Everton offers a surgical dissection of how narrative inconsistency cripples modern franchises, proving that magic without logic is merely a plot hole. It is a sharp reminder that spectacle can never compensate for the erosion of a story's internal credibility.
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Fantastic Flops and How to Roast Them
Added:The tragedy of McBth shows us a man consumed by ambition. He rises to King of Scotland, but nothing ever lasts.
Now, ambition itself is not a crime, unless you're a Slytherin, and his real downfall was his hubris. He believed himself invincible in his position. Of course, he was not. JK Rowling wanted to write a series of magical children's novels. This catapulted her to stardom and success, garnering international fame and literal billions of dollars.
She thought she could spin gold with a pen and set herself up to write five screenplays that juggled two tonally contradictory storylines. She could not.
The Fantastic Beasts films are over at three, not five. And no one can delude themselves into thinking her writing didn't contribute in a major way. Is McBth a perfect comparison? Not by a long shot. But it is extremely funny to imagine the weird sisters say telling Joanne that no man shall defeat thee and then having her deranged obsession with trans women lead to her downfall. It's almost poetic. That being said, you can apply any allegory you like. Icarus, Emperor Nero, Elon Musk, take your pick.
The story is the same. Her initial success convinced her she could do no wrong. Fantastic Beasts proved otherwise. Welcome all to the last video in this Harry Potter series. We're taking Joanne herself back to court. And I'm afraid that I'm going to need all of you graduate magical lawyers to help me litigate this case. These films explore themes and events almost as baffling as those in The Cursed Child. They repeat old mistakes, invent new ones, and boldly go where no competent editor would ever let a story go. wands away and funny wigs and gavvels back out for one last time. Now, it's not a secret of Dumbledore that this is the biggest overarching complaint about the series as a whole, but I think I do need to mention it up top. The series is called Fantastic Beasts. The main character is N Scamander, the author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He's a magisoolologist. He's obsessed with the care, conservation, rescue, and just existence of these wacky magical creatures. Naturally, half of the runtime of these Fantastic Beasts films is dedicated to a completely different, unrelated story that carries over from the books. I thought we went through this, Joanne. If the Wizarding World logo is on the poster, people are going to see it without you chucking all of these little references and callbacks in. They just are. These movies are not about fantastic beasts. They're about Grindlewald and his rise to power and then subsequent baffling bullshittery and then a smattering of fantastic beasts when they remember. This juggling act is handled about as well as if you handed a toddler a set of running flaming chainsaws and then asked them to keep them in the air for you. The first film does all right, but even it suffers from tonal whiplash and a strange protagonist narrative mismatch. The next two swap back and forth with jarring incoherence.
Are you okay, Tinker? What are you doing?
As I was saying, the second two jump back and forth with jarring incoherence, and every sparse attempt to meld these narratives is painfully contrived. Also, I have one more thing to mention before we dive into the discussion of these films, and it's that I can do a passable Eddie Redm impression, so get ready to hear that a fair bit throughout this video.
This movie is a bit of a time capsule for me. It came out in 2016 when JK Rowling's skull was still partially filled by her brain instead of entirely mold. It was the same year as The Cursed Child, so people could still pretend she didn't have anything to do with that and it wasn't canon and didn't exist. This movie even presented some good fun ideas. If someone told me they were a fan of this film, I would consider that perfectly reasonable. I remember actually enjoying this one, especially the Fantastic Beasts themselves. It's quirky, it's whimsical, it's different.
The cracks were already showing here, however. There are some strange plot lines, some groaninducing dialogue and nostalgia bait, and a baffling finale.
Also, I said this one handles the Grindlewald New Divide best, and I stand by that. But that doesn't mean it does it perfectly. In fact, it literally opens on a big quadruple murder, heaps of headlines about this dark, awful, evil wizard, then transitions straight into a whimsical traveler with a magic case and upbeat, happy music. Bit of a tonal shift there that really represents the two conflicting ideas of these films. Let's start with the better part, shall we? And talk about the fantastic beasts themselves.
N Scamander has a lot of beasts hidden in his case. I am incredibly jealous of him and angry that I can't do this.
Also, his creatures are sublime and the designs are interesting, cute, and quite wonderful. I have a line from my notes that simply reads, "Moon carves are amazing." And I will not say a single bad word about them. That's true. They don't play any role in the story, though. So, what about the ones that do?
The Niffler is the big selling point of this one. It's basically the face of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, and for good reason. Nifflers are adorable, but they are just fat little platypuses, aren't they? They just ripped off Australia.
That's a dog move, bro. Also, I get that they're cute and cuddly and wonderful, and I would die for them, but nippers are a huge problem for society, right?
Like this guy gets one whiff of a single coin from inside N's case, goes straight for the bank where everyone's got some gold and [ __ ] and causes a ridiculous ruckus. Also, uh, N sees the Niffler on a trolley like an inch from being in plain sight of the guards, but doesn't do anything about it. Ever heard of Axio? Guys, no. I'm not going to stop mispronouncing it. Okay, seriously, do a non-verbal spell or two. This guy's going to be seen. Plus, even if he's not, he's stealing all of their [ __ ] N is an irresponsible pet owner. That's what I'm trying to say here. This sniffler causes huge amounts of chaos in New York City, and that's on N. His beasts are fantastic, but his care of them is a little lax. The erupant being loose is not treated with nearly enough urgency here. It's humongous. It destroys an entire zoo and could have easily killed or injured a whole bunch of muggles. The okammy makes a big hassle for them and potentially [ __ ] up this building. The demigu start stealing stuff. Look, the demigguys oammy sequence is actually pretty great, and much of the damage to the city and its population is the point, but N is nowhere near concerned enough about this. In fact, he presents as a massive [ __ ] because of his bad pet ownership. He denies that they got out, gaslights Tina along the way, and gets extremely lucky. Is he ever properly punished for this potentially disastrous lack of care? No. Anyway, back to the beasts themselves. I enjoyed the romp with the arumpant. I enjoyed the cockroach teacup part for the okammy. I enjoy seeing all of the beasts in their enclosure in his case. Let's have fun with this while we can because we see precious little of it in future films.
Honestly, I don't even really care if this was all to sell toys. As I said, they're adorable and I think the tone of the story when they're on screen makes sense for a Wizarding World film. There is a good movie in here somewhere and there's probably even a good series of movies in here somewhere, too, if Joanne hadn't got lost in the source. In any case, I appreciate the focus on magical beasts in this movie, even if I don't appreciate new as a beast keeper. How does he keep them, by the way? Oh, in his giant magical case, of course.
[music] So, the case is actually a big old zoo.
Enclosures for half a dozen different types of animals with magical enrichment and everything. It houses an elephant-sized erupant and this huge ass Thunderbird guy with bad CGI feathers.
He's enchanted a carrying case to have more space than a house I will ever afford in my [ __ ] life and just walks around with it, right? So why isn't everyone doing this? If you can enchant this carryable object into a veritable palace, surely everyone's just going to carry around their portable houses.
Hermione sort of did this in Deathly Hallows, but not to this extent. God, the Weasley's could have had an entire village to themselves and never worry about rent. What am I saying? Everyone can do this. The housing market's [ __ ] now. You can potentially create infinite space. Mass doesn't matter. Honestly, I don't know what to do with this information. I know it was already in the world with the tent at the World Cup and Hermione's bag, but I thought there'd be at least a hard andf fast limit. N's case is huge. It's like a small apartment building. Is there any limit at all? Naturally not, because Joanne would never in a million years bother thinking about that kind of stuff. And look, she doesn't really have to here. I'm not telling her not to have the case be like this. I'm just using it as further evidence for the points I've already made in previous videos. The Weasley's should not be struggling in the way that they're struggling. Also, it's important to point out that continually adding to your world building has consequences. This spell is incredibly consequential. We've seen other versions of it before, but this one is more egregious, just like every other time Joanne adds to a potion or spell or effect. Side note, we get it.
He's fat. Hilarious. He's so fat he can't fit in the case that this giant irumpant lives in. God damn it, Joanne.
Don't make me come over there and demold your room. Okay, so what other magic does she add to in this film? Well, in the Makuza building, they magically animate these little notes to look like rats. These rat memos are cute until two of them [ __ ] shred each other. Are they enchanted to do that? Surely not.
What a waste of that memo you just magicked your typewriter to write. But how did this happen? When they enchant the notes, do they become sapient? Do they become bloodthirsty? This little 5-second gag has given me an existential dilemma because I don't know what the [ __ ] is happening and no explanation really makes sense. Even now, after all this time, Joanne's tiny little details are just as stupid as they always were.
This isn't about two paper rats fighting. It's a moment she thought was funny or cute or cool or interesting, but didn't think about. It's so inconsequential. I get that. But outside of its context, it's nonsense. It breaks the people casting the spell or it breaks the spell itself or it breaks the concept of transfiguration. Whatever your explanation, it has weird connotations. Moving on. Legmensy in Harry Potter is mindreading. Don't listen to what Snape says in book five.
You cast a spell or just focus or something and you can broadly tell what's going on in someone's head. Here in Fantastic Beasts, Queenie is Professor X. That's fine as a worldbuing detail. Tons was a metamorphagus that could change her appearance at will and magic exists, so it's not all that wild, but it's definitely interesting. Having such a powerful ability at your disposal surely trivializes a lot of conflicts.
No, you'd have to expect that Queenie has to take a back seat in many of these films because it would make it far too difficult for the villains to get anything done near her, right? Yep. I guess that's the hypothesis that I'm running with on these films I know nothing about and have never seen before. So, we'll obviously come back to this later, but this addition and extension is a particularly bold call.
As I hinted at, it's something that any writer would have to really think about carefully and monitor closely because it's an extremely powerful ability.
Joanne needs to think about what situations she puts Queenie in, how she reacts to them, and what information she can gather from the people around her.
She does not. In fact, there's some pretty big issues Queenie should be across, but isn't. Let's talk about magical America, shall we?
We talked a lot about this subject in all of the other videos, so it's only fair that it comes back here. I'll say right off the bat, some things have improved. That being said, oh [ __ ] there's house elves all over the Makuza headquarters. I guess Joanne has learned nothing. Look, lady, the movies wrote those slaves out of the story for a reason. Why the [ __ ] are you bringing them back in? Just couldn't imagine America without slaves. saying, "I know that's a cheap shot by me, but it does feel very strange that they're back, right? I suppose there's potential room for improvement here, though. This house elevator operator is wearing clothes. In fact, many of the house elves we see are wearing clothes, so maybe I have to retract some of my potential complaints.
Either this guy is free and he's employed by the MFBI, or he's been set free, but loves slavery so much that he's choosing to continue to work for them." Now, before you say I'm being uncharitable by even bringing that second one up as an option, just really think about how Joanne characterized them in the books, can you honestly say that we can rule it out completely? I can't. So, non-magical people are referred to as muggles in Harry Potter.
Here, people with no magic are referred to as >> the no match. No magic. The non- wizard.
>> No match. Ah, this term is so cringe. No magic. Wow. How long did it take you to come up with that one, Joanne? What was wrong with Muggle? Or is this another way to artificially inflate a divide between two cultures again? You'll remember when she did that with wizards and muggles back in the books.
Seriously, muggle already sounded a bit like a slur, didn't it? But now we have culturally different terms for muggles, and I just don't know that I love it.
But what I love far less is Makuza being a ridiculous nightmare institution where people get executed without trial. Our heroes get taken to a death sentence cell and yeah, they get sentenced to death by Grindlewald. Spoilers, but these government workers go along with it. Seriously, he orders their execution on the spot and they just do it. Now, you could say that he imperious them or something that they wouldn't normally do this kind of barbaric [ __ ] But you actually can't say that because there's an entire death sentence chamber where they take them to. They put them in the happy memories chair like Simple Rick and pop them with weird acid goo. Just use a Vicadavra. It's instant and completely humane as far as this ridiculous [ __ ] goes. Now, I'm not criticizing the decision to have Makuza be insanely [ __ ] up and potentially worse than the Ministry of Magic. At face value, this is interesting, just like I said about this theme in the original books, but it has to go somewhere. Two of our heroes work for the government. Naturally, this means we should be headed towards some serious character growth and social commentary, right? Well, we don't see it in this film, so we've got a bit of work cut out for us for the future ones, don't we?
We've really got to do something about this governmental problem, even if it's just having the Goldstein sisters quit and never work for that terrible institution ever again. Come to think of it, how did Queenie not know about this?
Either no employees have ever thought or knew about this awful murder chamber, or she's a piece of [ __ ] There's genuinely no in between. She's either ignorant or immoral. Take your pick now, but be prepared for that choice to potentially change down the line. Regardless, there's no trial process here. The government just allows Graves to take these prisoners and execute them. What the [ __ ] Is there nothing in place to stop this? Is no one involved going to maybe question some aspect of this? Why do they act like Grindleald is so evil and awful at the end when they're almost just as bad? God, >> if you hadn't said all those nice things to Madam Pickory about me, I wouldn't be back on the investigative team now.
>> Holy [ __ ] bootlicker. Batman, are you for real? Joanne, do you have one single iota of critical thought rattling around in that fungus trap of a head? This is so much worse than Harry Potter wanting to be an aura. At least he was a kid whose experience with governmental atrocities was secondhand for the most part. Here, Tina is in the death chamber. She's in a [ __ ] death chamber where her co-workers are about to execute her. She saw it. She knows the deplorable [ __ ] they do. She saw them murder Credence and she still goes back to work for them. Oh my [ __ ] Dumbledore. I just don't get it. I don't [ __ ] get it. It's not like Grindy Depel was the only one doing all of this bad stuff. Her regular co-workers were the ones putting her to death without a trial. They were the ones shooting Credence with their wizard guns. Graves was trying to stop that second one. Wow, what a twisted and warped sense of morals our main characters have in this series. And we're not even up to the really bad ones. For those of you that have watched all of the movies, you know that this gets worse. But this is already pretty impressive. I hate Tina.
She's a bootlicking piece of [ __ ] And the second she got kicked out, she ran straight back in for another mouthful of boot. Absolutely pathetic. It really proves that Joanne can't write these institutions in a different way. She's genuinely incapable of the nuance required for that. All right, we've touched upon it. So, let's talk about Grindlewald, his plans, and his ideology in this film.
Gerlet Grindleald was mentioned in the Harry Potter books. He had a romantic and ideological relationship with Albus Dumbledore where they planned to take over the muggle world for the greater good. In this film, he's impersonating Percal Graves, a high-ranking Makuza employee, and only reveals himself to be Grindlewald right at the end. He seeks an obscurial young Witcher wizard who harbors a powerful and dangerous obscurus within them, which can burst forth for devastating and often uncontrollable results. He figures out that the obscurial who's been causing damage throughout the city is Credence, this little grown man orphan boy. At the very end, he tries to recruit Credence to his cause while all the rest of Makuza machine gun the kid to death.
Okay, so Credence is dead. That's super sad and awful and crazy. He's just dead.
Damn, no one could survive that. And it would be unreasonable to think they could. Why would you show them getting so entirely eviscerated if they weren't dead? Then Grindleald makes a big speech about the statute of secrecy and who it really protects and why it's necessary at all. So, in a fascinating turn of events, Grindleald is actually both right and wrong here. He's very much in the right in the way that it's stupid and it should be repealed. This goal, though being pursued for bad reasons, is very clearly the correct view. Gee, I hope that doesn't become a theme. He's wrong, however, in the way that it's absolutely protecting wizards more than muggles. The only reason they're secret in the first place is so they don't have to bother helping all the lame ass boring muggles with their stupid non-magical problems. Uh, snooze first.
I mean, it's really because that's the whole conceit of the fantasy Jo-Ann's made, but in universe, it's the laziness thing. The muggles are getting screwed by this idea, Gelllet. You already control them. He's meant to be all evil and bad because he wants to subjugate the muggles and rule over them. Do you seriously not see that? That's how [ __ ] works right now. Every time they so much as catch a whiff of one bit of magic, they get their memories wiped. You control the narrative. You control what they do and don't know. You control where they can and can't go. Bro, you've already won. This is my problem with Joannne's idea that wizards are benevolent, even ostracized or victimized members of society. She keeps asserting that wizards are in hiding for everyone's good when it's plain with a bit of observation and analysis that it only ever benefits the wizards. Wizards are not the victims here. They're the ones gaslighting and ruining the muggle world. Also, obscurials probably wouldn't even exist without the statute of secrecy. Okay, so there are always going to be terrible parents who [ __ ] up their children regardless, but the ones we see in the stories surely would have been much better off with an integrated magical and non-magical society. How do we think that this segregated lifestyle is okay? It's super not, right? Anyway, Grindleald is totally right here, but because they showed him murdering people at the start and using rhetoric that's too extreme and also hitting and dismissing credence, he's a villain who's wrong about everything, and we can't engage with his radical, malicious ideas. Definitely don't listen to him about his plans for political change.
Also, he's the most incredible powerful magical wizard duelist ever. Taking on these dozens of auras and ministry officials singlehandedly about to crush them all with his amazing wizardry until N throws the good old yo-yo bat. He doesn't see that one coming and gets captured like a dumb idiot. Then he turns from Colin Farrell into Johnny Depp. Okay, we have to talk about this.
You know what? [ __ ] it. I'm going to start this Johnny Depp section by talking about Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell is so [ __ ] cool. Incredible shame they didn't keep him as Grindleald after being Percal Graves. He is a much better actor than Johnny Depp. Fight me.
If you haven't seen In Bruge, go watch it immediately after finishing this video. Set a timer or reminder or something. Also, his coat is [ __ ] sick. He has insane drip in this film.
My god, I wish I looked half as [ __ ] cool as Colin Farrell. This isn't a complaint or nitpick. It's just pure jealousy. He's handsome. He's talented.
And he gets to wear that cool stuff.
God, what a man. Magical law colleagues.
How do I get this kind of drip? Please help me. God damn it. Why couldn't it just be Colin Farrell the whole movie?
He's an incredible actor. He has gravitas. He has range. He has an established presence in this world and series now. He even has a unique bespoke look we've got used to throughout this whole film. But no, instead we bring in Johnny Depp, the man who's got worse at acting the more experience he gets.
Okay, it's clear Johnny Depp is not a bad actor, but I don't think it's controversial to say he's not got a whole lot of range. He's weird. He's a weirdo. He's got that cocky, zany, oddball energy down, and if you want that, say for Captain Jack Sparrow, then that's great. But if you want someone with sinister, calculated charisma, I don't think he's your man. You know how I know that? I've seen the second film.
We'll get to it. In any case, he looks gross and weird, and that's fine for a villain, but he also sounds cringe, and that is less fine for a villain.
>> Do you think you can hold me? Also, he's a pretty [ __ ] dude. All of this Fantastic Beasts nonsense was happening before his weird, purposefully hyperonline case against Amber Heard, where the internet somehow sided with him as if it were a sporting event instead of serious, legitimate allegations of abuse. Seriously, just look it up. It's so easy to find allegations and rulings and evidence for all of this. The judge in Johnny Depp's original UK liel suit against the UK newspaper, The Sun, found 12 of 14 allegations of domestic violence to be likely true. Come on, guys. I'm not here to go through the entire case with you, but can we stop pretending he's not abusive? He's been accused of domestic violence in the past by other people. He admitted to violent behavior towards Amber Heard. He's friends with other weird accused creeps and he sent disgusting texts about Amber to his gross friends. And plenty of experts agree that he was an abuser. Again, I am not holding anyone's hand and walking them through every second of the trial in their relationship. I'm not qualified for that. Other people have probably done it. The evidence is out there, and that's not what this video is about. I'm sure we can all agree, however, that Johnny Depp is a piece of [ __ ] and shouldn't be rewarded for being a piece of [ __ ] That's not up for debate. I'm not debating this. And if you really still support him after all of that, then just go look it up. It's not that hard. Don't come to the comments and tell me that I don't understand the case or I've fallen for some woke misandress trap or something. Just [ __ ] don't.
If you are still supporting Johnny Depp after all of this has come out, you don't understand the case. Educate yourself, please. Winning a liel case does not prove your innocence. [ __ ] me.
Anyway, Warner Brothers were aware of the accusations that were going around.
Yes, the trial didn't happen until 2022, and Crimes of Grindlewald, ironic name, came out in 2018, but allegations were there from Amber and also from like plenty of other people. Anyway, David Yates defended casting him as Grindlewald, saying, "I can only tell you about the man I see every day. He's full of decency and kindness, and that's all I see." whatever accusation was out there doesn't tally with the kind of human being I've been working with. So, you wanted a big name and he agreed and you don't really give a [ __ ] about all the terrible things he's done in the past. That's what this statement boils down to. This was a really stupid thing to say in light of everything else we know, but it's also just so [ __ ] weak and corporate. I know Hollywood does this all the time. I'm really swimming upstream here, but it's still disappointing and it's a big issue for me in the Fantastic Beast series. Oh, also there's this quote. Honestly, there's an issue at the moment where there's a lot of people being accused of things. They're being accused by multiple victims and it's compelling and frightening. Yes, I imagine it's a great deal more frightening for the victims.
David, this is just [ __ ] gross. I put Joanne on blast for a lot of [ __ ] earlier in this series, and now I have to put David on blast, too. This stupid [ __ ] sentiment that all these rich [ __ ] are being accused of abuse for no reason and we shouldn't believe the victims is absolutely abhorrent. Can people lie? Yes. Well done. You've discovered acting. But to pretend that the people with money and power are always right is how we end up with Mara [ __ ] denying reality and electing a sex offender. Now, some of you may point out that this is not what the quote is saying. In fact, he clarifies further by adding, "It's very different where there are multiple accusers over many years that need to be examined, and we need to reflect on our industry that allows that to roll on year in and year out." Johnny isn't in that category in any shape or form. So, he's ostensibly saying that there are serious cases that do point towards problematic patterns in the industry. So, he's supporting victims, right? No. Godamn it. The kinds of cases he's talking about is exactly what's happened to Johnny Depp. There are multiple accusers over many years. He's absolutely in that category. Are you kidding me? Even if David Yates didn't mean his comments to be dismissive of victims, he was still dismissing victims. The effect is exactly the same and nothing changes. Of course, JK Rowling also defended the casting.
That's not at all surprising given the latter half of her career seems to be her speedrunning every bad decision possible. Anyway, remember when I said he lost a liable case against The Sun?
Yeah, that's when Warner Brothers dropped him. What a principled stance this wonderful company has taken, letting Johnny Dip go only when it becomes socially unacceptable for them not to do so. Thank Dumbledore he got the boot eventually. We haven't even got to the second movie yet and I've had a big rant already. We may have to move on just a little. Will we move on just a little? Will we die just a little?
>> Will we die just a little? What? That's his second line as Grindlewald. His first is, "Do you think you can hold me?" which is fine, but will we die just a little? Is what? They barely react too. Like all we see is N looking after him as he leaves. And I really have to imagine that in his head he's thinking, I have no idea what that man just said.
>> Is he referring to the statute of secrecy? Like they've beaten him now, but they still have to live in secrecy and hide from muggles, so part of their power is dying. Or like they're dying inside, maybe having to bow down to this ancient law. That's certainly a prevailing theory online. At any rate, again, this sentiment isn't totally wrong, but it's a bit cryptic, isn't it?
Oh, he's so mysterious and sinister and important. Oh, what's he going to do next? Give me a [ __ ] break. He's cringe from the first second we see him.
The camera lingers and he slowly raises his face so the audience can do the [ __ ] Leo pointing meme and go, "Hey, that's Captain Jack Sparrow." Like, we get it. It's Grindlewald and he's Johnny Depp and he's whispering in that weird pseudo European French accent. I hate it. Not just because I don't like Johnny Depp, which I don't, but also because he's so cringe. I hate that he's in so much of the second film. So, what happens next? Well, next comes the real finale.
Once Grindleald is defeated, they have to obliviate everyone because Credence caused a huge amount of public open damage and then everyone used a bunch of easily visible magic to defend against that. President Pickery says, "We can't obliviate an entire city." But N's like, "Yeah, no, no, you drunk. I've got some crazy plot [ __ ] in my case, eh?" And Frank the Thunderbird flies out. Okay, yes, he's very cute. Big fan of the creature designs. Don't at me about those. But this final section of the film is a little [ __ ] up. God, I have so many problems with this section. But let me just say up top, yeah, I'm nitpicking here. I've been reduced to [ __ ] Cinema Sin style nitpicking, but just let me have that. It's on top of all of the substantial complaints I've been making for the rest of the series and Joanne being a human septic tank. I just want to yap on the internet and I suspect many of you will enjoy the nitpicks anyway. So, let's get into it.
First things first, Swooping Evil Venom is said to remove bad memories. Sure.
So, are they going to forget every bad thing that's ever happened to them? Oh, no. No. Why not? What's the time limit?
Days? Weeks? Months? If they had a [ __ ] couple of days at work and then this magic stuff also happened, are they going to forget all the work stuff, too?
There's no suggestion that swooping evil specifically makes you forget the wizarding world. So, I think we've just created a lot of problems here. New Scamander and his psychic CGI bird have just destroyed a bunch of memories.
There's no other way around it. Are people going to forget their family members are dead? Awful. Irresponsible.
Bad wizard. Take his wand away. Lock him back up in the nostalgia death room.
discuss sucks. Even if we accept that it only targets the bad memories related to magic, which is never specified, can't be assumed and would be contrived as [ __ ] we still have problems. What if the muggles, sorry, the nomades, didn't have bad memories from this event? What if they only caught the end of the incident and just saw the big magic bubble? What if they're a sicko and they like watching New York get destroyed?
How does Swooping Evil decide what's a bad memory? Some people are going to remember this. That's what I'm saying.
This is not foolproof. In fact, some of them might see the wizards coming round to repair all the magical damage with magic. That's surely not a bad memory.
All right, fine. Let's head cannon this one away, too, and say that Makuza went around like the goddamn Gestapo found out all of the people who didn't have bad memories somehow and obliviated them. A huge leap in logic, but we'll grant it. How did they all forget so fast? How is this not a huge issue that had to be contained as phone calls, radio announcements, television news reports, and even just [ __ ] letters were sent out about this [ __ ] The sweeping evil venom got mixed with the rain. So all the people in the rain got their memories wiped. Cool. These people taking showers and brushing their teeth.
No, dude. How the [ __ ] could it get in the water supply so quickly? You're telling me that these people are already using swooping evil contaminated water?
It's been seconds, less than a minute.
There's no godamn way that the venom is actually coming in contact with them in any shape or form. I refuse to believe that. You know what? I'm an unbelievably generous lawyer. I'm going to grant them this one, too. Even if it's genuine, ridiculous [ __ ] [ __ ] it. They can have it. I still think there would be hundreds, thousands of people who saw some of this [ __ ] happen or heard about it happening who didn't immediately hop in a shower, who didn't take a big swig from the tap. Surely some of them are writing letters about this or getting the [ __ ] out of the city that nearly got destroyed. You're not going to believe this. I'm actually going to give them this one, too. I'm going to say that why not? The sweeping evil venom was so potent that it just mixed with the air.
Everyone in New York is breathing this stuff in and forgetting only the memories of the magical world and it isn't affecting the wizards and it's universal and infallible and almost instantaneous. Okay, what the [ __ ] is this scene with Jacob then? He's standing 1 foot from the magical amnesia water. Oh, [ __ ] Another glidus reference. And he still remembers. He doesn't forget until he steps directly into the rain. There you have it. Air [ __ ] tight, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We had to grant four separate dumbass concessions to cover up gaping holes. And what we're left with still doesn't work. This ending doesn't work.
Plus, at the very end, Jacob's bakery and his interaction with Queenie proves one of my previous points. Anyway, some of his memories about the magical world are positive, so he keeps them. Why would this not happen with other people?
It's so frustrating. Joanne, how do you keep [ __ ] doing this? How does she manage to create plots so convoluted?
They're not just bad in one or two ways, but in a whole suite of bizarre and contradictory ways. It's genuinely impressive. I'm not joking. I'm actually impressed. Also, the music swells and we have these grand shots of the wizards fixing everything and changing the muggle newspapers to something else like it's a big victorious moment. This is dystopian. This is a nightmare. The wizards literally changed history and gas lit an entire city full of people just to protect an old ass law that the villain protests against. Ew, dude. No.
Am I supposed to be on their side here?
These guys are terrible. This law is terrible. We've been over it before, but this really seals the deal. Is this really moral, like at all? Also, are we just going to gloss over the fact that N's commander has this vial of forget your bad memories venom ready to go?
What's he doing with this? That's pretty suspicious. N might not be doing shady things with it, but this is an incredible tool for abuse and avoidance of consequences, isn't it? Not on an individual level that already exists in the form of memory charms themselves, but on a much larger scale. Wizards can perpetrate large-scale atrocities, then just make everyone forget it ever happened. Wow. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what happened here. The implications are horrible. All because of the statute of secrecy, which I already thought was immoral because they're hoarding their incredible, amazing magic. What's wrong with these people? Don't [ __ ] pretend these guys aren't terrible. Don't gaslight the audience like that, Joanne. Your music and visuals and narrative framing cannot fool me. I am immune to your brain mold aura. This big finale felt strange to me even the first time I watched it. But now with a more critical lens, it falls apart in so many ways. It's embarrassing. It's the most baffling sequence in the Fantastic Beast series so far. But fear not, it will not remain so. Let's talk about some miscellaneous crap, shall we?
N commander is actually a pretty rubbish guy. You remember at the start when his NFA gets into a bank vault? He doesn't even try to explain his way out of the situation that he let happen through negligence and inaction. He goes straight to jinxing this poor muggle.
Totally happy to do magic in front of Jacob and the bank manager, but couldn't possibly do magic in front of a few people earlier to stop the niffer before it got into the [ __ ] vault. Also, he goes to oblivate Jacob, but not the other guy. So, I guess you're just going to leave that to the American Ministry.
Is the movie trying to present him as reckless? Well, absolutely. He's very reckless with his animals, but the totality of his actions go beyond that.
He's also an idiot, and I doubt they intended that. In the jewelry store, N forgets he's a wizard. He has a fun little romp where he annihilates the stands and display cases and the chandelier and never once uses his wand.
Mate, are you a wizard or not? Do some bloody magic. He does it immediately after they exit the shop. So, why go through all that rubbish? Well, it's to look cool. Can't possibly have a scene that looks cool and makes sense, can we?
Accidentally made your character a [ __ ] again because you wanted to have this scene happen. Just make the Niffler dodge his spells or something. But even then, he uses Axio on it later in the series. Anyway, you know what else is weird? The sexy house elf in the bar. I don't like the sexy house elf at all. I really don't like it. It feels a little Return of the Jedi to me. So does the ending actually where Graves is using those spells on N while Credence just watches. really feels like Cidius using Force Lightning on Luke until Vader steps in. My god, she's even got silly little cuddly creatures that give the viewers tonal whiplash. It's Return of the Jedi, but with a much shittier finale.
>> Are you a seeker? A seeker after truth?
>> I'm more [music] of a chaser. Really?
>> Okay, I'm about to be really pedantic cuz I don't have that much of a problem with this, but she did clarify before he answered. It might be his autism, but he knows that seeker is a word outside of Quidditch. And this woman is likely a muggle. Sorry, no match. No, I hate that, too. Anyway, she literally clarifies seeker after truth. So, this cute little >> I'm more of a chaser really >> comment only exists to call back to Quidditch. Dog, we're watching a Wizarding World film. We know that Harry Potter and Quidditch exist. Just Just stop. Okay. The only other note I have before we can move on is that Tina's name is Porpentina.
Porpentina.
That's weird. Okay, cool.
This film is the best one, and there's a lot to enjoy, but Joanne has already succumbed to her worst instincts here.
She wrote it, and I really doubt that she allowed editors to look over it and change anything. That's why we ended up with main characters going back to work for the dystopian nightmare government and a series of avoidable contrivances in the finale. The hope, of course, at the time was that this series would continue as it was in terms of iterative worldb building and presenting stories that were fun and also lived up to the success and hype of the original Harry Potter books. That's what they were trying to cash in on. And I have to say that this was a doomed venture from the start if that's what they were aiming for. People loved those books. They still do. They were never going to recapture that same magic, especially seeing as the audience she was trying to recapture were now of varying ages. This was the first of a planned five. She was going to write five entire movies about Namander and Glet Grinderald. And there were people already pointing out from this first one that that is a strange combination of things to jam into the one series. It's like you can actually hear the gearbox shifting when Grindlewald exits the frame and we go back to New and his magical menagerie.
Clunky and awkward. But the first symptom of mold in her brain would be writing out of her radius. You can't possibly tell me that that whole ending wasn't pulled out of her ass at the last minute. So, how did she handle the next film which is so Grindlewald ccentric it's named after him?
The title Crimes of Grindleald sets us up for one of two things. Either we're going to see this man do some really villainous, crazy things as he tries to unravel the wizarding world as we know it, or we're going to see him get put on trial for all of his crimes. As a magical lawyer myself, I would have loved to see the second one. I was too young back in the 1920s, but I do know a few guys who would have loved to take him to court. Sadly, we don't really see the first one either. I mean, yeah, Grindleald commits some crimes, but it's not really about his crimes, is it? This film should be called Fantastic Beasts: The Convoluted Plans of Grindlewald to Achieve Almost Nothing. Let's see that on a poster, eh? And I will say I don't think we should be focusing on Grindlewald at all. I said for the last movie that the balancing act between Grindlewald's drama and N's whimsical creatures would be difficult to pull off and already felt strained in that film.
In this one, the scale breaks completely and we're dealing with everything but N and his fantastic beasts. So, I'm glad we're not entirely focused on Grindlewald, but [ __ ] maybe they should have been because now we're not just doing this storyline poorly or the N story line poorly. We're doing like three other ones poorly, too.
Dumbledore, show me mercy. If you're going to sideline N and the Beasts, can you at least do it for a reason? It's apparent from this movie that these story lines should have been entirely separate. We'll talk more on it later, but that's my stance. And I don't say that because I think that these films necessarily have to be lighter and for a younger audience. I say it because Joanne cannot be trusted with mature themes for older ones. I think we've gone through that point quite thoroughly this series. Let's talk about the opening for a second. Okay, we open on Grindlewald chained up in a protective magical bubble. That's cool and fine and I totally support it. Why are we chaining up his pet lizard? His pet lizard has to be chained up as well. Is it evil? Is it his accomplice or something? If so, why are we imprisoning it with Grindlewald? This is baffling.
I'm actually baffled. I get that this beast is included simply to live up to the first part of the title, but it's incredibly low effort. It's about as impactful as the few seconds we see the thestrals for. Also, why are we chaining him up at all? Is he really standing trial for his crimes? We can execute Tina and N without a trial, but we got to make sure the most dangerous wizard of all time gets a chance. Not a good start to this film.
>> He's very persuasive.
>> Yeah, I wonder why. Given the context of later events in this film, I can see why he might be persuading at least a few people. So, he gets put in a coach. His tongue's been removed. He's bound with magic. And there are two wizards inside the coach with their wands pointed directly at him. How's he going to get out of this one? Oh, it wasn't him in there. What a clever trick he's played.
It's actually Abanathy, the guy no one cares about. Grindlewald then storms the coach with the help of the weird lizard guy and rescues Abanathy. Wow, this guy has a lot of loyalty to his underlings.
So then the lizard, who Grindlewald has [ __ ] named, is trying to kill one of the Ministry guys. What does Grindlewald do? Well, he throws the lizard out of the window, of course. Why? What purpose did this serve other than to prove how incredibly villainous and awful Grindlewald is? [ __ ] you, Gilllet. That lizard was cool. Anyway, I mentioned Abanathy, so let's get this out of the way, shall we?
Kevin Guthrie, who played Aanathy, is a sex offender. Yikes. Convicted of sexual assault in 2021. Like, went to jail convicted. Ew, [ __ ] this guy. Terrible.
Not a great start. But I guess we should also talk about Ezra Miller. So, Ezra Miller is crazy. Now, all of these allegations came out after Crimes of Grindleald, so I'm not necessarily complaining about their casting in this film, but it is worth noting these accusations of some fairly serious crimes here. Assault, grooming, burglary, disorderly conduct. I'm not passing judgment on any of these allegations, some of which have been dropped, but Ezra Miller is clearly a very strange and potentially unstable person. All this to say, their real crime in this film in particular is being bad at acting. Seriously, they can't act. They were okay in the first film where all they had to do was cry and do a stoic face, but now they have actual lines and Credence has a character. I'm sorry, but Ezra Miller is a terrible actor. That's it. That's the note. Why are so many problematic people involved in this series? Joanne, Johnny Depp, Ezra Miller, Kevin Guthrie should have been called the crimes of Hollywood. Am I right, fellas? Seriously though, this weird progeny of the Harry Potter series is completely tainted.
It's like an afflicted offspring. a a cursed child. And again, I just don't like Johnny Depp and Ezra Miller in this film. Their performances are boring and one note and often painful to watch. Oh, yeah. Credence is alive.
Credence survived. Of course, he survived. Why wouldn't he survive getting blasted by 200 curses? You know what? I'd probably survive that, too.
Actually, I'm just built different. But seriously, how in the [ __ ] is Credence alive? That one little wisp of obscurest magic from the last film really means he just lives on. Is it like Dracula, but instead of becoming a thousand bats, he becomes a thousand tiny strands of weird magic silk? Every time Ezra Miller is on screen doing that cringing little hunchback thing they do. It makes me sigh. Their presence on screen is so boring and awkward. Either give Credence more of a character or cut him completely. He's doing nothing for me in the narrative, like at all. He wants to find his family. Sure. Is that it? Is that seriously [ __ ] it? This could work as a motivation if he actually did anything. God, nothing in these movies actually matters. Things just happen and then get thrown out the window. It's infuriating. Except you can't get rid of Credence or this story line because the entire film is built upon it. Everyone is obsessed with Credence and where he came from and where he went and what he's doing. What is he doing? Well, we don't know because we don't see him until 40 minutes in at this circus. Oh, cool. What a fun little magical circus we have here in Paris. It's got street performers. It's got a different vibe.
It's got buildings, I guess. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's iconic.
In fact, it's so iconic, I think it would make a great setting for a theme park. Why not? It's so unique with its buildings and magic. I guess you can't find those anywhere else in Harry Potter. Come on, let's make it into a theme park. This magical Parisian circus is going to be the lynch pin of the Fantastic Beasts pentology. So, every fan is going to know it so well and they're all going to love it. I don't think there will be a single person who sees this film who doesn't point at the screen and turn to their loved ones and say, "I want to go to that magical, tragical Parisian circus, and I'm willing to pay top [ __ ] dollar to do it." Anyway, that was weird and not related to anything at all. So Tina's at the circus, which gets packed up almost immediately, by the way. I guess we're hoping the rest of that street square is iconic enough for our $6 billion theme park. She sees that this bloke, Karma, is here, too. He claims that they're both there to prove who Credence really is. Tina doesn't deny this. And also, Credence wants to find his mother, and Dumbledore sent N to figure out who Credence's family is. And Grindlewald wants to set up his journey to finding the truth or whatever. So the whole plot up to this point, like the actual entire plot, apart from Queenie and Jacob, is revolving around Credence and his lineage. It's super important that Credence might be the last of a pure bloodline. So important that Karma asks Tina if proof of this will stop the Ministries hunting him, and she conceds that it might. Whoa, you guys already know where this is going. Stop [ __ ] writing about blood purity. Stop. It's not a critique of Pure Bloods being obsessed with blood purity. It's not a way to dismiss this absurd notion that his potentially pure blood ancestry has any relevance apart from his story and history. No, it's literally saying that his ancestry as a pure blood might be very important. Why are we still doing this like 10 stories in? Has she not learned? In addition to everyone in the goddamn wizarding world wanting to learn what's going on with Credence's amazing backstory, Grindlewald says Credence is the key to his plans. So great, Credence is the most important character in the movie now. They won't shut up about him.
They're absolutely obsessed with the bloke. Okay. Well, we're 40 minutes in and he said about two [ __ ] lines, so I guess he's not that important, is he?
>> There's a box hidden in the ministry, Tina. It's a box that can tell us who Credence really is.
>> What? What is this plot? We've accepted that everyone's motivated by an insatiable lust to find out who Credence is and where he's from and all that, but the methods they're using to get this information are just inane. Credence himself visits a woman on his adoption papers that we never heard of before and never hear of again. Karma appears from nowhere to enter the hunt. N suddenly knows about this weird box in the French Ministry of Magic. Grindlewald invites Credence to his secret meeting to find out the truth. What the [ __ ] is going on? A very charitable explanation for this weird pacing and bloated, contrived narrative funneling would be that Joanne realized while writing the script that Ezra Miller just isn't a good actor. She realized that giving them screen time would be counterproductive because they have negative charisma and telling the audience that credence is important would be more effective than showing because of their stilted performance.
Obviously, that's not the case and comes with a whole slew of problems on its own, but it's amusing to speculate, isn't it? No. The real reason behind insisting Credence is the most important special boy to ever live ever, yet never showing him on screen for more than a few minutes at a time while he does nothing, is because Joanne is terrible at this. Her Harry Potter books were limited third person POVs almost entirely centered around one character, Harry Potter. She's never had to juggle multiple POV characters like this and funnel them all towards a satisfying conclusion. Clearly, she still cannot do this as she fails miserably in this film.
There are simply too many characters.
New and Jacob are adventuring. Lita Lrange exists now. Queenies run off.
Tina's just been reintroduced 40 minutes in with this new guy, Karma. Credence is there, also introduced like 40 minutes in. Grindlewald is chilling in Paris killing babies. Dumbledore's up to something. And this aura bloke is looking for Credence, too. That's a lot to pack into a movie, even for a competent, talented screenwriter. But in Joannne's hands, it devolves into confused, muddled buffoonery rather than an intricately woven storyline. So, we'll start with who Credence is at the circus with.
>> Nagini.
>> Neagini. What? Neagini was Voldemort's snake. She was a big old snake and she loved Voldemort and that's all we knew about her. Maybe this snake was named after this circus woman. What a strange detail to add. Nope. She's a maladictus, someone who can turn into a snake. Not to be confused with an animeus who can turn into an animal in the same way.
They can do it at will. You see, I I mean, Neagini can also do it at will, but she's got a blood curse. Eventually, she'll turn into a snake permanently.
Oh, no. I think it's obvious why this detail exists. Amaladictus has never existed before this script. So, Neagini was not a cursed Indonesian woman until this script either. This is a retcon.
And whilst it doesn't affect anything that came before, it certainly confuses me in the here and now. It may not ruin anything, but what does it add? Please take this time of reflection to leave all of your opinions in the comment section below. I suspect we will have the same opinion. All done. Great. So, uh, this adds nothing for me. It's a cheap call back to the original Harry Potter series, which wasn't necessary in the first place, doesn't deepen existing events or relationships or characters, and doesn't lead anywhere. There wasn't any mystery around the origin of Neagini that fans were desperate to solve. There wasn't some unexplained law that now fits into place because of the existence of a maladictus. It's just fan service.
And it's not even good. It's just pointing at a name from the books and going, "Hey, you remember this?" I really mean it when I say she adds nothing, too. As a character, Neagini doesn't do anything. She stands around with credence and watches him barely do anything himself. I'm sure an original character with an original name could stand around just as ineffectively as Neagini does in this film. Not everything has to call back to the books, Joanne. She's obsessed with bringing things in from the books. And believe me, it doesn't end here. So, 50 minutes into this film, we see Credence and Neini again, as in this is their second appearance. We know effectively nothing about Neagini other than she's cursed. So, do we get any characterization for her? Does she deepen as a player in this story? Well, in this scene, she stands around, gets attacked by the aura, and then somehow doesn't die while Credence is trying to force crush this guy with his obscurest powers. Nothing. Then Credence gets a third scene where he has like four lines, and Neagini has one at an hour and 20 minutes in. Thank god I'd nearly forgotten about them. No, seriously, Neini has maybe five lines total in this entire film. It actually might be fewer than that. This is insane. I can't even claim that she's been sidelined because she was never developed in the first place. She got given the name Neini.
Some other bloke narrated her backstory.
She turned into a snake and then she may as well be a static JPEG in the background of these scenes. Isn't that kind of [ __ ] up? Like, why include her at all? Let's move on to Lita Lrange.
So, Litita is Harry Potter's first non-white female protagonist. That's cool. Zoe Kravitz actually does her British accent much better than plenty of other American actors, so props to her for that. She's fine, I guess, but she's introduced quickly and then dropped for another 40 minutes or so until we get to the big fanervice Hogwarts flashback sequence. Wow, this information about her dead brother is all so sad for Leita Lrange, a character we barely saw in this film until now.
There are too many characters, man. Am I supposed to care that much about Leita Lrange? I guess so. We had a big sad flashback with emotional music, so I must. Like I said, she's fine, but not developed enough to be good yet. We explore her here at Hogwarts, but this sequence is so disconnected from the scenes around it. She's not really in this film enough to garner a lot of sympathy or connection. With a better focus, she would have been interesting and compelling, but as it stands, it's just disappointing for the first woman of color in a lead capacity in a Harry Potter story. We explore the fact that she had a brother who died. This is good. Finally, a storyline that doesn't revolve around Credence. She actually gets to be a character in her own right.
You know what? I'm willing to say she's more than okay now. She started slow as everyone did in this bloated mess, but now she's getting interesting.
Unfortunately, she dies at the end of this movie. You liked Lita? Well, now she's dead. Deal with it. Oh, so that's pretty disappointing. Like, she just [ __ ] dies. Good one, Joanne. Oh, and the other non-white woman in this film never does anything and may as well have died. Lita didn't even need to die. Why did she sacrifice herself at all? It must be clear that she can't really do anything against Grindlewald. And yet, she just dies to to what? To give Newton Thesius time to get away. If Grindleald wanted them dead, he would have killed them just as easily, too. They were right there. This achieved nothing. And now one of the only interesting characters from the film is gone. Great.
Awesome. Well, we may as well talk about another interesting character.
Jude Law is a great Dumbledore. He has the accent and mannerisms down, and he's suitably clever and handsome and wonderful and all that, but the writing really is awful for him. His speech about a phoenix coming to any Dumbledore is such an obvious and pathetic setup for the Credence thing later. Spoilers.
Also, he sent N to New York. Come off it, mate. He doesn't have to have his finger in every pie. Don't go back to him being this omnisient gigger genius.
He's clearly not. Dumbledore reckons Credence might be Lita Lrange's long-lost brother, the last of an ancient pureb blood French line. All right, that sounds important. I'm sure it is. Also, that means that Lita's dead brother story line is about Credence, even if this isn't true. God [ __ ] damn it. So he sends N to Paris to check. N who is banned from international travel and might get thrown in as Cababan if he's caught has to go to Paris to check out who the hell Credence really is. N understandably asks why Dumbledore can't go himself.
Dumbledore then tells us that he can't move against Grindlewald. Whoa. Whoa. I know you made a blood pact that means you can't have a full-on duel with him or something, but you can't do anything.
How could figuring out Credence's parentage possibly count as directly attacking Grindlewald? This blood pact must have a full dossier of clauses and fine print if you can't even go to Paris to investigate the heritage of this kid.
This is a really contrived way to get N to be the one to kick off this already stupid plot. Dumbledore can't do it, so he sends N. Now look, I get it. N is an okay guy, maybe, and his magical creatures provide him with some pretty thick plot armor. But if you really think that there's a possibility of getting into a magical struggle with Grindleald, you're sending this poor man to his death. He's not going to survive that. Grindleald will wipe the floor with him. Then again, one yo-yo bat and he went down last time, so maybe he can pull another magical creature out of his sleeve. Literally. To the people out there who say that Dumbledore is just adhering to his character from the books and he doesn't want to confront Grindlewald himself because he's scared of finding out what really happened with Ariana. What's with the blood pact then?
I think we have two options. Option one, Dumbledore really wants to fight Grindlewald, but he can't because of the blood pact. He's completely prevented from personally acting in a way that would harm or negatively affect Grindlewald. It doesn't really seem to work the other way around if it's that sensitive, but okay. Option two, Dumbledore doesn't really want to fight Grindleald, and he's just using the Blood Pact as a front to cover up the fact that he's scared and worried. He absolutely could do more, but he chooses not to because the thought of his past coming back to haunt him is awful. If the first is true, it's nebulous. It's a contradiction of the existing book cannon, and it's a huge contrivance. If the second is true, that's narratively stupid. It would be strengthened tenfold by removing the Blood Pact completely.
It would make him a more interesting and compelling character. It would generate some much needed conflict and tension.
Dear Lord, I actually think Joannne's writing ability has declined as time has passed. She must be over 90% mold at this point. Imagine purposefully making your characters and story worse in service of a detail that isn't even good. Anyway, Albus isn't headmaster at this point. He's just a teacher at Hogwarts. So, let's talk about that bit of fan service and nostalgia.
John Williams score swells and we see sweeping shots of the castle and we cut to Albus Dumbledore teaching defense against the dark arts. Wait, what? I thought he taught transfiguration. It says so in the books, right? That's fine. I guess he just taught both at different points in his career. So, who's teaching transfiguration then? Oh, it's Manurva McGonagal. Cool. We love Manurva McGonagal. She's such an incredibly powerful witch. She might be the most powerful magical being of all time in the Harry Potter universe because she's got the most amazing feat out of anyone else in the whole series.
She somehow managed to secure a teaching position at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry a whole 8 years before she was born. So timelines can change. The nature of telling a story over a number of decades is quite difficult, I imagine, and some things might get forgotten along the way. This is not a crime of Grindlewald in and of itself, but it is very clear as an indication that Joanne doesn't really give a [ __ ] about internal consistency, and she makes it up as she goes. She threw out McGonogal's birth year as 1935, way back when on Pottermore, then never checked that again while she was writing the script for this film, which is set in 1927. How do you [ __ ] up that badly? She's like 30 here. That's a huge difference. It's not a few years either way. That's an enormous gap that makes one story completely incompatible with the other. You literally cannot reconcile them. In 1995, McGonogal states outright that she's been teaching for 39 years. That means she started teaching in 1956, a whole 29 years after this movie is set. What possible reason could she have to lie about this? What cryptic double meaning would we have to take for both things to be true at once? It's a straightup redcon, plain and simple.
Joanne or WB or both wanted to have McGonogal show up in the films for a bit of fan service because we're already at Hogwarts. Why the [ __ ] not? Even if you somehow find a way for all of this to work, it's still very clearly just a call back and it adds nothing. We would have lost nothing of value by not having her here. Again, it only exists to make people point at the screen and go, I remember her. Also, the details don't really matter, do they? If the 1935 date isn't firm, which some people think it never was, then it's still stupid because 1927 is 29 years before 1956 when she reckons she started teaching at Hogwarts. Also, get this. We get a flashback showing her like 15 years earlier and she's teaching then, too.
Bruh, what are we even doing here? We're adding another 15 godamn years to this already ridiculous notion. This Hogwarts section really drags. It languishes on long shots of the familiar set pieces from the original movies, but we're lingering way too long on this rubbish.
We're also redoing the Bogot lessons like Lupin did because it's a useful shortorthhand for some quick characterization, but also it's another familiar thing. We had a bit of originality with Dumbledore dueling that kid before, but originality time is over now. It's back to long, slow shots of Hogwarts and Scotland. Enjoy your nostalgia. Enjoy it. That's all that happens at Hogwarts. It tanks the already atrocious pacing and [ __ ] up the existing world building and timeline. Cool. Thanks, Joanne. Also, it happens like an hour into the film where the only thing that's really happened so far is that N has found Tina.
She even [ __ ] up what this series is meant to be about. Fantastic beasts.
So, the first we see of any beast is that lizard that's chained up with Grindlewald and the Thestrals that pull the carriage. does a big escape from.
The first thing we see of N and his beasts is at his home. He keeps several baby nifflers. They're adorable and I love them. Bunty, his assistant, looks after his magical beasts while he's out getting cucked by his brother and deciphering Albus Dumbledore's incoherent ramblings. She's also clearly infatuated with N. This little dynamic is fine. I don't remember if it goes anywhere, but I guess I'll keep an eye on it. Anyway, he's got these baby nifflers. He's got a kelpie. He's got this owl thing and probably some other stuff, too. I'm sure most of the creatures from his case are still around in some capacity, but we don't really see any of them. There are barely any magical creatures at all in this Fantastic Beasts movie. We've sidelined the [ __ ] title of the film. The first time a fantastic beast actually does anything in this story is after the French circus we all know and love and have pictures on our wall and dream about visiting one day. It's this cat lion thing. It breaks free and goes on a spree. Except it doesn't because N just tricks it in half a second. Oh, thank God. We nearly developed a bit of conflict there. This film has so little tension. Characters get into sticky situations and then they get resolved immediately. Jacob, Tina, and N get locked up by Karma, who then instantly faints and Picket picks the lock. Cool.
Credence comes face to face with a powerful aura, but he's working for Grindlewald and doesn't want to kill him anyway. Great. Queenie does something we haven't discussed yet and then immediately gets let off the hook. This giant beast is loose in Paris, rampaging through the streets, but N pulls out a rattle toy and it gets all cute and happy. We didn't even see it do any damage. It just leaps straight into the case after less than a minute of screen time. You wanted Fantastic Beasts? There you go. That's good enough, right? Our next dose of magical beasts is in the French Ministry. What the hell is this demon cat scene about? They guard the ministry, but they won't hurt unless you attack them. Pretty terrible guards then, aren't they? If anyone knows about them, they can just break in, give them a few pats, and carry on with their looting and murdering. Dear Lord, these things are useless. N, are you sure they only attack when attacked? Regular non-magical dogs would be more effective than this. So, naturally, because she isn't aware of this enormous loophole, Lita Lrange attacks one of the magic cats. It multiplies and then attacks her because she struck first. Classic.
Should have let him finish his sentence.
But wait, what? Why did she do this again? She's here to access her own family records, which she did. Then she finds that New and Tina are also there, but the cats aren't exactly jumping towards them, nor has anyone actually made any threats of any kind. Why did she attack? There are three options as I see it here. No, I'm just kidding. This is just a contrived little moment of [ __ ] Joanne wrote in because someone had to attack them, didn't they?
Well, guess what? How about you actually make the cats attack first? It's not like you're somehow being forced to include this detail about them not attacking unless provoked. You wrote that part, too. Just make the cats attack first and this entire section of the video just goes away. Speaking of, given that this is my last Harry Potter roast video, I'm sad to say that Joanne never transferred me that $10 million.
It's a shame, but maybe she watched my videos and didn't want me to stop. Oh wow, the big lion dragon thing is back.
This time he hops out, [ __ ] up some of the small black cats, carries N out of the Ministry, and then gets all cute.
Not exactly plot central. This makes up maybe a minute of screen time. Maybe.
Let's just look at what the beasts actually contribute to this film, which begins its title with the words fantastic beasts. Pick at the bow truckle picks a lock. The Niffler finds Tina's footprints. Maybe the big lion carries them out of the ministry. Did I miss anything? This series is literally supposed to be about fantastic beasts, but instead this film is about Credence and his parentage. It's not even about Grindlewald. It's called Fantastic Beasts, the Crimes of Grindlewald, and it's about neither of those things. Are you serious? Also, Credence, the guy everything revolves around this film, is barely in it, so it's not really about him either. What the [ __ ] is this film about? How did she get it this wrong?
The bar was already on the floor. You can't keep lowering it or you're going to [ __ ] up my downstairs neighbors.
Tonal whiplash is the name of the game here. And I'm feeling deja vu because it's exactly what I criticized her for in the book videos. Stop trying to make a narrative that's both fun family romp with all of these whimsical creatures, but also some dark political commentary with Grindleald killing babies and another secret thing we'll get to later.
If you didn't want to CGI all the big expensive CGI creatures, then maybe don't build a franchise around doing exactly that. The expectation when you see a film called Fantastic Beasts is that there's going to be a fair few of them and they're going to affect the plot in some way. here. There are some beasts and they affect the plot in extremely minor ways. Is that good enough? I think it's weak and lame and seriously disappointing. You know what else is disappointing? Yet more expansions of magic in this film and franchise.
So, I said N found Tina in Paris. That begins with him finding the circus she was at and using this strange new spell.
N has the Batman Arkham games detective vision. Now, it's kind of cool, but it's a little too easy for my taste. Why bother having him actually investigate things when he can just wave his wand and construct the scene completely from gold dust? Can anyone do this? Surely this would make the aura's jobs comically easy. Like, absurdly comically easy. He can even hear echoes of things that went down the previous night. Does this only work within a day, a few hours? Who knows? But even if it does, this is incredibly powerful.
Surveillance, tracking, crime scene investigation, all trivial. Cornelius, you don't believe that Voldemort has returned? Well, let's hop back to that graveyard Harry mentioned and check it out. Cast this spell and see and hear that Voldemort is back. There you go.
Proof. Oh, you want to see who put Mrs. Norris on the wall here? Who's been opening the Chamber of Secrets? Clear out, students. I've got to get dusty for a sec. Seriously, this could have trivialized so many important plot events of the original series and cheapens so many mysteries. We don't know the time limit because Joanne hates putting limits on things she doesn't have to. And the spell is shown is so effortlessly effective that N finds information he wasn't even looking for with ease. Maybe think a bit about what you're putting into your story. Think about the implications. Maybe you could be making a huge mistake. Boy, that would be part for the course for Joanne, wouldn't it? Adding a new spell that does something weird or awful or consequential for her world. Oh, look.
Jacob's back. Queenie has brought Jacob to N's apartment and very clearly restored his memories fully. Oh, wait, never mind. His memories never got erased in the first place because he has no bad memories, only weird ones and scary ones. You don't think anyone else in New York would feel the same way?
It's like she's trying to get me to point this [ __ ] out. Why is Jacob acting weird, though? He seems almost drunk.
What could this be about? His vision's all hazy and he can barely feed himself.
He's laughing at [ __ ] that isn't funny.
Oh my god, they're engaged. Maybe he's just love drunk. No, Queenie Goldstein, one of our last film's protagonists, has enchanted Jacob Kowalsski. So, I would say she used the Imperious curse, but that doesn't make people act all weird and drunk. It just makes them do what you tell them to. So, I think this is some sort of spell equivalent to a love potion. We've brought the [ __ ] love potions back again. Jacob Kowalsski, a man who does not know magic and cannot understand what's happening to him, let alone consent to it, is being enchanted to be with and stay with and marry Queenie. That is massively [ __ ] up.
She knows damn well that it's not only against their stupid law to marry muggles for some reason, but it's also hugely immoral to do this. I know she knows it's immoral because she tries to hide it from N and denies when asked at first. She does it anyway and I guess was just planning to spend the rest of her life with him under this enchantment. Was that seriously her endgame? What an idiot. What a loser.
What a piece of [ __ ] She's basically a rapist at this point. Need I say again, he cannot consent to this. He makes it clear that he doesn't when the enchantment gets lifted. Also, how stupid can she be? She brought this bloke around to N's base. He's all over the place. Did she think that N wouldn't notice? like he's just going to accept that Jacob got his memories back and he's a total drooling dumbass. Now, this plot point is a stupid contrivance that requires Queenie to be moronic for no reason other than to drive the plot forward. It's a baffling set of events that I cannot believe or fathom as being organic to the characters, no matter how hard I try. On top of that, it's also morally repugnant. We've already dealt with how bad Imperial is and how abhorentt love potions are. But I think this might be worse than either.
Firstly, she's using it on a muggle who cannot defend himself. So, it started bad. But more importantly, this is not an unforgivable curse. There are only three of those, and none of them release a big pink heart when they're dispelled.
This may be an unsanctioned enchantment, but there's no suggestion that what she's done is illegal in any way or will land her in any hot water of any kind beyond it being targeted at a muggle.
See, with Imperio, you go to Aszkaban.
And with Love Potions, you have to physically acquire or make the potion, then continually dose your victim so that the effects don't wear off. Here, the effects of Queenie's enchantment appear to be permanent until N dispels them with a counter curse. That's horrible. She's horrible. Once again, I am appalled and impressed. I thought that love potions were the pinnacle of problematic and thoughtless worldb building in Harry Potter. But again, she's oneuped me. She can't keep getting away with this. Lest you think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, the problem actually goes further than this.
We saw bad actors in the Harry Potter books. Rmildain accidentally love poisoned Ron while aiming for Harry. Not cool. Rapey vibes could have gone way worse. Maripe Gaunt love poisoned Tom Riddle senior to have an entire relationship and a child with him.
Literal rape dude disgusting. Awful.
Presented as bad in the story. Not nearly bad enough. Not anywhere close, but still bad. Queenie.
Not only is Queenie not presented as in the wrong for this ridiculous breach of trust, consent, and ethics, she actually flips the script on Jacob. When the enchantment lifts, she storms out into London and he follows her. Naturally, he asks when she was going to give it up and seems pretty upset that she would enchant him like this. Good. I'm on board so far. He is incredibly charitable to her during this exchange.
He calmly explains that she doesn't need to enchant him because he's already so in love with her. He doesn't shout. He doesn't walk away. He even comforts her.
This is an incredibly kind-hearted man to be so understanding after having his consent and [ __ ] free will removed by a woman who's supposed to love him. Then what happens? She calls him a coward and then he merely thinks that she's being crazy. She reads his mind and hears that he called her crazy and immediately goes on the attack. He apologizes, says he didn't mean it, but it's too late. She storms off again and leaves Jacob stranded in London, and he's still saying how he didn't mean it. What the [ __ ] is going on, Jacob? If you didn't mean it, you should have. She was acting completely crazy. She enchanted you to go along with the plan you already said no to for understandable, if not perfect reasons. She had no response to you asking when she was going to lift this enchantment, which N had to do for her.
Dude, have a bit of a backbone, will you? Let me do a quick recap. Queenie uses Budget Imperio on Jacob, kidnaps him, and takes him to London. And then when she gets found out, she acts like the victim and accuses Jacob of being the bad guy. In a better story, this would be a disturbing moment that shows us just how far gone Queenie is, how little we can trust her, and how malicious she's become. In this story, Jacob resolves to go after her and win her back, [ __ ] She needs to win you back. Seriously, the music changes and the scene gets all emotional when Jacob thinks the word crazy. and he keeps telling her to come back and he didn't mean it even after she's gone.
Make no mistake, the narrative is framing Jacob as the one who's in the wrong. I'm here to tell you that the narrative is a [ __ ] [ __ ] Joanne is incapable of having good takes anymore.
Every position she holds appears to be worse than the last. I don't know that I can fully articulate all of those issues in one video. I'm just one man. I will do my absolute best, but it's not just the writing and moral errors that make these films bad. It's a whole other slew of different things that I don't have the time or expertise to go into. Once again, if you notice that I've missed certain things, please point them out in the comments. I'd love to see them. This whole Queenie Jacob dynamic is insane in this film. They both do well as far as acting goes, but even they cannot save this travesty of a script. In fact, I think Jacob might be the best part of these films. I don't care for much of these movies, but Dan Fogler is simply wonderful as Jacob Kowalsski. Much of the rest of the cast does a good job, too. Even a great job, sands, the people I've mentioned and the sex offenders.
But Jacob is such a standout. Absolutely sublime to see him react to the magical world. Let's move on from date, rape, drugs coming back in the form of this potentially everlasting enchantment and talk about the finale.
So, like I said, there are two finales, and this is the first. Everyone gathers in the tomb because Credence is the most important person in the universe. Don't forget that. And then Credence says his one [ __ ] line again. This whole film, every time he's on screen, and this is only like the fourth time, by the way, he's all like, >> "Who am I?"
>> Because, god forbid he get any actual characterization or the audience forget what his motivation is. We get it, Joanne. Please move on. She can't trust her audience to recall this very simple idea. And honestly, with so many characters and story lines, I guess I kind of get it. But this is not the solution. Just remove some. So Lita's father used the Imperious curse on Ysef Karma's mother and raped her. He uses the word seduce, but that is not correct. It was rape because she couldn't consent because she was under the Imperia's curse. What's wrong, Joanne? Is rape too dark of a word for this film? Then maybe think about the goddamn tone for a second when we think just a little. No, clearly not. Anyway, this is played as disturbing because it is, but no one ever mentions Queeniey's enchantment on Jacob ever again. It's the same thing, isn't it? Maybe not exactly the same, but it's pretty close.
Why is no one commenting on this? So, Lita and Ysef Karma are half siblings.
Oh, damn. What does this mean? Nothing.
It It means nothing. Karma wants revenge on whoever Litita's father loves, but he didn't love Litita, so I guess it's not her. Then her father moved on to another woman and had a son, Corvvis Lrange. He loved this kid apparently. So that's Karma's target. And Corvvis is actually Credence. Oh [ __ ] we have an answer.
Credence is Corvis Ler Strange, long-lost brother of Leitita. Now Karma is going to kill him for the crime of being related to the guy who raped his mom. Wait, no. Leitita says that's not true. And actually, she let her brother die on the ship that went down. She swapped two [ __ ] babies and let her brother die, I guess. Oh no. What does this mean? Nothing. It doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Karma doesn't have anything to do. Leader's backstory stays pretty much the same. Credence still doesn't know who he is. And this family reunion only serves to get them all to Grindleworld. Useless. [ __ ] useless.
Oh my [ __ ] god. I actually genuinely forgot that Neagini was here. She hasn't spoken in like an hour, dude. This is hilarious. The camera just cuts to her and I have to imagine heaps of people were thinking the exact same thing as me when they saw this for the first time.
Why is she here? She's not doing anything. Why is she in this film? What a waste of a character and an actor. Oh, damn. Grindleald has organized a big rally. What's all this about? There's hundreds of people there. Dumbledore knew it would happen and the British Ministry is getting involved for some reason instead of the French one.
They're planning to arrest everyone, but Thesius knows that's a bad idea. Jacob meets back up with Queenie and she apologizes. She says she's sorry for doing that and she loves him. That's great. Yeah, but she probably means running away though. She's not apologizing for the love potion spell.
No way. Even if she is, which I think she isn't, she's glossing over it completely. And Jacob responds by saying he loves her too. No harm, no foul, I guess.
>> Queen Eie, the family tree has all been bait.
>> What? And it [ __ ] worked. If this whole plot really was Grindleald pulling off some gigabrain 5D chess moves on everyone to get them here, then he's the luckiest man alive and also an incurable [ __ ] [ __ ] Why the hell would anyone care this much about Credence's lineage that turned out to be completely irrelevant anyway? And even if they really did, New and Jacob being here is predicated entirely on Albus Dumbledore being invested and sending N, the one guy who's not allowed to travel internationally instead of going himself or sending anyone else. You can't just pretend like your nonsense story that doesn't make sense, was all some part of a master plan. It's so transparently not true. It's just not. I'm sorry. And it doesn't make any sense. Also, it partially hinges on Queenie, the person who can read minds, being able to read Grindlewald's mind, even through her supposed [ __ ] difficulty with accents, and then liking what she hears.
Are you kidding me? He convinced her that he's doing the right thing. This guy who kills babies. This guy who wants wizard supremacy over muggles. This guy who conjures a giant blue fire dragon to kill everyone who disagrees with him.
this guy who was imprisoned for a bunch of murders before the series even began, who looks like this. How How did he convince her that he's not evil as [ __ ] >> That is what we are fighting.
>> Oh. Oh my. This has rendered me somewhat speechless, actually. A moment of silence, please, for Joannne's last brain cells. And now for the next finale and a segment I like to call uh right. Let's do this properly, shall we?
So before I talk about the second finale, I have to talk quickly about Grindlewald's role in this film. First of all, every line Johnny Depp delivers pisses me off because he's trying so hard, but also like not trying at all.
Infuriating. Also, he's just got like a British accent now. Where'd your accent go, mate? Anyway, he takes over a house in Paris and finds out that there's a baby still in there. Like a one-year-old, a baby. His underling kills it. Like kills a literal child.
Okay, so we're going down the baby killer route for him being evil, are we?
Couldn't possibly have him present any reasonable or rational ideas, could we?
Now, anything he ever says or does can be dismissed on the grounds of him being a baby murderer. Right. Next, he puts a bunch of scary black fabric all over the buildings of Paris. I hope N has some swooping evil venom and another Thunderbird ready cuz surely the French Ministry can't obliviate all of those people. Of course they can't. Makuza was insisting last movie that obliviating a whole city was going to be impossible until N pulled out that ridiculous contrived [ __ ] Oh, we're just not going to mention it. Then what the [ __ ] was the point of ending the last film on that note? Everyone in Paris has just seen a bunch of magic happening and no one's going to point out that this might be a problem. Can we just have a bit of consistency, please? If we're making a big deal out of not leaving even a single muggle with his memories of the magical world, surely there's got to be a mass panic about this. Okay, now we can talk about finale number two.
Grindlewald emerges and isn't instantly jumped by all the authorities ever because he telegraphed this appearance.
Whatever. Dumb, but fine. He makes a cringy speech about getting rid of the old ways and heralding in the new. And Nagini is still just there mugging like she does in every scene. My god, it's so dumb. Sorry, back to the explanation.
>> The no magic, the muggle, >> the nomad, the can't spells.
>> Ew, what the [ __ ] Muggles was bad enough. And I hated nomad with a passion. But can't spells? Are we [ __ ] 5 years old? Can't spells? Who the [ __ ] calls them this? Christ alive.
It's like a caveman describing a muggle.
Are we for real? Wow. Way to deepen your lore there, Joanne. Throw in yet another term for non-magical people. What a great effect this has had on the wizarding world. Yeah, I bet there are thousands of people out there getting K spells tattoos. Eh, Queenie is just standing here listening to him talking about how muggles are second- rate citizens compared to wizards. How they're not special and they're not important. She's just happily lapping this [ __ ] up while standing next to the muggle she wants to marry. Yeah, go ahead and join this cause, Queenie. the one that wants to subjugate your boyfriend for being inferior to them.
What's [ __ ] wrong with you? This woman can read minds, but she doesn't really have to, does she? She's in love with a muggle, and she still hears all the details about how muggles are inferior and need to be ruled over by wizards and still joins Grindlewald.
What a [ __ ] idiot loser. What a dumbass, devoid of critical thought, gullible cretton she is. Your whole character this movie is about your love for Jacob. And yet here you are joining the guy who thinks his entire kind are pathetic worms who need wizards to rule them. Can this finale get any worse?
Yeah, he might abolish the statute of secrecy, but he's also going to subjugate the muggles, Queenie. So then he says, "The moment has come to share my vision of the future that awaits if we do not rise up and take our rightful place in the world." He smokes this skull hooker thing and shows the whole congregation vivid visions of World War II and the atom bomb. He is explicitly saying that he's doing all of this to prevent World War II. You know, the Hitler one. I can't quite comprehend what could possibly be going through Joannne's nearly empty head at this point because this is a doozy. So, if we assume that Grindleald is full of [ __ ] because he's a nasty baby murdering villainous bastard who can't be trusted anyway, then we reach the conclusion that he's lying about his motivations for taking over the world and working towards wizard supremacy. To be clear, though, he is seeing accurate visions of World War II. Even if he's lying about why he wants to rule the Muggle world, he's telling the truth that there will be this great awful war, a war that happened. Ultimately, in the context of this film, this is a war that the wizards failed to prevent, despite knowing it would occur because of Grindlewald's magical skull bong movie.
That's not great. This is already a huge risk in terms of script writing that does not go the way Joanne thought it would because I just don't agree with mixing this realorld atrocity with her whimsical portal fantasy. However, if we assume Grindlewald is not lying and genuinely does want to stop World War II, which the narrative seems to suggest, then holy [ __ ] our villain is trying to stop the deadliest war in human history, and our heroes have to stop him. That's that's quite the rugpull there. Not content with having Grindleald be a comically evil baby killer, she also had to make him the guy trying to prevent World War II. This leaves our heroes in a bit of a dilemma, doesn't it? because he's a bad dude. But in a way, they're directly working towards causing the Second World War.
They're specifically trying to stop Grindlewald preventing this war. I mean, I know he's probably just going to declare war against the Muggles as well, but this is such a bad look for your script. How can anyone think this is a good idea? Why would any writer put this in their story? Do you know how many people had to read this? from editors and fellow writers to David Yates and producers and then the actors themselves. And then everyone had to see the footage, edit the footage. Someone just tell her it's bad. Why did no one speak up? This is one of the most egregiously misguided writing decisions I have ever seen. Was it done to make him a more complicated villain? Maybe.
But it makes our heroes into accompllices to the [ __ ] Holocaust.
Don't do that. Why are you doing that?
Even if they're not direct accompllices, it still introduces the idea that they could be. Will we prevent World War II?
Just a little. You can debate what the greater good really means until the moon calves come home, but it doesn't make any of this better. Also, for anyone about to leave a comment about how I've misunderstood this and I'm wrong or I'm being uncharitable to Joannne's writing here and assuming too much, guess what?
It doesn't [ __ ] matter. Much like house elves loving their slavery, much like legal love potions our teenage characters sell to other school children. Just don't put this in the story. All of these criticisms disappear if you don't include this. And you still get Grindlewald pretty much being exactly the same. This is so unnecessary. It's actually laughable.
Bringing World War II and the Holocaust into this story at all was a huge blunder. It's already dubious to have your story happen concurrently with it given that we know Grindy was defeated in 1945 and he's clearly an allegory for Hitler. This is already dangerous territory because questions will arise about why wizards didn't interfere in the genocide in the atrocities. If you didn't have this plot point in, you could simply not address that. It would be unsatisfying and the implication would be that this stupid statute of secrecy kept them from saving millions of lives. But with this vision in the story, well, now we know that wizards knew about it. And the answer to why didn't wizards step in is because the bad guy wanted to and they had to stop him. Wow, that is awful. That's terrible. Now everyone trying to stop Grindlewald looks like a Nazi. Is that really what you want, Joanne? Was that the effect you were hoping for? God, you're bad at this.
>> It is not we who are violent.
>> Didn't you kill a baby earlier? If anyone comments that he actually got his follower to kill the baby, you will lose all of your cat time privileges. Also, Grindleald is an idiot because he says his whole plan is to prevent all of this death and destruction for the greater good and all that, but then he just starts blasting. Like, he kills a bunch of people with this unstoppable blue fire and creates a big fire dragon bird thing that starts [ __ ] up all of Paris. Why? I thought you were trying to avoid this. Oh no. Credence joins him at the end. What a huge loss for the good guys. Not Credence, that incredibly impactful character who everyone loves.
Wait, Queenie still [ __ ] joins him after all of that after she watches him murder people right in front of her.
She's lost her godamn mind. So, in this second finale, the Niffler steals the bloodpacked locket thing. This was a big plot point for Dumbledore specifically, so I imagine it'll be quite important to the next film, right? N gives it to Dumbledore and this seems like a really big moment because it sort of ends the film. Wait, no, there's an epilogue.
Let's talk about that.
So, we jump forward an unspecified amount of time to see that Queenie is just straight up working for Grindleald because I guess she's as stupid and evil as he is. Then, the most annoying thing ever happens. Grindleald tells Credence what his real name is. It's Aurelius Dumbledore. He says, "Your brother seeks to destroy you." And he's referring to Albus. Albus Dumbledore, the man with two siblings, Abfor and Ariana. The timeline really doesn't allow for any more siblings. This is impossible and stupid and inane. And for like 4 years, that's all we had. When this movie came out, it was baffling and ridiculous and a slap in the face. Aurelius Dumbledore, Albus's brother. No [ __ ] way. We'll talk about it more later, but I hate how she's reduced her world to always revolving around these key people and places. It's like Ry being a Palpatine or Delelfy being Voldemort's daughter.
Why does he have to be a Dumbledore? Why did we have to add yet more unnecessary connections to the main series? Just let your films stand on their own two legs.
Don't drag nostalgia and fan service into this. Credence being a Dumbledore doesn't add anything to the story at all and until later clarification muddies the waters quite a bit. What a lackluster way to end the second film in your franchise. Disappointing. I'm certain there were spirited discussions online about this ending and how this could possibly be, what it means, what the next film would do with this information. I feel sorry for those people because they were invested in a franchise that fell apart in no small way due to Joannne's massive lack of respect for her audience. It also never mattered. I could have told you from the second I saw this epilog that it wasn't going to matter regardless of what happens next film. Credence is a rubbish character and should have been left behind in the first one.
So, that's Crimes of Grindlewald, a baffling follow-up to a promising film that leaned hard into all the worst parts and threw out most of the good parts. Really, you're going to put all of your eggs in Johnny Depp's basket?
Embarrassing. It's not just Johnny Depp, of course. I said it earlier and I'll say it again. The film doesn't go anywhere. It's oversted with so many characters and elements that all revolve around the same anticlimactic nonsense that also doesn't go anywhere in this film. It meanders for two hours, then Grindleald blows [ __ ] up and then it ends. It is genuinely offensively bad.
The worst crime of Grindleald that a movie can commit is be boring. You can have campy, unnatural dialogue and still be fun. You can have poor pacing and still be a good time. You can even have bad writing and still present an amusing, watchable experience. Look at Moonfall. It has all of those mistakes, but I [ __ ] love that movie cuz it's dumb as [ __ ] and it makes me laugh.
Crimes of Grindleald makes all of those mistakes, but it makes them in the most boring way possible. This film is so boring. Every time we cut back to a character after not seeing them for 20 minutes, you'd be completely forgiven for forgetting what they last did because it so rarely has any impact on the story or what they do next.
Decisions get made out of nowhere.
Information just appears only to be disproven seconds later. Tension arrives already half diffused and then gets eliminated within the same scene. Our main characters do nothing to further the plot and barely have any emotional connection to the villain or the other characters. It's a pathetic excuse for a screenplay. If anyone was in doubt that Joanne is not cut out for screenwriting, this is the first definitive proof of that. This is Bernhamwood advancing on Dunen Castle. Joanne McBth saw it approaching from her lofty tower and confidently said, "Well, none born of woman can harm me, so I shall ignore that." So, I guess now it's time for movie number three.
Now, you must understand this film had to do better. It had to make more money at the box office, and it had to be better received because Crimes of Grindleald was a critical disaster. It still made over 600 million, so that was pretty good, but the critics hated it and so did most of the general audiences. Secrets of Dumbledore released in 2022. In case you're less than 6 years old, a global pandemic happened in 2020 and this affected the film industry quite a bit. This film in particular was hit with filming delays and setbacks and had a budget of around 200 million. Now, there's a reason I titled this video the way that I did.
They didn't just flop critically. This third film flopped financially, too. It made just over 400 million, and that simply wasn't good enough for old WB.
Now, once again, we've titled our Fantastic Beasts film something completely unrelated to N Scamander and his managerie. The Secrets of Dumbledore. Ooh, which Dumbledore? Maybe all of them. I guess we'll find out. But we all know this one is actually another [ __ ] Grindlewald movie. Also, this one is written by Joanne and Steve Cloves. I imagine this was due to the studio going, "Um, that was really bad, Joanne. Mind if we try to make it less bad this time?" This strategy did not work. We open in a nice cafe where Dumbledore and Grindlewald are having a quiet drink together. But wait, that face looks a touch different, doesn't it? Yes, Johnny Depp got dropped and now Mads Mickelson is Gill at Grindlewald.
That means with Jaime Campbell Bower playing young Grindy and Colin Farrell playing him playing Graves, four different actors have portrayed this one underwhelming villain across three films. That's a pretty impressive record. Mads Mikkelson is Danish and he just sounds Danish now, which is a significant improvement on Johnny Depp.
He's also a better actor with more gravitas, range, and screen presence.
Also, he's not a [ __ ] piece of [ __ ] which is what matters most in my opinion. Anyway, they talk about how they used to be in love with each other and how Albus is so deep of a character here. It's a side of him we never saw.
You all know my opinions on this terrible excuse for a teacher and leader, so I won't rehash it here, but I will say that in this first scene, we're seeing a lot more drama and personal stakes and believable tension than we saw in the entire second movie. I still hate that we're focusing so hard on Grindleald that he's appeared in all three movies before N Scamander, the guy who's supposed to be the protagonist, but oh well. I know that's not necessarily an indication of how the rest of the movie will go, but in hindsight, it's certainly tracks. Much more attention is given to the Grindlewald storylines than any others.
At this point, why pretend? Just write N out of them and tell the story you really wanted to tell. The rise of Grindlewald. Why are we still pretending that having these juxtaposing elements together under Joan's leadership is actually going to go anywhere good? It's obviously not. So, let's go through the beasts right now and see just how sidelined they are.
So, our primary magical beast for this film is something called a chillin. Last movie it was nothing, so I guess this is a course correction. N goes and sees a baby chillin hatching in the middle of a forest in China. and it's cute and magical and we love it. He's there to steal it essentially because he knows Grindleald's people will come after it, which they do. But what is a chillin?
Why does Grindleald wanted in the first place? What's so important about this little dick dick looking creature? Well, a chillin chooses the supreme mugwamp of the International Confederation of Wizards. That's quite a specific and important job to leave to a baby deer, is it not? Okay, so the chillin sees into your soul or something. It can see if you're a good bloke or a right dog.
And then if it reckons your true blue, it bows to you. That's how the magical community can tell who they should elect as the next leader of the magic UN. What the [ __ ] is this ridiculous contrived [ __ ] Even if you've never seen this film, I would bet a significant amount of money you can guess the broad strokes of Grindleald's plan here and how it all gets thwarted. You might not get the specifics, but it's incredibly easy to tell that he's going to try and rig the election and become supreme mugwamp by hoodwinking this baby deer. But wait, there's a second chillin. So N takes the second chillin, which again is really cute. Then they get rescued by this hot air balloon pterodactyl shoe bill thing.
Wait, if it has wings powerful enough to carry them, why did it need to inflate itself like a balloon to take off?
Whatever. I guess it's good that they're including more beasts this time around.
Genuinely, it's more than last movie, and we're only 12 minutes in. Guess what, [ __ ] That's it. What? That's all the magical beasts we get in this story?
Well, technically, no. We get other magical beasts, but these are the only friendly ones we get with N actually interacting with them in any meaningful way. We see Picket, the bow truckle, and Nifler, the Niffler in the prison sequence, as well as another creature.
But that brings a whole other bunch of [ __ ] doesn't it? It's been about an hour now, so we simply must get a beast or two involved in the story, or we'll have to abandon the premise entirely.
So, this German magic prison is infested with tiny scorpions with a bunch of stingers. Like, just way too many stingers. Scorpions already have too many limbs. I hate this. Naturally, N being a magisuologist, knows what to do.
He walks like a crab and they all follow and mimic him. That's it. He just walks like a crab a little bit. He's not even really committing to the bit here. Like, yeah, he's dancing and getting his hips into it, but that's it. And they're just loving it. They're doing the [ __ ] crab dance. Is that what this is? Is this the crab wraith meme from like 2018? Oh my god. Anyway, all these prisoners are tied up by their ankles and N finds Thesius. Is anyone coming to get these guys down, or are they all just going to die from this? I guess it doesn't matter because, as it turns out, there's a colossal super mega giant scorpion thing in the center of the prison where it can access all the prisoners. And access them it does. It yinks a random bloke who screamed, melts him in acid, then throws him back up for the tiny ones to eat. So, this isn't a prison. It's a death chamber and a feeding ground. While New and Thesus are escaping, it starts just yanking more prisoners and killing them. So, why bother putting them in this prison if you're just going to let them die? Why not just toss them all in the pit and feed them to these crab things in the first place? What am I saying? This is completely and utterly [ __ ] Thesus never got a trial. He got captured and taken immediately to this place to be fed to the big scorpion monster. I can only imagine this is meant to be some sort of comment on the German Ministry of Magic being authoritarian and fascist and their processes being barbaric, but it doesn't go anywhere. No one mentions it again. No one does anything about it and it's treated as just another weird isolated event they had to overcome. Is no one going to question governments in this [ __ ] story? No. Then stop setting it up. Also, it's even dumber than that because the giant scorpion guy just starts rampaging and destroying the prison after this. Newton and Thesius escape and it just destroys a huge part of this prison. Is anyone going to acknowledge that these prisoners just died or are about to die now? No. Well, I guess N got his brother back, so [ __ ] the rest of them, right? Also, don't come into the comments and say that Joanne is making some profound statement about how prisoners were or are treated.
She's not. You want my evidence? Look at her track record in my previous videos.
Yeah, she's not saying [ __ ] She wanted Thesus imprisoned. Then she wanted him to escape. And the title of the film mandated she put some fantastic beasts in the movie. There's the full reason.
They made a big dumb action scene that ruins the world building even more, makes our characters look cold and evil, and makes very little sense. Part for the course, really. So, that's actually it for the beasts. The chillin returns at the end. will talk about it, but it doesn't do a whole lot, and we spend 90% of the runtime forgetting any of these creatures ever existed. What a slap in the face to anyone expecting a story about the thing the story was supposed to be about. This mistake is baffling because she seems to have doubled down on a criticism that already existed in the last film. No one told her. Can you imagine if she did this more than once?
If she took something everyone criticized the second film for and decided to do it again this time, only potentially worse.
Wow, I cannot believe she has not learned her lesson. She could barely maintain a semblance of consistency when she was just writing for one POV character and one [clears throat] story thread at a time. Surely, if you receive feedback that your plot is messy and your characters are one-dimensional and all over the place, and there's too many of them, you would try to course correct. Apparently not. This franchise needs more characters, not fewer. Our plot revolves around Dumbledore's plan to take down Grindlewald, which involves all of these characters doing different but supposedly interconnected things.
So, let's go through some of them. Jacob is back and he's absolutely shattered at the loss of Queenie. His baker is not doing so well. He's having phantom visions of Queenie coming back to him.
He's a broken man. His part in the plan is to point his fake wand at Grindleald, get accused of being an assassin, watch as everyone, including the woman he loves, leaves, and then run away with Lai. Okay, wait, who's Lai? This is Lai.
Although I don't love all the dialogue she's given, Jessica Williams is absolutely delightful as Lai Hicks.
She's got style, she's got charisma, and she's a really fun foil to Jacob. She does, however, mention that Jacob's obliviation didn't take. But why did anyone from the ministry not come and obliviate him again after that? He's a muggle that continues to know about the wizarding world. Yes. Isn't that against their sacred statute of secrecy?
>> Hey kid, it ain't that kind of movie, >> right? Yeah. Anyway, when she and Jacob are at the big German state dinner, I just have to take a moment to mention that Jacob's tux is great and Lai's dress is absolutely gorgeous. I don't really have much else to say on this subject. I just wanted to point out that her dress is amazing and I love it.
Intricate but not overdesigned and a great color choice for her. No notes.
This is a fashion channel now and there's nothing you can do about it.
Buntie's back. Remember her from a few seconds in the second film? Bunty takes N's creature case after the big train planning meeting. Oh, thank God. We wouldn't want N to use or interact with any of his wacky creatures, would we? We simply must invent new and wonderful ways to get these beasts out of the story. Quick, start with some beasts, then get rid of them immediately. Go back to Grindlewald. She takes the case to be replicated by this leather worker guy. Has the Jimnio charm not been invented yet? Why does she need this guy to make copies of it when she can do it with a single spell? Surely if she can't, Dumbledore could. The case being replicated by this man in particular instead of magic plays no part in the overall plan or finale whatsoever. Bunty returns at the end, but we'll [ __ ] get to that. We already talked about Thesius and the role he plays. He gets captured and put in the German death prison to be eaten by scorpions. Okay, what about N himself? N's first task is to tell a politician to do what is right, not what is easy. Damn, what an integral, important, poignant message this bloke needed to hear from N right now. If he hadn't heard this unique life advice to put everything in perspective, the whole plan would have fallen apart.
Then his second task is to rescue Thesus. I really genuinely mean it when I say that's it. Isn't this guy meant to be our protagonist? He wrote Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? He gets top billing and all that. Some of you might be racking your brains to remember this film for yourselves. And don't bother. It's so forgettable. I think someone might have put an obliviate spell in the credits. If our hero doesn't do anything, how can we expect anyone else to actually impact the story? Which brings us to Yousef Karma.
His role in the last film was to show up, deliver backstory about Credence and Lita Strange, and then not do anything.
Both of those things could have been done by Alita Lrange. I mean, as well as the not doing anything. I'm sure she did plenty of that. Karma's role in this film is to go over to Grindlewald's side. Oh, cool. Is he going to be a spy or something? Is he going to infiltrate their ranks in secret? Uh, no. He just walks up to the front gate and announces Dumbledore sent him to surveil them.
He's just hopping over to the dark side and allowing the big G himself to remove all of his memories of Lita Lrange.
Yeah. So, I guess he's just with Grindlewald now. You didn't come here to betray Dumbledore.
>> Well, why the [ __ ] is he there then?
What is Karma doing in this movie?
Nothing. Oh, yeah. That's what it is.
It's nothing. Thanks for reminding me.
Once again, I'm not exaggerating. Karma shows up twice more in this film. Once at the German dinner for 2 seconds with no lines, then once in the finale with no lines there either. This is a shocking amount of characters who have no relevance on the events of our film.
And that already pisses me off. But it also kind of amazes me. How far can this go? Queenie is in this film, too. What does she do? So, Queenie looks like she's having a few misgivings about Grindleald now, especially after he kills the chillin. Well, it's a bit [ __ ] late for that, isn't it, Queenie? You already knew he killed countless auras and a baby, but you draw the line here at the little dick dick.
She sucks. Put her in the bin. She also comforts Credence, sort of.
>> You're a Dumbledore. You know this because he's told you.
>> Uh, yeah, dude. You were there. like you were there in the next goddamn room when he said it. And also, that was like five years ago. Why are you bringing it up again here and now? You're not going to believe this. Uh, Queenie also doesn't contribute to the plot. Yeah, I'll get back to everyone's final movements when we address the finale, but she does nothing except hang out with Grindlewald. You could fully legitimately replace many of these characters with cardboard cutouts or perhaps floss, and the ending of this film wouldn't change at all. Let's move on to Credence. We're told that his bloodline and heritage is the most important thing ever, and he's a Dumbledore. Well, Credence has long hair now, but no more emotions in his face.
Ezra Miller did nothing with their performance last film, and they do nothing with their performance in this one either. What a waste. I'm not looking forward to reviewing The Flash.
Credence's role is to assassinate Albus Dumbledore. Seems like a pretty difficult job. Let's see how he goes.
They start fighting and Credence blows up huge sections of the street, like entire buildings, the road itself.
Everything starts crumbling and flying towards Dumbledore. What's his response?
He teleports onto a tram full of people.
What? That's how you're going to play this? Credence destroys it immediately, killing all of those people. Ah, they got me. It was Albus using the mirror dimension because he's seen Doctor Strange. Now, I'll admit this part is actually quite sick. Credence gives everything he's got, which doesn't include any emoting. But Albus is way too advanced for that. He takes Credence to school and shows the kid never stood a chance. Yeah, this was never going to work. Why did Grindleald think this would work? Did he want Credence to fail? If so, why send him in the first place? He clearly doesn't want him dead or he'd just kill him. So, I don't see the rationale behind this decision at all. All right, so I guess Credence is actually Abberforth's son now. So, what the [ __ ] was that speech at the end of the last movie about where Grindlewald specifically said he was Albus's brother? Was he wrong? Are we retconing that? Why are we changing [ __ ] here, retroactively making a bad movie even worse, and still insisting Credence is the most important person ever while keeping him offcreen as much as possible? God, this franchise has such a weird relationship with its main characters. It's either extremely incompetent in so far that it completely sidelines the important people for the sake of inane [ __ ] or it knows that Ezra Miller cannot carry the importance of the role, so just avoids them for meta reasons. Either way, the result is baffling and awkward and rushed and unsatisfying. It's a catch 22. Also, it cannot be the second because Credence is not the only sidelined character. As I've pointed out pretty clearly, they may be on screen doing things, but those things never amount to much more than jingling enchanted keys until we get to the stuff that almost matters. Okay, those are all the players in Dumbledore's big game. Wait, we're forgetting someone.
>> What about Tina? Has Tina come?
>> Tina's not available.
>> Oh no, Tina's not in this film. Why not?
Well, if you look it up, you can see a bunch of info about how shooting had to stop due to CO, how she contracted CO herself. She's a busy woman and all of that stuff. I think it's slightly more likely that it's due to her comments about trans women and Joanne. However, as it turns out, Katherine Waterstone is a [ __ ] legend and is vocally outspoken against anti-trans bigotry and transphobia. [ __ ] yes, Catherine. That is based as hell. She distanced herself from Jo-Annne's ignorant fear-mongering and took a stand. Presumably, this made Joanne Big mad and she wrote Tina out of the story because she didn't like how her feelings got hurt. And by feelings, I mean she didn't like her hateful bigotry being remotely challenged on the internet. What a [ __ ] snowflake. Now, that's all of the players in Dumbledore's game. When we talk about the finale and the rest of the plot, you'll see how little they actually do.
But for now, it's pretty embarrassing that we've learned nothing from last time. Even if they were all important in some way, we would be splitting our focus way too much for what Joanne can handle. She did exactly this last movie and it didn't work. Why try it again?
Well, it's in service of a genius narrative, of course. So, what is it?
And how does Dumbledore factor into all of this?
We know from the original books, last movie, and the opening of this film that Albus Dumbledore has quite a history with Glet Grinderald. They were closer than close, and Albus held his hand through several plastic surgeries. He knows Grindleald must be stopped, though. He's just constrained by the blood packed Nifll the Niflla stole last film. We're still stuck on this uber important blood packed thing. Albus can't so much as think about attacking Grindleald or moving against him, or the blood pact will get all angry, key his car, and choke him out. Damn, Grindleald was not a good boyfriend, was he? But this blood pact still pisses me off.
Maybe it's technically possible for it to exist and not violate cannon. Maybe it's technically possible that Albus sent N off to Paris to confront Grindleald in a roundabout manner without triggering its incredible rage.
But it's not really in the spirit of what we know, is it? In the books, we learn that Albus was afraid to go after Gell because he was afraid he might learn it was he who struck the killing blow to his sister Ariana. You see, she was killed in a big duel between himself, Grinderald, and his brother Abberforth. But how could he be in a duel with Grindleald if he'd already made the pact? There are a bunch of pedantic explanations that someone as nitpicky as myself might find and present, but I really don't think any of them follow the spirit of the information. Originally, there was a duel. Ariana died and Dumbledore couldn't face up to the idea that he may have killed her. He was ashamed. He was scared. He put it off even though he knew it had to be done. That makes him a much more complicated man. Here, they made a pact. I guess didn't directly duel, but maybe it happened through Ariana. And now he physically cannot move against Grindleald, even in the private recesses of his own mind.
Boring. It also commits a much bigger crime of Grindlewald in this story. It leads to the dumbass plot events of this movie.
>> Can't say for certain it was my spell.
Doesn't really matter.
>> Well, it certainly mattered to you in the books. Look, I'm not trying to say the books were some sacred texts we can never interfere or mess with, but I don't think it's controversial to say we should at least try to maintain some level of consistency. A million people could have told her she's contradicting herself with this blood packed and Alba's characterization in these films.
10 million even. It's not like these are tiny hidden details only a select few people would remember and notice. And it's not even good. Like, if she were retconing stuff for good reasons, I'd be way more forgiving. but it just weakens and flattens Dumbledore's character. It also makes no sense at the end. All right, so all of our other main characters are working to this plan Dumbledore has concocted. Let's talk about it. So Dumbledore knows Grindlewald is getting glimpses of the future. He reckons that's pretty hard to counter because it is. Read Dune Messiah. He decides that in order to keep Grindlewald from knowing what's going to happen, they need to confuse him. No one can know everything and they don't even know why they're doing it.
But they just need to trust Dumbledore and go along with the plan. I'm sorry. I simply don't agree with the idea that no plan or many overlapping plans would confuse Grindlewald, who can see glimpses of the future. His power is explicitly stated to be seeing the future, not seeing the future intentions of people moving against me. If it were the second, then having plans that no one knows about or are confused by could possibly work. However, he's not reading their minds. He's just seeing what they're going to do. Also, him being confused does next to nothing to actually stop him. Anyway, I just think they're either not explaining Grindleald's precience well enough, or they're straight up wrong about what this blundering, convoluted plot actually entails for the villain. It's nonsensical. And it's not like it makes no sense in the beginning, but then comes together at the end to give a holistic part of how everything works cohesively. It just straight up doesn't make sense at all. It's a huge blow to the pacing, coherence, and flow of the movie. Last movie was already oversted and bloated. This one is threatening to do all of that again on purpose. It's like this entire plot is set up as a lampshade for the wider series, and I think that's beautiful. It's worth mentioning that this surely goes against the blood pact, too. Albus Dumbledore's here concocting a 50point plan no one knows all the details to which will involve all of these random people and moving parts and confuse Grindlewald.
But he's still moving against Grindleald. No. How is he allowed to plan this at all? Can't he like not even think about acting against him?
Inconsistencies abound here and I think you'll be quite impressed by how inconsistent this tale can become. But also, it kind of seems like Dumbledore knows the whole plan. So this notion of no one can know everything just really doesn't apply at all. We're throwing it out the window. Why are we doing this then? Confusing Grindlewald for the sake of stopping him is one thing, but confusing the audience for the sake of misdirection and purposeless immersion is just offensive. Last film, she didn't trust her audience to figure out anything without explaining it several times. That happens sometimes in this one, too. But it's also not a real plot, so there's not much to explain. From the very get-go, this is an ill-conceived idea. Steve Cloves apparently wrote this one with her, but unfortunately, you could have got William Shakespeare himself to come and advise, but the overarching plan is so bad in and of itself, I doubt you'd end up with anything much better. If your movie revolves around the characters not knowing what they're doing or why in the short term, you're stripping them of agency. You're removing their ability to meaningfully build a story with momentum and tension and flow. and instead you're just assembling blocks interchangeably until the runtime has been padded enough to get on to the finale you always knew you were going to get to no matter what.
Even Albus Dumbledore somehow doesn't do anything in this movie. Albus [ __ ] Dumbledore. That's so baffling. His big plan was concocted offcreen and he wasn't even there in person to deliver much of the information about it. The only person who's really doing anything before the very end is Grindlewald. So, I guess it's his movie again.
>> Aw, thank you.
The main conflict of this film revolves around an upcoming election. How relevant. It's a political plot thread with the Supreme Mugwamp job up for grabs. There are two main candidates.
Vicencia Santos, the Brazilian Minister for Magic, and Lu Tao, the Chinese Minister for Magic. Somehow Grindlewald wants to become a third candidate and use his corrupted chillin to become a supreme mugwamp. I have a real [ __ ] problem with this. Or more accurately, I used to. I dislike how the entire last film was about the crimes of Grindlewald. I seem to remember that phrase having importance for some reason. He killed children. He was hunted the whole time and the British and French ministries totally wanted to arrest him and put him away again. He's a bad dude. But now he's just kind of chilling out at his castle. He also just walks around and goes out in the open to effectively campaign and then try to take the Supreme Mugwamp position. Like, is no one trying to get this guy anymore? He didn't stop committing crimes. He killed a bunch of ministry officials at the end of the last film.
[ __ ] get him. Why would anyone be letting this villainous clown continue towards his goal? If he's as dangerous as everyone says, the full might of the world's ministries should probably be getting on that [ __ ] After all, he is a threat to their precious statute of secrecy. That being said, my problem used to be a lot more poignant before Donald Trump got elected. This convicted felon got elected to essentially the highest office in the modern world, and he bragged about many of his crimes, too. So, I guess I can't possibly critique this plotline as being unrealistic.
I still don't like it in a narrative sense given the entire focus of the last film. But [ __ ] me, life really does imitate art, doesn't it? This whole political theme has another negative effect though because it serves to sideline N and his beasts so hard they barely get mentioned, let alone seen.
It's still called Fantastic Beasts.
Maybe show us one or two. The tone has gone from mixed to confusing and muddled to downright faracle. This movie is a [ __ ] far. Joanne really needs to stop trying her hand at political drama. She tried adding political themes and conflicts to her books and it failed miserably because she didn't follow through. She's trying again here and would you believe it, she doesn't follow through. She [ __ ] it up royally and she simultaneously oversimplifies and over complicates things. You wouldn't think you could do both, but I promise you she can and does.
>> He is hereby absolved of all his Alice crimes. Wow, Grindleald has a lot of power here. Hey, impressive. Except how could he possibly be absolved everywhere. Surely he's not just completely free the world over.
>> You're a free man.
>> Oh, okay. I guess the crimes of Grindleald weren't that bad, then. So, now he's free to pursue the position and pursue it he does. So, let's talk about how the chillin factors in and how magical politics work in Joannne's world.
Just to quickly recap, there are two chillins. Grindleald doesn't know this yet and thinks he has the only one. He kills it, then unkills it somehow, and it's all corrupted. Now, the heroes have the second one because they know it's important. We establish in the Hog's Head that the chillin can see into your soul. They will only ever bow to someone truly pure of heart. Okay, that's the wording. They can't just be a good person. They've got to be completely pure-hearted and amazing. Got it. Very high bar. They've also replicated N's case so we can have some high jinks. The score swells into that theme we all know and love as our heroes walk towards the coalescing door to the room of requirement. It's so dramatic and the crescendo comes right as we open the door to an empty hazy CGI room with Bunty in five cases. Oh, and this weird floating dresser thing. Great. Everyone takes a case and heads to the magical voting city. There's a lower city, then an upper courtyard, and giant staircase where the actual candidates are, and where everyone is ultimately gathering.
They're ducking and weaving through the city while Gundowald's people look for them. They're even apparating and disapperating to get away. So, why can't they just apperate to the top with the chillin? Why can't they just apperate straight into the ceremony and be like, "Hey, we have another one. Let's all just make sure no one's killed the first one and sucked its blood back in with a weird bath ritual." Look how far away it is. You have to apparate up there anyway. Why bother going through all these random streets if you're just going to operate up to the top with the case regardless? It genuinely makes no sense. But we have to have a little magic sequence first, otherwise our investors will die and our audiences will pull out their tick tocks. So, here goes. So, I won't lie, I actually quite enjoy the creative fight that Lai and Thesius have with these goons, even if it does involve a lot of generic blue spells being thrown around. It's not perfect, but it's cool. And now, Karma's back, our favorite character. He shows up at the city with Grindleald's goons and switches sides again. He walks dramatically, turns around, defeats everyone with a single spell, and they never talk about it again. What the [ __ ] was the point of his entire character? I mean, yeah, in this film, he had no arc, made no difference, accomplished nothing, and barely had any lines. But last film, he also didn't really do anything either. He's a genuine nothing character that serves no purpose in this series whatsoever. Imagine this film without him. Spoiler alert, it's exactly the same, just a few minutes shorter. He doesn't even say anything in this redemption scene. I hope you heard my implied air quotes there because he doesn't even need a redemption. He never did anything. He went over to Grindlewald's side, but everyone saw through him immediately. Yet, for some stupid reason, they allowed him to join them. Like, why did they keep him around if they knew he wasn't there to betray Dumbledore? Could Grindlewald really not see this coming? Even if he didn't see it in the future, I reckon he might have just had enough brain cells rattling around in there to predict it the normal way using logic. Who the [ __ ] wrote this? Anyway, while this chase scene is happening in the lower city, the election ceremony is happening up top.
>> Which brings us to the most important part of our ceremony, the walk of the children.
>> So, was this always going to be a part of the ceremony or has it been added last minute? Did the other two candidates really not have anything to say about this [ __ ] baby deer being brought in just to choose which one of them gets to rule the godamn wizarding world essentially? Naturally, the chill and Grindleald rigged choose as Grindlewald. Everyone just reckons that's good enough and they all start voting for him. Uh, also they seem to have forgotten his symbol. You know, the one for the Deathly Hallows, but they throw this good game call sign up in the air anyway. Then after 3 seconds of this, I guess smoke voting, this bloke just calls the election. What? It's been seconds, dude. Don't you want an actual ballot or anything? You're just going to declare that Grindlewald won?
>> Who would marry a witch and pollute our blood? Create a forbidden union that would make us less make us weak like his kind?
>> Grindlewald wins and then immediately goes on a racist rant about how muggles shouldn't pollute wizarding blood. Hold on. Wasn't that the entire reason Queenie joined him in the first place last movie? Or was that because of the World War II thing? Wait, no. We're redconning that part away. Queenie joined him because she wanted to marry Jacob and now he's saying he thinks that's gross and terrible and he hates it. This would be up there with the top 10 anime betrayals of all time except that she can [ __ ] read minds. You didn't see that one, Queenie? Are you [ __ ] with me, Joanne? Did you write this badly on purpose? She can literally read his mind but didn't know that he's full of [ __ ] about the muggle marriage thing. I'm sorry. This is so stupid. Why put Queenie in the story if you're gonna ignore her powers at every turn? Also, the Wizard Emperor just won his election and immediately starts torturing this guy. What a great look for a leader. Is everyone just going to go along with this? Are you serious? He declares war on the muggles within 2 minutes of being elected. What is this? Can you seriously not write anything remotely more subtle than this? So, now we see the return of Bunty. Her role was to bring the second chillin. She just shows up and she has the chillin in her case. How was this a misdirect? Couldn't she have just had it there the whole time and teleported up at the last minute anyway? Did anything anyone else did contribute at all? No.
So the second chillin turns up and it's totally normal and the other one just [ __ ] dies. What was their plan? Just get it to bow to Grindleald then [ __ ] it a second later. Yeah, that's not suspicious. Anyway, the real chillin bows to Dumbledore. [ __ ] you. Sorry, that's not what I meant to say. I meant [ __ ] you. Hold on, I'll try one more time. I meant what isn't the entire point of Dumbledore's character that he's flawed and complicated and he does things for the greater good, but he's not pure-hearted because that might prevent him from doing what needs to be done. Also, all the other stuff we talked about in the original book series. How the hell is he so purehearted that it's choosing him over N or Bunty or even Jacob? It's because of the godamn blood pact, isn't it? That thing has done so much narrative and character damage. I can scarcely believe Joanne didn't notice it herself.
Terrible critic as she is. It's a lazy, easy way for her to say, "No, Dumbledore wanted to come and help, but he couldn't because of the pact." Ah, yes. He's the most incredible, wonderful, kind, pure-hearted man of all time. And he would come to apprehend Grindleald in seconds were it not for that blood pact.
Once that's out of the way, it's over for Grindleald because that's the only thing stopping Dumbledore. Sorry, what's that? I'm lying to your faces. Yeah, it breaks at the end of this film, but canonically Dumbledore doesn't defeat Grindleald for another 13 years. I I'm completely speechless. Fantastic Beasts may go down as the dumbest film franchise in cinema history. This is completely impossible to justify, but let's dive down the rabbit hole. If Dumbledore is so desperate to move against Grindleald, then 13 years seems like an insane amount of time to accomplish that task in. If the Blood Pact was the only thing holding him back, I have to believe that he's a good enough wizard to track him down and take care of business a bit sooner than that.
You don't agree? You reckon that Grindleald is just going to hide or avoid Dumbledore for this whole time?
Okay, what were the next two movies going to be about then? They just weren't going to meet again until their epic duel 13 years later. Were we going to go back to romps with fun mystical creatures for a film and a half, then just end with Dumbledore 360 no scoping Grindlewald? This doesn't track to me and would only make sense if he'd succeeded at becoming Supreme Mugwamp and maintaining some level of political protection. If you think that that blood pact wasn't the only thing holding him back and he really did feel all of these complicated feelings about not really wanting to stop this man he loved and find out who actually killed Ariana, then why include the blood pact at all?
It demolishes this idea in story and so does Albus's line about it not really mattering whose spell killed his sister.
Is this not contradictory to that notion? Besides, he's been trying to stop the man for two whole movies. Yeah, he might not have been doing it personally, but he also met him in that [ __ ] cafe, didn't he? So, he's clearly not afraid of hearing some secret knowledge that Grindlewald holds.
It could only possibly be about loving him too much to not attack him directly, which again seems a bit far-fetched given that he's been sending people to stop him for the last four years or whatever. Joanne started this series way too early. If she really wanted these stories to coincide and contend with Grindleald's rise and fall, then she's lost her [ __ ] mind starting at nearly 20 years before their big duel. You actually reckon you can handle telling a story over 19 years with these characters? I mean, clearly not given that the franchise got cancelled, but we'll get to that. The timelines are absurd, and I think it would be silly not to acknowledge that even if we left all of the other mistakes in, this would be really easy to fix. Like I know I complain about Grindlewald being the focus of these stories at all and in the second and third ones so much that they're not really about n anymore, but this one is just amateur-ish beyond belief. Pathetic. Start at 5 years out from his defeat and make each year a movie. Or better yet, write Fantastic Beasts and then write a single entirely separate Grindlewald movie. Imagine that. Oh, we're not even done with the chill and choosing Dumbledore. By the way, this rant really got away from me.
Dumbledore says he couldn't possibly accept this chillin choosing him. Well, yeah, you can't. You're not a [ __ ] candidate, doofus. But also, why not?
He's the supreme mugwamp in the books.
Stop pretending like Dumbledore doesn't want power or thinks he can't be trusted with it. He's the most powerful person in the world. This film makes that even more obvious and even more egregious.
Obviously, he doesn't become Supreme Mugwamp here and now because like I said, he's not a candidate. But before we get to who actually is, Gelllet realizes Credence is there to stop him.
The kids changed his mind and now doesn't want to murder people for no reason. Gelllet tries to kill Credence and Albus tries to protect him, intercepting the killing curse. This blocked curse moment results in the Blood Pact being destroyed, so Dumbledore and Grindleald have their big epic duel. Wait, not the big epic duel, just a big epic duel. So, he's not afraid to fight him at all. Why the [ __ ] did it take 13 years after this then?
[ __ ] Also, their wands connect a bunch because David Yates is a [ __ ] hack. There, I said it. Anyway, they stopped fighting because they wanted to make more films. Lol. And the new Chillin chooses Vicencia Santos to be the Supreme Mugwamp, which we've just now decided is a super important genuine leadership position. Wait, I thought Grindleald was already Supreme Mugwamp.
That guy earlier called it. Hold on.
Everyone's shooting orange smoke and fireworks into the air. Are they voting or celebrating cuz the chillin just straight up chose for them? Did they seriously just let a second chillin come in and choose their goddamn leader again? When the first one picked Grindlewald and then he immediately got exposed, did no one think to maybe take a closer look at their election methods?
Also, this isn't an election. It's a [ __ ] ritual. I'm all for politicians being better people. That would be fantastic. But let's not pretend it's the only thing that matters. I'm sure we can all envision a world in which Vicencia Santos is pure-hearted and kind and fantastic, but maybe not so great of a leader. Maybe she's learned some incorrect things about foreign policy and economics and magic and all that. I don't know. How does the chillin even factor in cultural bias and ignorance?
Yeah, she's already minister for magic, but people can be bad leaders. And what happens if you get a bunch of candidates up at the top of this mountain, release a chillin you found in a dumpster, and it doesn't bow to anyone? Do they vote like normal then, or do they just take it around and find the most pure-hearted person and give the job to them? Why even hold elections like this in the first place? If it boils down to this kind of [ __ ] Also, everyone seems super happy that Venencia Santos won now. They're all celebrating like the Emperor's just been killed in Return of the Jedi. But weren't they all just cheering for Grindlewald? Was it the magic war thing that soured them? Cuz I doubt anyone was voting for him or celebrating for him because they thought he was some benevolent nice guy, right?
What is this flip-flopping the magical crowd are doing? Oh yeah, Credence [ __ ] dies. After spending two entire movies telling us how incredibly important his character and his lineage was and how impactful it was that he was a Dumbledore, he just dies. Sorry, he starts to die. He's not dead yet.
Abberforth takes him home but makes him walk down the stairs, the [ __ ] And I guess he's not dead yet. What? You're going to make him survive after this?
Then why make a big deal about him dying in the first place? It's [ __ ] no matter what they do. But it also doesn't matter because this franchise is over. So I guess we'll never know what her garbage dumbass plan was going to be. And that's the finale. Just to make it super clear, Bunty brought the case that anyone else could have brought. Dumbledore's confusing plan amounted to nothing except the case being brought and no other character contributed in any way whatsoever. They may as well have not been there. Imagine writing a movie so terrible that none of your characters matter. How is this possible? Dumbledore could have apparated the case up himself and then Bob's your uncle. All new did in this film was find the second chillin at the start and not get killed because Credence has read the script. What a joke. This film has no plot. You could write a bunch of magic adjacent sentences on playing cards, shuffle them, and deal them out one by one, and you'll have a story as compelling and narratively sound as this one. That might even be how they wrote it. I don't know. Anyway, there's also a quick epilogue, which is now the last we'll ever see of these movies. Jacob and Queenie get married because I guess we're just ignoring the fact that she suffered terrible brain damage and also used that date rape spell on him that one time. Oh my god, it's Porpentina Goldstein. Remember that character that had a huge important role in the first two films? No. Well, don't worry. She wouldn't have done anything in this movie anyway. No one else did. Wait, did they seriously get married in his bakery? Okay, sure. Wait, isn't this still illegal? Ah, [ __ ] it. Who cares?
Who cares at this point? It's so stupid and it doesn't matter and never did and probably wouldn't have gone anywhere anyway. Hey, where the [ __ ] did Neini go? I would cut away and pretend that's all I have to say, but it's pretty weird and hilarious and [ __ ] up that she's just not in this movie. It's genuinely like Rise of Skywalker where they just pretend many of the events of the last film didn't happen. We saw the movie, Joanne. You can't pull the demigu wall over our eyes and that's it. That's the end of Fantastic Beasts. It wasn't meant to be because it ends with nothing, but that's what it is. If the second film was Burnham Wood, this one is McDuff and it has finally struck the killing blow.
Five films was always going to be way too many. I mean, the premise was stretched thin by the second one. If the third one wasn't going to wrap it up, then what were the fourth and fifth even going to be about? I don't mean in retrospect. I just mean in general. How can you expect either of these premises to carry an entire five film franchise without a really solid plan? If you're doing them together, that's even more difficult. With the three films we have, I'm glad we never got to continue.
Joanne ran with her previous pattern of not planning anything out. And this time, it resulted in unfocused, pointless narratives that don't deliver on their promises. Let's think about what we actually got. The first movie was N taking the Thunderbird to America but getting mixed up with Makuza and Grindleald in New York City. Grindleald finds an obscurial. The second was Grindleald escaping and starting his open crusade. The third was Grindleald amassing power and Dumbledore trying to stop him. The fourth and fifth would have spanned over a decade, but can't meaningfully advance the Grindlewald story. And that's the crux, isn't it? If there were always going to be five, then we know we can't defeat Grindleald until the fifth, can we? This presents a problem to Joanne because she wants to focus on the drama of Dumbledore and Grindlewald. But it really shouldn't have been a problem at all. The Harry Potter books revolved around Harry Potter. Voldemort was crucial to many of the issues he faced, but he wasn't the sole arbiter of them, and there were many other contained mysteries that related to other people. If Joanne were to do the same thing here, she would be centering her stories around N.
Grindlewald would be a side story, one that wo in and out of N's escapades and personal dramas. And in the first film, that's what happened. New and Grindleald are almost working towards the same goal in a way, and the intersection of their story lines feels much more natural than in the later installments. I know everyone says the same thing. I know I've already mentioned it a thousand times, but that's because it's true and important and obvious now with hindsight. N was the franchise vehicle, not Grindlewald. I feel like she didn't have the talent to hack it anyway because five movies is just so many, but she would have stood a much better chance if she' just spread the Grindlewald story a little bit thinner, thought of more reasons for N to be doing anything, and maybe tried to stuff less [ __ ] into her films. The new Grinderald dichotomy is my biggest issue, but the bloat is a similarly egregious one. Just think about how many characters get introduced only to do the absolute bare minimum. Karma, Leitita, Lai, Neagini, Credence. Bunty does more than Credence in the second and third films. I'm not kidding. And even she could have been easily replaced by anyone else. Ultimately, I think these films were meant to be fun. The first one clearly had that intention, and the third one had all the trappings of a film trying to be fun, but it never was.
Even if it was vapid fun, that would still be enjoyable to watch, but the second and third are just woefully dull.
Again, I think these films would have been much better if they were all just Wizarding World films. Like I said, the first one can be Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, all about N. And then you can have the second and third be about Dumbledore and Grindlewald.
That's a better trilogy that I've just given to you, Joanne. It's a bit embarrassing when you look back on certain parts of it. The actors changing left, right, and center because of controversies. The script writer being lambasted online as these films came out because she started unraveling in real time. Then the third one didn't do well and they canned at all. Thank Dumbledore. That being said, it's not like The Wizarding World doesn't make [ __ ] bank. Universal Studios makes billions off the back of Joann's books.
Epic Universe, which I talked about briefly earlier, has an entire section of the park dedicated to that magical street in Paris. Embarrassing. Most kids going there will be like, "Where is this supposed to be?" Because it appeared on screen for maybe 10 minutes in a film no one liked. Also, I have a theory. I think that the Harry Potter TV show upcoming later this year only exists because the Fantastic Beasts franchise is dead. Think about it. They want something to funnel new audiences into all of their merchandise and theme parks and whatever, but they can't get Joanne to write anything new because she's bad at this and everyone hates her. And they can't come up with anything else on their own because Joanne probably won't let them. I know. Let's just start again. I can't confirm it, but it does have a certain logic to it, doesn't it?
Now, don't even get me started on the actual series itself. I just It's ridiculous as a concept. So, that's the Fantastic Beasts franchise. a bold venture that devolved into a painful, unfinished slog. By the time the third one came around, they were clearly desperate, but they also somehow didn't know what to do with their own characters. I think there will be plenty of people out there who were disappointed that the franchise didn't continue. But I doubt you would find anyone who wanted it to continue without serious improvements. Unfortunately, that's impossible with Joanne at the helm.
[music] I may not be the best media critic out there. I may not be the most skilled writer, the most intelligent reader, or the most politically or socially savvy creator to cover these topics. That being said, I didn't make all of this content out of nothing. I'd like to think that I brought up some reasonable, nuanced point about this phenomenon that just never seems to end. And I'm glad that so many of you have come along for the ride. It's been a pleasure and an honor to have so many people come to my channel from this series, leaving wonderful, supportive, and informative comments and watching my videos. I've worked really hard on them, and it's very gratifying to see that pay off.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will of course continue to make more videos about other things, but this is my last Harry Potter one for now. I don't really have that much more to say about this series and Joanne as a writer, and I'm excited to move on to other things. I expect that those things will probably get me fewer views and subscribers than these videos, but that's just how it goes. If you've enjoyed my videos and want to see more content, there is of course plenty on my channel, but there's also existing and future bonus content on my Patreon where you can support me and my work. Speaking of, a huge shout out to my two top tier patrons, 999 and Zillian. You are true bloody legends. This video has been a mammoth project to get out and done in 2 weeks, and I've been very busy, so I'm pretty tired. But I'll leave you with this. I've said many times that these stories hold a special place in people's hearts, and that's okay. No one's asking you not to enjoy Harry Potter or not to reminisce about the memories that it created. It is important, however, to acknowledge what JK Rowling has said and done. It's not about feminism. It's not about defending women. It's not about just standing up for her beliefs. I see many comments coming in on my videos saying that I just hate her because she's a feminist or she doesn't want predators coming into women's spaces.
This is wrong. I'm sorry. It's just wrong. There are countless ways for you to find out that it's wrong, but just go watch Sha's videos. They're fantastic.
She's not a feminist. She's not defending women. She is attacking women.
Trans women are women. That's not controversial. It's just a fact. It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Science and logic are on my side. Facts don't care about your feelings. It should be noted that she's not just attacking trans women, but trans men also. She's a trans phobe, and that has been public knowledge for years. So, I don't feel bad about calling her Joanne instead of her full name. I don't feel bad about calling her a bad writer and a bad person. She is those things. She's also a bigoted piece of [ __ ] Also, I feel it's necessary to say this, not for me, but for future people talking about these books and movies because I won't be the last. You don't have to be a best-selling author to critique this work. You don't even have to be a writer. It just so happens that I am, but all of my books are unpublished, so it doesn't really matter. My point is that critiquing a piece of media is not the same thing as suggesting that you can do a better and more successful job.
That being said, I'm sure most people could write a series with more internal consistency than Joanne. It's not that hard. Anyway, that's all I have. We finished the trial. We won the case. You can all retire from magical law now if you like. Next up is The Flash.
Subscribe if you want to see more content in the future. Leave a like if you enjoyed and have a bloody good one.
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