Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Review by @Kush_Hayes
When it comes to Fantastic Beasts, one, I keep wanting to call it Fantastic Beats, and two, I appreciate that while it is not necessarily “adult” it is more mature. I left the previous movie rather surprised by how much I did enjoy it. I enjoyed exploring the world of Newt Scamanders suitcase and the titular Beasts that he was preserving. And with the exception of enjoying the characters of Jacob and Queenie, I dont remember anything else about the movie besides Johnny Depps cameo and being disappointed that that is where everything was leading to.
With the sophomore edition of this expanding spinoff we are promised and treated to a lot more Johnny Depp. And to be fair, he isnt so much chewing the scenes as he is snacking on them. As over the top as he is, it feels like he is holding back. Thats by no means a bad thing, just an observation.
For some reason, it is unclear as to what everyones motivations are in the beginning. Even to the characters themselves. Theyre just told more or less “This is a thing thats happening, now go that direction.” Themes for this movie include, Search for Identity, sacrifice, division, and preservation.
This movie is definitely 30 mins too long. And one of the worst critiques of this movie is that it tranquilized one of the franchises biggest fan as My Mom slept through half of this feature.
The previous movie tied everything up with a bow and gave most of our characters satisfactory feel good endings despite leaving the door open for Grindelwald. This movie leaves that door open much wider and it may even be fair to compare it to the ending of Empire Strikes Back. No one has a happy ending in this and we are left concerned for our favorite characters and what their fates will be. And then you realize that there is 3 more of these to go before Warner Bros and Wizarding World develop another series, if they dont just remake the Harry Potter series again.
The special effects are top notch, very beautiful stuff. Some of it looks like it was developed with 3D being in mind, but I dont know of any 3D screenings anywhere. Director David Yates with his sixth Wizarding World movie under his belt does an interesting thing in the 1st half of the movie where he will sometimes just present the movie with Newt or even Zoe Kravitz POV for entire scenes. Newts POV is steady, calm and present. Whereas Kravitz POV is nervous, shaky and just unsure the few times they do it with her.
This movie has a many improvements over the first but it is still a lot of empty calories. I will say I prefer these movies over the original Hogwarts movies, and as far as these go, the first one was better overall in presentation.
Three out of Six Blueberries
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