The New Fantastic Beasts Film Is a Half-Baked Disservice to the Harry Potter Legacy

Perhaps one of the most puzzling aspects of the new film is the way it treats the characters we meet in round one. Take, for instance, Tina: she's a huge part of the action in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, so much so that she quickly becomes a favoured love interest for Newt. This time, she's randomly dating to another Auror, whom we never meet. What's more, her role has been sliced, taking her from a lead character to a special guest appearance at best.

Queenie, on the other hand, is given a prominent role, but not one I enjoyed. She's all over the place, completely helter-skelter, until she does the unthinkable and joins Grindelwald's side, becoming evil. The Queenie we see in the final scene is unrecognisable. She's lost all the things that made her great in the first place: she's introduced as confident, quirky, and loyal, which makes her 180 to the dark side not only confusing, but also highly unrealistic. The insecurities she feels about her relationship with Jacob — who clearly loves her — as well as her own telepathic abilities that make her seem "crazy" are far from being good enough reasons to turn her into a villain; the film barely scratches the surface of her feelings, not even bothering to include a confrontation between her and her sister, an Auror.

Doing a prequel was always going to be dicey, but had they taken a lot of care with the material, it might have worked out. Sadly, not much care has been taken. The first big controversy related to to casting for Nagini. To many, it seemed like a desperate ploy to introduce more diversity in the universe. But perhaps Nagini was the wrong choice; as a character who eventually becomes enslaved by Voldemort, a white man, it gives a very horrifying read. Then there's the fact that "Nagini" is, at its origin, a Sanskrit word that comes from India. So, while it was admirable to cast a Korean woman at all, it seemed strange to make the choice to cast her as Nagini.

It's not just off-key casting choices that have unsettled us, either. There seems to be a quite blatant disregard for Harry Potter canon in other ways. The sorest thumb is the appearance of McGonagall, who, according to the books, was born in 1935. This movie takes place in 1927, eight years before her birth, and yet she appears as a 20-something professor at Hogwarts. I guess you could claim she used a time turner or whatever, but that sounds more like convenient plothole repair than an actual explanation.

Speaking of strange canonical choices, the whole situation surrounding Dumbledore's supposed sexuality is a real mess. I mean, let's be real, the whole thing has been a mess from the start, ever since J.K. Rowling retroactively made Dumbledore gay in the first place. I already wrote about this in-depth if you'd like to read my critique about how it's handled in The Crime of Grindelwald, but this really stretches into a bigger thing. Even in the books, if Dumbledore was gay, there should have been some overt way of letting us know. Stop putting homosexuality in the subtext! Give us an out, proud, gay, unapologetic character, damn it!

Listen, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the Johnny Depp casting controversy and the way it was handled by those involved in the films. We all know what this is: not a good look. Johnny Depp should have been removed from the cast, and he should not appear in future Fantastic Beasts films.

It's not even worth defending his performance either! I don't want to hear an argument about how only the great Johnny Depp could do this role. His performance is uninspired and bland. He was the sleepiest villain ever. Almost any veteran actor would have done just as good a job, if not better. I guess, on the bright side, that whole thing made me hate Grindelwald a whole lot more?

Although I could put this one under the section about messing with the canon, I felt like it deserved its own moment. The reveal that Credence is actually a Dumbledore is a really strange decision. Mostly because Albus only mentions one brother in the Harry Potter novels, and if Aurelius really ends up being the right-hand man of Grindelwald, you'd think he might bear a mention at some point. Sure, you can explain it away, say that Grindelwald might be lying, but Ezra Miller himself said it's very likely real and that we'll get an explanation for it at some point. But I'm already prepared to dislike whatever explanation we get. It's the complete invention of a character, and I think it's really messing up the Harry Potter books.

There were a whole bunch of really not great choices made throughout this process (see above), and even some of the most basic aspects of the film really rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly because it seems like the creative powers that be are shoe-horning plots in just to add tension. Plots that don't make sense! Take, for instance, this strange supposed love triangle between Newt Scamander, Theseus Scamander, and Leta Lestrange.

In the film, we get the vague insinuation that Newt and Leta bonded over being outcasts while at Hogwarts, but never get any confirmation that they were lovers. We also don't learn how Theseus and Leta ended up together; we just know that they're somehow engaged and somehow in love. Were meant to believe that there's tension between the three, that Newt might love Leta, or Leta might love Newt, or whatever. With so much in the subtext, though, I mostly thought "?????" the whole time.

That's just one example of the sort of hodge-podge plotting that meant to made the film more exciting. Same for all that tension between Queenie and Jacob about getting married. It just doesn't make sense, and it's sloppy.

All this is to say that, basically, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald was a big soufflé that was taken out of the oven too soon. So, it collapsed and ended up a big, doughy mess. The main plot was loose, distracting, and not that compelling. The side plots were half-baked, not respectful of the canon, and ultimately unfinished. The controversies were mishandled. We didn't get the things we were hoping to get from the film. In fact, in most cases, we got just the opposite.

I guess we have three more movies to see where it goes, but a friend of mine put it best: if you can't make a good movie after two tries, you're really failing hard. As someone who loves Harry Potter, it feels like they've taken the franchise and bloated it with offencive and unnecessary things, just for a big of extra cash. And I'm not here for it. Oh well; it'll probably still make a billion anyway. That's showbiz, baby.