Dear Escapist Friends,
back when I saw the original Harry Potter movies I often found myself thinking "Boy, I'd sure be lost watching these, if I hadn't read the books". Now, after watching Crimes of Grindelwald, I felt the same way, only that there's no book I could have read. Now, the first movie was, overall, a fairly simplistic affair, at least most of the time. Yo had Dr. Who-little going to 20s New York because of some magical creature, there was a B-Plot about an evil wizard trying to corrupt a young boy who wasn't aware he's a wizard himself, it was all pretty straightfoward and, in its better moments, rather charming. The sequel is neither of these things and makes that clear from it's very first scene.
For some reason the Harry Potter series has got it in its head that it needs to be dark and mature now, which already hurt the last few books and the films even moreso, but Fantastic Beasts 2 practically wallows in its own grittyness. It starts of with the titular villain escaping from custody in what is in theory a pretty enjoyable action setpiece, had it not been a dark, stormy, indulgently "gothic" visual mess that looks what people who don't like Zack Snyder movies think a Zack Snyder movie looks like. It continues as it started, only that it gets even more confusing as it goes on. I'm not kidding, it had countless moments where I couldn't help but wonder things like "How did we get here", "where did this come from" and "What's even happening." and mind you, I'm saying this as someone who grew up with the books. I have no idea how someone mostly unfamiliar with the franchise would react to any of it. Talking about this franchise, it seems like its official name is "Wizarding World" now, which is better than "Potterverse", but only slightly.
See, the thing is, Crimes of Grindelwald technically has a lot going on. Some of which is technically even interesting. The problem is, the pacing is too jumpy for most of it to properly sink in. There were a few things I genuinely appreciated, like Gellert Grindelwald being an immeasurably more engaging antagonist than Lord Voldemort (And Johnny Depp, for the first time in a long time, actually putting in some effort) and some of the character relationships having the potential to be worth following. It's such a shame that all of that which works has to take a backseat to countless visually confusing things happening at the same time. Maybe it's one of these movies that I have to watch a second time before I realize that, hey, a lot of this is actually quite genius, but I can't say that I find that very likely. Maybe this whole deal is much easier to follow once I get to watch it outside of a movie theatre, that magical place where you can see films wearing a pair of sunglasses in a dark room while a greek chorus of twelve year olds provides a running commentary on what you're seeing.
See, there are some ideas here that I rather liked. They seem to build up the character of Credence Barebone, the orphan kid played by Ezra Miller, as a kind of parallel to Harry Potter with Grindelwald as his Dumbledore, which has the potential to lead to some of these strangely satisfying moments of poetic synchronicity that the Star Wars prequels liked so much. It has a wonderful speech of Grindelwald , outlining his cryptofascist notions of wizard supremacy, in a way that actually made me see what his point was and why exactly he thinks that wizards should rule muggles... and why people would follow him. The flashbacks showing the past of Leta LeStrange were quite well realized and fleshed her out as a character in a way the rest of the movie mostly failed to do. And now that I'm describing all these things to you I start wondering why I didn't like this movie more until everything else about it comes to mind.
See, well before the movie came out it was announced that Nagini, Lord Voldemort's pet snake in the books, used to be human and would appear in this movie. Which she sure does, turning out that she used to be sideshow attraction, but for all intents and purposes she was a complete noncharacter that mostly served as an accesory to Credence and, as far as I remember, hardly did anything. Late in the movie there was a scene of a character from the first movie joining Grindelwald for reasons absolutely unrelatable to the viewer, seeing how that particular character didn't have anything resembling an arc throughout the entire movie, making the best reason I could come up with for her making that decision "Well, she's just not very smart, I guess." Which is still really jarring because in the first movie she was a very straightforward, if rather likeable, variation of the old manic pixie dreamgirl archetype. Yes, I know, I just spoiled who it is but, believe me, it's still gonna come out of nowhere anyway.
See, this is a thing I was already thinking with the first one: These movies are the clumsy first attempts of a novellist to write a screenplay without realizing that the requirements are actually quite different. Contrary to what you may think, I don't think Of Mrs. Rowling as a bad storyteller, as a matter of fact I can easily see how much of Crimes of Grindelwald could have worked much better in, say, a 700 pages book, but for a 2 hour movie it feels rushed, confused and overstuffed and David Yates' hectic, effects driven direction only serves to make these problems worse.
There's some stuff to enjoy in Fantastic Beasts 2 but it certainly expects you to put up with a lot of bullshit to get to it. This is a movie that has exposition where any other action movie would have a climax. I didn't hate it and it had moments where I was fascinated with it but, I gotta be honest with you, it wasn't enjoyment that I felt throughout most of it. Fantastic Beasts 1 was a movie that I approached with a lot of good will, maybe more than it deserved, and that I rated rather positively, the sequel however is a pretty strange beast. No pun intended. I'm about as on board with anything related to Harry Potter as you can get and I still don't feel like this movie was made for me. I do have a colleague at work who's crazier about the series than me and she dug the hell out of it so maybe I'm too critical. I'd like to say "I can recommend this movie to diehard fans only" but... can I? Can I really? It left me with mixed feelings, not all of them bad, but probably most of them. But maybe you're gonna like it. I dunno.
back when I saw the original Harry Potter movies I often found myself thinking "Boy, I'd sure be lost watching these, if I hadn't read the books". Now, after watching Crimes of Grindelwald, I felt the same way, only that there's no book I could have read. Now, the first movie was, overall, a fairly simplistic affair, at least most of the time. Yo had Dr. Who-little going to 20s New York because of some magical creature, there was a B-Plot about an evil wizard trying to corrupt a young boy who wasn't aware he's a wizard himself, it was all pretty straightfoward and, in its better moments, rather charming. The sequel is neither of these things and makes that clear from it's very first scene.
For some reason the Harry Potter series has got it in its head that it needs to be dark and mature now, which already hurt the last few books and the films even moreso, but Fantastic Beasts 2 practically wallows in its own grittyness. It starts of with the titular villain escaping from custody in what is in theory a pretty enjoyable action setpiece, had it not been a dark, stormy, indulgently "gothic" visual mess that looks what people who don't like Zack Snyder movies think a Zack Snyder movie looks like. It continues as it started, only that it gets even more confusing as it goes on. I'm not kidding, it had countless moments where I couldn't help but wonder things like "How did we get here", "where did this come from" and "What's even happening." and mind you, I'm saying this as someone who grew up with the books. I have no idea how someone mostly unfamiliar with the franchise would react to any of it. Talking about this franchise, it seems like its official name is "Wizarding World" now, which is better than "Potterverse", but only slightly.
See, the thing is, Crimes of Grindelwald technically has a lot going on. Some of which is technically even interesting. The problem is, the pacing is too jumpy for most of it to properly sink in. There were a few things I genuinely appreciated, like Gellert Grindelwald being an immeasurably more engaging antagonist than Lord Voldemort (And Johnny Depp, for the first time in a long time, actually putting in some effort) and some of the character relationships having the potential to be worth following. It's such a shame that all of that which works has to take a backseat to countless visually confusing things happening at the same time. Maybe it's one of these movies that I have to watch a second time before I realize that, hey, a lot of this is actually quite genius, but I can't say that I find that very likely. Maybe this whole deal is much easier to follow once I get to watch it outside of a movie theatre, that magical place where you can see films wearing a pair of sunglasses in a dark room while a greek chorus of twelve year olds provides a running commentary on what you're seeing.
See, there are some ideas here that I rather liked. They seem to build up the character of Credence Barebone, the orphan kid played by Ezra Miller, as a kind of parallel to Harry Potter with Grindelwald as his Dumbledore, which has the potential to lead to some of these strangely satisfying moments of poetic synchronicity that the Star Wars prequels liked so much. It has a wonderful speech of Grindelwald , outlining his cryptofascist notions of wizard supremacy, in a way that actually made me see what his point was and why exactly he thinks that wizards should rule muggles... and why people would follow him. The flashbacks showing the past of Leta LeStrange were quite well realized and fleshed her out as a character in a way the rest of the movie mostly failed to do. And now that I'm describing all these things to you I start wondering why I didn't like this movie more until everything else about it comes to mind.
See, well before the movie came out it was announced that Nagini, Lord Voldemort's pet snake in the books, used to be human and would appear in this movie. Which she sure does, turning out that she used to be sideshow attraction, but for all intents and purposes she was a complete noncharacter that mostly served as an accesory to Credence and, as far as I remember, hardly did anything. Late in the movie there was a scene of a character from the first movie joining Grindelwald for reasons absolutely unrelatable to the viewer, seeing how that particular character didn't have anything resembling an arc throughout the entire movie, making the best reason I could come up with for her making that decision "Well, she's just not very smart, I guess." Which is still really jarring because in the first movie she was a very straightforward, if rather likeable, variation of the old manic pixie dreamgirl archetype. Yes, I know, I just spoiled who it is but, believe me, it's still gonna come out of nowhere anyway.
See, this is a thing I was already thinking with the first one: These movies are the clumsy first attempts of a novellist to write a screenplay without realizing that the requirements are actually quite different. Contrary to what you may think, I don't think Of Mrs. Rowling as a bad storyteller, as a matter of fact I can easily see how much of Crimes of Grindelwald could have worked much better in, say, a 700 pages book, but for a 2 hour movie it feels rushed, confused and overstuffed and David Yates' hectic, effects driven direction only serves to make these problems worse.
There's some stuff to enjoy in Fantastic Beasts 2 but it certainly expects you to put up with a lot of bullshit to get to it. This is a movie that has exposition where any other action movie would have a climax. I didn't hate it and it had moments where I was fascinated with it but, I gotta be honest with you, it wasn't enjoyment that I felt throughout most of it. Fantastic Beasts 1 was a movie that I approached with a lot of good will, maybe more than it deserved, and that I rated rather positively, the sequel however is a pretty strange beast. No pun intended. I'm about as on board with anything related to Harry Potter as you can get and I still don't feel like this movie was made for me. I do have a colleague at work who's crazier about the series than me and she dug the hell out of it so maybe I'm too critical. I'd like to say "I can recommend this movie to diehard fans only" but... can I? Can I really? It left me with mixed feelings, not all of them bad, but probably most of them. But maybe you're gonna like it. I dunno.
