Crimes of Film-making
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.
