I'm actually not sure this is the case, it's just the way they've done them.

Why make Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a vehicle for Dumbledore vs Grindelwald? In this world, Dumbledore vs Grindelwald is one of the biggest events that's ever happened, and they've chosen to tell that story inside of a movie series that started with Newt Scamander and his briefcase of monsters.

That's not to say that Newt doesn't have a good story, but as someone else pointed out, he's now like the fourth most important person in this series. It would be like Feige and the MCU deciding to have the Civil War plot happen inside of the Ant Man series. Just an odd vehicle choice for an event that's so important.

The Star Wars point is an interesting one I think, because I think there is some opportunity here to dive into characters we only sort of know. Specificallly Dumbledore. So much about him is untold, even in the books, that there's a ton of space there to really give some depth and create some great movies, but why not give that it's own spinoff?

bobinator said:

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I'm actually not sure this is the case, it's just the way they've done them.

Why make Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a vehicle for Dumbledore vs Grindelwald? In this world, Dumbledore vs Grindelwald is one of the biggest events that's ever happened, and they've chosen to tell that story inside of a movie series that started with Newt Scamander and his briefcase of monsters.

That's not to say that Newt doesn't have a good story, but as someone else pointed out, he's now like the fourth most important person in this series. It would be like Feige and the MCU deciding to have the Civil War plot happen inside of the Ant Man series. Just an odd vehicle choice for an event that's so important.

The Star Wars point is an interesting one I think, because I think there is some opportunity here to dive into characters we only sort of know. Specificallly Dumbledore. So much about him is untold, even in the books, that there's a ton of space there to really give some depth and create some great movies, but why not give that it's own spinoff?

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Doesn't this support my claim? There is no reason to connect these movies to the originals.

So is Newt's gal in this at all. I don't think I've seen her in either of the trailers.

I thought you were saying there's no reason to connect any movies to the originals, and that is what I disagree with. Like I don't think the idea of the Star Wars prequels was bad, it was their execution that was bad.

If you wanted to tell the Dumbledore/Grindelwald story, then tell that story. Especially if you're gonna have Jude freakin' Law play Dumbledore.

Imagine a teaser trailer where it's two boys practicing magic, talking about how they'd change the world someday, at the end one of them says something like "you know, not everyone is going to be on our side" and the other says something like "I know, but hopefully we can make them understand its for the greater good"... and it fades to just the title of "The Secrets of Dumbledore, Pt. 1" or something. I'm seeing that opening weekend.

Little late but here is an article that explains McGonagall's age between all the movies. Seems like a stretch, but I guess if Dumbledore is 100+ years old, other witches/wizards could be too.

https://www.mugglenet.com/2021/06/a-young-minerva-mcgonagall-in-crimes-of-grindelwald-doesnt-break-canon/

Just watched as well.

Agree, nice acting, writing choppy.

Also liked the change Mads.

Loved the new installment of "The Enormous Beasts" franchise! Very secretive!

Just got out with my Harry Potter obsessed daughter. She really liked it.

I thought it was pretty good, much better than the second one.
Jude Law was really good. Newt is just not a character that I've grown to love, but his beasts are great.

Some of the transitions back and forth between the story lines were pretty jarring.

I think the success of HP magic is fun and creativity. This movie has a lot of fun creative magic and beasts. The later HP movies and second Beasts movie seemed to have a lot of people just shooting stuff out of their wands at each other. At that point it's not fun and they might as well be shooting ray guns or something.

Pirate04 said:

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Saw it today. I actually LOVED it! Probably my favorite of the Fantastic Beasts series. I've never been a huge fan of Jude Law or really ever taken him seriously as an actor but holy cow, he embodied young Dumbledore so well. Also a fan of the Mads replacement. For me, I could never get past it being Johnny Depp as a character. With Mads, I can at least lose him into the role.

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My thoughts fairly well summed up. My favorite of the 3 so far. It was still a little choppy, but not terrible. And it completely erased the 2nd one for me, outside of the little transitional stories needed to get to this one.

How much was the gay storyline emphasized?

It's definitely mentioned that they used to be a couple, but no overt displays, kissing, etc.

I liked this one better than the last one.

I always thought Fudge was being unbelievably irrational in the fifth book, must have been some long harbored lover's quarrel.

Great Movie! The niffler should win an oscar.

caleblyn said:

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How much was the gay storyline emphasized?

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It's part of the plot, but its not the center of the story, after watching it last night.
It could have just as easily been the same plot point without the homosexual detail.

I hadn't seen any spoilers, so I was slightly surprised, but once I thought about Dumbledore through the other movies and just the way that these details are now included in every movie/TV show/commercial for inclusion's sake, I didn't really care.

There are no scenes of any intimacy, gay or otherwise.

ETA - its a good movie, you should see it.

Happened to be on HBO Max, now, so checked it out. What an unbelievable waste of time. This movie was completely meaningless. We basically spent an entire movie to do something that eventually inadvertently destroys some device that keeps Dumbledore from moving against Grindelwald. Why can't this have been done in half a movie, and then have the big showdown? So now they are milking this series out for 4 movies?

This entire series is truly ridiculous. I'm actually upset that the casting of Jude Law as Dumbledore is being wasted on this. I also like Mads a lot more as Grindelwald, as opposed to Depp.

The story telling was also extremely sloppy. I still don't understand what what going on. What office was Grindelwald running for? Some grand emperor of all the different countries' magical governments? Where did this come from? Oh, and now there's an animal mcguffin that has historically chosen leaders?

The dialogue was mumbled and hard for me to understand, especially Eddie Remayne. I can hardly understand a word that guy says.

I also think this series suffers from the fact that Rowling's "magical world" was never really thought out. She wrote a great kids series about a little orphan going off to magic school. She obviously never really thought out the rest of the world that clearly. It all just exists and is malleable to whatever plot need they have. This makes her entire wizarding world horribly constructed for such a large story, versus the more personal/intimate story of Harry Potter.

Just really bad.

Watched last night and didn't care for it. It is beautiful and I have no issues with the actors, dialogue, etc. it just felt ?too dark?

The latter HP stories were necessarily dark but something about this one was just off. The creatures are great heart warming and comic relief, but it could use more.

To think of what we could have had with Jude Law as Dumbledore is the most depressing part to me. Instead we get a story that is either nonsense like the second or just pretty weak like the third.

The optimistic person inside of me that isn't quite dead actually likes that this movie didn't have the final showdown between Grindelwald and Dumbledore. It also did kind of wind down the Kowalski/Queenie/etc story within the story.

So, theoretically, they could start up a new series, focused on Jude Law's Dumbledore that would still have potential.

Agreed. We didn't see it in the theater despite being huge HP fans. Watched it this weekend and was underwhelmed. Just tons of random/lame things happening.

• Some random animal saves Newt at the beginning because he is the swell animal guy? Where did it take him?
• Credence just accepts Dumbledore's "explanation" during their fight and changes sides without anything haven't been said really
• Some random device about Dumbledore not going after Grindelwald versus him just being conflicted about it because of their past (takes away some of the gray area with Dumbledore)
• Random UN for magic that's never been mentioned before now

The Dog Lord said:

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Agreed. We didn't see it in the theater despite being huge HP fans. Watched it this weekend and was underwhelmed. Just tons of random/lame things happening.

• Some random animal saves Newt at the beginning because he is the swell animal guy? Where did it take him?
• Credence just accepts Dumbledore's "explanation" during their fight and changes sides without anything haven't been said really
• Some random device about Dumbledore not going after Grindelwald versus him just being conflicted about it because of their past (takes away some of the gray area with Dumbledore)
• Random UN for magic that's never been mentioned before now

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Not random

I thought this was going to be a trilogy, can't believe they didn't try to wrap up the storyline just in case after how bad the second one was.

I thought this was marginally better than the second one. Its not that it's bad, it just was boring. I can do bad and exciting, but this was just a snooze fest that ends up right back to where you started out at the beginning of the movie. Although now I suppose Dumbledore has the ability to fight Grindelwald in the next movie that probably won't happen now. I don't really count that though, because that was introduced only in this movie as plot armor.

I think Eddie Redmayne did a great job of playing a loveable autistic wizard, although choosing a loveable autistic wizard as your titular character for a series of movies is a strange choice from a story writing perspective, especially since he didn't really evolve as a character in this one.