When this franchise was announced my immediate reaction was "shouldn't we just do Dumbledore and Grindelwald given that's the one everybody wants to see" and then the franchise swerved to that while keeping Newt around as a hanger-on, making this a rather fantastic case of half-assing both to nobody's approval.
First film I felt already struggled with this a bit, as the plot zig-zagged between Newt's whimsical hijinks and the physical torture of a boy under a magical apartheid that felt extremely dissonant, until in the climax those things just crash into each other. Grindelwald/Graves already stuck out like a sore thumb in movie one, so this doesn't surprise me.
They should have just led with a Dumbledore-Grindelwald franchise out of the gate or stuck to their guns with Newt (even though I find Newt a incredibly generic tumblr bait protagonist, but I digress). I wish the franchise had just ended up with more scenes like the noir goblin speakeasy we see in movie one, that was fantastic.
Edited by Gaon on Mar 2nd 2022 at 1:16:43 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The first Fantastic Beasts aint perfect, but I give it a lot of credit for least making an attempt to branch out into a wider world. They could have just done another series about another group of kids and their wacky adventures at Hogwarts and people would've likely eaten that up but they chose to do something a little different.
But then the sequel came along as was like "nah lets just go back to Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic, another Eurocentric storyline instead of continuing to go to new places with new characters and new stories" and thats what bugged me the most about it.
I mean god forbid we actually get stories that aren't so overtly tied to the original series of any franchise right? And maybe even add a little bit of diversity to the fantasy genre that so desperately needs it in this day and age.
Edited by starwanderer on Mar 2nd 2022 at 1:36:49 AM
I think what's even more grating is their actual attempts at diversity are very transparently token and not well-thought-out. Besides the not-quite-queerbaiting, we also have gems like "MACUSA has a black female president pre-suffrage for black women?" and "An Asian woman...but she's a snake sidekick for a genocidal guy".
Also "We are going to have a mixed-race character but do a beat-by-beat tragic mulatto
narrative unironically in 2018"
Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 2nd 2022 at 5:00:16 AM
Honestly, the best thing to happen to the franchise at this point might be for it to go the Star Wars route, where the original creator parts ways with it and the new owners go about expanding the world with various creative teams while rebooting the general EU to keep the stuff that people like and jettisoning stuff like Cursed Child or wizard poops (God, WTF, JK?)
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonI don’t think Rowling is ever going to part ways with Harry Potter. Lucas sold Star Wars because he was getting old and wanted to spend time with his family and doing other projects, as well as having a fairly accepting manner towards EU not written by him. Rowling is still well away from retirement and Harry Potter has had almost no expanded material that hasn’t had Rowling directly involved in some manner.
This is a bit of a uniquee case in many ways. Most franchises of this sort are firmly in the hand of a company or firmly in the hand of a creator (Star Wars being a key example: it was either basically Lucas' or entirely Disney's, something illustrated by how Disney treated Lucas like he was a tumor once the franchise was bought) this sort of shared custody half-and-half thing where Rowling rules the franchise with an iron fist while partly being owned by Warner is pretty rare. I think the closest comparison would be the notorious tug-of-war between Gene Roddenberry and the Paramount executives in Star Trek which made the production of Star Trek: The Next Generation a bit of a mess.
I don't know if Warner actually has mechanisms (or the willingness, for that matter) to isolate her from the franchise. The Roddenberry situation I mentioned above only really came to a close when Roddenberry's failing health (and subsquent death) rendered him unable to throw his creative weight around. Granted, Roddenberry was (and still is) a much more respected figure than Rowling, who is controversial to put it mildly.
I think the hypothetical Harry Potter HBO Max show pitch might end up being a way out if Warner manages to do it, as the inherently more collaborative nature of tv-series (writer's rooms and such) might work as a way to minimize her input and looming shadow over the franchise, particularly if you get a big-name showrunner.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."To be clear, I'm not *super* caring about Gay Dumbledore and his story.
Mostly because, when it comes down to it, it's still a gay man who loves (not a neo- but) an OG Nazi (who is either also gay or merely using him?) and then said gay man has to fight him and lock up his crush/lover forever.
It would be *yet another* tragic gay love story that I hate so much. I would still be kinda upset with it, but at that point it's consequences of choices made over a decade ago that we can't exactly do much about.
But the fact of that matter is that, if that's what this film series is about, that's what this film series is about and ignoring the queer story here is simply homophobic. And, I don't know if its intentional or not because of the malformed birth of this one-shot film into a 5-and-then-3-film series, but taking that gay set up and then reframing it around... a heterosexual couple... Who have virtually no development or dynamic and are cliche as hell... Uhmmmmm....
Edited by InkDagger on Mar 2nd 2022 at 4:33:29 AM
I mean, I agree that saying that a character is part of a certain minority to pander to demographics but never actually showing it is disingenuous, but calling the Fantastic Beasts series a "queer story" is a stretch imo. If the series focused on Dumbledore and Grindelwald I guess I'd agree, but the first installment of the series is about Newt, even if the second film got away from that.
Edited by good-morning on Mar 2nd 2022 at 9:48:03 AM
oh hey how are you doing?Kinda? Not really?
Yes, the first film was about Newt.
The series pivots hard to be about the First Wizarding War. Which all of our information on has been basically centered around Dumbledore and Grindewald before this and never on Newt. We actually had no connection between him and the First Wizarding War until these movies tbh. He and the "Fantastic Beasts" are kind The Artifact and out of place...
So, while the first film was Newt's story, the story the films pivot into was always a pretty queer narrative, one Rowling had a whole press conference in 2007 to confirm as a queer narrative, and the second the films pivot into the sole canon queer thing in this entire franchise, it's now suddenly too balsey to engage with the queerness.
Edited by InkDagger on Mar 2nd 2022 at 11:30:31 AM
Bet Rowling is regretting her Word of Gay right about now.
It is pretty cringe to see Crimes of Grindelwald awkwardly dance around Dumbledore's feelings, and trying to be as vague as possible while also queer baiting without really offending the actual audience that Just Kidding Rowling wants to pander to, and also making this movie the most sexual charged one for the straight pairings only.
And they are all pretty fucked up in some way, Queenie drugs and kidnaps Jacob, Papa Lestrange kidnapped and brainwashed Leta's and Kama's mom, ETC.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 2nd 2022 at 2:46:27 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"At least this time it didn't make the child of rape pure evil? Progress?
Edited by Pseudopartition on Mar 3rd 2022 at 1:20:43 PM
I'll say something positive about the movie, thus far just based off the trailers it does seem to have a lot more action going on compared to the last one.
The last movie had like one action scene of note which was Grindelwalds escape at the beginning, although it wasn't that well edited and poorly lit, but I liked the concept and the decision to at least start the movie off with an action scene. Then the rest of the movie was just a bunch of characters walking around and talking which is part of the reason many found it boring.
At least here there seems to be a bit more momentum going on, and at the bare minimum a fantasy movie at least needs to have a couple of semi-cool magic scenes throughout. And to me at least I thought some of the shots in the trailer looked kinda-sorta neat.
Early critic reactions
have been out for two days. Generally, they find the film to be "the best of the three", though not without its own issues.
The linked article contains some opening tweets to the threads of some critics. Below are some summaries:
- Ian Sandwell of Digital Spy called the third entry in the Fantastic Beasts series an “improvement” on its predecessor, and also notes that Mads Mikkelsen, who is taking over the role of Grindelwald from Johnny Depp, is “a huge upgrade.” Although, it’s not an entirely positive reaction as he does note it’s “overstuffed” and “unsure if it’s a Beasts film or a Harry Potter film.”
- Perri Nemiroff of Collider calls The Secrets of Dumbledore a “big bounce back” for the series and reports it’s “far more engaging” than the previous film. Nemiroff also notes that the adorable Niffler steals the show once again.
- Finally, Griffin Schiller of Film Speak salutes screenwriter Steve Kloves as he “miraculously salvages a sinking ship.” The first two Fantastic Beasts movies were solely penned by J.K. Rowling, but Kloves came on board as a co-writer for The Secrets of Dumbledore after adapting all by one of the Harry Potter books for the screen.

It really feels like the Wizarding World War stuff hijacked the Newt stuff, doesn't it? And it feels like they just didn't manage to make it work.
Wake me up at your own risk.