Review of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) by Lowfiv3S — 18 Apr 2022

Newt and his animals really need to stay out of the Dumbledore vs Grindelwald conflict, it really muddies the tone of the movie from the dark gritty civil war to cute fun animal scenes. Unlike the previous movie, this movie at least makes fantastic beasts an integral plot to the movie, that being the magic deer to determine elections.

Doing so makes the movie stupid though, like if everyone watching the twitch live stream at the end of the movie knows Grindelwald is lying about the deer bowing to him then how is he going to have any followers for the next two movies? Jacob, Newt, and Newt's assistant are constantly being shoehorned into these movies for no reason.

Why put a muggle in major danger doing wizard quests against the most dangerous wizards? It seems Dumbledore is very irresponsible and not thinking straight. Let's get a muggle to do a wizard cop's job and hope he doesn't die like Jacob should've stopped being relevant after the first movie.

Let the man bake and keep him out of wizarding problems for once. Hell, why not get Tina to replace Jacob? She's a wizard and a wizard cop she's an instant upgrade. I'm glad they got rid of Nagini, she really has no reason to be in any of these movies besides an "Oh look it's a character from Harry Potter" moment.

I have no hate towards Eddie, Depp, or Mads, but I just want Newt to have his own separate TV show/movie not connected to the wizard war. Mads does a way better job at being Grindelwald than Depp. Important aspects like the blood pact, Queenie's redemption, and Credence's arc, were all rushed in this movie and concluded too soon.

Overall, a decent movie if you turn your brain off, but if you start to think about the plot it all starts crumbling like Voldemort at the end of Deathly Hallows.