Posted in: Harry Potter, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Warner Bros, Wizarding World | Tagged: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, movies, Warner Bros

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Review: Just More Setup

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is another frustrating entry into this series. It feels like 142 minutes of setup where ultimately not much happens in terms of story or character development.

Director: David Yates
Summary: The third installment of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which follows the continuing adventures of Newt Scamander.

The Fantastic Beasts series might be one of the weirdest big-budget movie series we've seen in a long time. The idea of more movies in the Harry Potter universe wasn't that surprising, but when the first one came out, it was a bit weird that this was the angle that they decided to explore. However, that first movie was all right, but the second one was basically a disaster. A critical and commercial flop that even the fans seemed to hate. Four years later, what we can only assume was a page-one rewrite, a major recasting, J.K. Rowling going off the TERF deep end, the cast failing to condemn her for it save for one [incidentally, the one with almost no role in this movie], and Ezra Miller  over the last two weeks let alone in the last couple of years, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is here. It's apparent that whatever the plan before the Monday morning after The Crimes of Grindelwald was, that is not this movie. In some ways, it almost feels like a soft reboot in the sense that it is nothing but even more setup for more stuff that will eventually happen down the line. If the pacing is anything to go by, "down the line" is inching closer to "the only time anything that happens that will actually matter will be in the final 30 minutes of the fifth movie."

The Secrets of Dumbledore is better than the second one if we're being technical, but that is not exactly a high bar to clear since that movie was awful, and now this one is another frustrating two hours to watch. There is nothing wrong with doing long-form storytelling over multiple films. The books that this series is based on told one massive story over seven books and eight movies. However, with the exception of movies seven and eight, because they are just structured differently, each movie or book had its own internal story that had a beginning, middle, and end interwoven throughout that overall story. The character would have some sort of arc that would develop and change over the course of the story. In another example, the three Lord of the Rings movies have clear beginning, middles, and ends and clear character arcs throughout each film while telling one massive story.

The Fantastic Beasts movies are not doing that. In fact, there is almost no movement in the story or the characters within the near two and a half hour runtime. There is one big thing, but it's something that should have been fixed within fifteen minutes or at least by the end of act two. Instead, it's the finale of act three and is the entire point of the movie. Then the rest of the film is basically trying to write themselves out of the two dumbest plot points of the second movie. We won't spoil which plot points or how they go about trying to write their way out of them, but one is about the best you could hope for considering the sheer level of stupidity, and the other is just sort of fixed without anyone really thinking about it. Both of those plot points deal with what can be characterized as supporting players if you're feeling generous, but that is another massive problem that The Secrets of Dumbledore has and that these movies have had since the second one; there are too many damn characters.

When the character posters for The Secrets of Dumbledore dropped, we here at Bleeding Cool were rather flabbergasted to find eighteen of them, and half of them were people that we hadn't ever met before. Even now, after seeing the movie, the only people you actually remember are maybe one of the new characters from the last film, Jessica Williams because she is lovely, Jude Law because he's Jude Law, and everyone is people we know. None of these other people really seem to matter, and for most of them, you won't need to know their names. Half of the time, they show up, and the movie seems to be making a big deal that they show up. Even so, very little time is given to actually establishing anyone, and you can only guess that these moments are supposed to mean something by the context clues from the movie, not from any genuine audience reaction.

This is not to say there aren't some good moments floating around in the overly long haze that is The Secrets of Dumbledore. It's not a spoiler because it's revealed within the first five minutes of the film, but they aren't sneaking around the Dumbledore and Grindelwald romance anymore. They don't actually show anything outwardly romantic, god forbid, but we do hear the words "love" expressed from one man to another, so they aren't trying to friendship-with-subtext their way out of this one as they did in the previous movies. Jessica Williams is a lovely addition to the cast, even if it's a little unclear why we needed yet another character. The accent and annunciation she uses when she speaks is a little distracting at times. Mads Mikkelsen is a welcome replacement as Grindelwald and actually seems to have the charisma needed to be the sort of leader that the script is asking him to be.

There is also about a 30 minute period where you think they might be going in an interesting direction in terms of real-world metaphors in this movie and the moments when they lean into that are some of the better ones. However, they MacGuffin their way out of that interesting story point because it would have meant having some very serious conversations that would have really put a damper on all of the whimsey that they are trying to maintain. The reason we haven't mentioned Newt in this review is that it still remains very unclear as to why he is the main character of this movie. There is really only one plot point that really requires his expertise, and even that feels like a stretch. The problem with bringing in Dumbledore and Grindelwald is that they, inevitably, take over the entire movie. So it's distracting every time The Secrets of Dumbledore forces your focus away from the two interesting characters with the really complex and heartbreaking dynamic back to the other random people doing other stuff.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is not a bad movie, but it is an extremely frustrating one, and it is becoming harder and harder to justify seeing these movies as they come out. If they are going to be nothing but set up for what is to come with little to no character development or plot of their own, then fans that are interested would be better off waiting until the fifth movie comes out and just binge-watching all of them at once. They cannot stand on their own as movies, they can't even stand as movies apart from Harry Potter because someone unfamiliar with that would be lost as hell in this, so it's impossible to recommend this to anyone but a fan. A fan, however, is going to seek this out regardless of what any critic says. For those on the fence after disliking the second movie, there isn't much more to see here and no set piece that wouldn't be fine seeing on HBO Max in a couple of months. There's also no reason to put more money in J.K. Rowling's pocket since she has made it impossible to do any version of death of the author when it comes to this franchise by completely tying any money made to herself, but that's another issue.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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5.5/10

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is another frustrating entry into this series. It feels like 142 minutes of setup where ultimately not much happens in terms of story or character development.

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