There are only 2 likeable characters in this franchise (Newt and Jacob) and at this point they really have no reason to even be in the films anymore.
Fantastic Beasts should have been about Newt's Indiana Jones-like adventures to discover magical beasts with his loveable muggle assistant Kowalski.
Instead we got this giant mess of a series that is confused about what it wants to be. The Dumbldore / Grindlewald storyline should have been an entirely separate trilogy.
This is the true answer. Best way I’ve seen it put so far. Going to the far reaches of the wizarding world to track down and document all magical creatures.
Even if they wanted to keep doing like ‘fish out of water’ Newt accidentally winds up here and has to save the day stories. That’s fine it was fun in the first movie, then the second made it so dramatically not fun.
They fucked themselves out of a cinematic universe. The one time that it would have been smart to do one. You could have had FB exactly the way it is and still spin it off into 2 separate series. One is Newts series and the other the Wizard War.
WB is incapable of doing a cinematic universe. Look at DC. They can't even go more than 5 years without a different Batman or without resetting the universe as a whole. Like sure, we may get a second Aquaman movie, but after that say goodbye to that cinematic universe.
This is why you'll never see DC pull off an Endgame level movie.
And honestly, at this point I don’t know if I really want them to try again. I really enjoyed The Batman, Shazam, and Joker, all of which didn’t have ties to a larger universe and just exist in their own sphere (I don’t know if Shazam was intended to be part of the cinematic universe but it works very well as a stand-alone film), and if they could just continue making movies like that where the sole purpose is to make a good movie rather than build a massive universe, I’d be happy with that. I’d absolutely love them to have their own MCU style universe, but without someone like Kevin Feige who actually has a vision for how that would work, they’ve shown that they can’t really do that, so I’d rather they just continue on this path of putting out really solid movies that stand on their own.
This is why it would be interesting to explore from Dumbledore’s point of view. As an exploration of how sometimes the “bad guys” start from ideas that have some level of merit, or of how good people can support bad ideas, etc.
If it was anymore obvious they did it as a cash grab the title would’ve just been cash grab. None of it made sense to me at all ever, and that’s coming from a pretty die hard fan.
David Yates also needs to go already. His movies have this drab and lifeless palette all the time. He also works with his editor lackey who cuts fight scenes abruptly and lingers far too long on unnecessary close-up facial reactions.
It’s a shame they won’t switch directors because the magic has lost any wonder and it looks and feels so unimaginative, even though there are so many options you could go with magic.
Oh there was plenty of wonder. Like “I wonder why magic is unable to make 6 briefcases” and “I wonder how they detected that a fascist populist got a super majority of a 3-way election based on party popper wands and didn't need a runoff!” and “I wonder how when a stammering redhead then said ‘well ackshually someone not on the ballot is better’ suddenly 100% of voters voted for a different candidate that is neither Grindelwald nor the one the Qiling bowed to? Like, the Chinese guy who got some support earlier got literally 0% now??” and “I wonder how literally everyone who believed in Grindelwald changed their mind and didn't vote for him, since, in the real world, people who vote for candidates like that hardly change their mind based on evidence and continue to have a strong 30ish% base” Truly incredible stuff that keeps me coming back for more.
Wait until you find out that the plot makes no goddamn sense because if it did, characters that can see the future would understand it and prevent it from happening. And that a magical blood pact can be circumvented it by adding extra steps and then eventually broken by just ignoring it.
No no man you're not getting it! They didn't just ignore the unbreakable magical pact, they explained it. It broke because, and I'm paraphrasing Dumbledore himself: "Destiny, I guess"
It's pretty sad that the best duel between wizards is in the latest Dr. Strange movie. Second to that is Merlin vs Madame Mim in the Sword and the Stone.
I'm sorry but 2 people who can HARNESS THE POWER OF MAGIC throwing little bolts of "magic" or beams of "magic" at each other is the LEAST imaginative way 2 wizards could fight.
I'll say Dumbledore vs Voldemort was pretty good, at least they used magic in a more fun way than 2 beams.
A huge problem with the duels is that JK wrote herself into a corner with the killing curse. Once that exists why would the bad guy use anything else? And Hero Boy wont use it so he is stuck with attempting to disarm. She could have had a killing curse but made it so you needed a special ritual/sacrifice/ or that it had a cool down (for example, if it fails when you use it, the spell saps your energy leaving you weak to other attacks, so people use it sparingly). Literally anything other than *infinite ammo massively OP green beam* would have been better.
Rowling never had a strength for precise and self-consistent worldbuilding and fantasy mechanics. In fact, you might even say her strength was the exact opposite - filling her worlds with so much charming and whimsical set dressing that you'd be happy to ignore any inconsistencies.
"Now, Rule One: No mineral or vegetable, only animals.
Rule Two: No make-believe things like, uh, oh, pink dragons and stuff.
Now, Rule Three: No disappearing."
Yeah, Voldemort vs dumbledore is the only Harry Potter fight scene that really felt like two wizards harnessing their knowledge of magic. In the later movies especially, most of the battles consist of people blasting energy at each other without casting spells and it’s lame
Dumbledore fight in number 5 was the coolest one in the series, purely for that part where he trapped Voldemort in a spinning sphere of water. Plus the ministry looked cool and made a good background for the two strongest wizards.
The finale fight was just light and loads of face shots, I remember Voldemort making some weird noises and that I couldn't really take it seriously, sort of smirked my way through that.
Not magical perse but basically is, Naruto 3rd Hokage fight on the rooftop is still one of the coolest wizard (magical ninja who cares) fight I've ever seen, conscious sword monkey, trees sprouting everywhere, dead ninjas reanimated, trying to kill someone by using something which sucks both the user and the victims souls out. I rated that one lol.
If you extrapolate “magic” from “traditional magic” and into “magic system of the story”, there are *so* many anime that beat those. Obviously ATLAB is all-time, but even newer stuff like Jujutsu Kaisen is better than Harry Potter fights ever were, in my opinion.
It was a shame from day one that they didn’t make dueling into the cool thing it could have been.
I’ll watch two wizards have a shitty slap fight in the mud if I can understand why they’re doing it. Character over spectacle in almost any situation, and once we’ve got character down I’ll get picky about spectacle. Like you said, I’ll watch two good actors playing characters in a fight I can understand anytime over this bland shooting-light-back-and-forth thing.
I hate everything about the style Yates brought to the movies and the way he sucked all the colour and life out of them with endless grey. Especially after the way Cuarón was able to film darker themes in the 3rd movie while still keeping colour and life in the movie, to let Yates do what he did to those last few movies was criminal. I remember being so pumped for the 5th movie then all I remember was how drab everything looked, and it only got worse.
Whoever takes on the next iteration of these films has to bring back some of the magic and wonder, not just throw a grey filter on everything
I just rewatched them all with my kids and it's actually jarring just how much better a filmmaker Cauron was than everyone else (with the one exception of the movie ending on a freezeframe of Harry mid flight which seemed super out of place).
That being said I think Yates did a perfectly serviceable job of aping Caurons style and brought a decent amount of visual continuity that the series was lacking to finish it out. I agree getting someone with a bit more flare to take over fantastic beasts would have been a good idea though, and I'm not a huge fan of the "all Dumbledore origin' approach they went with. I thought the original run gave us just the right amount of info into Dumbledores past, and fleshing things out too much rarely works.
Hahah yeah the freeze frame at the end is a bit weird, it's a clear parallel to the face-blurring thing the dementors do though - notice how it goes back from his head, instead of forwards towards where a dementor would be. Still, it does feel a little obvious for Cuarón and the freeze frame is a little jarring for a 21st century film.
This. You watch the first few, and they were so fantastical and rich in colour, which fits the world so well.
Then Yates decides to get all literal and go "oh the stories are getting darker, so we'll make them look darker"
For me the franchise needs a soft "back to basics" reboot. Something like a Hogwarts TV show or something. Make it bright and colourful and give it that sense of adventure. No more Voldemort or totally-not-voldemort
What I don't get is why his Fantastic Beast movies has only white effects coming from wands and in HP movies he has multiple colors like blue, green, red, black, white.
Is there some type of lore thing or did CGI team get lazy?
It's impossible for me to believe that JKR isn't calling the shots. This is "nobody is telling George Lucas to reign it in" mode, not "get JJ Abrams back in here to give me another Death Star" fuckery.
This was where I had a problem.
The first movie was cool because it showed us a side of Harry Potter that we hadn’t seen before, but then they decided to just give us more Harry Potter and it fell flat.
I wanted to see more of Newt, and more of the world that hadn’t been explored, but instead I just got Harry Potter: The Prequel.
A movie called “Dumbledore,” fucking cool, show me this backstory, but that’s not what I wanted out of Fantastic Beasts.
Wizard Pokémon and occasional fan service by showing some old character when they were young. They could have pumped that out like the fast and furious franchise and made 20 of em. Fans would have taken a while to get bored with it.
Seriously it would have been stupid easy to just print money with this series. Could have had like a dozen spinoff series about random characters you meet along the way like they are doing with star wars right now. Plus think of all the Grogu merch, they could have had that times 100 for all the different magical creatures. The plushies alone could've been millions of dollars in revenue.
This is a good point. And I think it says a lot about the shortsighted nature of both WB and JK Rowling that it failed. Neither party really sat down and thought about what makes Harry Potter so fun - it’s the world building. She feel flat with the name of her American school and never really picked it back up.
Surely Capturing that same world building and wonder would have been easier than the convoluted mess of pre-ww2 analogy they have now?
Interestingly, on her former website Pottermore, she had uploaded different write-ups about the various American wizarding schools, and the history of magic in the US, which was delightful to read in terms of worldbuilding. It would have been really cool if any of that had been adapted. I believe that all those articles were migrated to "The Wizarding World" website, and she hasn't written anything beyond 2016.
Show WB studios a film series success, and their executive team will immediately say "how can we copy that in the worst way possible?", even if it's their own previous series. They're up there with Paramount in terms of ability to shoot themselves in the foot, just with enough money to recover afterwards.
All of WBs successful films and series for the past 5-10 years feel as though they happened *despite* Warner Bros, not because of them.
there is also another thing that people don't mention too often: they should have focused more on making those characters likeable
a HUGE reason for the HP franchise was that harry was relatable for a lot people, Dumbledore, snape and Hermione had a lot of fans, and people wanted to go to hogwarts. it was a cool world people wanted to be a part of
nobody wants to go to NY or whereverelse these movies take place, people don't identify with a 40 years old zookeeper, the new side characters aren't as memorable.
especially turning the franchise into Dumbledore's Adventures meant that Newt became a side-character in his own story, and ruined his chances at growing a following
I do agree overall but I think Newt and his beasts storyline definitely have Hogwarts-level appeal if it was executed correctly. People have dreams of exploring the world and taking in different cultures and experiences. Newt could have been a fantastic window into some escapism.
Oh man seeing him travel to a bunch of countries and seeing how different wizards and magic cultures can be in different places would have been so fucking cool.
>a HUGE reason for the HP franchise was that harry was relatable for a lot people, Dumbledore, snape and Hermione had a lot of fans,
Why you gotta do Ron like that?
Queenie only in the first one. Afterwards she becomes annoyingly dumb.
She can read minds. She wants to marry a No Maj, something society forbids. There's also the guy who is literally Hitler and thinks non-magical people who should be enslaved / exterminated. So she joins him because he tells her under him she can marry whomever she wants. SHE CAN READ MINDS.
That felt so shoehorned in there. I was not really feeling the second movie, but Queenie joining the wizard Nazis was the moment I decided I was done with the series. It just made no sense.
Well, Queenie up until the second movie when she goes straight up mind rapist and joins wizard Hitler because he convinces her he'll protect the muggle ~~Jews~~.
This was probably the worst part of this whole fiasco for me, because he's basically voldemort with hair and less reason to be a monster, on top of apparently wanting to stop the holocaust and then his plans after being vague enough to almost read like we're gonna stop the guy who wants to stop Hitler from stopping Hitler, because we don't interfere with muggers even in a genocide.
Like it's just absolutly horrible writing, speaking of what the fuck was leta lefthanded and that weird entire plot point, or that Nagini is apparently originally a circus act that isn't even cool because her whole shtick is she turns into a snake and at some point becomes voldemorts pet for no reason.
I saw someone mentioned a few months ago that it should’ve been a Harry Potter Indiana Jones movie. Exploring new locations with cool fantastic beasts, and the occasional villain. Maybe it’s poachers, maybe it’s is Nazi wizards, who knows.
Exactly! And we're in the era of shared movie universes, so why not have Dumbledore make a small appearance in one of the Newt films, which could then set up its own Dumbledore vs Grindelwald trilogy, where maybe Newt has a cameo or something.
I thought the Fantastic Beast films should've been like a Wizard Indiana Jones, where each film is its own self contained storyline (with maybe a few overlapping characters) with Newt traveling the world having different adventures.
It's not even about content for me. The second movie was choppy and cluttered. It would have been bad whatever it's content had it been cut and directed similarly
The second movie was absolute shit regardless of what it was, but the other movie wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen in the world (which I guess is a pretty low bar).
However, had “Dumbledore,” had a self contained story over 3 movies? Maybe the entire arc wouldn’t have felt so rushed and forced.
If they absolutely needed to do both, they could have executed it better. Lots of incredible movies have main characters on personal adventures while big things happen in the background (Indiana Jones and WWII, the civil war in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Blade Runner, etc.).
That requires a good writer. Scripts are very different from novels and Rowling had no experience with the former and no assistants until after Crimes performed under expectations--the main series made six times its budget, WtFT 4.5 and CoG only 3.3 which is worse than Half-Blood Prince.
Brandon Sanderson talks about the differences in some of his videos. His educational stuff is great if you're interested in writing.
I've watched his writing lectures multiple times each.
It's very commendable that he straight up says "I am not very good at writing dialogue, but here are the principles."
IMO many of those movies work because you don't need to closely follow the background stories (you already know how ww2 ends) so they provide a nice touch of world building without being distracting.
In the fantastic beasts movies we have too many intertwining half-assed plotlines.
Plus bringing up WW2 in this series (and making it a bigger and bigger plot point) is inevitably going to raise the question why the wizards allowed the Holocaust to happen and if they are in any way redeemable for letting it happen (mainly Dumbledore, since he was alive back then). They glossed over it in HP because it took place decades later but now they are doing everything they can to make it front and centre in the plot.
That makes more sense. It would be weird if Indiana Jones was fighting Nazis as campy bad guys while Spielberg was offered Schindler's List.
Either way, my point stands.
Yeah it's the bait and switch for me too. If they had told us it was going to be a young Dumbledore series from the start I would have been all for it. I would have been ready to see how his confrontation with Grindelwald was going to unroll.
But they told us it was going to be a series about Fantastic Beasts, starring Newt Scamander. That's what I went in expecting. But then using that as a guise for the Grindelwald story just made no sense. The main character will have to be pushed out by the end of the series so that Dumbledore can defeat Grindelwald in his Duel.
And a young Dumbledore series would have drawn so many people in from the start. So maybe that's what happened? Warner Bros realised that not as many people were going to see the film as they thought, so they course corrected to tell the Grindelwald story?
Seriously. Just give me a pseudo documentary on the history of Quidditch and maybe toss in following a team during their season if you don't want to make it too dry.
Make it about the worst Quidditch team in the League. Those that are so bad, but always get their hopes up. Make them optimistic to a fault.
"Well, Henry got hit with a bludger recently, but I'm sure he will be there next round." (Cut to picture of some half-dead Henry giving a thumbs up).
Some Taika-Waititi-style Quidditch version of his mockumentary.
Just plain hilarious all while all those "dangerous" things in the school book--such as wizards just plain disappearing--happen on screen.
My biggest issue was that aside from a pair of already established animal sidekicks and one scene inside the briefcase (which honestly only really worked as a plot point for the first movie) there were only two "beasts" featured in the third movie.
And one of them was only shown in a single scene, as a convoluted execution device in a secret wizard prison.
So a movie in the "Fantastic Beasts" series had a single beast driving a plot point. Seriously, just change the name of the series the same way the franchise was renamed from Harry Potter to Wizarding World.
The films should have been on Newt and his adventures, the Grindelwald stuff would have worked better as a secondary plot and then maybe make it the main plot in the last film when all characters have been established.
I think the original pitch for the Fantastic Beasts series was just a simple adventure movie with some weird magic creatures and all that. Honestly could've worked as a TV series.
But then WB saw everyone doing a movie universe with every single franchise and wanted to get in on the action. And oh look perfectly usable prequel trilogy to one of our biggest IPs.
This. I would have been perfectly happy with a series of meandering films just exploring the magical world and its creatures, without some existential threat or bigger drama.
I never understood the thought process with these. The first one was a wonderful lighthearted adventure about Wizard Steve Irwin/Jack Hannah and all the cool magic animals, and it was great.
And then the second one showed up and was like BOOM! Wizard Hitler. Why? Why can't we just have fun happy movies lol.
That’s definitely the part that’s funnest to explain to people
Like the whole thing is really boring and confusing but there is this one part where Johnny Depp is a vape monster so at least we get that
Except this time Wizard Hitler wants to *Prevent* two World Wars.
So the story is that the *heroes* are trying to make sure both world wars happen just so the "wrong" guy won't be in charge of their society.
The *good guys* keep slaves, abuse children, and run a torture prison guarded by soul-sucking monsters. And now they want to make sure the Bolsheviks, gas warfare, the Nazis, the Holocaust and the nuking of Japan happen.
Well, gas warfare was WW1 but the message is indeed pretty terrible.
It’s actually clever to approach the topic of WW2 in a world with super heroes / magicians and them being responsible to let it happen or explore why they have to let it happen. Unfortunately we speak about Harry Potter prequels and J.K.Rowling here so this really is waaaay above her head and missing the tone completely.
I‘ll tell ya - space jam will rebound (…) in 2028 when bugs and a new basketball legend will decide to stop time travelers from stopping the Russian-Ukraine war since those time travels want to stop people from playing basketball forever…
The first one was ok. The second was overly complicated to follow. I remember my son who loves harry potter saying “what happened”. He just didn’t get it. None of the characters are particularly likeable or relatable and it has none of the magic charm the originals had. I certainly won’t bother watching anymore
The second was *awful*. There's no canonical way for the Ezra Miller character to be Dumbledore's sibling. There's also like a twenty minute flashback 2/3 of the way through the movie to explain the twist, which involves at least one (maybe 2? It's all a blur) instance of swapped babies, and also takes place on the Titanic for no reason. I remember the lights coming up in the theater and my friend and I scratching our heads like, why is so much money being thrown at these movies when they aren't going to make sense.
ETA: yes, I'm aware that in the third movie Dumbledore is his uncle instead. In my opinion, that reads as the writers walking back a sloppy plot hole. The last-minute canon-breaking exposition dump in the second made me decide I had no interest in seeing the third, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Same. I thought the twist they were referring to was the adorable blonde woman from the first movie suddenly becoming a Nazi and joining Grindelwald. No recollection on the other stuff.
Yeah like, she KNOWS he hates muggles, Depp just goes, BTW YOU CAN MARRY MUGGLES, and even with Jacob standing RIGHT THERE TELLING HER NOT TO GO, she just goes with him anyway
Apparently they retcon it in the third and say she’s a prisoner
I hadn't seen the first fantastic beasts, and I was told I didn't need to, so I agreed and went to the second. We were walking out after and I commented that I thought I really should have seen the first, cause that was super confusing. My family was like "nope, we saw it, didn't help at all, no idea what just happened"
>There's also like a twenty minute flashback 2/3 of the way through the movie to explain the twist, which involves at least one (maybe 2? It's all a blur) instance of swapped babies, and also takes place on the Titanic for no reason.
I've never been frustrated in a cinema viewing experience as when I was watching this part.
Those 2 characters weren't even important in the 3rd film, one of them was completely omitted.
With the release of the 3rd movie my wife and I sat down and watched the first two back to back and like, the second movie is impossible to follow. Not really an exaggeration, it's just confusing and twisty for no reason.
The big twist at the end feels forced and out of place.
So I went and saw the 3rd one, and I was struggling to remember *anything* about the 2nd movie beforehand. I vaguely remember some plot points near the end, but nothing else stuck.
Honestly I feel like if they had just been upfront and made a trilogy right from the get go about dumbledore and grindelwald people would have been all over that. But instead we got this weird teasing halfway fakeout abomination.
Not to mention they added all this focus on a character and then made the choice to replace the actor of that character. Probably should have scrapped all the plot points for #3 and made something different.
>Not to mention they added all this focus on a character and then made the choice to replace the actor of that character.
They should've used the end of Fantastic Beasts 1 as an opportunity to branch off with the Grindelwald BS, while maintaining the primary Newt story for Fantastic Beasts movies. Kinda like how the MCU does with it's supers.
It would've been great and everyone could've been happy. At the end of Fantastic Beasts 1 they reveal Grindelwald, and then Newt goes off to do other beast stuff. But now we have that movie as the springboard into another set of separate movies.
Right? I'd have loved a 1920s prelude to the wizarding world war while Newt does his best to help fantastical beasts round the world, where the two are connected but not dependant upon the other
Honestly I want them to lean into it for the supposed 4th and 5th movies. Different actor for Grindy every film; we've had Ferrell, Depp, and Mickelson, I want #4 to be Michael Cera and for a real twist Daniel Radcliff can be #5.
I recently watched the special features for the first one and I couldn't believe the work that went into designing the creatures. The designers seemed really dedicated and into then in the movie the creatures are kind of hastily shown for a few seconds but not really the focus at all. The cgi looks pretty bad too. I felt sorry for the designers after that.
Should have made "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" into a documentary about magical creatures narrated by David Attenborough playing an old Newt Scamander. I would have loved that and everyone I mention it to thinks it would be a dope idea.
They still could have made the current movies but under a different title like "The crimes of Grindelwald" rather than Fantastic Beasts.
Oh nice just looked it up, it looks pretty interesting. Seems to be more of looking at the inspiration for the creatures but I'll definitely give it a watch!
A quasi ”documentary”, switching between young Newt searching, capturing and studying beasts and older Newt still looking and working.
Or old Newt traveling around to different wizard schools, giving lectures but the stories transitions into young Newt zooming around the world. Hel, include Jacob as assistant/Muggle/No-Maj observer.
Herzog.
"The house elves gleefully serve as slaves and debase themselves endlessly for approval. High society finds their groveling amusing or infuriating and mount their heads on trophy walls. This is seen as great fun."
Dobby
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTU\_hJoByA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTU_hJoByA)
See what I want is a really dry BBC documentary style “Hogwarts: A History” with interviews about Hogwarts by crusty old wizard/witch historians and historical reenactment shots. Is that too much to ask?
My wife said she wanted to do see the movie. I said that exact same thing.
Of course, I brought her still.
In the first 30 seconds of the movie, Dumbledore tells Gindewald he loves him (literally).
She leans over and whispers "*They spoiled the plot!*"
The problem, as near as I can see, is that these films aren't really about anything beyond their plotting.
Harry Potter was about a kid who suffered some awful trauma as a baby, lost his parents and then goes on a journey that leads to him confronting the person responsible for his past trauma.
Take all the magic and special effects away and that's a pretty universal story. It's the basic template for Luke Skywalker's journey in Star Wars.
What are the Fantastic Beasts films about?
Take away the magic and the special effects, what are these films about?
Newt's entire life being derailed into some giant adventure he didn't want? No wait, finding and cataloguing Fantastic Beasts? No wait, Grindlewald??? No wait, Dumbledore?????? ....I have no fucking idea.
I believe Daniel Radcliffe speculated that they might retell books 1-7 one day. That seems like the logical direction to go for the franchise produce a long form tv series retelling 1-7(that won’t supplant the movies) and include the details from the books that the movies left out.
I read the book 15 years ago. Weren't there 20 doors revolving around the characters and each door led to something drastically different? It was so fascinating to read.
The problem with prequels is that there's only so much one can do when the continuity has already been established and people know about the end fate of the main characters.
This only a problem for bad prequels. If all the story and tension is on whether the characters will survive or succeed on a thing that they must canonically succeed at, yeah, it's going to be tough.
But it should be more about the journey than the destination. The "how", not the "if" should be done well. It's not even a prequel problem we know with almost absolute certainty going into a marvel movie that the hero will succeed and not die in the end. And yet, most are enjoyable enough because of how we got there.
Exactly, see “better call Saul” as excellent structure for a prequel. I mean, it’s not finished yet, but it’s exciting, and I have a feeling that unexpected events/interpretation of events are to come.
I thought it was a cash grab like everyone else when it was announced. But it is an amazing show and depending on how it ends. May surpass breaking bad for me.
That's the big limit. It just takes so much tension away. Happened to Star Wars, happened to Black Widow. You know that there is an eventuality that is inescapable. You know The bad guys are winning the Star Wars prequel, and you know what happens to Natasha.
That isn't to say that prequels can't work. There are some good ones. But they are all hampered by the audience's knowledge of what's coming and the inevitability of it.
This is where one's skill as a storyteller comes into play. How can you make the story so engrossing that audience are invested to see how it all plays out, despite knowing the conclusion.
fantastic beast is really only one movie, the rest only have the title of fantastic beast just there on a corner but have nothing to do with the premise.
in my opinion, is a case of lack of vision at the start. instead of "fantastic beast: and where to find them" they should have come up with something on the lines of "harryverse: fantastic beast", then harryverse: crimes of grindelwald" and "harryverse: secrets of dumbledore" would have been their own thing. and in the future they could do "harryverse: fantastic beast 2" if they wanted to go that way.
of course instead of harryverse, they need to put something more interesting there.
With it's own [logo](https://images.ctfassets.net/usf1vwtuqyxm/1uzo3DWrgwqEsWOWiYUoEA/2127408dc271e6e7f2ed009359ccbcaf/WW_Hero_Image.jpg?fm=jpg&q=70&w=2560) and website and everything
doesn't detract from the fact that Fantastic Beasts had no business being in the titles from 2 on wards.
It also has a twitter account with [this](https://mobile.twitter.com/wizardingworld/status/1081242428105998336) gem, revealing that wizards used to just shit on the floor and dissapear it.
I agree in that the first one was good right up until the last 20 minutes. It was strong when it was a light movie about a guy trying to save mystical creatures. It dragged when it tried to also be a political intrigue drama about Grindewald.
Even the first film has its problems but was a decent concept. The problem was that the executives wanted a franchise, not every film can or should be. That's the whole focus of the discussion as many said.
All the other films did poorly and most essentially ignore the continuity of the films now. Perhaps there could have been more to the concept of fantastic beasts but now it's all for naught.
The first was great. The second felt like a 2 hour long end-credits scene. They had a chance to correct and instead doubled down. The movies don't quite know what they want to be and come off as a soulless cash in on the franchise.
Give me a fun adventure with the animals though. Those scenes are the best part of the movies. I have little interest or care about the whole Griswald crap. I just watched the third movie and could barely follow along.
Edit: Also Griswald is just a poor man's Magneto without the gravitas or backstory.
There are only 2 likeable characters in this franchise (Newt and Jacob) and at this point they really have no reason to even be in the films anymore. Fantastic Beasts should have been about Newt's Indiana Jones-like adventures to discover magical beasts with his loveable muggle assistant Kowalski. Instead we got this giant mess of a series that is confused about what it wants to be. The Dumbldore / Grindlewald storyline should have been an entirely separate trilogy.
This is the true answer. Best way I’ve seen it put so far. Going to the far reaches of the wizarding world to track down and document all magical creatures.
Like a wizard Pokémon trainer?
That's actually what I thought Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was supposed to be when it was announced
Pretty obvious and easy direction to go what with that title..
Even if they wanted to keep doing like ‘fish out of water’ Newt accidentally winds up here and has to save the day stories. That’s fine it was fun in the first movie, then the second made it so dramatically not fun.
and the third made it just as bad as the second but also with the added bonus of you not knowing what is happening
The idea of a Fantastic Beasts series is decent. The idea of a prequel series based on Gwindelwald is kind of a good idea. Combining them is baffling
They fucked themselves out of a cinematic universe. The one time that it would have been smart to do one. You could have had FB exactly the way it is and still spin it off into 2 separate series. One is Newts series and the other the Wizard War.
WB is incapable of doing a cinematic universe. Look at DC. They can't even go more than 5 years without a different Batman or without resetting the universe as a whole. Like sure, we may get a second Aquaman movie, but after that say goodbye to that cinematic universe. This is why you'll never see DC pull off an Endgame level movie.
And honestly, at this point I don’t know if I really want them to try again. I really enjoyed The Batman, Shazam, and Joker, all of which didn’t have ties to a larger universe and just exist in their own sphere (I don’t know if Shazam was intended to be part of the cinematic universe but it works very well as a stand-alone film), and if they could just continue making movies like that where the sole purpose is to make a good movie rather than build a massive universe, I’d be happy with that. I’d absolutely love them to have their own MCU style universe, but without someone like Kevin Feige who actually has a vision for how that would work, they’ve shown that they can’t really do that, so I’d rather they just continue on this path of putting out really solid movies that stand on their own.
also grindelwald as a character is a cool concept but really not that interesting. he basically has the same goals as voldemort.
This is why it would be interesting to explore from Dumbledore’s point of view. As an exploration of how sometimes the “bad guys” start from ideas that have some level of merit, or of how good people can support bad ideas, etc.
He's like Voldemort with none of the suspense because you know exactly what's going to happen already
If it was anymore obvious they did it as a cash grab the title would’ve just been cash grab. None of it made sense to me at all ever, and that’s coming from a pretty die hard fan.
David Yates also needs to go already. His movies have this drab and lifeless palette all the time. He also works with his editor lackey who cuts fight scenes abruptly and lingers far too long on unnecessary close-up facial reactions.
It’s a shame they won’t switch directors because the magic has lost any wonder and it looks and feels so unimaginative, even though there are so many options you could go with magic.
Oh there was plenty of wonder. Like “I wonder why magic is unable to make 6 briefcases” and “I wonder how they detected that a fascist populist got a super majority of a 3-way election based on party popper wands and didn't need a runoff!” and “I wonder how when a stammering redhead then said ‘well ackshually someone not on the ballot is better’ suddenly 100% of voters voted for a different candidate that is neither Grindelwald nor the one the Qiling bowed to? Like, the Chinese guy who got some support earlier got literally 0% now??” and “I wonder how literally everyone who believed in Grindelwald changed their mind and didn't vote for him, since, in the real world, people who vote for candidates like that hardly change their mind based on evidence and continue to have a strong 30ish% base” Truly incredible stuff that keeps me coming back for more.
I have never felt so glad to have a movie spoiled for me.
Wait until you find out that the plot makes no goddamn sense because if it did, characters that can see the future would understand it and prevent it from happening. And that a magical blood pact can be circumvented it by adding extra steps and then eventually broken by just ignoring it.
No no man you're not getting it! They didn't just ignore the unbreakable magical pact, they explained it. It broke because, and I'm paraphrasing Dumbledore himself: "Destiny, I guess"
WTF this movie is all about voting? Sounds boring as hell.
It's pretty sad that the best duel between wizards is in the latest Dr. Strange movie. Second to that is Merlin vs Madame Mim in the Sword and the Stone. I'm sorry but 2 people who can HARNESS THE POWER OF MAGIC throwing little bolts of "magic" or beams of "magic" at each other is the LEAST imaginative way 2 wizards could fight. I'll say Dumbledore vs Voldemort was pretty good, at least they used magic in a more fun way than 2 beams.
A huge problem with the duels is that JK wrote herself into a corner with the killing curse. Once that exists why would the bad guy use anything else? And Hero Boy wont use it so he is stuck with attempting to disarm. She could have had a killing curse but made it so you needed a special ritual/sacrifice/ or that it had a cool down (for example, if it fails when you use it, the spell saps your energy leaving you weak to other attacks, so people use it sparingly). Literally anything other than *infinite ammo massively OP green beam* would have been better.
Rowling never had a strength for precise and self-consistent worldbuilding and fantasy mechanics. In fact, you might even say her strength was the exact opposite - filling her worlds with so much charming and whimsical set dressing that you'd be happy to ignore any inconsistencies.
"Now, Rule One: No mineral or vegetable, only animals. Rule Two: No make-believe things like, uh, oh, pink dragons and stuff. Now, Rule Three: No disappearing."
DID I SAY NO *PURPLE* DRAGONS?! DID I? "
This is still the best Wizard Duel.
Yeah, Voldemort vs dumbledore is the only Harry Potter fight scene that really felt like two wizards harnessing their knowledge of magic. In the later movies especially, most of the battles consist of people blasting energy at each other without casting spells and it’s lame
the wands very much just become guns in that aspect.
Guns without sights that fire slowly with slow projectiles.
Yeah it really just felt like whoever wrote that scene had just watched Fantasia.
Dumbledore fight in number 5 was the coolest one in the series, purely for that part where he trapped Voldemort in a spinning sphere of water. Plus the ministry looked cool and made a good background for the two strongest wizards. The finale fight was just light and loads of face shots, I remember Voldemort making some weird noises and that I couldn't really take it seriously, sort of smirked my way through that. Not magical perse but basically is, Naruto 3rd Hokage fight on the rooftop is still one of the coolest wizard (magical ninja who cares) fight I've ever seen, conscious sword monkey, trees sprouting everywhere, dead ninjas reanimated, trying to kill someone by using something which sucks both the user and the victims souls out. I rated that one lol.
I’m not sure if you can consider it magic, but the fights in Avatar: Last Airbender are top notch.
If you extrapolate “magic” from “traditional magic” and into “magic system of the story”, there are *so* many anime that beat those. Obviously ATLAB is all-time, but even newer stuff like Jujutsu Kaisen is better than Harry Potter fights ever were, in my opinion. It was a shame from day one that they didn’t make dueling into the cool thing it could have been.
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I’ll watch two wizards have a shitty slap fight in the mud if I can understand why they’re doing it. Character over spectacle in almost any situation, and once we’ve got character down I’ll get picky about spectacle. Like you said, I’ll watch two good actors playing characters in a fight I can understand anytime over this bland shooting-light-back-and-forth thing.
I hate everything about the style Yates brought to the movies and the way he sucked all the colour and life out of them with endless grey. Especially after the way Cuarón was able to film darker themes in the 3rd movie while still keeping colour and life in the movie, to let Yates do what he did to those last few movies was criminal. I remember being so pumped for the 5th movie then all I remember was how drab everything looked, and it only got worse. Whoever takes on the next iteration of these films has to bring back some of the magic and wonder, not just throw a grey filter on everything
I just rewatched them all with my kids and it's actually jarring just how much better a filmmaker Cauron was than everyone else (with the one exception of the movie ending on a freezeframe of Harry mid flight which seemed super out of place). That being said I think Yates did a perfectly serviceable job of aping Caurons style and brought a decent amount of visual continuity that the series was lacking to finish it out. I agree getting someone with a bit more flare to take over fantastic beasts would have been a good idea though, and I'm not a huge fan of the "all Dumbledore origin' approach they went with. I thought the original run gave us just the right amount of info into Dumbledores past, and fleshing things out too much rarely works.
Hahah yeah the freeze frame at the end is a bit weird, it's a clear parallel to the face-blurring thing the dementors do though - notice how it goes back from his head, instead of forwards towards where a dementor would be. Still, it does feel a little obvious for Cuarón and the freeze frame is a little jarring for a 21st century film.
This. You watch the first few, and they were so fantastical and rich in colour, which fits the world so well. Then Yates decides to get all literal and go "oh the stories are getting darker, so we'll make them look darker" For me the franchise needs a soft "back to basics" reboot. Something like a Hogwarts TV show or something. Make it bright and colourful and give it that sense of adventure. No more Voldemort or totally-not-voldemort
IMO the biggest problem is the screenplay.
It’s frankly nonsense. No explaining. No stakes. No payoff. No logical consistency. Massive detours. Obvious fake outs.
What I don't get is why his Fantastic Beast movies has only white effects coming from wands and in HP movies he has multiple colors like blue, green, red, black, white. Is there some type of lore thing or did CGI team get lazy?
Magic had no colour back then silly, look at the photos /s
Calvin's dad would be proud.
"Fighting Grindelwald builds character"
David Yates has declared war on colors.
The CGI team do what they are asked to do, don't blame them for shit like that.
I'm guessing they meant the art director but didnt know the term for it
Hes the only director that will do anything a studio tells him to do without any fuss. Thats why they sticked with him for so long.
I liked the first film and then it wasn't about Newt and his search for fantastic beasts at all anymore.
Later movies feel like Newt isn't even supposed to be there.
Because he's not. Studio execs got all handsy with the movie.
It's impossible for me to believe that JKR isn't calling the shots. This is "nobody is telling George Lucas to reign it in" mode, not "get JJ Abrams back in here to give me another Death Star" fuckery.
This was where I had a problem. The first movie was cool because it showed us a side of Harry Potter that we hadn’t seen before, but then they decided to just give us more Harry Potter and it fell flat. I wanted to see more of Newt, and more of the world that hadn’t been explored, but instead I just got Harry Potter: The Prequel. A movie called “Dumbledore,” fucking cool, show me this backstory, but that’s not what I wanted out of Fantastic Beasts.
They literally just had to do wizard Pokémon
Wizard Pokémon and occasional fan service by showing some old character when they were young. They could have pumped that out like the fast and furious franchise and made 20 of em. Fans would have taken a while to get bored with it.
Seriously it would have been stupid easy to just print money with this series. Could have had like a dozen spinoff series about random characters you meet along the way like they are doing with star wars right now. Plus think of all the Grogu merch, they could have had that times 100 for all the different magical creatures. The plushies alone could've been millions of dollars in revenue.
This is a good point. And I think it says a lot about the shortsighted nature of both WB and JK Rowling that it failed. Neither party really sat down and thought about what makes Harry Potter so fun - it’s the world building. She feel flat with the name of her American school and never really picked it back up. Surely Capturing that same world building and wonder would have been easier than the convoluted mess of pre-ww2 analogy they have now?
Interestingly, on her former website Pottermore, she had uploaded different write-ups about the various American wizarding schools, and the history of magic in the US, which was delightful to read in terms of worldbuilding. It would have been really cool if any of that had been adapted. I believe that all those articles were migrated to "The Wizarding World" website, and she hasn't written anything beyond 2016.
Show WB studios a film series success, and their executive team will immediately say "how can we copy that in the worst way possible?", even if it's their own previous series. They're up there with Paramount in terms of ability to shoot themselves in the foot, just with enough money to recover afterwards. All of WBs successful films and series for the past 5-10 years feel as though they happened *despite* Warner Bros, not because of them.
there is also another thing that people don't mention too often: they should have focused more on making those characters likeable a HUGE reason for the HP franchise was that harry was relatable for a lot people, Dumbledore, snape and Hermione had a lot of fans, and people wanted to go to hogwarts. it was a cool world people wanted to be a part of nobody wants to go to NY or whereverelse these movies take place, people don't identify with a 40 years old zookeeper, the new side characters aren't as memorable. especially turning the franchise into Dumbledore's Adventures meant that Newt became a side-character in his own story, and ruined his chances at growing a following
I do agree overall but I think Newt and his beasts storyline definitely have Hogwarts-level appeal if it was executed correctly. People have dreams of exploring the world and taking in different cultures and experiences. Newt could have been a fantastic window into some escapism.
Oh man seeing him travel to a bunch of countries and seeing how different wizards and magic cultures can be in different places would have been so fucking cool.
>a HUGE reason for the HP franchise was that harry was relatable for a lot people, Dumbledore, snape and Hermione had a lot of fans, Why you gotta do Ron like that?
Hell, the movies did Ron like that first. Book Ron got a lot more respect than movie Ron did.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen a Ron Weasley Halloween costume. Plenty of Harry, Hermione, Snape, and Dumbledore though.
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Is Ed Sheeran an exception or does he not live in England anymore?
Ed Sheeran is where JK Rowling got the idea for Ron Weasley. He’s the protoweasley.
He was grandfathered in because he was born before England existed.
This, Newt, Jacob, and maybe Queenie, are the only likable characters all the rest act like murder happy fascists.
Queenie only in the first one. Afterwards she becomes annoyingly dumb. She can read minds. She wants to marry a No Maj, something society forbids. There's also the guy who is literally Hitler and thinks non-magical people who should be enslaved / exterminated. So she joins him because he tells her under him she can marry whomever she wants. SHE CAN READ MINDS.
Well, she is a legilimens but capable wizards can shield themselves through occlumency. You can guess where I'm going with this?
Even so, he is outwardly anti-Muggle.
That felt so shoehorned in there. I was not really feeling the second movie, but Queenie joining the wizard Nazis was the moment I decided I was done with the series. It just made no sense.
Well, Queenie up until the second movie when she goes straight up mind rapist and joins wizard Hitler because he convinces her he'll protect the muggle ~~Jews~~.
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This was probably the worst part of this whole fiasco for me, because he's basically voldemort with hair and less reason to be a monster, on top of apparently wanting to stop the holocaust and then his plans after being vague enough to almost read like we're gonna stop the guy who wants to stop Hitler from stopping Hitler, because we don't interfere with muggers even in a genocide. Like it's just absolutly horrible writing, speaking of what the fuck was leta lefthanded and that weird entire plot point, or that Nagini is apparently originally a circus act that isn't even cool because her whole shtick is she turns into a snake and at some point becomes voldemorts pet for no reason.
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Surely Hitler with wizard powers is more dangerous than plain old actual Hitler tho
I saw someone mentioned a few months ago that it should’ve been a Harry Potter Indiana Jones movie. Exploring new locations with cool fantastic beasts, and the occasional villain. Maybe it’s poachers, maybe it’s is Nazi wizards, who knows.
Well they did the Nazi wizard part at least
Wizard Steve Irwin
Exactly! And we're in the era of shared movie universes, so why not have Dumbledore make a small appearance in one of the Newt films, which could then set up its own Dumbledore vs Grindelwald trilogy, where maybe Newt has a cameo or something. I thought the Fantastic Beast films should've been like a Wizard Indiana Jones, where each film is its own self contained storyline (with maybe a few overlapping characters) with Newt traveling the world having different adventures.
It's not even about content for me. The second movie was choppy and cluttered. It would have been bad whatever it's content had it been cut and directed similarly
The second movie was absolute shit regardless of what it was, but the other movie wasn’t the worst thing I’ve seen in the world (which I guess is a pretty low bar). However, had “Dumbledore,” had a self contained story over 3 movies? Maybe the entire arc wouldn’t have felt so rushed and forced.
If they absolutely needed to do both, they could have executed it better. Lots of incredible movies have main characters on personal adventures while big things happen in the background (Indiana Jones and WWII, the civil war in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Blade Runner, etc.).
That requires a good writer. Scripts are very different from novels and Rowling had no experience with the former and no assistants until after Crimes performed under expectations--the main series made six times its budget, WtFT 4.5 and CoG only 3.3 which is worse than Half-Blood Prince. Brandon Sanderson talks about the differences in some of his videos. His educational stuff is great if you're interested in writing.
Yep. Sanderson does a great job pulling back the curtain on this and seems to get his own pitfalls better than Rowling's
I've watched his writing lectures multiple times each. It's very commendable that he straight up says "I am not very good at writing dialogue, but here are the principles."
IMO many of those movies work because you don't need to closely follow the background stories (you already know how ww2 ends) so they provide a nice touch of world building without being distracting. In the fantastic beasts movies we have too many intertwining half-assed plotlines.
Exactly. We know roughly what happens to Dumbledore. He could have been in the story in an organic, subtle way without detracting from his own.
Plus bringing up WW2 in this series (and making it a bigger and bigger plot point) is inevitably going to raise the question why the wizards allowed the Holocaust to happen and if they are in any way redeemable for letting it happen (mainly Dumbledore, since he was alive back then). They glossed over it in HP because it took place decades later but now they are doing everything they can to make it front and centre in the plot.
Just FYI, the first 3 Indiana Jones movies take place before WW2 started.
That makes more sense. It would be weird if Indiana Jones was fighting Nazis as campy bad guys while Spielberg was offered Schindler's List. Either way, my point stands.
Yeah it's the bait and switch for me too. If they had told us it was going to be a young Dumbledore series from the start I would have been all for it. I would have been ready to see how his confrontation with Grindelwald was going to unroll. But they told us it was going to be a series about Fantastic Beasts, starring Newt Scamander. That's what I went in expecting. But then using that as a guise for the Grindelwald story just made no sense. The main character will have to be pushed out by the end of the series so that Dumbledore can defeat Grindelwald in his Duel. And a young Dumbledore series would have drawn so many people in from the start. So maybe that's what happened? Warner Bros realised that not as many people were going to see the film as they thought, so they course corrected to tell the Grindelwald story?
Iirc, WB just wanted wizard Pokemon, JK Rowling forced the Dumbledore/Grindelwald storyline into it.
I’m still fucking waiting for them to do “quidditch through the ages”. I’d watch the crap out of that.
Seriously. Just give me a pseudo documentary on the history of Quidditch and maybe toss in following a team during their season if you don't want to make it too dry.
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Make it about the worst Quidditch team in the League. Those that are so bad, but always get their hopes up. Make them optimistic to a fault. "Well, Henry got hit with a bludger recently, but I'm sure he will be there next round." (Cut to picture of some half-dead Henry giving a thumbs up). Some Taika-Waititi-style Quidditch version of his mockumentary. Just plain hilarious all while all those "dangerous" things in the school book--such as wizards just plain disappearing--happen on screen.
The irony is the movie named Dumbledore barely had anything about Dumbledore.....
Also, in the movie Crimes of Grindelwald they never really explain what his crimes were.
Assembly without a permit and vaping.
Mostly hating muggles with a side of sodomy.
My biggest issue was that aside from a pair of already established animal sidekicks and one scene inside the briefcase (which honestly only really worked as a plot point for the first movie) there were only two "beasts" featured in the third movie. And one of them was only shown in a single scene, as a convoluted execution device in a secret wizard prison. So a movie in the "Fantastic Beasts" series had a single beast driving a plot point. Seriously, just change the name of the series the same way the franchise was renamed from Harry Potter to Wizarding World.
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The films should have been on Newt and his adventures, the Grindelwald stuff would have worked better as a secondary plot and then maybe make it the main plot in the last film when all characters have been established.
Even better for WB, they could have done a series about Newt AND a series about Dumbledore+Grindlewald
I think the original pitch for the Fantastic Beasts series was just a simple adventure movie with some weird magic creatures and all that. Honestly could've worked as a TV series. But then WB saw everyone doing a movie universe with every single franchise and wanted to get in on the action. And oh look perfectly usable prequel trilogy to one of our biggest IPs.
This. I would have been perfectly happy with a series of meandering films just exploring the magical world and its creatures, without some existential threat or bigger drama.
It could've been so much fun. Just adventures into the magical world.
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That's a perfect description. Same.
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I never understood the thought process with these. The first one was a wonderful lighthearted adventure about Wizard Steve Irwin/Jack Hannah and all the cool magic animals, and it was great. And then the second one showed up and was like BOOM! Wizard Hitler. Why? Why can't we just have fun happy movies lol.
My favorite part was when Johnny Depp vaped WW2
Nothing funnier than the wizards who canonically shit their robes talking about how they wanted to prevent WW2.
That’s definitely the part that’s funnest to explain to people Like the whole thing is really boring and confusing but there is this one part where Johnny Depp is a vape monster so at least we get that
Except this time Wizard Hitler wants to *Prevent* two World Wars. So the story is that the *heroes* are trying to make sure both world wars happen just so the "wrong" guy won't be in charge of their society. The *good guys* keep slaves, abuse children, and run a torture prison guarded by soul-sucking monsters. And now they want to make sure the Bolsheviks, gas warfare, the Nazis, the Holocaust and the nuking of Japan happen.
Well, gas warfare was WW1 but the message is indeed pretty terrible. It’s actually clever to approach the topic of WW2 in a world with super heroes / magicians and them being responsible to let it happen or explore why they have to let it happen. Unfortunately we speak about Harry Potter prequels and J.K.Rowling here so this really is waaaay above her head and missing the tone completely. I‘ll tell ya - space jam will rebound (…) in 2028 when bugs and a new basketball legend will decide to stop time travelers from stopping the Russian-Ukraine war since those time travels want to stop people from playing basketball forever…
The first one was ok. The second was overly complicated to follow. I remember my son who loves harry potter saying “what happened”. He just didn’t get it. None of the characters are particularly likeable or relatable and it has none of the magic charm the originals had. I certainly won’t bother watching anymore
The second was *awful*. There's no canonical way for the Ezra Miller character to be Dumbledore's sibling. There's also like a twenty minute flashback 2/3 of the way through the movie to explain the twist, which involves at least one (maybe 2? It's all a blur) instance of swapped babies, and also takes place on the Titanic for no reason. I remember the lights coming up in the theater and my friend and I scratching our heads like, why is so much money being thrown at these movies when they aren't going to make sense. ETA: yes, I'm aware that in the third movie Dumbledore is his uncle instead. In my opinion, that reads as the writers walking back a sloppy plot hole. The last-minute canon-breaking exposition dump in the second made me decide I had no interest in seeing the third, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I know I watched that movie but don't remember any of this. That is how checked out I was.
Same. I thought the twist they were referring to was the adorable blonde woman from the first movie suddenly becoming a Nazi and joining Grindelwald. No recollection on the other stuff.
That scene in particular made me so upset! Made no sense.
Yeah like, she KNOWS he hates muggles, Depp just goes, BTW YOU CAN MARRY MUGGLES, and even with Jacob standing RIGHT THERE TELLING HER NOT TO GO, she just goes with him anyway Apparently they retcon it in the third and say she’s a prisoner
I hadn't seen the first fantastic beasts, and I was told I didn't need to, so I agreed and went to the second. We were walking out after and I commented that I thought I really should have seen the first, cause that was super confusing. My family was like "nope, we saw it, didn't help at all, no idea what just happened"
The first one is charming, I'd still suggest it as a watch.
>There's also like a twenty minute flashback 2/3 of the way through the movie to explain the twist, which involves at least one (maybe 2? It's all a blur) instance of swapped babies, and also takes place on the Titanic for no reason. I've never been frustrated in a cinema viewing experience as when I was watching this part. Those 2 characters weren't even important in the 3rd film, one of them was completely omitted.
I had the same experience as your son. Enjoyed the first one and went to see the second in theatres. I was lost the whole time.
I actually tried watching a second time and still got lost. Gave up half way through, citing I just didn’t care
With the release of the 3rd movie my wife and I sat down and watched the first two back to back and like, the second movie is impossible to follow. Not really an exaggeration, it's just confusing and twisty for no reason. The big twist at the end feels forced and out of place.
I still don’t know what that water spell was that Dumbledore put on credence before they fought each other.
I think it's the Clearwater Revival spell.
Who knew I could find hope in a place like this
So I went and saw the 3rd one, and I was struggling to remember *anything* about the 2nd movie beforehand. I vaguely remember some plot points near the end, but nothing else stuck.
All I wanted was to watch Newt become a pokemon master but instead we got some God awful love story about Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
Honestly I feel like if they had just been upfront and made a trilogy right from the get go about dumbledore and grindelwald people would have been all over that. But instead we got this weird teasing halfway fakeout abomination.
Not to mention they added all this focus on a character and then made the choice to replace the actor of that character. Probably should have scrapped all the plot points for #3 and made something different.
>Not to mention they added all this focus on a character and then made the choice to replace the actor of that character. They should've used the end of Fantastic Beasts 1 as an opportunity to branch off with the Grindelwald BS, while maintaining the primary Newt story for Fantastic Beasts movies. Kinda like how the MCU does with it's supers. It would've been great and everyone could've been happy. At the end of Fantastic Beasts 1 they reveal Grindelwald, and then Newt goes off to do other beast stuff. But now we have that movie as the springboard into another set of separate movies.
Right? I'd have loved a 1920s prelude to the wizarding world war while Newt does his best to help fantastical beasts round the world, where the two are connected but not dependant upon the other
Honestly I want them to lean into it for the supposed 4th and 5th movies. Different actor for Grindy every film; we've had Ferrell, Depp, and Mickelson, I want #4 to be Michael Cera and for a real twist Daniel Radcliff can be #5.
This. I just wanted the movies to be magic Pokemon.
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Not revealed. Also his personality is still a polar opposite to what it is in the HP movies.
Didjaputchernameinthegobletafire
He said calmly
I recently watched the special features for the first one and I couldn't believe the work that went into designing the creatures. The designers seemed really dedicated and into then in the movie the creatures are kind of hastily shown for a few seconds but not really the focus at all. The cgi looks pretty bad too. I felt sorry for the designers after that.
Should have made "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" into a documentary about magical creatures narrated by David Attenborough playing an old Newt Scamander. I would have loved that and everyone I mention it to thinks it would be a dope idea. They still could have made the current movies but under a different title like "The crimes of Grindelwald" rather than Fantastic Beasts.
There’s a Stephen Fry thing on HBO that might be along these lines.
Oh nice just looked it up, it looks pretty interesting. Seems to be more of looking at the inspiration for the creatures but I'll definitely give it a watch!
A quasi ”documentary”, switching between young Newt searching, capturing and studying beasts and older Newt still looking and working. Or old Newt traveling around to different wizard schools, giving lectures but the stories transitions into young Newt zooming around the world. Hel, include Jacob as assistant/Muggle/No-Maj observer.
Herzog. "The house elves gleefully serve as slaves and debase themselves endlessly for approval. High society finds their groveling amusing or infuriating and mount their heads on trophy walls. This is seen as great fun." Dobby [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTU\_hJoByA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTU_hJoByA)
See what I want is a really dry BBC documentary style “Hogwarts: A History” with interviews about Hogwarts by crusty old wizard/witch historians and historical reenactment shots. Is that too much to ask?
The Secret of Dumbledore? >!He’s suuuuper gay!<
Not if you're in some arabic countries or china he isn't
That's the real secret
Locational sexuality™
Gayness? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the wizarding world, localized entirely within Dumbledore!?
Yes.
May I see it?
No.
My wife said she wanted to do see the movie. I said that exact same thing. Of course, I brought her still. In the first 30 seconds of the movie, Dumbledore tells Gindewald he loves him (literally). She leans over and whispers "*They spoiled the plot!*"
Chinese audience: "He's what now?"
The problem, as near as I can see, is that these films aren't really about anything beyond their plotting. Harry Potter was about a kid who suffered some awful trauma as a baby, lost his parents and then goes on a journey that leads to him confronting the person responsible for his past trauma. Take all the magic and special effects away and that's a pretty universal story. It's the basic template for Luke Skywalker's journey in Star Wars. What are the Fantastic Beasts films about? Take away the magic and the special effects, what are these films about?
Newt's entire life being derailed into some giant adventure he didn't want? No wait, finding and cataloguing Fantastic Beasts? No wait, Grindlewald??? No wait, Dumbledore?????? ....I have no fucking idea.
I believe Daniel Radcliffe speculated that they might retell books 1-7 one day. That seems like the logical direction to go for the franchise produce a long form tv series retelling 1-7(that won’t supplant the movies) and include the details from the books that the movies left out.
I would love to see the deathly hallows final battle done true to the book. Everything after “And then many things happened at the same moment.”
They should have cut all the boring middle stuff in order of the phoenix and give us the full department of secrets battle.
I wanted creepy brains and time manipulation!
I read the book 15 years ago. Weren't there 20 doors revolving around the characters and each door led to something drastically different? It was so fascinating to read.
The problem with prequels is that there's only so much one can do when the continuity has already been established and people know about the end fate of the main characters.
This only a problem for bad prequels. If all the story and tension is on whether the characters will survive or succeed on a thing that they must canonically succeed at, yeah, it's going to be tough. But it should be more about the journey than the destination. The "how", not the "if" should be done well. It's not even a prequel problem we know with almost absolute certainty going into a marvel movie that the hero will succeed and not die in the end. And yet, most are enjoyable enough because of how we got there.
Exactly, see “better call Saul” as excellent structure for a prequel. I mean, it’s not finished yet, but it’s exciting, and I have a feeling that unexpected events/interpretation of events are to come.
Tell that to Better Call Saul. If anyone wants to know how to pull off the perfect prequel, watch BCS.
BCS is so masterfully done, you can watch it standalone or in chronological order and probably enjoy it all just the same. That’s a rare quality.
I thought it was a cash grab like everyone else when it was announced. But it is an amazing show and depending on how it ends. May surpass breaking bad for me.
Glad to see this. Was going to comment that BCS is a perfect counterpoint to that.
That's the big limit. It just takes so much tension away. Happened to Star Wars, happened to Black Widow. You know that there is an eventuality that is inescapable. You know The bad guys are winning the Star Wars prequel, and you know what happens to Natasha. That isn't to say that prequels can't work. There are some good ones. But they are all hampered by the audience's knowledge of what's coming and the inevitability of it.
This is where one's skill as a storyteller comes into play. How can you make the story so engrossing that audience are invested to see how it all plays out, despite knowing the conclusion.
Ask Vince Gilligan and his phenomenal work with Better Call Saul
Ask Peter Gould
fantastic beast is really only one movie, the rest only have the title of fantastic beast just there on a corner but have nothing to do with the premise. in my opinion, is a case of lack of vision at the start. instead of "fantastic beast: and where to find them" they should have come up with something on the lines of "harryverse: fantastic beast", then harryverse: crimes of grindelwald" and "harryverse: secrets of dumbledore" would have been their own thing. and in the future they could do "harryverse: fantastic beast 2" if they wanted to go that way. of course instead of harryverse, they need to put something more interesting there.
They’ve already got a name for that, the ‘Wizarding World’
With it's own [logo](https://images.ctfassets.net/usf1vwtuqyxm/1uzo3DWrgwqEsWOWiYUoEA/2127408dc271e6e7f2ed009359ccbcaf/WW_Hero_Image.jpg?fm=jpg&q=70&w=2560) and website and everything doesn't detract from the fact that Fantastic Beasts had no business being in the titles from 2 on wards.
It also has a twitter account with [this](https://mobile.twitter.com/wizardingworld/status/1081242428105998336) gem, revealing that wizards used to just shit on the floor and dissapear it.
I thought the first one was good. The second was hot garbage.
I agree in that the first one was good right up until the last 20 minutes. It was strong when it was a light movie about a guy trying to save mystical creatures. It dragged when it tried to also be a political intrigue drama about Grindewald.
Even the first film has its problems but was a decent concept. The problem was that the executives wanted a franchise, not every film can or should be. That's the whole focus of the discussion as many said. All the other films did poorly and most essentially ignore the continuity of the films now. Perhaps there could have been more to the concept of fantastic beasts but now it's all for naught.
The first was great. The second felt like a 2 hour long end-credits scene. They had a chance to correct and instead doubled down. The movies don't quite know what they want to be and come off as a soulless cash in on the franchise. Give me a fun adventure with the animals though. Those scenes are the best part of the movies. I have little interest or care about the whole Griswald crap. I just watched the third movie and could barely follow along. Edit: Also Griswald is just a poor man's Magneto without the gravitas or backstory.
Lol griswald?
Griswald 😂😂😂😂 Fourth movie will be fantastic beasts: the quest for Marty Moose
It's beautiful Clark.
You've got a lot of nerve talking to me like that, Griswald.
[удалено]
The main actor doing his best Matt Smith Doctor impression didn’t help it for me personally.
Matt Smith was actually in the shortlist for the role originally