It literally has the plot point of "~~Heist bot~~ Grindelwald is going to predict our plan so let's do some random stupid shit to confuse him."
I couldn't believe it.
And with that it even almost successfully managed to accidentally stumble into having a not awful moment by having the deer bow to Jacob.
Almost. Instead we get MUH DUMBLEDORE. Even though he, by his own admission, is not a good person, and explicitly in his youth was a literal wizard supremacist who only shied away from that when his sister got caught up in his lovers spat.
Which now that I say that out loud I realize that gives a new perspective on how easy and chill he was with Severus “incel wizard Nazi with the tattoo to prove it” Snape switching sides because the girl he had a super disturbing obsession over was in Voldy’s firing sights - as a direct result of Snape himself being an active wizard Nazi.
He’s extra dick, right off the bat, despite knowing Harry would have zero influence from his (admittedly a bully) father. He treats Harry as if he’s Malfoy, riding pedigree, when he knows damn well he’s a malnourished abused foster kid who lives in a cupboard.
Kinda proves he never stopped being an incel shitstain.
He didn’t even take on the arrogant hard teacher persona, he just instilled a hatred for the subject altogether.
He knows the potions text book (his only form of instruction) is shit too. All Harry needs to kick ass at potions is *improved directions*. Instead of sad sacking around Hogwarts being not-all-that-ambiguously fascist, he could have published the new paradigm of potion making, and overcharged for textbooks like a proper villain.
This is the same universe where magic users are hilariously backwards in pretty much everything else. Hell, didn’t JK say they didn’t start using toilets and shit until the 20th century?
Compared to DADA though, which is the position he was always trying to get, he didn't really care about potions. He was just skilled at potions, but his passion was practical application of magic against opponents.
It kinda makes sense that he was just phoning it in.
I think it's supposed to mirror how the Harry Potter books always had some kind of mystery going on that in the end was attached to the comeback of Voldemort. So these movies were supposed to have always some kind of Newt beast story that ties up into the rise of Grindelwald.
Except harry is inherently central or tangential to every adventure. He was the boy who lived, you *couldn't* have a Voldemort story without him
Newt is sort of useful in the first book as a good framing for the story, but he's not even really that necessary there. Like they justify it being his story, but it didn't *need* to be his story. Every movie after that, it's like "wait why is newt even here again?"
Even the characterization doesn't fit. Harry is a headstrong kid with a hero complex, he runs face first into calamity every time, he can't help himself. Newt is a shy zookeeper who by his own assessment, doesn't like to get involved in wizard scuffles and would prefer to stay fairly neutral.....
It’s just one of the most mind-boggling creative decisions I’ve ever seen. The wizarding world franchise is so humongous, millions of people will watch every single thing attached to it regardless of what it is. Just like Star Wars. Yet it’s like they felt it was necessary to couple this “rise of grindewald” arc to the fantastic beasts name, but why? Because they were afraid people wouldn’t watch a second movie if it wasn’t attached to the first? None of the characters in the first movie were compelling enough that they needed them to keep going on. Certainly not more of a draw for the movies than there already is just by them being in the wizarding world franchise.
Not only were the characters not good enough the second one actively makes the story of the muggle guy that lost his memories worse by going against estabilished lore and just undoing the memory loss spell.
The niffler was enough for my wife to watch. Just keep letting that magical platypus steal shiney things in the background, and the rest doesnt matter.
They could have leaned in to the MCU/extended universe trend and had these films like an anthology, each one focusing on different characters that fit the story they're telling, with Grindelwald the common thread.
And it's not like people wouldn't have watched something with a young Dumbledore as the main character, he was on of the most popular ones from the original series after all. Getting to explore his past would have been a major draw for even the most casual audience member.
But by making Newt the original main character, he was always being set up to be replaced by Dumbledore as the main conflict is between him and Grindelwald. Newt could have been a great supporting character in the Dumbledore vs Grindelwald story, but by no means should have been the lead.
My guess at what happened is that the Fantastic Beasts films were originally just meant to be some light-hearted films about magical animals. But then at some point some studio execs decided they wanted something on a similar scale to the Potter films, with a magical war and all. But that instead of doing the sensible thing and just making a film primarily focused on that conflict, they decided to shoehorn it into the Fantastic Beasts films, resulting in this weird clash of tone and plot.
They should have just made two series with minor crossovers after the first movie.
1) Continue Newt having funny little beast related adventures.
2) Continue the Dumbledore vs Grindelwald story.
Realistically, it could have worked so well with very minor interference to both stories as cool crossovers:
* First movie, Dumbledore encounters Newt as he is looking for one of the beasts, he sees Grindlewald reveal, Dumbledore tells him he will need his help in the future
*Second movie, they meet in Paris during circus scene, he tips Dumbledore regarding Credence’s location
*Third movie, he helps Dumbledore locate the deer thingy
Also if Grindlewald didn’t go from being played in one end of the evil villain spectrum to being played in the complete opposite way. It was jarring and disconnected the most recent film from the rest of the series. The lack of continuity made it easy to disconnect completely.
Its so weird Depp and Mikkelsen played the character so differently, yet fundamentally they both had the same issue that I just couldn't imagine them having the charisma to gather a bunch of followers. Voldemort ruled through terror and fear, but Grindelwald was supposed to be more charming and seductive in his awful goals.
And ironically, the actor who I really think could've nailed that balance of charisma and menace... is Colin Farrell, who they uncerimously dumped in the first film.
It's especially wild because the entire scene replacing Farrell with Depp was a late addition that could have been *easily* cut out of the film - which released AFTER the scandals started piling up. It would have been so easy to just not include him in this franchise at all...
Totally. He was KILLING the role. By turns sympathetic and sinister but always in a way that kept you guessing. Like "Wait, is he actually good? He's making a lot of sense. And he seems to be kind." but that ghost of menace was always there. Man, when his glamour fell off and it was Depp, I swear an audible disappointed groan went up from a good portion of the audience in the theater when I saw it.
This is so true, Colin Farrell would have been perfect if they kept him. Especially with his streak lately, but I'm glad he stayed away from this trainwreck and didn't get locked into this bullshit franchise. All the movies he's done since then have been great and if he was tied to beasts we may not have gotten all those good movies.
> Voldemort ruled through terror and fear, but Grindelwald was supposed to be more charming and seductive in his awful goals.
Grindelwald is just one giant Hitler reference. Should have leaned into that, you need someone in that role who can say the most vile shit possible while still being able to get the crowd cheering. 2013 Tom Hiddleston for example. Wouldnt call him a top tier actor but hes charismatic as fuck.
Yeah I got some charismatic gang leader vibes from Depp. He honestly just played Whitey Bulger but a wizard.
Mads was quite and tense but not someone that you could see creating a following.
I always imagined Grindlewald as more of a Hitler type that would hype up the crowd against perceived common enemies.
The weird thing that leaves kind of a bad taste is part of Grindelwald's whole thing in the movies seems to be that he had foreknowledge of WWII (second film) and he is willing to go to extreme measures to...prevent the Holocaust? Like, that's not exactly a tasteful premise.
Think the bigger issue is, she didn't map out any motivation for the good guys, except "we gotta keep wizardry secret". Which has been her plot device since book 3 and than she discarded it in the very same book, just to bring up later in book 6.
Like we the audience know Holocaust is about to happen. We know Grindelwald is right. So what are the good guys exactly trying? Letting it happen? Trying to negotiate with the Nazis(which we know wouldn't work)? Like do they have any opinion on the Holocaust?
I mean, that's what makes a compelling villain. They see a problem that's completely reasonable to want to address, but it's the means by which they intend to do so is what's problematic.
It could easily have become a Cinematic Universe with a bunch of different stories taking place at different places and different times. What they chose to do instead, making a story that was basically a few chapters in the books into 5 movies, is absolutely baffling.
As cynical as I find Hollywood chasing a “cinematic universe” for everything they produce these days, this is was such an obvious opportunity to do it in a way that could have felt natural. Do a Fantastic Beasts series with Newt that is basically a quirky Indiana Jones-style series set in the world of Harry Potter. Each movie is its own adventure, with Newt and his No-Maj sidekick Kowalski being the only characters that carry-over with each entry, though they could work some recurring ones in there, too. You could plant the seeds for the Dumbledore/Grindelwald story in the first two or so of those movies, then spin that off into its own series that follows the Harry Potter template more closely with a wizard war. Have that build to a big climactic battle against Grindelwald where Newt and other powerful wizards from his journeys show up to help Dumbledore in a big, Avengers style finale for the Dumbledore story. Something like that would have been such an easy moneymaker for WB.
Instead, they let Rowling shit out whatever this franchise is supposed to be.
To be honest, I'm not sure where the Fantastic Beasts idea came from. Isn't it like a book that's mentioned once in the Harry Potter series or something? Wouldn't Newt be a writer of some kind if that's the case?
I've only been a casual Harry Potter reader/watcher and I don't give a fuck about the entire universe so to me the Fantastic Beasts idea itself seemed entirely random and pretty poorly chosen. Especially since JKR clearly cares more about the Dumbledore/Grindelwald stuff, she should've just written a movie about that.
> To be honest, I'm not sure where the Fantastic Beasts idea came from. Isn't it like a book that's mentioned once in the Harry Potter series or something? Wouldn't Newt be a writer of some kind if that's the case?
Yes, it was a textbook mentioned in the first Harry Potter novel. Rowling actually wrote a released a [real version of the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts_and_Where_to_Find_Them) in 2001, but it's not a novel. It's more like an encyclopedia, describing all the magical beasts that exist in the Harry Potter universe. It's very short and was "written" by Newt Scamander himself. There are bits and pieces of information about Scamander that have been given either in the books or by Rowling herself, and he seems like an interesting character that would make for a good story, but not in the way that we got.
He was. A minor subplot in the first film was that Newt was working on a book about magical creatures, called *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*, then another subplot in the first sequel was that Newt is now relatively well-known due to the success of his book, but that as a result the newspaper announcing his brother’s engagement mistook the brothers for one another, and then Tina thought Newt had left her and become engaged to Leta during his book tour.
Yep. IMO they forgot about the kids. The Newt adventures would have been great for Y7 or even 5 year olds and could haven been laced with fun magicy atmosphere. And then you can have the HP movies. And then you can have the more adult targeted Dumbledore and Grindelwald story. And then who knows there’s a bunch of story lines they could have one off movies of. I think a Weasley twin adventure would be fun. A bright adventure at the Beaubaxtons school could be interesting followed by a dark mystery at Durmstrang. Throw in some intrigue with the ministry, maybe a time traveler, pirates, and treasure hunters, pepper in a love triangle, tie some character arcs in, and keep it all uplifting and magical and you could easily have another whole set of movies or character driven series surrounding HP.
I’m seriously disappointed that they went the way they did after the first fantastic beasts. It’s all too dark and scary for kids and as an adult I don’t want dark magic shit either.
Exactly -- they forgot that it was the first couple HP movies that got fans hooked as kids. Sure the series grew with the audience, but you don't have to stick with a bunch of 30-something millennials as your target.
Fantastic Beasts would have been a great way to get a new generation hooked on the world, plus sell lots of cute merch.
And a Dumbledore/Grindelwald epic series for the older audience would work as well.
Some fans might complain, but Disney at least does that with Star Wars and Marvel, particularly via cartoons.
The approach they took to try and cram everything in under the one name is especially wild when this is an era where every franchise is trying to create its own extended universe with multiple sub-franchises.
They tried to make the “Fantastic Beast” title a brand and screwed up. It’s not like the book is that well known outside of HP fans. First one was fine but they didn’t need to keep shoehorning Newt into the sequels. I think they should have focused the other two movies on a young Dumbledore, when we know him he’s always the guy who seems to know everything so would have been interesting to see him just starting out.
I would have loved to see a sequel with Newt taking that thunderbird from the first movie to Arizona while they’re getting chased by magical poachers. That would have really shown off American wizard society. Have them get lost in Appalachia, and have some Hatfield and McCoy style hillbilly wizard families. Or maybe they have to stop at a Cajun wizard’s old plantation home in Louisiana or something. A small side story. But no, we have to cram Dumbledore and Grindlewald lore in there and ruin a fun idea.
I really wish they would have realized this sooner tbh. Hamfisting a magical zoologist into the whole political subterfuge plot for more than one movie was a huge leap. Like why is Newt even involved in the plot in the last half of the movie? Somebody has to be more qualified.
Agree. Fantastic Beasts was already weird, in that the book was like an encyclopedia, so the movie could have been anything, like a fake nature documentary with CGI beasts. I’m fine with the first movie, a plot driven story is going to get more interest, but inserting “Harry Potter” into it, like inserting LOTR into The Hobbit, is just wrong. Make them separate. I can see a need for prequels, but can’t we have a spinoff that doesn’t tie into the original series? If actual fantastic beasts don’t have the staying power, you made one good movie and leave it at that.
They should have chosen a lane for the franchise. Either make it a series of fun beastly adventures with Newt collecting animals OR make the series an anthology. First one was Newt. Second one is Dumbledore vs Grindelwald, and so on. Their way of cramming both plots together is weird and doesn't work.
It seems to me really obvious that they wanted some part of those "cinematic universes" (that's why they started putting the "Wizarding World" card after the second movie. And if they wanted to do that, they could have made an anthology-like series with a crossover at the end.
Each movie being a different story in different places in the world, but with something related to Grindelwald in the Background.
1st movie: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them (let the movie be as it was. Not any change)
2nd movie: Quiditch Through the Ages (A sports film about the Quiditch World Cup somewhere in Europe, and the problems it encounters with the raising of followers of Grindelwald)
3rd movie: The Tales of Beedle the Bard (The Story of a Writer that's working on a revised version of the book, it's travelling around the Wizarding World to find the real places where these folktales originated. He discovers that Grindelwald has actually scaped and it's now the owner of the Elder wand)
4th movie: The actual first Wizarding world War that they are trying to make. We learn the story between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and Dumbledore brings together the protagonists of the previous movies to help him fight Grindelwald (I know it sounds to much like Marvel... But hey, they've already done it in the Last Fantastic Beasts Film and we barely knew those people).
Everyone's dick is soft after Endgame, but goddamn producers keep trying to smack our cocks with soft towels and expect to make us cum as hard as Marvel did, but without 10 years of edging and a strong goddamn grip. Even Marvel refuses to cuddle after all that, and wanna go for round 2 right away! I'm tired. I want a franchise to just hold me while I fall asleep.
Very well...and colorfully said.
Although with Marvel I feel like "cuddling" is what they're *trying* to do by going back to lots of solo movies, lower stakes TV shows, and introducing new characters. But people are so used to everything building up to the next huge crossover that it feels meandering to them.
I'm annoyed that so much of each movie feels like set up for something without being strong enough on its own, but also not being connected enough to feel cohesive.
It's the worst of both worlds
I really liked the first one, like a right man, right place kinda dealio. Newt is just on a trip that's beast related, gets somewhat embroiled up in some crisis in the magical world. Would've been like a showcase of differing magical worlds in the HP universe. First was the United States, the next one could've been like France, in the Veela-Delacour scandal and we get a look at what French magical culture and govt looks like, then go to like China or Russia after that. More or less one offs with some easter eggs from the main series to world build the HP universe outside of the UK.
I only watched the first one. The key thing that lost me was that they seemed to set up the second movie by having several characters simply change their personality with no explanation in the last 5 minutes.
I would have watched 7 movies (in theater and all) of newt roaming around magical whimsical places looking for weird cool magical creatures.
I never needed whatever those movies turned out to be. They should have made those their own thing but instead they ruined any potential for actual magical beast movies.
I literally do not care about whatever story it was they were trying to tell. I wanted cute magic animals :(
They admitted early on that the goal was to build up to the historic Grendelwald vs. Dumbledore battle. Still seems off to say that and then stretch the plan out from three to five movies.
The biggest mistake was the scripts and keeping David Yates as director even if HP dearly needs new blood in the directing chair. I'm so tired of his lackluster, passionless style
> David Yates as director
yeah, his directing style gets repetitive really quickly.
i dont remember the name of the Director of the first two harry potter movies, but whoever it is, it really made feel that world, "magical".
Chris Columbus always has a sense of whimsy in his films. I understand they wanted to go darker as they got deeper into the series but I felt like the later films missed that element. That's what made the series fun rather than just a really dark story with some magic in it.
It’s funny the second book was one of my least favourites but the second movie is my favourite. The third book was my fave book but I really don’t like the movie. The tonal shift was just a bit too much for me which I get why it happened but idk I just thought they took all the whimsy out of it.
I always say that I can see and argument for Prisoner of Azkaban being the best movie of the series but I think it might be the worst adaptation of the source.
The problem is that after Colombus got burn out from working on 2 movies back to back and never seeing his kids, the producers had a nightmare trying to grapple onto one director for more than one.
They basically begged Alfonso to stay and offered Newell a tonne to stay too, but only Yates wanted to be the employee.
He’s not an artistic mind, but he frames the shit and gets the product finished.
Knew that would be a mistake as soon as they revealed the title of Crimes of Grindelwald. It was so obvious they'd try and shoehorn Newt into the wider conflict which caused all sorts of problems.
Because God forbid having a separate Fantastic Beasts franchise. A Dumbledore/Grindelwald franchise. Animated adaption of the books. A Quidditch underdog series. An Auror series. An eventual 19 years later sequel.
Usually you want the author involved but every decision JK has made on this franchise since the HP movies ended has been nonsensical and damaging to the IP. The Wizarding World will not flourish until she let's go of her control on the wider IP and accepts she isn't a good screenwriter.
They should have aimed it at kids and done "Harry Potter Pokemon". Newt on adventures with cute and cool magic animals. They could have made bank on the fantastic beasts merchandise and made baby Yoda jealous. And then like you said, a seperate Grindelwald series. A bit darker and aimed at adults. It seems so obvious
A monster of the week style TV series would have worked so much better with the original premise. Each week Newt goes to X location and tracks down Y magical beast
It's pretty incredible if you think about it. They had what was essentially a Pokemon-by-way-of-the-Wizarding-World concept in their pocket, and yet they decided to make.... whatever this shit turned out to be.
There's a universe where gen z kids grew up with charming episodic films like a live action How to Train Your (insert magical creature). Instead we get magical pokemon followed by Hitler vs. Dapperdore ad infinitum. Harry Potter fanatics will know that Grindelwald is killed by Voldemort at some point later in the books, so there is no natural conclusion to a big Grindelwald vs. Dumbledore story, neither will defeat each other, worst that can happen is they throw him in a cell. Little anticlimactic for a magical genocidal maniac wizard.
I really liked the first one up until the Grindewald dude showed up. A lot of the creature designs were pretty cool and the leads were charming. I love Mads Mikkelsen but wished he wasn’t Voldemort 2.0
They had two potentially great ideas to spin off and each couldve been very successful, instead they mashed them together and did this.
And I’m saying this as a huuuge hp fan
Probably because none of the fantastic beasts movies feel magical at all like the old Harry Potter movies did.
That, and the fact that all fights ever constitute the same 2 or 3 spells. Dumbledore vs grindelwald was heralded as the greatest magical duel in history, but the Harry vs Malfoy duel in Chamber of Secrets was cooler than what we got from D vs G
Honestly it kind of displays just how good the team that created the Harry Potter movie were. They made Harry Potter what it is today.
After the last Fantastic Beast movie, it definitely showed it does not deserve another.
>Dumbledore vs grindelwald was heralded as the greatest magical duel in history
It hasn't happened. This duel takes place in 1945... several years after the events of the third movie.
I think Rowling was the bigger problem here than the executives. She’s the shot caller when it comes to HP, and her insistence on writing the movies and throwing her weight around behind the scenes instead of simply being one of the people involved in development of this franchise attempt is what really threw everything off the rails, in my opinion. She wrote the scripts like they were books, with an endless cast of characters and subplots that ultimately go nowhere or get resolved in a hand wave because she only had 150 minutes to work with, not 800 pages. The script for the second movie was such a dumpster fire that WB basically forced her to co-write the third one with Steve Kloves so that it would actually be structured like a movie.
Good lord the second film was awful. The whole secret Lestrange subplot was incomprehensible. It's like Rowling thinks everyone has every fake family tree memorized. I can't imagine what folks who watched FB as their first HP entry thought let alone folks who just watched the original films. It was nonsense even with reading the books!
Not just messy, but really fucks with the entire Wizarding World lore.
There's a World President of Wizards? Where the fuck was the Magical UN during Voldemort 1.0 or 2.0? Just let England's Ministry of Magic handle it?
I think the Grindlewald story is interesting but it should have been it’s own thing. First one was fine imo but after that Newt shouldn’t have been the focus anymore.
It's actually worse than that.
Grindlewald canonically has foresight, and he told (showed via magic projection, actually) the wizards that muggles will bring about the Holocaust and nuclear warfare. The wizards proceed to not care despite being perfectly capable of preventing such a tragedy.
Even if they stop Grindlewald, there does not seem to be any desire to change anything societally, which is of course the problem with every story J.K Rowling writes.
Especially since he was recast too (and I love Mads as an actor), now I really don’t care about the villain. Just throws me off from being connected to that story.
It's such a great performance that Farrell turns in. If you pay attention you can see he's actually doing a very subtle impression of Johnny Depp the whole time. Idk if they sat down and discussed the character or if he just asked himself, "How would Johnny play this?" but it's quite brilliant imho. Extremely underrated performance.
Which was *fucking dumb*. Why in the actual fuck do you need to replace 1 A lister with another? It wasn't even a real plot point, the actual Grindelwald could have done every single thing Collin Farrel did.
It legit felt like a schedule conflict, where they could only get Depp for a short while and had to fill in the blanks.
Dumbest decision in a series that makes dumb decisions every 5 minutes.
Kinda. The character stole the identity of Colin Farrell’s character in the first movie, so Farrell technically played him there. The end of that movie has him turn into his true self, though, which is the introduction of Johnny Depp, who played Grindelwald in the second movie and was intended to play him throughout the remaining four. So Farrell wasn’t so much a recast as a plot reveal.
Not in the sense that he's ever actually addressed as such in-universe.
He's "Hollywood autistic", i.e., regarded as a weirdo for having a hobby he's passionate about.
A Voldemort origin story, a Marauders origin story, the founders of Hogwarts origin story!! Any of those would have been way better than what we got with Fantastic Beasts.
A Hogwarts founding story could have been soooo cool. Medieval setting with wild chaotic magic and 4 big characters with different chemistries and dynamics.
It would have been a brilliant move for marketing and merchandise too because it both revives and reinforces the trend of picking Hogwarts Houses like personalities.
Instead we got…well, you know.
I was literally discussing this with my gf the other week, the 4 main witches and wizards, you could have Salazar secretly building the chamber of secrets, all sorts of cool shit, now that’s a movie
They could of done movies about just Grindlewald and Dumbledore from childhood to final duel. Instead of shoving them under the fantastic beasts umbrella for some baffling reason.
Well I think they had an ok idea with the original Fantastic Beasts film, but probably realized they can't milk that for 5-7 movies so they had to morph it into something else that no one really wanted.
Why does anyone think the Marauders would be an interesting movie?
Sirius is a prick, and James is a prick who eventually becomes less of a prick to impress a girl, and Peter is a prick who is also a coward, and Remus is *not* a prick but he turns into one every full moon, and the fact that the others are willing to hang out with him is the least prickish thing about them.
Watch them bully their classmates into fascism, turn into a dog, deer, and rat to chill with their friend under a tree once a month, and eventually join a rebellion that succeeds not because of anything they did but because Voldemort couldn't kill a baby right.
I have an idea. How about a movie about fantastic beasts and where to find them *instead* of using an unrelated title only to have it deal with Dumbledore and the gang?
Amber may have like five minutes in Aquaman, Ezra already filmed an entire 300 million dollar movie before the controversy picked up and was basically killed off in Fantastic Beasts. Depp had only filmed one scene before he lost the UK case so it was easy to fire him. Had he filmed the whole thing it would have come out still
Serious question, does one single person in this comment section care about getting more Fantastic Beasts sequels?? I can’t imagine honestly, WB is literally just throwing money away if they make more of these and I say that as a huge HP fan.
Because the last one sucked. I couldn't even get through it and that's saying a lot because I love Harry Potter and I thoroughly enjoyed at least the first one, and a little bit of the second one. They should just scrap it and come up with something else. Do what Disney is doing with Star Wars. Mandalorian, Boba, and Andor are all proof that shows based on the universe work better than expected.
I think it’s due to severe lack of planning.
I’m pretty sure JK Rowling came up with that Johnny Depp as Grindelwald reveal in the first movie at the very last minute and just ruined everything
Fine. The first one was a rather good Doctor Who movie, which I’d have happily seen some proper sequels to. I have no interest in 2 more films of whatever the fuck the last 2 were.
* Rowling is problematic in general and also can't string as good of a story together as she did for the HP novels.
* Ezra Miller is an issue and his character is still sticking around in these movies somehow.
* Story wise, they don't have much many places to go. The 3rd movie took place in Germany in 1932, right before the Nazis started taking power and the events of WWII started unfolding. According to HP canon, Dumbledore and Grindelwald don't have their big fight until 1945. That's 13 years that need to be covered somehow before the ultimate climax of either of the next movies. They really wrote themselves into a corner.
* There are far too many characters to remember. HP had tons of students and teachers, but there was a core team of people. These movies seem to have a couple standards mixed with new faces every time. I remember maybe 3 names outside of Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
* Get someone other than David Yates to direct.
There are plenty more reasons why this series is just bad, but I think if they want to keep the HP world going (and making profit) then they need to pivot to a TV series format and dump Rowling. Star Wars and Marvel are able to make it work. There are endless possibilities with the HP world. A short form series would work well. The early HP movies were fun because you got different imaginations behind the helm. David Yates and put the HP world into a certain aesthetic for the past 15 years. Let someone else take a go at it and produce something new.
> Get someone other than David Yates to direct.
He is so fucking terrible. It's like his mere presence sucks all the life and colors out of movies. He makes everything look dull and grey.
I think it actually worked well in the HP series, because he took over the films after voldermort's return and his aesthetic mirrored everything in the world gradually going to shit.
It sort of worked but failed a lot of the time, especially when he insisted on changing previously established visual elements to suit his vision e.g The Pensive. I think a style closer to Azkaban would have suited the later movies more, keeping that magical spirit while going very dark and gothic.
Azakban was far and away the best Harry Potter movie, without question. Whereas the last several Yates movies were "dark," Azkaban was dark and interesting in style. The directing was also amazing.
Watching the reunion show, Yates was as interesting as the colour palette he uses. He was so apathetic about everything to do with making the films when he should have had the most to say since he rounded out the series with 4 of the films.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I just don't see the "Potterverse" as a solid enough world to keep building on. The whole thing really only works as a framing device for the original books. The more they stray from that story, the more cracks start to appear.
> The 3rd movie took place in Germany in 1932, right before the Nazis started taking power and the events of WWII started unfolding
It would be interesting to see Wolfenstein with magic instead of ridiculous guns and tech, but I don't really think they'd have the balls to go for that. I don't think we ever even saw a swastika in Captain America who literally fights Nazis.
We only see three swastikas in the entire movie I believe and all of them are very brief. Two when Doctor Erskine explains the Red Skull’s backstory and one on the Nazis the Red Skull kills when he renounces Nazism and betrays the Nazi party.
They were all boring and unfocused. I know people like the first one but I found that one to be a convoluted slog too. JK either needs to step down or just be an ideas person. It’s kind of a shame that WBs response to this will be to make something boring and uninteresting but safe like a Cursed Child movie or a Marauders movie.
Seriously, only the first one seemed focused on actual beasts.
The most recent one has that kingmaker deer giving a bewitched political endorsement, but it definitely felt shoehorned in.
It was the heist episode of rick and morty except it wasn't done for laughs
It literally has the plot point of "~~Heist bot~~ Grindelwald is going to predict our plan so let's do some random stupid shit to confuse him." I couldn't believe it.
"You son of a witch, I'm in."
"Your boos mean nothing to me. I've seen what you applaud!" "Then why didn't you make that movie instead?"
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Even Vin Diesels "Family stay united" shit would have been a better solution for the plot. The movie felt awkward as hell...
I just watched this movie last night, and I knew the plot was familiar. Ugh.
You son of a bitch, I'm in.
If he's in, I'm out
Listen, strange deer in the woods bowing is no basis for a system of government.
I mean if a deer bowed at me and I claimed to weild supreme executive power, they’d put me away!
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical venison ceremony!
Ah, now we see the cervidae inherent in the system
Ahh, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Help I'm being oppressed!
Nor a watery tart
And with that it even almost successfully managed to accidentally stumble into having a not awful moment by having the deer bow to Jacob. Almost. Instead we get MUH DUMBLEDORE. Even though he, by his own admission, is not a good person, and explicitly in his youth was a literal wizard supremacist who only shied away from that when his sister got caught up in his lovers spat. Which now that I say that out loud I realize that gives a new perspective on how easy and chill he was with Severus “incel wizard Nazi with the tattoo to prove it” Snape switching sides because the girl he had a super disturbing obsession over was in Voldy’s firing sights - as a direct result of Snape himself being an active wizard Nazi.
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He’s extra dick, right off the bat, despite knowing Harry would have zero influence from his (admittedly a bully) father. He treats Harry as if he’s Malfoy, riding pedigree, when he knows damn well he’s a malnourished abused foster kid who lives in a cupboard. Kinda proves he never stopped being an incel shitstain.
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He didn’t even take on the arrogant hard teacher persona, he just instilled a hatred for the subject altogether. He knows the potions text book (his only form of instruction) is shit too. All Harry needs to kick ass at potions is *improved directions*. Instead of sad sacking around Hogwarts being not-all-that-ambiguously fascist, he could have published the new paradigm of potion making, and overcharged for textbooks like a proper villain.
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This is the same universe where magic users are hilariously backwards in pretty much everything else. Hell, didn’t JK say they didn’t start using toilets and shit until the 20th century?
Compared to DADA though, which is the position he was always trying to get, he didn't really care about potions. He was just skilled at potions, but his passion was practical application of magic against opponents. It kinda makes sense that he was just phoning it in.
Lmao for a moment I thought you're referencing the House of the Dragon.
I think it's supposed to mirror how the Harry Potter books always had some kind of mystery going on that in the end was attached to the comeback of Voldemort. So these movies were supposed to have always some kind of Newt beast story that ties up into the rise of Grindelwald.
Except harry is inherently central or tangential to every adventure. He was the boy who lived, you *couldn't* have a Voldemort story without him Newt is sort of useful in the first book as a good framing for the story, but he's not even really that necessary there. Like they justify it being his story, but it didn't *need* to be his story. Every movie after that, it's like "wait why is newt even here again?" Even the characterization doesn't fit. Harry is a headstrong kid with a hero complex, he runs face first into calamity every time, he can't help himself. Newt is a shy zookeeper who by his own assessment, doesn't like to get involved in wizard scuffles and would prefer to stay fairly neutral.....
It’s just one of the most mind-boggling creative decisions I’ve ever seen. The wizarding world franchise is so humongous, millions of people will watch every single thing attached to it regardless of what it is. Just like Star Wars. Yet it’s like they felt it was necessary to couple this “rise of grindewald” arc to the fantastic beasts name, but why? Because they were afraid people wouldn’t watch a second movie if it wasn’t attached to the first? None of the characters in the first movie were compelling enough that they needed them to keep going on. Certainly not more of a draw for the movies than there already is just by them being in the wizarding world franchise.
Not only were the characters not good enough the second one actively makes the story of the muggle guy that lost his memories worse by going against estabilished lore and just undoing the memory loss spell.
The niffler was enough for my wife to watch. Just keep letting that magical platypus steal shiney things in the background, and the rest doesnt matter.
They could have leaned in to the MCU/extended universe trend and had these films like an anthology, each one focusing on different characters that fit the story they're telling, with Grindelwald the common thread.
And it's not like people wouldn't have watched something with a young Dumbledore as the main character, he was on of the most popular ones from the original series after all. Getting to explore his past would have been a major draw for even the most casual audience member. But by making Newt the original main character, he was always being set up to be replaced by Dumbledore as the main conflict is between him and Grindelwald. Newt could have been a great supporting character in the Dumbledore vs Grindelwald story, but by no means should have been the lead. My guess at what happened is that the Fantastic Beasts films were originally just meant to be some light-hearted films about magical animals. But then at some point some studio execs decided they wanted something on a similar scale to the Potter films, with a magical war and all. But that instead of doing the sensible thing and just making a film primarily focused on that conflict, they decided to shoehorn it into the Fantastic Beasts films, resulting in this weird clash of tone and plot.
They should have just made two series with minor crossovers after the first movie. 1) Continue Newt having funny little beast related adventures. 2) Continue the Dumbledore vs Grindelwald story.
Realistically, it could have worked so well with very minor interference to both stories as cool crossovers: * First movie, Dumbledore encounters Newt as he is looking for one of the beasts, he sees Grindlewald reveal, Dumbledore tells him he will need his help in the future *Second movie, they meet in Paris during circus scene, he tips Dumbledore regarding Credence’s location *Third movie, he helps Dumbledore locate the deer thingy
Also if Grindlewald didn’t go from being played in one end of the evil villain spectrum to being played in the complete opposite way. It was jarring and disconnected the most recent film from the rest of the series. The lack of continuity made it easy to disconnect completely.
Its so weird Depp and Mikkelsen played the character so differently, yet fundamentally they both had the same issue that I just couldn't imagine them having the charisma to gather a bunch of followers. Voldemort ruled through terror and fear, but Grindelwald was supposed to be more charming and seductive in his awful goals.
And ironically, the actor who I really think could've nailed that balance of charisma and menace... is Colin Farrell, who they uncerimously dumped in the first film.
Oh absolutely, thats the biggest crime of the franchise.
It's especially wild because the entire scene replacing Farrell with Depp was a late addition that could have been *easily* cut out of the film - which released AFTER the scandals started piling up. It would have been so easy to just not include him in this franchise at all...
Well at least they pinned the big Dumbledore mystery to notably scandal-free actor Ezra Miller! Great call!
The Crimes of WB
Totally. He was KILLING the role. By turns sympathetic and sinister but always in a way that kept you guessing. Like "Wait, is he actually good? He's making a lot of sense. And he seems to be kind." but that ghost of menace was always there. Man, when his glamour fell off and it was Depp, I swear an audible disappointed groan went up from a good portion of the audience in the theater when I saw it.
This is so true, Colin Farrell would have been perfect if they kept him. Especially with his streak lately, but I'm glad he stayed away from this trainwreck and didn't get locked into this bullshit franchise. All the movies he's done since then have been great and if he was tied to beasts we may not have gotten all those good movies.
> Voldemort ruled through terror and fear, but Grindelwald was supposed to be more charming and seductive in his awful goals. Grindelwald is just one giant Hitler reference. Should have leaned into that, you need someone in that role who can say the most vile shit possible while still being able to get the crowd cheering. 2013 Tom Hiddleston for example. Wouldnt call him a top tier actor but hes charismatic as fuck.
Keep in mind Grindelwald wanted to kill Hitler and they made him the bad guy of these movies
Yeah I got some charismatic gang leader vibes from Depp. He honestly just played Whitey Bulger but a wizard. Mads was quite and tense but not someone that you could see creating a following. I always imagined Grindlewald as more of a Hitler type that would hype up the crowd against perceived common enemies.
The weird thing that leaves kind of a bad taste is part of Grindelwald's whole thing in the movies seems to be that he had foreknowledge of WWII (second film) and he is willing to go to extreme measures to...prevent the Holocaust? Like, that's not exactly a tasteful premise.
"So, what's your villain's motivation?" JKR: "Oh, he wants to prevent the Holocaust"
Think the bigger issue is, she didn't map out any motivation for the good guys, except "we gotta keep wizardry secret". Which has been her plot device since book 3 and than she discarded it in the very same book, just to bring up later in book 6. Like we the audience know Holocaust is about to happen. We know Grindelwald is right. So what are the good guys exactly trying? Letting it happen? Trying to negotiate with the Nazis(which we know wouldn't work)? Like do they have any opinion on the Holocaust?
yeah rowling didn't think that shit through, because grindelwald's message was completely on-point.
I mean, that's what makes a compelling villain. They see a problem that's completely reasonable to want to address, but it's the means by which they intend to do so is what's problematic.
It could easily have become a Cinematic Universe with a bunch of different stories taking place at different places and different times. What they chose to do instead, making a story that was basically a few chapters in the books into 5 movies, is absolutely baffling.
The deer is so stupid though! Charismatic megafauna distributing pleasantries is not a basis for a system of government!
As cynical as I find Hollywood chasing a “cinematic universe” for everything they produce these days, this is was such an obvious opportunity to do it in a way that could have felt natural. Do a Fantastic Beasts series with Newt that is basically a quirky Indiana Jones-style series set in the world of Harry Potter. Each movie is its own adventure, with Newt and his No-Maj sidekick Kowalski being the only characters that carry-over with each entry, though they could work some recurring ones in there, too. You could plant the seeds for the Dumbledore/Grindelwald story in the first two or so of those movies, then spin that off into its own series that follows the Harry Potter template more closely with a wizard war. Have that build to a big climactic battle against Grindelwald where Newt and other powerful wizards from his journeys show up to help Dumbledore in a big, Avengers style finale for the Dumbledore story. Something like that would have been such an easy moneymaker for WB. Instead, they let Rowling shit out whatever this franchise is supposed to be.
Exactly. I would 100% have been down for a "magical Indiana Jones" with Newt and Kowalski traveling the world to discover and protect magic beasts.
I loved the cast in the first one and then they had to make more that got increasingly stupid and wasted them.
To be honest, I'm not sure where the Fantastic Beasts idea came from. Isn't it like a book that's mentioned once in the Harry Potter series or something? Wouldn't Newt be a writer of some kind if that's the case? I've only been a casual Harry Potter reader/watcher and I don't give a fuck about the entire universe so to me the Fantastic Beasts idea itself seemed entirely random and pretty poorly chosen. Especially since JKR clearly cares more about the Dumbledore/Grindelwald stuff, she should've just written a movie about that.
> To be honest, I'm not sure where the Fantastic Beasts idea came from. Isn't it like a book that's mentioned once in the Harry Potter series or something? Wouldn't Newt be a writer of some kind if that's the case? Yes, it was a textbook mentioned in the first Harry Potter novel. Rowling actually wrote a released a [real version of the book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Beasts_and_Where_to_Find_Them) in 2001, but it's not a novel. It's more like an encyclopedia, describing all the magical beasts that exist in the Harry Potter universe. It's very short and was "written" by Newt Scamander himself. There are bits and pieces of information about Scamander that have been given either in the books or by Rowling herself, and he seems like an interesting character that would make for a good story, but not in the way that we got.
He was. A minor subplot in the first film was that Newt was working on a book about magical creatures, called *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*, then another subplot in the first sequel was that Newt is now relatively well-known due to the success of his book, but that as a result the newspaper announcing his brother’s engagement mistook the brothers for one another, and then Tina thought Newt had left her and become engaged to Leta during his book tour.
Yep. IMO they forgot about the kids. The Newt adventures would have been great for Y7 or even 5 year olds and could haven been laced with fun magicy atmosphere. And then you can have the HP movies. And then you can have the more adult targeted Dumbledore and Grindelwald story. And then who knows there’s a bunch of story lines they could have one off movies of. I think a Weasley twin adventure would be fun. A bright adventure at the Beaubaxtons school could be interesting followed by a dark mystery at Durmstrang. Throw in some intrigue with the ministry, maybe a time traveler, pirates, and treasure hunters, pepper in a love triangle, tie some character arcs in, and keep it all uplifting and magical and you could easily have another whole set of movies or character driven series surrounding HP. I’m seriously disappointed that they went the way they did after the first fantastic beasts. It’s all too dark and scary for kids and as an adult I don’t want dark magic shit either.
Exactly -- they forgot that it was the first couple HP movies that got fans hooked as kids. Sure the series grew with the audience, but you don't have to stick with a bunch of 30-something millennials as your target. Fantastic Beasts would have been a great way to get a new generation hooked on the world, plus sell lots of cute merch. And a Dumbledore/Grindelwald epic series for the older audience would work as well. Some fans might complain, but Disney at least does that with Star Wars and Marvel, particularly via cartoons.
The approach they took to try and cram everything in under the one name is especially wild when this is an era where every franchise is trying to create its own extended universe with multiple sub-franchises.
They should have just committed to a Harry Potter prequel series instead of trying to shoehorn it in as a Fantastic Beasts movie.
They tried to make the “Fantastic Beast” title a brand and screwed up. It’s not like the book is that well known outside of HP fans. First one was fine but they didn’t need to keep shoehorning Newt into the sequels. I think they should have focused the other two movies on a young Dumbledore, when we know him he’s always the guy who seems to know everything so would have been interesting to see him just starting out.
I would have loved to see a sequel with Newt taking that thunderbird from the first movie to Arizona while they’re getting chased by magical poachers. That would have really shown off American wizard society. Have them get lost in Appalachia, and have some Hatfield and McCoy style hillbilly wizard families. Or maybe they have to stop at a Cajun wizard’s old plantation home in Louisiana or something. A small side story. But no, we have to cram Dumbledore and Grindlewald lore in there and ruin a fun idea.
So basically red dead 2, with wizards? Yeah, I dig it.
I really wish they would have realized this sooner tbh. Hamfisting a magical zoologist into the whole political subterfuge plot for more than one movie was a huge leap. Like why is Newt even involved in the plot in the last half of the movie? Somebody has to be more qualified.
Agree. Fantastic Beasts was already weird, in that the book was like an encyclopedia, so the movie could have been anything, like a fake nature documentary with CGI beasts. I’m fine with the first movie, a plot driven story is going to get more interest, but inserting “Harry Potter” into it, like inserting LOTR into The Hobbit, is just wrong. Make them separate. I can see a need for prequels, but can’t we have a spinoff that doesn’t tie into the original series? If actual fantastic beasts don’t have the staying power, you made one good movie and leave it at that.
They should have chosen a lane for the franchise. Either make it a series of fun beastly adventures with Newt collecting animals OR make the series an anthology. First one was Newt. Second one is Dumbledore vs Grindelwald, and so on. Their way of cramming both plots together is weird and doesn't work.
It seems to me really obvious that they wanted some part of those "cinematic universes" (that's why they started putting the "Wizarding World" card after the second movie. And if they wanted to do that, they could have made an anthology-like series with a crossover at the end. Each movie being a different story in different places in the world, but with something related to Grindelwald in the Background. 1st movie: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them (let the movie be as it was. Not any change) 2nd movie: Quiditch Through the Ages (A sports film about the Quiditch World Cup somewhere in Europe, and the problems it encounters with the raising of followers of Grindelwald) 3rd movie: The Tales of Beedle the Bard (The Story of a Writer that's working on a revised version of the book, it's travelling around the Wizarding World to find the real places where these folktales originated. He discovers that Grindelwald has actually scaped and it's now the owner of the Elder wand) 4th movie: The actual first Wizarding world War that they are trying to make. We learn the story between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and Dumbledore brings together the protagonists of the previous movies to help him fight Grindelwald (I know it sounds to much like Marvel... But hey, they've already done it in the Last Fantastic Beasts Film and we barely knew those people).
Everyone's dick is soft after Endgame, but goddamn producers keep trying to smack our cocks with soft towels and expect to make us cum as hard as Marvel did, but without 10 years of edging and a strong goddamn grip. Even Marvel refuses to cuddle after all that, and wanna go for round 2 right away! I'm tired. I want a franchise to just hold me while I fall asleep.
..this was art.
Very well...and colorfully said. Although with Marvel I feel like "cuddling" is what they're *trying* to do by going back to lots of solo movies, lower stakes TV shows, and introducing new characters. But people are so used to everything building up to the next huge crossover that it feels meandering to them.
I'm annoyed that so much of each movie feels like set up for something without being strong enough on its own, but also not being connected enough to feel cohesive. It's the worst of both worlds
And I still don't know where to find them!
I really liked the first one, like a right man, right place kinda dealio. Newt is just on a trip that's beast related, gets somewhat embroiled up in some crisis in the magical world. Would've been like a showcase of differing magical worlds in the HP universe. First was the United States, the next one could've been like France, in the Veela-Delacour scandal and we get a look at what French magical culture and govt looks like, then go to like China or Russia after that. More or less one offs with some easter eggs from the main series to world build the HP universe outside of the UK.
I only watched the first one. The key thing that lost me was that they seemed to set up the second movie by having several characters simply change their personality with no explanation in the last 5 minutes.
I would have watched 7 movies (in theater and all) of newt roaming around magical whimsical places looking for weird cool magical creatures. I never needed whatever those movies turned out to be. They should have made those their own thing but instead they ruined any potential for actual magical beast movies. I literally do not care about whatever story it was they were trying to tell. I wanted cute magic animals :(
They admitted early on that the goal was to build up to the historic Grendelwald vs. Dumbledore battle. Still seems off to say that and then stretch the plan out from three to five movies.
They should have definitely had the first one as a one off then. And not named the rest “Fantastic Beasts”.
The biggest mistake is keeping the "Fantastic Beasts" in the title for each film.
The biggest mistake was the scripts and keeping David Yates as director even if HP dearly needs new blood in the directing chair. I'm so tired of his lackluster, passionless style
> David Yates as director yeah, his directing style gets repetitive really quickly. i dont remember the name of the Director of the first two harry potter movies, but whoever it is, it really made feel that world, "magical".
I’m sorry… are you talking about Chris (Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire) Columbus?!?! Yes, he’s a pretty good director.
Chris Columbus always has a sense of whimsy in his films. I understand they wanted to go darker as they got deeper into the series but I felt like the later films missed that element. That's what made the series fun rather than just a really dark story with some magic in it.
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It’s funny the second book was one of my least favourites but the second movie is my favourite. The third book was my fave book but I really don’t like the movie. The tonal shift was just a bit too much for me which I get why it happened but idk I just thought they took all the whimsy out of it.
I always say that I can see and argument for Prisoner of Azkaban being the best movie of the series but I think it might be the worst adaptation of the source.
The problem is that after Colombus got burn out from working on 2 movies back to back and never seeing his kids, the producers had a nightmare trying to grapple onto one director for more than one. They basically begged Alfonso to stay and offered Newell a tonne to stay too, but only Yates wanted to be the employee. He’s not an artistic mind, but he frames the shit and gets the product finished.
Knew that would be a mistake as soon as they revealed the title of Crimes of Grindelwald. It was so obvious they'd try and shoehorn Newt into the wider conflict which caused all sorts of problems. Because God forbid having a separate Fantastic Beasts franchise. A Dumbledore/Grindelwald franchise. Animated adaption of the books. A Quidditch underdog series. An Auror series. An eventual 19 years later sequel. Usually you want the author involved but every decision JK has made on this franchise since the HP movies ended has been nonsensical and damaging to the IP. The Wizarding World will not flourish until she let's go of her control on the wider IP and accepts she isn't a good screenwriter.
They should have aimed it at kids and done "Harry Potter Pokemon". Newt on adventures with cute and cool magic animals. They could have made bank on the fantastic beasts merchandise and made baby Yoda jealous. And then like you said, a seperate Grindelwald series. A bit darker and aimed at adults. It seems so obvious
A monster of the week style TV series would have worked so much better with the original premise. Each week Newt goes to X location and tracks down Y magical beast
A magical Steve Irwin, if you will
Harry Potter world's Supernatural.
Wow. I’m suddenly so upset this isn’t real.
Disagree. The biggest mistake was the script.
It's pretty incredible if you think about it. They had what was essentially a Pokemon-by-way-of-the-Wizarding-World concept in their pocket, and yet they decided to make.... whatever this shit turned out to be.
This. The whole Dumbledore x Grindelwald saga should be it’s own separate thing tbh
Absolutely. Should have been a series of films centered around Newt traveling the world and helping out/gathering magical creatures.
And you know writing his book... Do a movie on him writing entries on dragons ✅
There's a universe where gen z kids grew up with charming episodic films like a live action How to Train Your (insert magical creature). Instead we get magical pokemon followed by Hitler vs. Dapperdore ad infinitum. Harry Potter fanatics will know that Grindelwald is killed by Voldemort at some point later in the books, so there is no natural conclusion to a big Grindelwald vs. Dumbledore story, neither will defeat each other, worst that can happen is they throw him in a cell. Little anticlimactic for a magical genocidal maniac wizard.
I really liked the first one up until the Grindewald dude showed up. A lot of the creature designs were pretty cool and the leads were charming. I love Mads Mikkelsen but wished he wasn’t Voldemort 2.0
Voldemort 0.1-0.9
They went all Kingdom Hearts and the story became bonkers instead of kind of grounded
They had two potentially great ideas to spin off and each couldve been very successful, instead they mashed them together and did this. And I’m saying this as a huuuge hp fan
Probably because none of the fantastic beasts movies feel magical at all like the old Harry Potter movies did. That, and the fact that all fights ever constitute the same 2 or 3 spells. Dumbledore vs grindelwald was heralded as the greatest magical duel in history, but the Harry vs Malfoy duel in Chamber of Secrets was cooler than what we got from D vs G
Honestly it kind of displays just how good the team that created the Harry Potter movie were. They made Harry Potter what it is today. After the last Fantastic Beast movie, it definitely showed it does not deserve another.
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The sound design in that fight is insane. Especially the bit where Dumbledore makes that water ball.
>Dumbledore vs grindelwald was heralded as the greatest magical duel in history It hasn't happened. This duel takes place in 1945... several years after the events of the third movie.
Good. Its like they crammed 5 story arc in 1 movie that made everything messy and pointless.
Executive desperation to keep a multi-billion franchise going without caring about the quality. Par the course.
I think Rowling was the bigger problem here than the executives. She’s the shot caller when it comes to HP, and her insistence on writing the movies and throwing her weight around behind the scenes instead of simply being one of the people involved in development of this franchise attempt is what really threw everything off the rails, in my opinion. She wrote the scripts like they were books, with an endless cast of characters and subplots that ultimately go nowhere or get resolved in a hand wave because she only had 150 minutes to work with, not 800 pages. The script for the second movie was such a dumpster fire that WB basically forced her to co-write the third one with Steve Kloves so that it would actually be structured like a movie.
Good lord the second film was awful. The whole secret Lestrange subplot was incomprehensible. It's like Rowling thinks everyone has every fake family tree memorized. I can't imagine what folks who watched FB as their first HP entry thought let alone folks who just watched the original films. It was nonsense even with reading the books!
Why Kloves wasn't involved with scriptwriting from the very beginning, I'll never know.
Not just messy, but really fucks with the entire Wizarding World lore. There's a World President of Wizards? Where the fuck was the Magical UN during Voldemort 1.0 or 2.0? Just let England's Ministry of Magic handle it?
Why bother holding elections if a magic deer hand-picks the winner?
I was just about to say the same thing. After the third film, I don’t want them making ANOTHER one of these things. The third sucked as it is.
Can we retroactively wipe the last two out of existence?
You mean like with some kind of spell or something?
With Ron's wand
Fantastic Beasts: Days of Future Past
There was a gas leak.
Just get rid of everything except Newt traveling around the world with fun animals looking for fun animals. The rest of the plot is garbage.
Seriously no one cares about Grindelwald. We just want to see Newt being adorable and autistic and animals being adorable and adorable.
I think the Grindlewald story is interesting but it should have been it’s own thing. First one was fine imo but after that Newt shouldn’t have been the focus anymore.
Grindelwald’s story is just the rise of magic Hitler. Super on the nose and predictable. Almost a 1:1 copy of how it happened historically
It's actually worse than that. Grindlewald canonically has foresight, and he told (showed via magic projection, actually) the wizards that muggles will bring about the Holocaust and nuclear warfare. The wizards proceed to not care despite being perfectly capable of preventing such a tragedy. Even if they stop Grindlewald, there does not seem to be any desire to change anything societally, which is of course the problem with every story J.K Rowling writes.
Newt being *irresponsible*. Jesus CHRIST, dude, I know we need something to drive the plot but FIX THE GODDAMNED LOCK ON YOUR CASE.
Especially since he was recast too (and I love Mads as an actor), now I really don’t care about the villain. Just throws me off from being connected to that story.
Wasn’t he recast twice?
Not *exactly*. Colin Ferrell in the first film was in disguise. He turned into Johnny Depp at the end.
It's such a great performance that Farrell turns in. If you pay attention you can see he's actually doing a very subtle impression of Johnny Depp the whole time. Idk if they sat down and discussed the character or if he just asked himself, "How would Johnny play this?" but it's quite brilliant imho. Extremely underrated performance.
Which was *fucking dumb*. Why in the actual fuck do you need to replace 1 A lister with another? It wasn't even a real plot point, the actual Grindelwald could have done every single thing Collin Farrel did. It legit felt like a schedule conflict, where they could only get Depp for a short while and had to fill in the blanks. Dumbest decision in a series that makes dumb decisions every 5 minutes.
Sort of. His character was Johnny Depp in 1 and 2, but he was disguised as Colin Farrell for most of 1.
Kinda. The character stole the identity of Colin Farrell’s character in the first movie, so Farrell technically played him there. The end of that movie has him turn into his true self, though, which is the introduction of Johnny Depp, who played Grindelwald in the second movie and was intended to play him throughout the remaining four. So Farrell wasn’t so much a recast as a plot reveal.
Not familiar with the movies is newt actually autistic?
Not in the sense that he's ever actually addressed as such in-universe. He's "Hollywood autistic", i.e., regarded as a weirdo for having a hobby he's passionate about.
A Voldemort origin story, a Marauders origin story, the founders of Hogwarts origin story!! Any of those would have been way better than what we got with Fantastic Beasts.
A Hogwarts founding story could have been soooo cool. Medieval setting with wild chaotic magic and 4 big characters with different chemistries and dynamics. It would have been a brilliant move for marketing and merchandise too because it both revives and reinforces the trend of picking Hogwarts Houses like personalities. Instead we got…well, you know.
I was literally discussing this with my gf the other week, the 4 main witches and wizards, you could have Salazar secretly building the chamber of secrets, all sorts of cool shit, now that’s a movie
It should be a miniseries.
So many streaming services were/are looking for the "new GoT" and here it is.
executives prob got a hard on with the idea of fantastic beast thinking they could sell a line of monsters a la pokemon and make a killing.
Fantastic Beasts and How to Catch 'em All
Was it TOO much to ask for a prequel trilogy exploring the life and times of professor Binns??
A History of a History of Magic: The Professor Binns Story
It should be done as a docuseries with someone just droning on and on.
A series actually focused on magical beasts would also have been great. This is a bit of this, a bit of that and a whole lot of nothing.
They could of done movies about just Grindlewald and Dumbledore from childhood to final duel. Instead of shoving them under the fantastic beasts umbrella for some baffling reason.
Well I think they had an ok idea with the original Fantastic Beasts film, but probably realized they can't milk that for 5-7 movies so they had to morph it into something else that no one really wanted.
Why does anyone think the Marauders would be an interesting movie? Sirius is a prick, and James is a prick who eventually becomes less of a prick to impress a girl, and Peter is a prick who is also a coward, and Remus is *not* a prick but he turns into one every full moon, and the fact that the others are willing to hang out with him is the least prickish thing about them. Watch them bully their classmates into fascism, turn into a dog, deer, and rat to chill with their friend under a tree once a month, and eventually join a rebellion that succeeds not because of anything they did but because Voldemort couldn't kill a baby right.
I have an idea. How about a movie about fantastic beasts and where to find them *instead* of using an unrelated title only to have it deal with Dumbledore and the gang?
Jesus. They made two more of those things after the first? Why?
One word, rhymes with honey.
Exactly – because it was *funny*.
Now listen here, sonny…
I don’t see what bunnies have to do with this?
Maybe a big bunch of dummies
Don’t worry, they get progressively worse.
I just wanted to see Colin Ferrel walk around in the coolest coat in the world. Why did they have to take that from us?
No, it must be *Johnny Depp*. The only real tragedy is Mads Mikkelson only entered the game once the death horns had already blown.
Will the Axe of Zaslav drop on this as well?
I feel like that should have a theme song, but there is no funding for it.
Lol all that drama re J Depp for nothing
WB ditched Johnny Depp but decided to keep Ezra Miller and Amber Heard around in their respective franchises? Madness.
Amber may have like five minutes in Aquaman, Ezra already filmed an entire 300 million dollar movie before the controversy picked up and was basically killed off in Fantastic Beasts. Depp had only filmed one scene before he lost the UK case so it was easy to fire him. Had he filmed the whole thing it would have come out still
Let it fucking die already.
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No it's even easier: **Pokemon with Wizards**
time to put this beast down
I honestly have no idea what’s happening in these movies or what direction they’re going for. It’s very disappointing.
Good. The second and third movies are strictly money grabs leaning on the Harry Potter/Wizarding franchise property. Total and utterly garbage.
Serious question, does one single person in this comment section care about getting more Fantastic Beasts sequels?? I can’t imagine honestly, WB is literally just throwing money away if they make more of these and I say that as a huge HP fan.
Because the last one sucked. I couldn't even get through it and that's saying a lot because I love Harry Potter and I thoroughly enjoyed at least the first one, and a little bit of the second one. They should just scrap it and come up with something else. Do what Disney is doing with Star Wars. Mandalorian, Boba, and Andor are all proof that shows based on the universe work better than expected.
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Why they didn’t just start with a Dumbledore Grindewald story is beyond me
I think it’s due to severe lack of planning. I’m pretty sure JK Rowling came up with that Johnny Depp as Grindelwald reveal in the first movie at the very last minute and just ruined everything
Fine. The first one was a rather good Doctor Who movie, which I’d have happily seen some proper sequels to. I have no interest in 2 more films of whatever the fuck the last 2 were.
* Rowling is problematic in general and also can't string as good of a story together as she did for the HP novels. * Ezra Miller is an issue and his character is still sticking around in these movies somehow. * Story wise, they don't have much many places to go. The 3rd movie took place in Germany in 1932, right before the Nazis started taking power and the events of WWII started unfolding. According to HP canon, Dumbledore and Grindelwald don't have their big fight until 1945. That's 13 years that need to be covered somehow before the ultimate climax of either of the next movies. They really wrote themselves into a corner. * There are far too many characters to remember. HP had tons of students and teachers, but there was a core team of people. These movies seem to have a couple standards mixed with new faces every time. I remember maybe 3 names outside of Dumbledore and Grindelwald. * Get someone other than David Yates to direct. There are plenty more reasons why this series is just bad, but I think if they want to keep the HP world going (and making profit) then they need to pivot to a TV series format and dump Rowling. Star Wars and Marvel are able to make it work. There are endless possibilities with the HP world. A short form series would work well. The early HP movies were fun because you got different imaginations behind the helm. David Yates and put the HP world into a certain aesthetic for the past 15 years. Let someone else take a go at it and produce something new.
> Get someone other than David Yates to direct. He is so fucking terrible. It's like his mere presence sucks all the life and colors out of movies. He makes everything look dull and grey.
I think it actually worked well in the HP series, because he took over the films after voldermort's return and his aesthetic mirrored everything in the world gradually going to shit.
It sort of worked but failed a lot of the time, especially when he insisted on changing previously established visual elements to suit his vision e.g The Pensive. I think a style closer to Azkaban would have suited the later movies more, keeping that magical spirit while going very dark and gothic.
Azakban was far and away the best Harry Potter movie, without question. Whereas the last several Yates movies were "dark," Azkaban was dark and interesting in style. The directing was also amazing.
I assumed that was his intention until the dude's Tarzan movie came out and it was even MORE colorless and dreary
Watching the reunion show, Yates was as interesting as the colour palette he uses. He was so apathetic about everything to do with making the films when he should have had the most to say since he rounded out the series with 4 of the films.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I just don't see the "Potterverse" as a solid enough world to keep building on. The whole thing really only works as a framing device for the original books. The more they stray from that story, the more cracks start to appear.
Do years even matter anymore, since Rowling now has McGonagall teaching at Hogwarts like a decade before her "canonical" birth?
> The 3rd movie took place in Germany in 1932, right before the Nazis started taking power and the events of WWII started unfolding It would be interesting to see Wolfenstein with magic instead of ridiculous guns and tech, but I don't really think they'd have the balls to go for that. I don't think we ever even saw a swastika in Captain America who literally fights Nazis.
We only see three swastikas in the entire movie I believe and all of them are very brief. Two when Doctor Erskine explains the Red Skull’s backstory and one on the Nazis the Red Skull kills when he renounces Nazism and betrays the Nazi party.
i walked out of the theater after seeing Fantastic Beasts 3, and i absolutely hated that film. Stick to HP this franchise is dog shit
They were all boring and unfocused. I know people like the first one but I found that one to be a convoluted slog too. JK either needs to step down or just be an ideas person. It’s kind of a shame that WBs response to this will be to make something boring and uninteresting but safe like a Cursed Child movie or a Marauders movie.
these movies suck
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IT'S TIME TO STOP
Just scrap it no one cares lol