I'M DONE - Fantastic Beasts embargo

I consider myself a patient man.
I believe in giving every movie a chance to impress me; even if I go in expecting to dislike it, oftentimes low expectations can lead to my enjoying the final product.
Even in some of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, I’ll try to highlight the positives.
I won’t review bomb something for the sake of my emotions,
and I promise to always judge each movie on its own merits.

But I have limits.

The Fantastic Beasts movies had a lot of promise; they were penned by JK Rowling, the author of the original Harry Potter novels that this series spins off from, and directed by David Yates, who brought the last four Harry Potter movies to the big screen.
It was set to be a darker look at this world through the eyes of adults while exploring the past of one of its main characters and his relationship with the villainous Grindlewald.

Instead, the final result is ugly to look at and infuriating to follow the plot.
Characters do stupid things and events happen purely because the story wants them to.
Events are disconnected from the plot and sometimes entirely pointless.
Despite having one writer, each movie will directly retcon things that happened in the previous movie.
Actions will be undone, dead characters resurrected and relationships shifted for the sake of whatever new story they want to tell.

It’s hard to escape the comparisons to the Star Wars Prequel trilogy; the returning pedigree of the previous movies set to take us back into the world we loved as kids but lost itself in bad storytelling, poor characterisation and needless pandering to fans of the original.
And yet those movies didn’t irritate me as much as Fantastic Beasts; they were bad, sure, but I liked my fair share of moments from them.
At least this series doesn’t have the racist aliens of the Phantom Menace, but they still have two movies left, so they could still introduce a Beast that looks like a golliwog or something.

But I won’t be there to see it.
I’m out.

I have only placed an embargo on two other series; the Disney live action movies and the Micheal Bay Transformers franchise.
On both occasions, I stayed with them for three movies but realised that I couldn’t enjoy them.
There is an anime community thing called the three-episode rule; you give a show three episodes to suck you in since the first two rarely set everything up properly. After three, you’ll know if this show is for you,
and that’s what I’m applying to these movies.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with anything behind the scenes; neither my disagreement with the politics of the writer nor my feelings towards the firing of Johnny Depp.
My opinions on these matters have no place in anything on this site, and quite frankly they are no business of anyone but myself.
My only concern is the product and said product sucks.

I am open to lifting it, however.
Transformers turned itself around with the highly entertaining Bumblebee movie, and it’s possible Fantastic Beasts will do the same.
But I have lost confidence,
and it will take a lot to win me back.
Critical praise or endorsement from critics I respect; I promise to remain hopeful, even if my expectations are low.

This is to both warn you away from these movies
and to close my own personal book on this franchise.
After I have said my peace, I don’t plan on watching or even thinking about the Fantastic Beasts movies, current or future.

Plans change of course,
but for now,

I’m done.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald

Crimes of Grindlewald is about…nothing.
This plot is nothing.
It’s certainly not about Grindlewald or any crimes he may commit.

So in theory the plot is about the character of Creedance Barebone from the previous movie, who survived exploding at the end of the last one, because shut up, and is hunted by multiple people who are after his power.
The villains, led by the villain Grindlewald, want to harness his power for evil, and the heroes want to stop him, while a third party of Yusef Kama, played by William Nadylam, wants revenge for something he belives Creedance’s father did to his mother.
The plot revolves around this, with Creedence’s revelations and Kama’s search for revenge being based on this idea that Creedance is this person.
And it’s ultimately a lie.
This is an over two hour movie that effectively wasted both the time of the characters, and audience,
and this might be salvageable if this was a one off movie about misplaced revenge,
but it’s not.
It’s the second part of what is planned to by a pentalogy and it has no baring on the ongoing narrative.
By the end, nobody directly involved in this plot cares about any revelations, and having seen the sequel, it’s brought up all of once, only to sweep it under the rug.
Seriously, they retcon a connection so Kama cares about someone who died, only so they can take his memory away.
It is amazing how inept this was.

Not only that, but they ruined aspects from the previous movie.
If you read my review of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, I talked about how I liked the romance between the characters Kowalski and Queenie.
The movie begins undoing the dramatic ending where Kowalski’s memory is wiped and separating the lovers, and has Queenie mind control him into marrying her.
They call it “enchanting”, but it’s not. It’s mind control and it’s character assassination of Queenie.
If the genders were reversed here, I guarantee people would be complaining about it (though it would make for a much better show. Seriously, watch Jessica Jones, thank me later).
It’s not even for a satisfactory reason; she isn’t portrayed as a villain or anything, but more a confused person struggling with her feelings, so it feels even more wrong because at least going full psychopath would be committing to the horrible act. I wouldn’t like it, but it would feel like a direction the writer wanted to take.
And I pray to every God that they didn’t have sex while he was like this, because I don’t even want to contemplate the grossness of witch rape on top of everything else.

The movie tries to distract the audience with characters from the Harry Potter movies and books, but there’s no insight and they don’t contribute more than cameos.

CONCLUSION

The plot is fluff that amounts to nothing, the way they have Queenie act like a villain for stupid reasons and a distinct lack of anything interesting makes this a terrible movie in my eyes that I have zero inclination to revisit.

It’s an unpleasant experience and one of the few movies that I honestly can’t think of anything I like about it.
Don’t let those two stars fool you; I wish I could justify scoring it less, but that would be unfair in my eyes.
Even if you liked this first, this is just trash.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Fantastic Beasts follows Newt Scamander, a Wizard who studies magical animals, as he tracks down several monsters that have escaped into New York, while also being drawn into a conspiracy that threatens the world.

The first theatrical spin off of the Harry Potter franchise, Fantastic Beasts tries to take the franchise in a more adult direction, which I applaud.
The fan base for this series has grown up and with it a more mature change of direction is a good direction to take it (though debatable this franchise hasn’t really been a kids story since around the fourth movie, but I digress).

The issue is with the execution; the story has a metric ton of plot holes that really start to add up.
Characters do stupid things or know things because the plot needs them too, and the ending pulls a Deus Ex Machina out of it’s all to solve all the movies problems.
It’s really distracting when you keep asking, “wait, why is this person doing something stupid?”

The biggest sticking point was an execution scene; Newt discovers the villains identity and he tries to have him killed via a strange execution method where the prisoner is sat on a chair over what looks like Mercury that…I think it burns them. Drowns them? It’s really not clear, but that’s the least of the problems.
Why is the villain using this method? Can he do this? There’s no trial? We saw in the Harry Potter movies that they have a judicial system to imprison people, but execution can be assigned by whoever?
And why kill them? It makes him look really suspicious. A better method would be to use mind control (which this series has established does exist), have them attack someone in public and gun them down in self-defence? Or have them go free and draw attention away from you.
It raises so many questions that could be easily avoided, but they were really set on filming this scene so just worked it in.
A recurring issue when we get to the sequels, but let’s stay focused on this movie.

It’s a very ugly looking movie too.
There’s little life to any of the images, it’s all shades of grey and brown. And scenes in the dark become really difficult to see what’s happening.
There’s a scene where they enter the American Ministry of Magic and this whimsical music plays, but it looks washed out and unimpressive, so the music feels like it’s trying to hard to impress me.

I did enjoy the characters however; Newt himself, played by Eddie Redmayne, is well cast and delivers the idea of a social awkward man who communicates well with animals but struggles with people. Redmayne has great subtle acting to accentuate this; the way he avoids making eye contact, his speech feels nervous without mumbling so we can still understand him.
The ultimate test is that the main danger is a human, the one animal he can’t talk to well, so it’s great to see him overcome his shyness to help someone else.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the romance between the characters Kowalski and Queenie. They are both very likeable characters that have a real friendly energy to them, and they make for an extremely cute couple.
Sure hope the sequel doesn’t do anything to mess this up! (it does)

CONCLUSION

This is a flawed but not unsalvagable movie; I can generally accept issues like plot holes and unappealing visuals if the characters are right, but this really tested my limits.

I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s not without it’s merits, and I can see someone else getting into this movie even if I didn’t. However I can’t recommend it.
The original Harry Potter movies were mature enough and all really good movies (well, except maybe 4, but I enjoyed that more than this movie at least), so I would say they are more worth your time.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Fantastic Beasts: the secrets of Dumbledore follows the wizard Dumbledore’s efforts to stop his former lover Grindlewald from taking over the wizarding world.

I wasn’t a fan of the previous movies in this series, and sadly the same is true with this third entry.
It’s better than the previous movie, the Crimes of Grindlewald, but suffers the same issues that prevented me from enjoying that movie.

The main issue is the abundance of plot holes and irritating habit of wasting time; the first two thirds of this movie are spent pretty much wasting time. Nothing is accomplished, which the characters openly admit to, but that doesn’t make it better just because it was the intention. This is a two and half hour movie with barely enough actual plot to fill a feature length running time.

If there is an issue that frustrated me more than the superfluace, it’s the painfully inept world building.
The plot revolves around an election, but for what the movie doesn’t make clear. It’s for a Confederation of wizards, but we don’t know much about what this confederation does.
Do they superseed the leader so individual countries, because we do see that each nation has its own minister of magic. It appears to be a democratic election, but the voting is thrown out in favour of using a magical animal. Have the people already voted? If so, why aren’t they more angry? A character is arrested by German police at one point and sent to a jail where they await to die by a giant scorpion. He’s a foreign national and a civil servant; these people don’t see how this could cause issues diplomatically?
Things just happen because the plot needs them to, without any satisfactory explanation or resolution.
Two characters who joined the villain at the end of the last movie switch sides with very little convincing; one was preparing to kill Dumbledore, blaming him for being abandoned as a child, but all it takes is Dumbledore telling him its not his fault and he just takes him at his word. Again, because the plot needs him too.
And that’s not even getting into the retcons imposed; Grindlewald in the last movie escaped custody and went on to murder several wizard policemen, and his crimes are thrown out due to “lack of evidence”. It’s all just swept away because they changed their minds about what they wanted the plot to be. If there was a trial and we see how members of the jury or even the judge sympathise with his cause then that would be an explanation because it shows how much power he has politically, but the whole criminal thing is thrown away with a shrug.

The only part I enjoyed was the character of Albus Dumbledore; Jude Law brings a fatherly energy to the role that helps sell him as a younger version of the same character seen in the Harry Potter movies. His ability to dodge questions and manipulate people while also placing a genuine level of trust in them makes for a different kind of mentor; not necessarily darker but complicated, as he keeps people at arms length.
His conflict comes from the fact that he and Grindlewald were once lovers turned enemies, and Law does well to portray a man clearly at odds with what his heart wants and what he knows is right.
The opening scene does well to portray this with little more than innuendo and physical acting, and led me to believe that the movie would be better. However it ultimately ended but being downhill from there.

Grindlewald was a missed opportunity; Mads Mikkelsen again does his best with what he has, with subtle facial expressions that say louder than worlds how he feels, but I feel that the script gives him no meat to work with.
The characters of Newt Scamander and Jacob Kowalski too feel wasted; Eddie Redmayne and Dan Fogler bring the same likeable energy to their roles as in the previous movies, but like the second instalment this movie doesn’t give them much to work with.
Newt in particular feels like a character written for the first movie that plays to his strengths as a social awkward animal lover, but was forced into this new plot without a plan of what to do with him.

CONCLUSION

While better than the previous movie, the third Fantastic beasts movie is a giant disappointment.
Good characters aren’t utilised well, half the plot amounted to nothing and the plot holes really pile up that it drowns out the only part I liked, which was the character of Dumbledore.

This movie felt like a waste of my time, and I fear it may be a waste of yours.
And after three chances all disappointed me, I am officially done with this franchise.
I don’t care to see the remaining movies in this story.
I’m out.
Do yourself a favour and just watch the Harry Potter movies instead.