The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C-
Welcome back to the wizarding world of who-gives-a-shit as Warner Bros. continues to bleed this franchise to the very last drop. New ideas be damned, Fantastic Beasts was originally going to be a one-off prequel to the Harry Potter series, but was then stretched into being a trilogy before finally being stretched into a five-film series (of which The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third). If you think it’s ridiculous to stretch a one-film concept into five movies, then you just don’t have the street smarts of a creativity-crushing, money-sniffing studio executive. So buckle your seat belts as we return to the magical world of proven intellectual properties with a story that moves so slowly, we are in danger of the sun going supernova before we see the plot progress in this fucking series.
The Secrets of Dumbledore revolves around an election, which is the most exciting development in a fantasy or science fiction series since I learned about trade negotiations in The Phantom Menace. Apparently wizard elections are determined by a rare magic deer that will bow to the person that is noble enough to be named the next leader. Why the fuck people have to campaign and be nominated when it all comes down to the whims of a deer is beyond me, but I digress. Grindelwald (the evil wizard pre-cursor to Voldemort), finds one of these rare creatures, kills it and creates a doppelganger that will do his bidding so that he can win the election and become the new leader of the wizards. However, the evil deer also had a twin that has been placed (for some reason) in the care of our (for some reason) hero, Newt Scamander. Then it’s a very, very long game of political intrigue as we await to see who the deer will name king.
The plot is absurd (to paraphrase Monty Python, some forest creature bowing their head to you is no basis for a system of government) but there are positives here. I’ll even hesitantly say that this is an improvement on the last installment, The Crimes of Grindelwald, though I admittedly barely remember that that movie exists. First and foremost, Mads Mikkelsen finally brings some menace to Grindelwald. Mikkelsen replaces the fired Johnny Depp in the role and transforms Grindelwald into a genuine threat; I buy that this guy could be the wizard equivalent of Hitler and the performance finally brings some desperately needed gravitas to a series that mostly feels infuriatingly inconsequential. Furthermore, the chemistry and tension between Mikkelsen and Jude Law (returning as Dumbledore) is effective. One does feel a sense of complexity, history and impending doom whenever these guys look at each other.
If the film had focused entirely on the relationship and rivalry between Grindelwald and Dumbledore, then The Secrets of Dumbledore could have actually amounted to something. Unfortunately, that gets put on the backburner we have to return to the hijinks of a bunch of characters that nobody gives a shit about. Why is Newt Scamander (again played by Eddie Redmayne) the main character of this series? Why do people keep putting this dufus in charge of things? If this magic deer is going to determine the future of the frigging world, then why not just have Dumbledore guard the damn thing? He’s a bumbling nothing of a character that only gets in the way of the few good things that this series has going for it. The film at least manufactures a clunky reason for him to be in the story; it can’t even do that to explain why Jacob (played by Dan Fogler) is still in these movies other than out of some bizarre sense of obligation. I forgot that Ezra Miller was even in this series and his appearance made me vaguely think “oh yeah, didn’t the plot of the first movie revolve around him?” That’s how memorable these movies and characters are.
These movies also make me feel like Bill Murray waking up to the sound of Sonny and Cher. Since the plot has been stretched out to so many movies, we never reach a climax and each movie ends the same way: Grindelwald is amassing his forces to launch a war and take over the world. But the war never gets here. I’ve seen this ending three fucking times now, just start the goddamn war already. Win, lose, I don’t give a shit. Just bloody do something for the love of frigging god and get this over with.
Unless the law of diminishing box office returns finally takes effect, we have two more of these movies to go. Despite this being an improvement on the last entry, I can confidently say that it is mathematically impossible for me to give less of a shit at this point. I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world (I lose interest after The Prisoner of Azkaban), but those movies had a story arc and characters that made sense in the context of the story. Fantastic Beasts is just a lumbering cash grab that ran out of steam after one movie, which is all that it was supposed to be in the first place.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts:_The_Secrets_of_Dumbledore#/media/File:Fantastic_Beasts-_The_Secrets_of_Dumbledore.png
