BEFORE: Carmen Ejogo carries over again from "Born to Be Blue", and I've got some catching up to do this weekend - catching up on "True Detective", catching up on movies in general (I like to be sort of one day ahead by starting before midnight, so maybe I'll double up today) and catching up on this franchise. I was late to the "Fantastic Beasts" party, just like I was late to watch most of the "Harry Potter" films - I watched the first installment a little over a year ago in January 2018, even though the film came out in 2016. And as usual, as soon as I watched the first of something, suddenly everyone's talking about when the sequel is coming out - I feel like they never would have announced a sequel to "Shaun the Sheep" until I watched the first one, but that's crazy, right? As soon as I watched "Super Troopers 2", they announced there would be a third film. So now I'm expecting to hear about "Venom 2: Carnage Unleashed" or "The Commuter 2: Mass Transit" or "Eat, Pray, Love Some More". I've got three sequels coming up on my list next week, so be prepared for some breaking news about "Paddington 3", "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again Again" and "Mary Poppins Just Won't Go Away".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (Movie #2,819)
THE PLOT: The second installment of the "Fantastic Beasts" series featuring the adventures of Magizoologist Newt Scamander.
AFTER: Look, you know me by now, I get deep into these franchise films, particularly the geeky ones relating to sci-fi, superheroes and fantasy. (I've avoided the "Twilight" and "Transformers" franchises, along with "The Fast and the Furious", but I guess never say never...). Honestly, I can't recall a time when a franchise took such a turn away from where it started, and they're only on the SECOND one of these films. People tuned in to the first "Fantastic Beasts" film for two things - for Newt and the magical animals that he found and cared for. Kids love pets, and even non-real ones like Pokemons, and that film had a lot of that "gotta catch and collect 'em all" spirit to it. Everything else - the possible love story, the totalitarian rules of the Ministry of Magic, the hinted-at connections to the Potterverse - those seemed to be there just to linger in the background, to provide some context for the adventures of the man with the Tardis-like traveling case and his menagerie.
So now in the second installment, it feels a bit like somebody forgot what was appealing about the first film, and tried to throw in a whole bunch of stuff about politics, taking the villain character that was in the first film for about two minutes and bringing him to the forefront. His vague rhetoric about "pure-bloods" was probably meant to evoke the policies of Hitler or Mussolini, even though they referred to magic users vs. non-magic users, by setting this film between the World Wars, we're automatically reminded of a time when those same principles were applied to gentiles vs. Jews, whites vs. non-whites, or Germans vs. non-Germans, take your pick, I guess.
But then something changed in America between the first film and the second, you know what I'm talking about, and this whole Grindelwald thing seems to have taken on a new meaning - he's still ranting about pure-bloods and non-mags, but is it possible that this is supposed to represent hatred for Mexicans? Democrats? Anybody who's different? When Grindelwald calls all of his supporters together, is it supposed to look like a Trump rally, or is that a coincidence? Am I projecting that onto the screen from within myself? This is crazy, I know that movies of this size take YEARS to write, develop, film and edit, so this all must have been planned out well in advance of the 2016 election, so what gives? I have to conclude that we're seeing echoes of reality every time there's someone on screen who's acting dictatorial or rousing up an audience's fears of the unknown. The only thing missing here was Grindelwald wearing a red hat that reads "Make the Dark Arts Great Again".
Anyway, it's a weird mix because of what we now know about Grindelwald and Dumbledore, thanks to J.K. Rowling's recent revelations in the press. This film only states that when they were younger they were "closer than brothers", and that Dumbledore can't possibly take up arms - er, wands - against his old mate, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what that all means. But come on, just say it already in the film if it's THAT important to the plot. My issue is that liberal policies, like those about freedom to love whoever we want, regardless of gender, are usually seen as passive, positive, favoring non-agression, and this takes that idea and throws it out the window. This is like mixing the gay pride parade with a military parade, and the combination just isn't mixing right for me. Yes, I realize there are gay activists, but you expect violence and militarism to come more from the anti-gay, conservative hate-group side, right? If the "freedom to love" party started using violence and aggression, that would seem like a contradiction.
So I think there's a lot of confusion in Grindelwald's proposed policies, since he's all about keeping the "magic" race pure, but isn't the Ministry ALREADY against mixing with the muggles? I guess he wants to take things even further, and put the magic-users in charge of the whole show, and make the non-mags into slaves, or worse. And then the "join or die" mentality ends up dividing families and couples, and where have I seen all THAT before? I don't know any specific cases of supporting Trump being used as valid grounds for divorce, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
The only thing I can compare this to is "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", when a whole ton of Star Wars fans showed up at the theater to learn about the backstory of the Jedi Order, what they did in there heyday, maybe standing against great evil in the galaxy, and instead we were treated to a lesson on politics in the Galactic Senate, trade embargoes and negotiations and the struggles of the Gungans to be considered citizens of Naboo. Yeah, George Lucas really had his finger on the pulse there - he wanted to tell his story the way he wanted to, and didn't really care what the fans wanted to see. "The Crimes of Grindelwald" has that same feel, like why not just send Newt out on another adventure to collect more fantastic beasts? There are only like TWO new beasts in this film, the rest are holdovers from the first film, and that's not really going to wow anybody in the same fashion as before.
Just like the "Alien" and "Star Wars" prequels, everybody knows where the story needs to end, so it's almost a fait accompli that the Ministry will (eventually) relax their rules on relationships with non-mags. But apparently it's going to be a very twisty road getting there.
Also starring Eddie Redmayne (last heard in "Early Man"), Jude Law (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Johnny Depp (last heard in "The Doors: When You're Strange"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Alison Sudol (ditto), Ezra Miller (ditto), Zoe Kravitz (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Callum Turner (last seen in "Assassin's Creed"), Claudia Kim (last seen in "Avengers: Age of Ultron"), William Nadylam, Kevin Guthrie, Brontis Jodorowsky (last seen in "Jodorowsky's Dune"), Fiona Glascott (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Poppy Corby-Tuech, Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson (last seen in "Justice League"), Olafur Darri Olagsson (last heard in "The BFG"), David Sakurai, Victoria Yeates, Jessica Williams (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine 2"), Derek Riddell, Wolf Roth, Cornell John, Simon Meacock, Claudius Peters, Bart Soroczynski, David Wilmot, Alfie Simmons, Jamie Campbell Bower (last seen in "Anonymous"), Toby Regbo (last seen in "One Day"), Hugh Quarshie (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Keith Chanter, Isaura Barbe-Brown.
RATING: 5 out of 10 spirit familiars
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