THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has been a
long wait for most Wizarding World fans and audiences who have been following
these magical stories since they were young except the fact that this franchise
started off two years ago. You would have expected that a sequel to do even
better than the first film and provide more insights to the story and characterisation
that make you go, “Oh my goodness, no wonder this and that…” feeling.
Unfortunately, the movie was a little step back in terms of storyline and sadly
to say that it was too rushed.
Why rushed? I mentioned rushed because Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald – this title suggested
that the movie focuses on the notorious wizard himself and all the bad deeds he
had done to suggest that he is evil and purely sinister, and the group of
wizards wanting to step up and stop him (even the trailer seemingly showed
something along the line), but non, the
storyline build up was off and the plot felt cluttered. Too many things
happened in one movie when they can be spread in other movies since this
franchise is expected to have three more sequels. Each focal point of the story
is swapped with one another and despite all talks and revelations, we do not get
much new information coming from the story or the characters. Hence, this unbalance
plot terribly drags the sequel into a long soap opera series and this is an unlikeable
move on J.K Rowling’s part (she is the screenwriter for both movies).
With the unbalanced storyline that is at stake of making the
movie exciting, the main characters that we see from Fantastic Beasts have slowly made its way to the backstage and they
seem somewhat neglected. Not only were some characters neglected, inconsistent
characterisations from this sequel does not lived up to the previous movie
especially how and why would some of them considering taking a certain action
when they were initially promoted this way. Queenie was one of the characters, in
my opinion, had a drastic characterisation change and I was quite disappointed because
since Queenie is a Legilimen (someone who has the ability to extract feelings and
memories from another’s mind), I believe she should know that Jacob does truly
love her for who she is and to see her joining the dark side makes me feel that
she did not really love him deeply. How can she not think for the man who truly
love her and instead join a cause that brings nothing but more malevolence? This
is not what I believe someone who has the capability to feel would do and this
is shameful. Most importantly, if you truly love someone, why would you do this
to someone as genuine as Jacob?
Apart from the major shift in characterisations and story
plot, I still enjoyed watching Newt Scamander especially again his lovely
interactions with his creatures and making a trip back and forth with Jacob. Moments
like these I have mentioned are part of the reasons what kept me on my seat and
thanks to the phenomenal acting coming from Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Eddie Redmayne
and Dan Fogler, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes
of Grindelwald managed to overcome the shabby storytelling and redundant
moments.
In conclusion, Fantastic
Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has the charm to keep the audience with wizarding
excitement. However, while using fanciful spells on production value does make
up the cool aspect of the wizarding world, story and character developments
again sits at the top level of delivering a decent movie. Whether to be
enjoyable or not, these developments should not be ignored. A movie should not
be delivered if there is no solid story narrative/direction and a character
should not be overwritten just because you feel like doing it. In recent
months, J.K. Rowling seems to be putting out promises that people never asked
for nor living up to the world that she had already created from the beginning.
The trust that she has for the cast is truly not there and the story that she
has presented on final screen shows that everything is just coincidental –
characters borrowed from Harry Potter franchise
just merely telling me that Rowling is not putting much thought into the
product she is selling. Not to forget, the movie has some contradictions that seem
like an easy step to bring some mockery to Rowling’s writing.
You cannot sell a product without recalling the objective of
why you create a product, a franchise and Fantastic
Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald is a fine example of an average product with poor
scope.
Ratings: 6/10
P.S. I gave 6/10 as the ratings because despite what went
wrong in the movie, the cast were truly magnificent in playing their respective
role and it is no fault of them that the story was seemingly lacking a purpose.
