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thesffcorner · 5 years

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Before we jump in I just want to say, I don’t critique out of hate; it’s love. That’s why it hurts more.

There were so many issues with this film, from basic storytelling to lore. I can’t decide if these issues stem from J K Rowling trying to retcon and reimagine her own world, or the studio mandating a more streamlined, marketable “universe” (yeah I haven’t missed that the logo has now changed to Wizarding World).

I think the best way to go through the characters, because conveniently the major issues are all tied to specific characters. So, starting with more minor grievances and working up to the big stuff; warning, SPOILERS ahead.

1. Too many characters (aka Jacob, Tina and Nagini have nothing to do):

One of J K Rowling’s greatest strengths is creating memorable and interesting characters; one of her biggest flaws is making too many of them. In the Harry Potter books and by extension the films, this was mitigated by the audience experiencing everything through Harry’s perspective. Yes, there were tons of characters, but we always saw and met them through Harry’s eyes, and the story was narrowly focused on him and his journey.

The first Fantastic Beasts benefited from a much smaller cast, and a narrower focus; Newt was our lead and we experienced the conflict through his journey to retrieve his creatures, and most things that happen around him are just that: a coincidence.

Here, the cast has been expanded to the breaking point: not only do we follow Newt, Credence, Tina, Queenie and Jacob, but they are also fighting for screen time with newcomers Leta, Nagini, Thadeus, Kama, Dumbledore and Grindelwald, all of whom have much more substantial roles and tie much more closely to the main conflict, which is Grindelwald’s search for Credence.

As a result, not only does it feel like Newt has become a supporting role in his own film (we’ll get to that), but also, characters like Tina, Jacob and Nagini have nothing to do. Tina’s entire story is that she is sent to find Credence by the American Ministry, and is angry with Newt because she read in a tabloid magazine that Newt is engaged. Her bond to Credence, her desire to do good and prove herself are completely lost to the myriad of plot threads we have introduced. She also barely has any reaction to Queenie essentially eloping with Jacob and then joining Grindelwald (we’ll get to that too). What? Her sister just joined the wizarding equivalent of Hitler, and she has nothing to say? Really movie?

Nagini, is introduced, and then does nothing for the whole film. She bites the circus owner who abuses her and holds her captive, gets trapped in a wall by Mad Eye Moody (oh yeah, he’s in this too), follows Credence to La Perches and then gets abandoned by him. There is no real reason for her to follow him as long as she does, and we don’t really get any scenes deepening their relationship; all we learn about her is what someone else tells us about her (and that someone else is the abusive circus owner which is a whole other can of worms). Why was she necessary again? She does nothing, has no real purpose, and the only reason she’s at all sympathetic, likable, and has any character, is Claudia Kim’s excellent acting.

Jacob is the worst offender in that he is literary and completely irrelevant. His story was over in Fantastic Beasts; there was no need to drag him into this. Here, he gets jinxed and kidnapped by Queene to come to England and marry her, when he in reality doesn’t want to, because he is afraid that if Queenie is found out, she would get put in prison. As soon as his jinx is lifted, and he and Queenie have an argument during which he thinks she’s crazy (which obviously hurts her, since she can read minds) she decides to find her in Paris with Newt, and then spends the rest of the film doing absolutely nothing.

Since he can’t do any magic, he is unnecessary for all of those scenes, and he’s not even in any danger; no one points out he’s a no maj, no one questions why he’s there. They even go to a meeting of Grindelwald’s followers, most of them purebloods and no one even bats an eye that a muggle is between them. He doesn’t even really have any cute or funny scenes of doing something useful like punching someone out or kicking a door in like in the first film; he’s there to provide conflict and a reason for Queenie to be back, and someone to react to Newt and that’s all he is.

And since we are already talking about this, Nicholas Flamel. Why was he here? Who was the woman he was talking to in the book? Was that really necessary? Couldn’t we have a different character filling out that role, like say… someone from the already bloated cast? Maybe Thaddeus and Newt working together, or a spell Tina knows, or maybe even Kama showing magic that isn’t used in Europe? Just a thought.

2. What they’ve done to Queenie is a crime

In the first film, Queenie is an incredibly endearing, sweet and kind character. She is pretty, bubbly, knows exactly how people perceive her and is generally very likable. I loved that she was an unabashedly girly character, who wasn’t career oriented or tomboyish and was still powerful, capable and smart. Her romance with Jacob was sweet and felt believable, and I thought the ending they got in Fantastic Beasts was deserved and conclusive.

In this film, Queenie is, well… unhinged. She jinxes Jacob and kidnaps him, and when he is reasonably upset with her (not even enough in my opinion) she takes what he thinks in the heat of the moment at face value and runs off. Why she decides to go after Tina in Paris, when supposedly they aren’t on speaking terms, I don’t know, but what I know even less, is how Grindelwald a) knew who she was, b) knew she was related to Tina, c) knew how to find her, in the middle of Paris and d) wanted her on his side to begin with.

I can maybe buy that Grindelwald somehow knew she was a Legitimans and wanted her for that purpose (though I always thought Legitimancy was something you could learn to do, not an inborn superpower, like an X-man) and I could also maybe buy that he knew who she was because he knew Tina was in Paris, and she’s an Auror, but was it always his plan to seduce Queenie to his side? Because as is, it just looks like she was randomly targeted by him, and randomly accepted.

Oh yeah, Queenie joins Grindelwald. Why? Because even though she knows Grindelwald is manipulating her, even though she knows he indiscriminately kills muggles, and knows he wouldn’t stand for a marriage between a pureblood witch and a muggle, she still falls for his whole wizards should live freely speech. And to make matters even more nonsensical, what pushes her over the edge, is actually a fight with Jacob who doesn’t want to (and literary can’t) cross into Grindelwald’s ring of fire. So she is joining Grindelwald so she can marry the man he loves… after she has a fight with him in which they break up? Makes sense!

This whole thing could have so easily been fixed if Queenie wasn’t completely crazy from the very start. What if instead of coming to England under duress, she and Jacob come to appeal the British Ministry to let them marry and then get denied? And throughout the course of the film Queenie gets more and more desperate as it becomes clear that Jacob will never be accepted among wizardkind? Or perhaps her friendship with Grindelwald’s French Henchwoman is actually developed to have her manipulate Queenie into believing Grindelwald truly is fighting for the freedom to love and marry? (You know something that ties with his character really well, but we will get to that, oh we will).

Instead we get this complete 180 turn with no motivation and now Queenie is part of the Nazis. I guess.

3. Credence is inconsequential in a film all about him (also that stupid reveal)

There were… issues with Credence in the first film. However here, he is basically a non-entity. How he survived being blown up by a dozen or so death curses is never explained; only that he is now in Paris with a traveling circus, supposedly coming to France to find his birth mother. How he got to the circus and how he learned to control the obscurus is also never explained or shown to us; by the time we learn of the circus and see Credence he is already escaping with Nagini.

The rest of his role in the film is trying to find his mother, thinking that he is the long lost Lestrange child, since him being a descendant of a powerful wizarding line is what has kept him alive that long. I understand his motivation to find out who he is and why his family abandoned him, but we are never really privy to how he actually feels and what he wants. There is a bit at the end before he joins Grindelwald where Nagini tells him Grindelwald knows where he came from but not who he is, and that would be a powerful line if we knew who he was. We don’t; even disregarding the change he went through between movies, we still know nothing about him other than being an abuse survivor and immensely powerful.

Another thing that I personally didn’t understand was, does Credence not know that Graves was Grindelwald? If no, then why is Grindelwald doing this breadcrumb trail to have Credence come to him instead of just showing up and telling him he knows who his real family is? If he does, then why on God’s green earth, would he go back to him? Did he conveniently forget how Greaves treated and manipulated him?

And let’s talk about that backstory. Supposedly, Credence is Dumbledore. Huh?

First off… how. Is he a step brother? There is no mention of a fourth Dumbledore sibling in the books, and even still by the time Credence could have been born, Albus’ father was already in Azkaban. The only possibility would be if he’s a half brother, but in that case, why would Kendra give him away? Even if this is the case, and he was possibly born right before Kendra died (when Albus was 17, and always away from home), he would only be a Dumbledore in name, not blood, so I’m not sure how the phoenix legend would apply to him. Even still the logistics of this working, with Kendra never leaving the house, make no sense, and even in terms of age, Credence appears to be at most 20, and Dumbledore is in his 40s. Also even if somehow Albus didn’t know that Kendra was pregnant, what about Aberforde? Ariane?

If Credence isn’t a brother then this whole reveal is even stupider and less impactful, because a long lost cousin is nowhere near as flashy or interesting as a long lost brother. More importantly, if this is the truth and Grindelwald isn’t just lying so he could manipulate Credence into killing Dumbledore… how does he know this? When did he learn it? He had no idea who Credence was when he was hunting for the obscurus as Greaves in New York! But if he is lying, then this film just wasted over 20 minutes of already bloated screen time, explaining a red herring. Which leads me to:

4. Grindelwald’s entire motivation

Hooo boy. Let’s get into it I guess.

First things first, I have to say I actually thought Johnny Depp was pretty good as Grindelwald. I would have still preferred to have Colin Farrell in the role, and I definitely don’t like supporting Johnny Depp, but I do have to give credit; he played the part convincingly, and seems to care about his role which is always a positive. He is a threatening presence and the way he manipulates and seduces the characters around him is believable and insidious. However, the actual character motivations are… muddled.

From what we know about Grindelwald in the books and the first film, he thinks muggles should be subjugated and/or exterminated, and wizards should rule. He sees muggles, half-bloods, muggle borns and anyone not of pure blood as subhuman and expandable, and his goal is to start a war between wizards and muggles. Unlike Voldemort, he has learned the art of PR and gives a decently convincing speech towards the end of the film, that I could see could reasonably sway more center leaning wizards to join his cause. I think too this is what they were trying to do with Queenie’s character; show how enticing his message could be to someone desperate precisely because of the laws the wizards have set to guide their society.

However, I am still not sure why he wants or needs Credence. He says in the film that his biggest threat is Dumbledore and he can’t kill Dumbledore because of a blood pact he made with him (we will get to it, I promise), so the only person who can kill him is apparently… Credence? Why? Credence is powerful yes, and he may be a Dumbledore, but he’s also not trained and has no experience in fighting, and it was shown in the first film that he can in fact be defeated or at least significantly slowed down with curses. Hell, that’s even shown in this film too with Mad Eye Moody! So what makes Grindelwald think Credence can take on Dumbledore and win? Moreover, Grindelwald knows that Dumbledore is afraid of him, so why would he even bother wasting time and resources on this? It’s just so unnecessary!

I’d also like to point out one things here. I was very afraid the film will completely gloss over the relationship Grindelwald has with Dumbledore, and for the most part it does. The representation is that very vague, blink and you’ll miss it type, that can be very easily plausibly denied; a line about them being closer than brothers here and a flashback of the blood pact in the Mirror of Erised there. Which is honestly a wasted opportunity, because how much more compelling would it be, if homosexuality, and possibly laws against it were actually explored? What if the wizarding community has laws against gay marriage and relationships as well as against muggle-wizard relationships? This would give such a more interesting and powerful reason for Queenie and Grindelwald to connect, and possibly another reason for Dumbledore and the Ministry to disagree on, but no. It’s just weak lip service, and it’s honestly disgraceful and insulting in an otherwise progressive series, in 2018.

5. The Blood Pact (and everything Dumbledore):

Let’s talk about the stupid ass blood pact. So, in the books, one of the most interesting and touching aspects about Dumbledore and Grindelwald was that Dumbledore was afraid of facing Grindelwald, not because he was afraid he’d lose, but because of the truth; Grindelwald possibly knew what happened the night Arianne died, that maybe it was Dumbledore’s own curse that killed her. He felt guilty that he failed to protect his siblings, disillusionment with Grindelwald and his cause, afraid of the truth and still very much in love with the man, in spite of everything.

In this film, it turns out that Dumbledore couldn’t fight Grindelwald because he apparently made a blood pact with him that they would never fight each other. Right.

This makes… no sense. In the books, the reason Grindelwald and Dumbledore split up, is because one of their fights escalates in a three way duel with Aberford, which ends up killing Arianne. So if they made this blood pact before the duel, then how did they fight? Obviously they were tossing around death curses so what… does this pact work, but only sometimes?

After the fight, Grindelwald fled, and Dumbledore hadn’t seen him until decades later, when their actual duel happened. He refused to seek Grindelwald out. In the flashbacks, they look like their teenage selves, so unless they made this pact right after Arianne died, which makes no sense, then how could they have fought? Arianne is even mentioned in the scene between Leta and Dumbledore, so we can naturally assume that that at least happened the way it did in the books.

My question is, why? Were love, fear, and guilt not compelling enough reasons? Do we really need another McGuffin that we will probably spend the next entire movie destroying?

Jude Law, like Depp gives an excellent performance, especially in the classroom scenes; he gives the character a warmth and vulnerability, while still maintaining his imposing nature and importance, something Michael Gambon never achieved. It genuinely upset me that his backstory got so brutally retconned, because just imagine how much more compelling Jude Law would be in the part, if he had all these conflicting emotions to work through, rather than just a magic bottle of blood that prevents him from fighting his ex.

6. Leta Lestrange’s wasted potential (and Yusuf’s too)

This one crosses the line from just poorly executed to YIKES. What hurts most, is that I was excited for this character. A Slytherin that is possibly not evil? Backstory on the Lestrange family? A female lead of color, and played by Zoe Kraviz to boot?

Then all we get is wasted potential.

The problem with Leta is that she is too good for this film. Her backstory is incredibly interesting, while at the same time being incredibly dark, even too dark for this series. She is the daughter of a white man who kidnapped and raped a Senegalese witch of great beauty and magical power, under the Imperius curse. The woman died giving birth to Leta, and her husband made their son, Yusuf Kama swear an unbreakable vow to kill what Lestrange loves most.

As Lestrange has no love for Leta, he remarries and has a son; the only thing in the world he loves. He sends Leta and the child to America, and while on the boat, Leta switches him out for a different child that ends up drowning in the shipwreck. The muggle child gets adopted as Credence Barebones.

While at Hogwarts Leta was hated and bullied, and she was only close to Newt. But now she’s marrying his brother? We are never really given any reason for this; none of the Hogwarts flashbacks include Thaddeus, and while I have no doubt he loves her, there is never doubt for the audience that she loves Newt; she reminisces about their school days, seeks him out at several points and the scene where she dies is cringe inducing. She yells I love you at both, and the audience is supposed to guess which one she’s talking to, as if that matters at all?

How she dies is honestly insulting; she doesn’t even do anything to Grindelwald. Her spell doesn’t appear to have any effect on him or the fire, so her sacrifice is completely pointless. And don’t give me the whole she lets the apparate when they clearly do it a while after she dies, and Grindelwald still attacks them anyway.

Why introduce this character only to kill her off? Was there really no other way to have the Scamander brothers bond? You had to kill a very interesting and unique female character to do it? This choice, made me angry. Leta and Yusuf deserve a better move than this, The latter is so underused, that outside of his exposition scene where he just tells the audience the entire Kama and Lestrange backstory, he spends the rest of the film either unconscious or being an obvious red herring. As for Leta, why doesn’t Grindelwald want her on his side? She is also the heir to an incredibly old pure bloodline and she’s clearly a capable witch. You are telling me Credence is worth blowing Paris up for, but Leta isn’t? Hogwash.

7. Newt Scamander is a supporting character in his own film

Do you remember a little series of films called the Hobbit? They also contained an endearing, soft male lead, a jovial tone, lots of interesting supporting characters and an underlying darkness that occasionally peered through the cracks? Do you remember how the second film of that series became increasingly bloated, by taking the focus away from Bilbo, and introducing all these characters and plotlines that were only tangentially related to him, and weighed down not just on the film’s runtime, but also its content? And then how the third film barely had anything to do with Bilbo, was a jumbled, overlong mess and relegated its lead character to nothing more than a book end? Yeah, I’m worried about that too.

I love Newt; Eddie Redmayne is excellent in the role, and makes even strange scenes endearing and lovable. Newt even gets some great scenes in this film, like him taming the zouwi, riding the kelpie, and any of the scenes he shares with Leta, Tina or Jacob. But my is he just completely superfluous to this film.

The reason he is even in Paris, is completely stupid; the ministry wants him to become an Auror. Why? Why would they even think he would be willing to kill an innocent man for them? Dumbledore having no one to trust but Newt? Also why? You are telling me truly that Newt Scamander, outsider, cooky naturalist and carer of magical creatures is capable of going against Grindelwald? Not to mention he has no real reason or motive to want to; if anything it was the Aurors that ‘killed’ Credence so his beef should be more with them, than Grindelwald. Until Grindelwald kills Leta (which let me remind you, is the end of the film), he has no motivation to want to even meet Grindelwald and in fact he doesn’t; his priority for over half the film, is finding Tina, not Credence or Grindelwald.

How is he supposed to fit in this historically famous duel between Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald? The way they involve him at the end with the niffler is almost as bad as introducing a whole other character and killing them off, just to give your lead motivation to stop the villain.

The point of the matter is that these movies should have been an anthology. This particular story would have worked much better if Tina, or Thaddeus, or Credence or even Dumbledore were leads. Hell, you could still have Newt tag along, but he can’t be the central character in a conflict that has nothing to do with him. That’s why Battle of Five Armies was so jumbled, because in order for the film to make any sense, they had to relegate Bilbo to a secondary character since he spends most of the battle unconscious. I don’t want that to happen to Newt, but I’m afraid that’s where the filmmakers are going and it makes me sad.

I didn’t want to come down this hard on this film; I really did want to love it. And the parts that are good, are truly magical; it has some beautiful visuals, incredible and imaginative magic, and the actors are all excellent in roles of mostly likable characters. Unfortunately the universe has expanded to a breaking point, and it doesn’t seem like the filmmakers know how to juggle all the threads they have introduced. I haven’t even touched on unresolved plot threads from the first film that aren’t even addressed here. I just hope this isn’t a predictor of what to expect for the rest of the series because I remember a time, when J K Rowling was able to craft plots and characters that were spectacular, and not just marketable.

#fantastic beasts #crimes of grindlewald #harry potter #hp #moni talks #film review

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