Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald – 7/10

*POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW*

The biggest source of frustration with the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them relates to it being a middle installment of a much larger story. As such, it’s a stepping stone from the introduction into a meatier narrative. It lacks its own individuality, not having much of a story to tell. Unlike its predecessor, which offered a self-contained tale within a larger framework, The Crimes of Grindelwald is all about world-building and getting viewers ready for what is yet to come. According to what I have read they are planning a five-movie arc.

Like the first film, director David Yates is back along with Eddie Redmayne as the leading wizard who studies magical creatures, Newt Scamander, Katherine Waterston as his love interest Tina Goldstein, and author J.K. Rowling returned to write the screenplay.

Despite being light in the story department, The Crimes of Grindelwald offers plenty of small pleasures and tightens up the linkage between this series and Harry Potter. The most obvious is the introduction of a younger, mid-1920s version of Albus Dumbledore, with Jude Law taking on the role that was first portrayed by Richard Harris then, after his death, Michael Gambon. I really liked Jude Law as Dumbeldore, but after his first very brief appearance at the beginning, we barely see him for the rest of the movie. There’s also a visit to Hogwarts, which doesn’t look sufficiently different in 1925 than it would 75 years later. 

Let’s talk about Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, a character that appeared for a moment in the first movie, but this movie obviously relies a lot more on the character being an intense menace. The movie wastes little time letting you know that he is bad news in a fantastic sequence where he escapes from the Ministry of Magic. And he’s not just bad. He may make Voldemort look soft. Grindelwald is the sort of guy who tosses animals out of flying carriages to their death and has muggle kids killed. It’s all in the name of making sure pure-blood wizards rule the world and in order to do that he needs Credence played by Ezra Miller, the powerful Obscurial from the first film, for reasons that are sort of unclear for most of the film until the very end. Thankfully, Ezra Miller isn’t nearly as creepy as he was in the first movie – he’s still pretty creepy though.

The film’s biggest crime may be stuffing itself with too many subplots and references, some of which are just time consuming, and, at the end of the day, aren’t needed. The most notable being the insertion of an iconic “Harry Potter” character teased in trailers seems wasted and inserted as nothing more than fanfare and a giant Easter egg.

Overall, it’s not a terrible film and it’s definitely not a boring one. There are a few laughs, gorgeous special effects to look at, and if you’ve been looking for something darker in the wizarding world, this is it.