Fantastic Beasts ROASTED

No, not literally. I’m talking about the movie.

As you may have read in the Hopes & Fears article, we had such high hopes for this movie. Now that many of you have probably seen it, it’s time to discuss the actual film. You may have figured this out for yourself, but that means SPOILER ALERT!!

Let me start by saying; I liked this movie. This may not be a very popular opinion since some people seem to despise it from the very first close-up of Johnny Depp until the credits (that do not contain an extra movie scene by the way), but I cannot help it. After all, the first question one has to ask oneself when judging a movie, is “did I enjoy watching this?” In the case of The Crimes of Grindelwald, my answer is yes; despite the story being utterly pointless, I did enjoy watching this.

So if you like the wizarding world, go watch the film. Good chance that you will have a good time. From a critical perspective though, this is not a great movie. The problem with this movie is the storyline. The whole film is beautifully made, entertaining, fast-paced and quite well-acted. But honestly, was JK Rowling drunk when she wrote the script?

Why the **** is this called “The Crimes of Grindelwald”??

Crimes? Plural?? Did you spot more than one crime? Because I saw Grindelwald break out of a carriage (“oh he’s extremely persuasive, but we had no clue he might get a guard to help him escape”) and that was it. That was one crime. At the beginning of the movie. And then nothing. But who cares, let’s call it “The Crimes of Grindelwald”. Of course, there was the murdering of that poor woman and her little kid, for no other reason than a tight housing market and the need for a lair of evil, but it wasn’t Grindelwald who committed these crimes. It was that unsympathetic French lady. We did not hear him give the command, did we? I mean, not to defend child murder, but from a legal perspective y’all got nothing against him. So what crimes??

Why the **** is this called “Fantastic Beasts”??

Back to the first part of the needlessly long title. How important were the beasts in this movie (without counting Jacob, muggles are human too)? The storyline is pretty much a repetition of the ‘follow the chosen hero-guy on his quest to save the world from the evil maniac who wants to destroy it’ story. Main difference with Harry Potter: this one has got some random animal appearances that could have been completely left out and the story would not change. Obviously JK thought it best to plagiarise herself other than making a new, original story about fantastic beasts. The only beast that actually does something is the one that steals Dumbledore’s and Grindelwald’s magical BFF jewellery. And if you do have to put in fantastic beasts for no reason at all, why not include more baby nifflers? Because there definitely were not enough baby nifflers.

Everyone is retarded

Imagine you are a wizard prison guard. You are tasked with moving a very dangerous criminal from one prison to another. How would you do that? Use a portkey of course: together with a bunch of other guards, get inside the criminal’s cell, lock the celldoor, hold on to the criminal, use the portkey, get safely inside the new prison cell, leave that cell together with you colleagues whilst the criminal remains inside, lock the door tightly and TADAAA! Job done. But you know, moving him with a flying carriage without locking the doors or anything is also a very smart idea.

Now imagine you are working for the ministry of magic. There is a young man with severe psychological trauma as a result of his abusive childhood on the loose. Naturally, he must be killed (it was the 20’s people). How do you do that? You threaten the local zookeeper to solve the problem of course! But what if he refuses to travel to Paris to do the dirty work? Then you will not grand him a travel license. Sounds like a plan.

But wait, there are more retards in this movie. Even the main characters are not exactly bright-minded. Take Dumbledore. Dumbledore, in Dumbledore fashion, decides to do the illogical thing and chooses a random guy with an animal obsession and a minimal chance of succeeding to help defeat the most dangerous dark wizard on earth. Starting by tracking a pretty deadly Obscurus, because that is apparently the same as tracking an animal. Of course, after giving Newt this task, Dumbledore forgets the additional instructions and goes on living his life. He does not bother trying to steal that blood vow/magical BFF necklace from his love so he can finish him by himself. Maybe Dumbledore just gave up on life after Grindelwald dumped him, and now gets his only pleasure from watching other people sacrificing their lives because he told them so.

Credence, the boy with no background and a severe lack of personality, wants to know who he is and therefore spends the whole movie searching for answers. He becomes a wizarding world conspiracy theory and thinks that he is indeed the son of a certain LeStrange, but he is bluntly told that he is not. Which makes everything else he does during the movie pretty much irrelevant. At the end, a creepy albino asks him to become his minion in return for some information about his family, without any guarantees of this info being true. Credence is stupid, so he thinks this is a fair deal and he goes with Grindelwald to a very fancy Hitler-bunker in the mountains. There, he is told that he is a Dumbledore. Is this fake news or not?? You’ll have to pay for the next Fantastic Beasts to find out.

Queenie, the woman who knows all your dirty thoughts, is all sweetness and innocence and just wants everyone to be happy, including herself and her muggle-with-moustache boyfriend. Apparently she likes the way he thinks (*wink). He probably likes her sweet nature. Or so he thought. Because Queenie, in a moment of infinite wisdom, joins Grindelwald. He murders babies but Queenie doesn’t give a ****, she wants to be with moustache, her great love, who will be enslaved or killed by Grindelwald because he is a muggle. Queenie must have gotten that much from Grindle’s speech, but again, why would she mind? She did not exactly have trouble enslaving moustache muggle before (love potion, remember?). I think Jacob (let’s call him by his actual name for once) dodged a bullet there.

Finally, let’s mention Newt himself here. What is he doing? For what purpose? Why him? The poor sweet guy probably could not answer any of these questions if his life depended on it. Newt likes animals and Tina, because she looks like an animal. Now that he compared her to a salamander, I finally get why he likes her. Oh, and Newt; just because a guy talks wisely and has a beard doesn’t mean you must do everything he tells you.

Leta the Pointless

We’re really sorry for your sad backstory that just came out of nowhere Leta, but can we get on with the movie please?

Let me get this straight: a random guy turns out to be a wizard, so the public starts thinking who his parents might be. For some reason, everyone ignores the fact that wizards and witches can be muggle-born and assume that this dude must therefore be Corvus LeStrange, a baby who mysteriously disappeared many years ago. Alright, let’s give the conspiracy theorists some credit: the missing baby was suspicious, and Credence was born around the same time. Little did we suspect that poor little Corvus DIED ON THE BLOODY TITANIC??

The delivery of this completely pointless side-drama was equally odd. I wonder if there was anyone in the theatre not thinking “what the hell??” when Leta blurted out her dramatic baby-killing history. Did you notice the awkward silence of all the other characters? That probably wasn’t just good acting work.

JK Rowling probably did not know what to do with Leta next, so she pulled an old Harry Potter card called “all tragic characters need to die” and that was the end of Leta. She pulled that one on Credence to, by the way, but he came back from the dead. How did he do that? We saw him explode right? No idea, no one cares.

Not gay enough to get banned

We get some hints:  “I cannot fight Grindelwald”, and that longingly staring into the Mirror of Erised. But that is it.

See, I loved the fact that Dumbledore sees Grindelwald in the mirror. It may be my favourite scene because I am a hopeless fangirl. However, we only get a glimpse of Dumbledore’s feelings, nothing more. This was one of the better side stories, and it is largely left untouched. I get that, you don’t want your movie banned in certain countries, because that would mean less money and the wizarding world is all about money, but still; a missed opportunity. Instead of Dumbledore and Grindelwald we get to see angsty teenagers Tina and Newt again. Boring!

Left in limbo

So many questions remain. For example: why would any wizard pay for a circus act where some chick turns into a snake when they can see that shit every day?? Who even is that snake lady? Where did she come from and why is she all of a sudden BFF’s with Credence? And why did Tina and Newt not keep in touch? Writing a letter clearly was too much to ask for, and Skype wasn’t invented yet, but for god’s sake; you’re wizards! Also; Leta did not tell anyone about switching the babies. Then why did the entire wizarding world hate her so much? Are wizards just a bunch of a******s? Who was Yusuf Kama again? Oh never mind. And finally: what on earth was McGonagall doing in this movie? She is not even born yet. JK Rowling knows her own characters, right? Is fanservice through familiar character appearances important enough to screw up timelines?

They should have just called this “Newt Scamander and the Hunt for Johnny Depp”. This has a gayer ring to it than anything Dumble or Grindle said. Oh well, I still ship it. Bring on number three!

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