Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Hello, dragonflies! 

The time has come! JK Rowling has blessed us again with an extension to the Wizarding World we all know and have come to love! Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is officially out in theaters all over, attracting hoards of Potterheads - because that sounds better than Newtheads - who were eager to see how our favorite universe got extended. 

So yesterday I was both bored and freezing in my dorm room, which has a dysfunctional heater and no hot water, so went downtown. Walking by the movie theater, I noticed that this movie was starting five minutes from then! First time at the movies by myself, but it was fun! 

Now I went in trying not to have any firm expectations or hopes, to have the maximum surprise effect. Now, I have many many thoughts and feels that I want to discuss! 

Note: This will be in two sections; I'll start with the non-spoilery bit and will let you know once spoilers will begin!

My first note is Holy Headwig, Jude Law was an amazing Dumbledore! Perfect casting, perfect role representation! He had that awesome eye twinkle going on when he smiled, and was such a cool professor! No wonder people have such respect for him, even in his younger adult life, he just shows that he owns the room. 

This movie in general did feel like a filler-movie. There are five of these Fantastic Beasts movies that are in the works, and I think that this one in particular built a base for something much bigger than we can imagine for now; although I do have my theories, that I'll discuss in the spoiler part!

I loved the way they portrayed the magic in this movie... mostly. Some uses of magic were incredible, and really brought me back to the feeling of first watching the Harry Potter movies so long ago. (Disclaimer: I've been feeling old while writing this - The first movie came out 17 friggin' years ago, I was five!). Other moments weren't the most consistent with what we know about the magical world and laws that, as total nerds, we took as fact. 

I also felt like the movie was... I'm not sure, maybe edited strangely? I felt like some moments that should obviously have been there were just cut out for the sake of making the movie short enough. Again, more details in the spoiler section! 

Overall, I enjoyed watching the movie! It was a fun break, and really satisfying to be able to fangirl about the magical world again! 

If you haven't seen the movie, you should stop here! I'm not going to hide anymore details! 

BOOM epic magic time this GIF is so satisfying 

Aaah, how to write this in a way that makes sense, that is the question. 

Let's go big point by big point. 

First, the character development. 

I feel like this movie kind of put a break on the characters we know and are growing to love. I love Newt Scamander - he is adorable and so delicate and has the biggest heart. I do agree with the theory that he may be somewhere on the autism spectrum, but that doesn't take anything away from his character, at all! You could tell he had a kind of relationship with his brother that involved a lot of guidance, which I appreciated. 

Another character I liked a lot was Leta Lestrange - I'm so sad she's already dead! In the entire movie, she certainly had the most interesting and well thought-out character arc! I loved the flashbacks of her and Newt's friendship when they were at Hogwarts together, her story with Credence (Is it just me or were they on the Titanic when she swapped her crying Lestrange brother for him!?), and her whole morale tilting. She really made for an incredible character! 

The others felt... flat. Credence and Nagini were simply running around 90% of the time, Jakob served no purpose but to show Queenie's intentions, which didn't make sense in the end. We never really learn much about Tina... from the movie it is difficult to catch the fact that Newt is now a famous author or why Queenie suddenly sides with Grindelwald... it was all a bit flat to me, and I feel like this really could have been resolved if there was a bit more meaningful dialogue between characters in the movie. 

Second, the storytelling. 

I mostly loved this! The flashbacks to various childhood memories were probably some of my favorite parts - everyone's back at Hogwarts and learning about friendship and magic and it was just so sweet! I think that one of the coolest ones was Dumbledore's memories of making a Blood Oath with Grindelwald, which was something we haven't seen yet! I loved how we could finally see what Dumbledore really sees in the Mirror or Erised! 

We do know of Unbreakable Oaths, but these were represented wrong in this movie with respect to how they were shown in the HP movies. Considering the director and author are the same, canon should be law. This happened many times - polyjuice potion was as common as aspirin, spells worked differently, laws were different, even the way magic manifested itself was vastly different. Many times, I felt like I was watching fanfiction, just because of the inconsistencies between the OG series and what we were now seeing. PolandBananasBooks has a great video on YouTube that focuses more on specific inconsistencies, I would highly recommend it! 

I do think that this movie did bring the magic element out well - One of my favorite scenes was with the Kelpie - sure, I agree with the masses who say that it was too long and took away from plot-building screen time, but I loved how it brought the light-heartedness back to the movie! This is also the case for the scene in which Newt uses that golden power to see what happened with the circus, I loved it! 

One last bit about the storytelling I adored was how they tied the Wizarding World with our muggle history. Sure, the entrance to the French Ministry of Magic was plain stupid (anyone could see that!) and the fact that the magic community just understood muggles so well was off-setting after what we learned from the OG series, but some bits were so well done! You can totally see Grindelwald's point about muggles once he points out that World War 2 was going to begin if they didn't do anything. It would be scary for anyone. Also, flashback to what was possibly the Titanic was super cool! 

But, like I mentioned, the story was told in such a way that the magic was really put forward. If I have to use one sentence, I'd say that they really tried to pull on our nostalgia by being flashy and giving us familiarity, to the point where they ignored quality or consistency. 

I have no idea why Queenie joined Grindewald. What was the point of the big fire dragons? I'm sure Leta knew what she was doing when she switched the babies. The wand didn't choose Credence so does that make him go crazy? What about Nagini? I just feel like the lack of dialogue lead to many plotholes. 

BUT THE END REVALATION! Nowhere does it say there were 4 Dumbledore siblings - We know about three, and that there was a showdown at some point in which Arianne died - I find it incredible that there's a 4th one, and I can't wait to see what happened for him to be wiped out of history! 

Also side note but I wanted to see more of Bunty, she seemed like she would be a fun character to have around! 

That's most of my thoughts about it, for now! I definitely enjoyed watching it, but I felt like I was watching fan fiction most of the time, which was very odd for me. Overall, I'm giving it a 3/5 feathers! I would, however, love to see JK Rowling put this in book form! I think that with a little fleshing out, this can be an incredible story! 

Have you seen the Crimes of Grindelwald? What did you think? Let me know! 

Stay bookish!