BEFORE: So far, this has been a week notable for very LONG movies - starting with "White Noise" at 136 min., then "Annette" was 141 min. long, and "Stillwater" was 139 min. Today's film is the champ at 142 min., or 2 hours and 22 minutes. I've needed a LOT of Mountain Dew this week, though I did watch "Stillwater" during the day on Tuesday, which helped. Coffee for a daytime movie, soda at night.
William Nadylam carries over from "Stillwater".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" (Movie #3,193)
THE PLOT: Professor Albus Dumbledore must assist Newt Scamander and his partners as Grindelwald begins to lead an army to eliminate all Muggles.
AFTER: I've watched over 1,250 movies since the last installment in the "Fantastic Beasts" franchise, so I'm going to take a moment now and re-read my review of the 2nd film, "The Crimes of Grindelwald", which I watched back in April 2019. The whole world has changed since then, we had a pandemic and streaming took over for movie theaters and now every movie that makes over a billion is proclaimed to be the one that's "saved Hollywood", that's what they'll probably be saying next week about the tenth installment of the "Fast & Furious" movies....
I see that it took me TWO years after release to watch the first "Fantastic Beasts" film, so by then everyone was already anticipating the sequel, which I watched a little over a year after it was in theaters. "Secrets of Dumbledore" opened in April of 2022, so I'm also just a little over a year behind with this one. This has sat on my DVR for a few months, because it is NOT easy to link to - Eddie Redmayne just doesn't make a lot of movies, and I maybe spoiled things by watching "Jupiter Ascending" a few months too early. I still got there another way, and now I've got some Jude Law movies planned, so at least there's an easy outro.
But in my review of the franchise's second film, I mused that it was very bizarre for a film series to take such a strange left turn - the first film was all about finding and caring for magical animals, and sure, I can see how that could be very appealing to kids and young adults. Who doesn't consider "dog trainer" or "veterinarian" as a career when they're 12 or 13? (I sure did, then I realized to be a vet I'd have to go to medical school and learn how to cut open dogs and cats, and that just didn't appeal to me when I thought about it a bit more.). Kids love magic, kids love animals, so a film about magical animals is a slam-dunk for the young audiences. So why make the second film all about politics? Most kids don't care about politics, just the weird ones.
What struck me about this political story in a fantasy film was how much it reminded me of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", when George Lucas somehow thought that his audience that loved spaceships and aliens and blasters would get caught up in a story about trade embargoes, negotiations, and Senate procedures. Umm, George, babe, maybe learn to read the room? More "pew pew" and "blam blam", less with the vetoes and voting. Well, the makers of the third installment have doubled down on the political angle, but they also brought in some new magical animals, at least three that I can think of, but really, only one of them is important to the plot. And yeah, there are some good magical wand fights here, I'll admit.
But Grindelwald reminded me of Donald Trump in the second film, and now that the character is being played by a new actor, one with a comb-over, the resemblance is even greater. Grindelwald talks about the "purity" of the magic-users in much the same way that Trump talked about the immigrants who were coming over our Southern border, how they were rapists and drug-smugglers, though he had no real statistics or evidence to prove this. He was just saying whatever he needed to say to stir people up, get them to panic over foreigners coming to take their jobs and live off welfare, and yeah, it was all for the sake of votes. If you can't get elected by making promises that you intend to keep, the next best way is to fall back on scare tactics.
And yeah, the main plot here is how Grindelwald plans to rig the election (sound familiar?) and become President of Magic or something, and he similarly riles up his base by having rallies, and by exerting his influence on the current leader of the International Confederation of Wizards, who I think would cast the deciding vote if the senate was tied (he might as well be named "Pike Mence"). And if Grindelwald doesn't win the election, you'd better believe he's going to lead his angry followers during an insurrection on the MACUSA building. I'm kidding, it's much more stupid than that, he killed a magical beast called a Qilin then brought it back to non-life so that it would appear to look into his soul and deem him worthy for office. Then the beast goes and finds 11,000 votes in Georgia that weren't already counted for Grindelwald.
Really, you're going to waste not one but TWO movies in your franchise to just do a Trump analogy? When all your pre-teen fans just want to see magic wands and interesting animals? OK, go ahead, don't listen to me, what the hell do I know? The movie made over $407 million and that was twice the budget, so you can't really argue with success, but it still just seems like a big waste of everybody's time and effort. We all KNOW Trump was dirty, we all KNOW Trump tried to rig the election, so really at this point you're just beating a dead Qilin.
The so-called "Secrets of Dumbledore" are a big rip-off as well, I mean, is there anybody out there who hasn't figured out that Dumbledore is gay? It's hardly a secret if everybody already knows it, and that he was in love with Grindelwald when they were younger has also been super-obvious. There's some kind of magical spell, they took some kind of oath that means they can't harm or fight each other, which would only be a problem if over the last few decades they've become very different people with different ideological approaches to magic, and one became super well-respected and legit and the other became a toxic evil garbage magic-user. Oh, right, that's what happened. But at least this makes it interesting, Dumbledore's forces have to take Grindelwald down, but they have to do it in a very roundabout way, the plan has to be really vague and random to work around the spell. Also, Grindelwald has the power of prophecy, so that's another hindrance designed to make things difficult and random by necessity.
Well, you wouldn't want things to be too EASY, now, would you? Thankfully Newt Scamander ALSO has a Qilin, because he stayed behind to care for the dying Mama Qilin and he found out that she had twins. That's good karma right there, Newt did the right thing and got rewarded for it. Then Dumbledore gets the team back together again - Newt, his brother Theseus, Lally Hicks, Newt's assistant Bunty, and No-Maj American baker Jacob Kowalski. Plus they need a pickpocket/safecracker, a disguise expert, an explosives guy and a hot female martial artist - wait, I think I'm thinking of another film, or maybe every other film. The plan here is just to walk around Bhutan with a bunch of identical-looking suitcases and hope that the bad guys only open the non-magical suitcases. Wait, what? THAT'S the big plan? This sounds more like an episode of "Deal or No Deal"! (Hey, is that show still on?)
I mean, yeah, OK, it is what it is, if you want THIS to be the action in the third installment of your franchise, by all means proceed. But I can't help re-stating that something from the first film still hasn't been achieved again - whatever magic the initial film has seems to be fading with each additional film. Even the big reveal about Credence Barebone - they teased it so much in the second film that when it finally happened in this one, it felt like an afterthought. And they gave him almost ZERO motivation to do what he did - wait, Grindelwald really bullied him around, so maybe that was supposed to be his motivation? That's pretty weak sauce at this point. My other main complaint is that this is another film with an over two-hour running time, and there's MAYBE a half-hour of good story material here.
Look, I'm glad everything worked out, I'm glad that the rigging of the election wasn't successful, and I'm glad there wasn't a war between the Magic-Users and the Muggles. Well, we knew there wasn't going to be, because things had to remain peaceful in the 1930's in order to set up the conditions that existed in the "Harry Potter" movies. Otherwise in the H.P. films they would have talked about the "magic wars" the same way the characters in "A New Hope" talked about the Clone Wars. These wars never happened, and we know this because they were NOT ever mentioned in the 8 Harry Potter films, right?
I guess this is what fantasy films are for now, imagining a world where the most horrible evil guy possible does NOT win an election or succeed in making false claims about election results - but come on, they could have done so much more with this movie than just wasting it on taking cheap shots at Trump. Then again, since he's been found guilty of sexual assault and has several other trials coming up and is STILL somehow leading in Republican polls, maybe not, maybe we need to press the point at every possible opportunity until everyone GETS IT, and that includes having a powerful wizard character who wants to Make Magic Arts Great Again.
Random thoughts - I know that Ezra Miller's character can't possibly become Snape later on, no way, that can't be a thing - but MAN, he sure does resemble a young Alan Rickman here. Also, I'm generally opposed to just re-casting a new actor to play a part midway through a film series, but I understand it was necessary here, as Johnny Depp kind of became box-office poison after that trial. Well, at least there's a history of that with Michael Gambon taking over as Dumbledore midway through the "Harry Potter" movies, and of course with magic any character can change their appearance, there's a valid explanation. But, I still don't have to LIKE it.
Also starring Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Jude Law (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Mads Mikkelsen (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Ezra Miller (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Dan Fogler (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Alison Sudol (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald"), Victoria Yeates (ditto), Poppy Corby-Tuech (ditto), Fiona Glascott (ditto), Callum Turner (last seen in "Emma."), Jessica Williams (last seen in "Booksmart"), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Richard Coyle (last seen in "W.E."), Oliver Masucci (last seen in "Look Who's Back"), Ramona Kunze-Libnow (ditto), Maria Fernanda Candido, Dave Wong (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Valerie Pachner (last seen in "The King's Man"), Maja Bloom (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Paul Low-Hang, Matthias Brenner, Peter Simonischek, Wilf Scolding, Lucas Englander, Jan Pohl (last seen in "Captain America: The First Avenger"), Jacqueline Boatswain, Kazeem Tosim Amore, Manuel Klein, Noor Dillan-Night (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Stefan Race, David Bertrand (last seen in "Robin Hood" (2010), Jessica Cartledge, Radha Sthanakiya, Isabelle Coverdale, Donal Finn (last seen in "How to Build a Girl").
RATING: 6 out of 10 blast-ended skrewts (these were the dancing crab-like things)
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