movie thoughts: Fantastic Beasts 2 (2018)

[orangerful]

So, this happened today.

I sat down to watch Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald. I steeled myself because I knew the reviews for this were all over the place. But something about it bugged me right off the bat and I ended up sort of live-tweeting my viewing:

Why do storytellers who have created well-loved worlds have so little faith in them to bring the audience in? ‘Fantastic Beasts’ went from a new story to a prequel by bringing in Dumbledore, even for a matter of minutes.

— orangerful (@orangerful) October 13, 2019

Yeah, I signed on for the misadventures of Newt Scamander, but instead it turns out this was just a Album Dumbeldore story.



At least, I think it is. Maybe it's a Creedence story. No wait, maybe it's Grindlewald's story. OH hang on, how about Nagini? Queenie? Tina? Jacob? Lita Lestrange? Newt's brother? The double agent(s)? That random half-house elf? The little baby?

Do you see what I'm getting at? The first movie was already at the character limit, barely giving us enough to go on to invest in their story. But JK decides to go into fan service mode and begins to bring in characters from or related to the 'Harry Potter' series. WHY? Have FAITH that fans are there to see the Wizarding WORLD. Not the Wizarding small town where everyone knows everyone.

It undoes pretty much everything I enjoyed about the first movie.

FB - only romantic relationship is Queenie liking Jacob.
FB2 - Queenie and Jacob are a cluster and now Tina is *jealous* of Newt because for some reason he shows up in wizarding tabloids and Newt is all *I don't know how to talk to girls* and it's just **eyeroll** especially when these things are happening in the middle of important story.

FB - Newt is his own Wizard, doing his own thing, stumbles into this darker story and manages to help because of his love of creatures.
FB2 - Newt becomes "chosen" by Dumbledore to complete this task that "only he" can complete.

FB - new characters, new country, different story
FB2 - old characters...I guess Paris is new. But we're back to EVIL Nazi Wizard. (missed opportunity - this could have gone the X-Men route! Xavier vs Magneto. But they've made Grindelvald too icky. Or maybe that is just because they cast Johnny Depp

And should we even talk about the problematic Nagini plot (or, more like, token appearance because she has no story to go along with her plight, she's just the girl to go with Credence). Or what about the random rape story that is tucked away as a flashback? Oh sorry, he *enchanted* her.

Anyway, yeah, this movie rubbed me the wrong way. Are there no editors in Hollywood? No one to take JK's script and say "okay, I see what you're going for but let's trim the fat." No one to work with Yates and say "you know, this is a mess right?" Where are the script doctors?

And there are THREE MORE in the queue??? There is nothing new about this story and it is so disappointing.



TL;DR if you skipped this one, you made the right choice. The more I think about ti, the more frustrated I get with what a huge, wasted opportunity this was.

Comments

[jerusha]

I will probably hate-watch it at some point. But man, I agree. They really wasted an opportunity.

[orangerful]

LOL well if you do go down that road, let me know and I will reply to all your tweets/posts with "I KNOW OMG!" -- don't watch it alone!

[silverusagi]

I actually haven't watched either of these (for some reason Harry Potter is just not my thing, even though on paper, it should be), but I have actually thought I need to watch the first one, because it sounded interesting. The second one, not so much.

[orangerful]

First one was cute. Far from perfect, but still had some cool ideas and moments. Just pretend that is the end once you're done though.

[rhoda_rants]

As I said before, I've only read the script, but I had a pretty similar reaction to most of these. The relationship-focused stuff was a total bore and I disliked it. Magneto vs Xavier would have been a much better way to go, and it seemed like that was what they were going for in the trailers, but then you never actually get to see Dumbledore and Grindelwald interact and it just didn't happen.

I will say I imagine Johnny Depp's delivery makes Grindlewald more sinister than I pictured him while reading it. Again, IF ONLY we'd kept Colin Farrell. Just. Goddammit. He would've been perfect to bring that character some nuance and depth, which he did, in the first movie. Alas.

And yeah, I don't know what Scamander contributes here. This has nothing to do with Fantastic Beasts, and felt like a very weak way to pin this movie to the previous one. Disappointing.

Maybe one day we'll get the Marauders miniseries we all deserve, but I guess we have to suffer through this first at least. *sigh*

[orangerful]

Yeah, we need some time and distance, I think, before WB and JK let others create some HP works. I agree that JK's style would work better as a mini-series rather than movies. She likes to create characters and you can do that when you've got 13 hours.

[rhoda_rants]

Miniseries are sort of "in" right now, too. How many streaming services have we got? It'd be the perfect venue for something in the Marauders era.