follow the clues. The kind of confusing thing about this movie is, that it basically turns the watcher into the one who has to keep following the clues. And sometimes this is fun, but it is also extremely annoying when you always get the impression that everyone on screen knows more than you do.

And the whole backstory with the blood revenge plot was too melodramatic for my taste.

But, well, I kind of live for the creatures. I really do. I have thing of having a protagonist which is the absolute opposite of what you would usually expect in a protagonist, someone who is all about kindness and understanding. And I kind of enjoyed trying to figure out what the plan was. And pretty much everything about the climax (aside from, again, the inability of Yates to allow a dramatic moment to truly breath, but at least he managed to convey the tension).

I'm not saying they're teasing the fans. They absolutely intended for her to be, for us to recognize her as, Minerva McGonagall. What I'm saying is that they did that and never bothered to even glance at their own fucking previously established timeline.

Edited by TheAirman on Nov 17th 2018 at 4:47:47 AM

Yeah, there's Writers Cannot Do Math (the old books) and then there's The Writers Didn't Even Attempt The Math (this movie).

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:32:07 AM

It does seem somewhat funny that the movies people like the least are the ones directly written by Rowling herself.

Of course, 'fans' will still decry all the changes in adaptations written by people other than her, of course.

Edited by ArthurEld on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:38:08 AM

Eh...actually, the first fantastic Beast movie is easily my favourite. I don't like it better than the books, mind you, but it provides a way more satisfying movie experience to me. Not sure where to put Crimes of Grindelwald, though. I think I like Prisoner of Azkaban better, but it might just beat out Order of the Phoenix (again, the movie, NOT the book).

I read the script book and plan on seeing the movie later. A big issue I have with this story is that everybody seems to know about Credence, even characters who weren’t in the first movie. No solid explanation is given as to how they have this knowledge, they just do. In regards to Newt, I don’t mind him. In these next few movies some of these characters will need to get shifted around.

Naturally they knew...it is more this prophecy thing which came kind of out of nowhere.

The first Fantastic Beasts movie is probably as good as the Sorceror's Stone movie, or it would be if the protagonist were someone other than that charisma-free fake movie star, Eddie Remayne.

I don't think it's shocking that an author who is hugely successful in one format might struggle with another one. F. Scott Fitzgerald was pretty much a total washout as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Edited by jamespolk on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:43:29 AM

So I actually really liked this movie. I thought it was better than the first one anyway. I'm a bit surprised to see it getting such a negative reaction. I am a bit curious how they're going to resolve the cliffhanger stuff though. It sure seems like a big thing to never bring up before this point.

And I think that's the problem.

Fantastic Beasts, I assume, was probably concieved as a stand alone film. And it works as such. Beasts flood New York. Need to capture them. Cool. Fun little adventure. I don't think Fantastic Beasts is an amazing film and I think the script is more or less where the problems lie, but it was ok. I think the name is probably the most obvious sign that this was never really meant to be longer.

I think the problem is that Crimes tries to engage itself as this larger story and Rowling is RUSHING to get info to us at the expense of clarity and the characters we're trying to get attached to. The whole "Heir to a powerful wizard family" thing (which, really? Prophsey? Again???) and the really convoluted explanation to that whole mess probably would work more in a book where everything can be slower paced and explain things, but a movie doesn't have time to do that.

Not to mention I felt like we wasted time on things that could have been easily excised and worked around. The Chineese Cat Dragon thing probably could have been cut and we just found another way out of the Ministry instead. Sure, Tina gets a cute moment later immitating Newt's trick with the cat toy, but that could have been replaced easily too.

Fantastic Beasts introduced Grindelwald, which was an obvious Sequel Hook. Not to mention that hardly any stand-alone movies of any sort are made these days.

Worth noting is Warner Bros was originally planning to, without Rowling, make 3 movies based on Fantastic Beasts, then Rowling stepped in to write the scripts and expanded them to 5 movies.

So there was always a series planned and unable to be prevented, but Rowling did bring in much of the excess herself.

Please don't tell me that Rowling is falling into George Lucas syndrome. Cause many of the faults with this film feel distinctly Prequel-ish.

I beg WB to please hire an actual screenwriter to write these movies, let JK write a draft then let the screenwriter adapt it and make it proper. I think this movie will do ok box office wise but I hope somebody at WB is paying attention to the reviews and reactions given for this, don't let these movies become like the DCEU and fix the problems now before its too late.

I would argue that Fantastic Beasts works fine if you excise the Grindlewald reveal entirely. In fact, I think its actually a stronger story that way. Graves makes good points about the Masquerade.... but loses all rehetorical appeal when "Oh, well it was Wizard Hitler the whole time!".

Edited by InkDagger on Nov 17th 2018 at 11:01:59 AM