Anyone who grew up in the 2000s wanted to be a wizard. Drawing lightning-shaped scars on our foreheads, and waving around magic wands while eagerly anticipating the newest book in the Harry Potter series were a cultural phenomenons like no other. The Wizarding World was a constant adventure that we all wanted to escape to. So, once the film series ended in 2011, an inferior prequel series to capitalize on the success was inevitable. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the Fantastic Beasts saga and features Wizarding World veteran David Yates in the director’s chair.
While the Harry Potter films will forever hold a special place in my heart, this movie is the lowest depth this enterprise has sunk to. The Secrets of Dumbledore is a bland attempt at a political thriller, one that makes poor creative decisions and fails to capture the (literal) magic of the original series. This movie features the noteworthy replacement of Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald, who resigned from the role following negative publicity. After dipping his toe into franchises like 007, Star Wars, and Marvel, Mads Mikkelsen joins the Wizarding World for his stint as the franchise’s villain to moderately effective results.
The film begins by developing the near romantic relationship between Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law). Their relationship and Albus’ past are among the most fascinating aspects of the series, revealing their flawed pasts as the movie brings in Aberforth Dumbledore (Richard Coyle) to expand their family’s story. Unfortunately, while it is nice to return to places like Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and The Three Broomsticks, the movie offers nothing more than brief nostalgia wrapped in a slightly ludicrous story and undeveloped characters.
The first two Fantastic Beasts films proved that Rowling was a better author than screenwriter. This movie brings back Steve Kloves, the writer of most of the Harry Potter movies, as a co-writer. Ideally, this would have been a step in the right direction, but even he cannot make the material work. The original films were filled with interesting characters, while this movie has way too many and no idea what to do with any of them. Dumbledore and Grindelwald have a compelling relationship, but the protagonist, Newt, has his compassion and knowledge of creatures and not a single other compelling quality.
This movie fails to explore Newt’s relationship with his brother, Theseus (Callum Turner), any more than it already has. Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is always entertaining as a Muggle out of his element, and he provides a lot of comic relief as usual. The movie explores how he misses his girlfriend, Queenie Goldstein (Allison Sudol), and while the film gives her an arc, it doesn’t feel emotionally impactful or earned. The writers seemed too apprehensive about capitalizing on her fate in The Crimes of Grindelwald and did the bare minimum instead.
Furthermore, the film almost entirely removes the character of Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterson), reducing her to a cameo appearance and giving us little of her fun dynamic with Newt. Her substitute is Professor Lally Hicks (Jessica Williams), a Charms teacher at Ilvermorny who tags along for the adventure. Unfortunately, after her fun character introduction, she verbally exposits the events of the first two movies to Jacob before becoming a one-dimensional, disposable character. Finally, Yusuf Kama (William Nadylan) has a total of one engaging quality to his character, which gets removed from his memory, reducing him to the same fate as Hicks.
We continue the film’s waste of its multitude of characters with Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller). The ending of The Crimes of Grindelwald revealed that Credence was Aurelius Dumbledore, a brother of Albus and Aberforth. Unfortunately, this movie walks back on that creative choice, retaining his status as a Dumbledore but mixing up the family tree in what feels an awful lot like retconning. With the film’s unbearably messy treatment of its characters, it’s almost a relief that the character of Nagini has vanished from the series without a single reference to her whereabouts.
By some miracle, we have not even gotten to the film’s story, which surrounds electoral fraud as Grindelwald attempts to run for Supreme Mugwump. The movie’s stakes feel remarkably low as the film follows a pedestrian political premise, lacking the mystery and joy of the franchise’s early installments. While Harry Potter characters are always searching for answers to a mystery surrounding the greater whole, the Fantastic Beasts characters are all focused on their own storylines, which leads to strange results where characters like Credence get sidelined for long periods of time.
With a story that lacks any sense of urgency, the first fascinating moment comes an hour into the film when we have a duel that Yates directs in quite an inventive way. Unfortunately, each installment of the series steps away from Newt and his magical creatures, and focuses on an unremarkable execution of Grindelwald and Dumbledore’s story. It’s not a bad story, but Kloves and Rowling make very conventional writing choices that prevent the story from reaching its full potential. In addition, the weak characters do not support the similarly flaccid narrative, with nothing much to offer besides the occasionally enjoyable scene and quite a grin-worthy ending.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is a disappointing addition to a past-its-prime franchise. Mikkelsen does a solid job as Grindelwald, but with the actors portraying the character changing as often as Harry’s Defense Against the Dark Arts professors, it can be hard to get connected to his portrayal after we have already seen Depp’s excellent stab at the character. This is an emotionally powerless film with an anticlimactic and convenient finale. While George Richmond’s cinematography and James Newton Howard’s musical score are excellent, this is nothing more than the middle chapter of a quintology people are no longer interested in seeing. If anything, this movie proves how the magical mighty have fallen from grace.
They should’ve called it, “The Movie That Must Not Be Named.”
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives overweigh the positive aspects making it a struggle to get through.
