Crimes of Film-making - A Review of "Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald"

Crimes of Film-making

Review of "Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald"

I finally found a movie to bring me out of blogging retirement. Oh boy, it has been a bit. Time to come out swinging.

"Crimes of Grindelwald" is unnecessary, poorly written, and in fact cheapens the rest of the Wizarding World films/books in retroactively. The fact that it was actually written by JK Rowling shocked me because it reads like fan fiction from someone who doesn't understand character development.

It's predecessor "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" was not a great film but it was enjoyable. The structure of the film was incredibly strange, as what would be considered "B-plot" (Newt Scamander collecting lost creatures that escaped his bag) serves as the main focus of the film for the first two acts. This would be fine, except the second storyline which they clearly wanted to kick off this new set of films trundles in the background until the third act when Newt shows up, having next to no involvement in this half of the plot, and suddenly has answers. There's no real character development for Newt, barely any for Creedence (ostensibly the threat) and the reveal the Colin Firth was actually Grindelwald in disguise hiding his true form of *wait for it* Johnny Depp was horribly disappointing.

It was not long before the first film that it was released that pictures of Amber Heard's abuse at her husband Depp's hand. For a 10 second reveal followed by serving as the tentpole villain of two more films, this was repugnant of WB to proceed. And for this morally loathsome casting, what did they get? A inconsistent villain who does little to convince you he's charismatic, and in fact does very little in the way of crime until the very end of the film. One minute, he's the man with the plan, manuevering the Ministry of Magic to inflict violence on onstensibly peaceful rally members so he can incite division and recruit more people, the next he's conjuring up a living flame to destroy all of Paris (presumably where these followers he just conned live, so...great plan?). And while all this murder goes on he conducts with his wand like a madman. So what kind of villain is he? The smooth talker Revolutionary labeled as evil by the government or the insane Dark Wizard who hungers for destruction? If he's pretending to be the former, he's doing a terrible job of it.

This is the greatest writing sin of the film in a nutshell, and permeates every aspect of it: the film tells but rarely shows.

Be warned: we're in SPOILER TERRITORY now

The Ministry shows up to Hogwarts to tell Dumbledore that he's the most powerful and he must do something about Grindelwald. They do very little to establish young Dumbledore's abilities except he conjures a lot of fog in London. He plays puppet master, but doesn't seem to know what he's going for. He sends Newt to Paris to save Credence, but fixates on the blood pact amulet in the Mirror. But then he is surprised when Newt shows up with it later. So Dumbledore's endgame is based around dumb luck that Newt would bring a niffler that Grindelwald wouldn't notice?

Dumbledore explains to the audience how it must be Newt who goes to Paris to deal with the problems brewing because "he always does the right thing no matter the cost," but aside from his interactions with injured animals, Newt never really does The Right Thing that we see. Newt is supposed to be our protagonist but he just sleepwalks through the film, moving from point to point to hear exposition but doesnt really do anything of note, nor change in any meaningful way. This is tragic because Newt the character is actually really interesting. Eddie Redmayne does a great job portraying someone clearing on the high functioning part of the autism spectrum, nailing mannerisms and cultivating a believable ostracized wizard. If only the story did anything with him besides talk about how he's different and that's actually good.

There's a subplot with Zoe Kravitz's character Leta Lestrange (ha, callback! important wizard family!) being in unrequited love with Newt but now engaged to his brother for not clear reasons (other than to arbitrarily make Newt's love interest jealous because a tabloid error, conflict!). This latter serves to reveal that Credence is, in a incredibly dumb twist, not *actually* a secret Lestrange, but a random baby she swapped out as a child on a boat because her real baby brother cried too much. And because of this when the boat sank her real brother drowned. And this haunts Leta for her life because she blames herself that her brother drowned. Huh?

But wait, *double twist* turns out the random baby she switched her brother with? SECRET DUMBLEDORE BROTHER.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNNN

How do you know this is true? Well, a phoenix shows up (presumably Fawkes) because Dumbledores can summon phoenixes (phoenices?) in times of distress. So does Dumbledore deal with his secret younger brother and take his bird? And both of Dumbledore's parents cannonically died in the 1890s (father in Azkaban, mother due to Ariana's madness), almost 40 years before Credence was born. So how is he (supposed to be ~18ish in the first film) supposed to be the 4th Dumbledore sibling? And he's never mentioned in the chronologically later story of Harry Potter despite so much of Dumbledore's character being based in the guilt and regret of his involvement in his sister's death?

Not only does the character writing not make sense, it chops of the established cannon or makes it unnecessarily convoluted. The "secret dumbledore brother" is just the most egregious of this. This is the Prequel Fallacy at work: Writers telling a story about what happens before the big events shoehorning all these small elements from the main story to retroactively give it more importance. Instead it just makes suspension of disbelief harder, and this is a movie about wizards and witches for God's sake. 

Nicholas Flamel is the owner of the Paris hideout, and he shows up in the climax to help save the day. But he doesn't contribute much more than being a warm body and telling them to get in a circle for a spell. Could have been some random dude for all he contributed to the plot.

Voldemort's snake Nagini who he put part of his soul into? Turns out she's actually a person who was cursed to transform into a snake and eventually the transformation would be permanent. And she's the friend/lover of Creedence. Nagini's long life in the books was supposed to be because she was a living horocrux, not because she was secretly a former human this whole time.

The Mirror of Erised? The Mirror that shows your greatest desire? Shows Dumbledore the old days with his friend/lover and how they formed a blood pact into a magical maguffin that prevents them from directly harming each other (which seems incredibly dumb from all angles of it). This is his greatest desire? The amulet, or his old buddy? Not only this but there already exists a better mechanism to show this, the Pensive.

Quick Cuts:

• Even the title is cumbersome
• The cinematography clearly looks like it was shot with 3D as first priority, and the film suffers from it. POV pans that are charting, odd angles to allow for "pop" out of the screen but serves to make the geography of the scene difficult to follow.
• The message is inconsistent. Newt always "does the right thing," but everyone tells him he must "choose a side" and he insists he doesn't do sides. So he thinks no one is doing the right thing, or he finally sees Grindelwald is evil? Did the first movie not happen? This isn't actually character development 
• The film feels like its just moving pieces in place for the next movie, but that's a terrible idea because it doesn't stand on its own. The finale of film seems almost an afterthought, like "oops coming up on the end of our run time, better do something cool" and summons living fire to burn down Paris. Suddenly there are stakes. But it's fixed by a bunch of people forming a magic circle in the ground. The magic has no internal logic seen in the prior books/films.
• Queenie's telepathy becomes overwhelmed in the streets of Paris because too many voices. But she lives in New York City normally. This should be a regular occurance for her that she would be cognizant of.
• Further plot weirdness: Dumbledore is Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in this, but during Tom Riddle's school time, he's the Transfiguration teacher. A young McGonagall is already at the school in this film, what was she teaching? Did she get bumped from Transfiguration for Dumbledore? Other than Defense Against the Dark Arts (a cursed job) none of the other teachers in the original books switch subjects since they are supposed to be master of their particular art.
• So have the unforgivable curses not been outlawed by the 1920s? Cause the Ministry of Magic seems to have no problem killing people on a hair trigger. Somehow I don't think a society living for thousands of years under rule of law decided in the last 80 years magic that kills, tortures, or forces control of people's will was suddenly bad.

This may seem nitpicky in some parts, but it serves to show everything from the broad strokes of the plot to the details of the setting of the world all seem to have been written in a completely slapdash fashion.

The titular Fantastic Beasts are cool though. Two thumbs up for the Chinese Tiger Dragon.

Overall, the movie doubles down on the worst mistakes of its predecessor, and takes what should be interesting ideas and characters, but instead contorts them with atrocious writing.

HouseOfNerd on: First Dates

Me: Just don't get murdered.

T: He owns a TKD dojo, so no guarantees.

Me: Get inside his reach and crush his groin or trachea. If you can take out the knees, he's screwed.

T: Quite possibly the best first date advice ever

Me: I'm a helper!

Case Study in Bad Directing: Haywire

            Cinematography, music selection, and direction go a very long way in setting up a good movie. Haywire fails in all of these aspects and succeeds in making international espionage completely boring. Its especially interesting that its coming from Steven Sodenbergh, the director of Ocean’s Eleven remake. On the other hand, he made Ocean’s 12 and 13, so maybe that’s been sapping away at his talent.

            Gina Carano plays Mallory Kane, a field agent for a private espionage firm consulting with the government who gets burned by her handlers. Standard faire for producing chases, gunfights and fist fights, with tense situations about as the spies try to outmaneuver each other.

            Sound: almost none of the build-up to tense scenes feature any music whatsoever, it usually just involves standing or walking. The action happens suddenly, but its still broadcast without any surprise. The other music is haphazardly chosen and placed in random scenes. The soundtrack sounds like something taken from a quiet cheesy 70s B movie. Its boring, and its used as a backdrop behind boring flat conversations.

            Cinematography: the shots are extremely static, often using a wide shot, with no movement at all and only a few angles during the fight scene. One shootout between police SUVs uses only a single wide shot that shows almost none of the action and makes the scene look exceptionally fake. I’ve seen 10 year olds on the playground act better shootouts.

            Direction: This is Gina Carano’s first major film, after a career as a female MMA fighter, so no one is expecting a particularly nuanced performance out of her, but what is surprising is how flat everyone else is in this film. Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas and Channing Tatum all act like they’ve just finished the first script read-through and they’re still reading the lines as if written on cue cards in front of them. There is zero emotional investment, and even when the characters are in danger, none of them seem particularly troubled, scared, or particularly agitated.

            Granted, Ocean’s Eleven dialogue comes off as flat, but the movie benefited from quick cuts, multiple scenes occurring at once, and George Clooney being able to say his lines with a certain amount of quirky charm that he always possesses. This film comes off as a guy who wants to make slow paced “indie” films but got stuck making an action film.

            The single redeeming quality of the film is the actual fighting. It is refreshing to see a female actress who clearly knows how to fight. Her MMA skills are on clear display as a no-frills brutal style featuring Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu amongst other elements.

            There are plenty of bad action and spy films, and they can be enjoying in their own way. Hell, I’ve been to Bad Movie clubs were terrible action films reign supreme (I’m looking at you Crack 2). But Sodenbergh committed the gravest sin of directing a spy or action movie; he made it boring.

 I will say though, for a woman who could kill you without breaking a sweat,

Gina Carano is very pretty.

They Live

A: Bleh! Enough of this. We are gonna do great on Step 1!!

Me: Yeah! I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum.

Me: And they won't let me take gum into the test center anyways

 Roddy Piper Approved

Review - Invincible: Ultimate Collection 1

            While I am not blessed with an overabundance of free time, I always take 20-30 minutes to read for fun before sleep in order to decompress. One of the styles of literature that I found works very well with this system is the graphic novel. I spend time catching up on collected volumes of books like The Walking Dead and the Goon.

            The series that I’ve most enjoyed starting however, is another Kirkman project: Invincible. The story follows the titular Invincible, the teen son of the world’s greatest superhero Omni-man, the Superman of this universe. Invincible enters a world filled with superheroes and high expectations. All the while he juggles high school, college searches and interacting with the superheroes of his generation.

            While Invincible’s story hits every beat of standard origin story, at least at first, it’s the situations around him that are fascinating. One of the issues spends the entire time setting up the universe’s equivalent of the Justice League, complete with an Amazonian, speedster, batman stand-in (Darkwing), fishman, martian, an green energy user. After spending all that time fleshing out all these characters, they are savagely murdered in a single page. The fallout from this event spurs on Invincible’s story as he is forced to step up to cover for the vacuum of heroes.

            One of the strengths of the book is that it adds a realism to superheroes. When people as strong as Superman clash, mountains are leveled, city blocks are destroyed, and despite best intentions, thousands are hurt and killed. And when two nigh invincible beings clash, the only way to win is for one to brutally and swiftly end the other.

            By the end of the volume, the big reveal changes everything previously established and separates itself from the DC comics archetypes it had followed thus far. It also makes it a far deeper story than the standard superhero fare. Betrayal, loyalty and duty all weigh heavily in Invincible’s mind as his duty to the Earth becomes personal.

            Invincible is a series I would recommend to experienced graphic novel readers and those new to the genre. It offers an excellent introduction to those who are interested in superhero stories, but find the horribly convoluted continuity of Marvel’s and DC’s respective universes far too daunting to tackle. Invincible uses the genre archetypes as the springboard to create a fully realized world that twists the preconceived ideas about the people behind the masks and capes.

Review: Ready Player One

Ready Player One is a novel by Ernest Cline detailing a mad scavenger hunt quest in a dystopian near future where societal decay has pushed everyone to escape reality by plugging into a massive multiplayer life simulation called OASIS. OASIS is a combination of World of Warcraft, Second Life and every internet connected game in between. The economy of the world is now based upon token in-game, as it is the most stable currency in the world. People work in the game as technicians, store clerks, grinding enemies for loot or as celebrities in Player versus Player battles, to name a few. OASIS’s creator James Halliday was like a cross between Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and a 12 year old playing video games all day. He was also easily the wealthiest man on the planet, valued at a quarter of a trillion dollars. Upon his death, a video he made announced that his fortune would go to whoever found all the items (3 keys and 3 gates) leading to his easter egg left hidden somewhere in his sprawling virtual world. All of these clues are related to his obsessions: 80s culture, television and movies, science fiction, and old school arcade games.

Years passed with no one even coming close, until a high schooler named Wade (AKA Parzival) finds the first key – and immediately launches the contest into overdrive. He finds himself competing against high level players, internet celebrities (including his online crush Art3mis), and a corporation that will do anything, even murder IRL, to gain control of OASIS for its own corporate greed.

Ready Player One is a fascinating book for anyone a fan of sci-fi, 80s culture, video games, or the culture that has grown up amongst the internet. The humor is incisive to those with appropriate background, and the references are hugely varied. The scavenger hunt itself is eminently solvable if you have the appropriate knowledge. I understood the first clue within seconds of reading it. The rest were significantly more difficult, but the ride was better for it. The book also illustrates beautifully the pros and cons of anonymity and freedoms of the internet. Deception, for both good and bad, abounds amongst OASIS. The antagonist corporation is sufficiently menacing even in the virtual world. They cheat with modified rigs, throw their economic might to purchase in-game artifacts of immense powers, spy on priority users, and if necessary, dispose of anyone deemed a threat through corporate indenturement or even murder. It feels like there are real stakes to the story even though the majority of it plays out in an MMO.

Not that the book is without flaws, there are some seriously heavy exposition sections that would have been better spent showing rather than telling, especially about the major characters like Art3mis, Aech and several other prominent avatars hunting for the prize. There is often some major lulls inbetween the flurry of action when clues are unraveled. But overall this is a fantastic book I’d recommend to any sci-fi fan.