After delays script-driven, cast-driven, and covid-driven, the third installment of the Fantastic Beasts series has finally limped to theaters. Does anyone care? Absolutely not! JK Rowling has become obsessed with burning all goodwill towards her, psychotically obsessed with commenting on trans politics in ways confusing and harmful. There’s nothing left there; it’s just sad. Trans women are women, and that simple fact is making Rowling ruin a generation’s favorite book series. Not mine though; I was more into A Series of Unfortunate Events. Daniel Handler seems like a bit of a nut too, but that’s not the point. The point is that I am right, and also Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is nothing and for no one.
Horror of horrors! The dreaded wizard Grindelwald (Mads Mikklesen, asleep) has captured a Qilin, a sort of magic horse baby thing that can see the goodness of man and bow to them. In the wider wizarding world, this horse was once used to confirm the leader of their government, I guess. Naturally, Grindelwald has murdered this baby and turned it into a zombie that will bow to him, making him the… the Supreme Mugwump. I guess. It’s up to his ex-boyfriend Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), and some others (Dan Fogler, Callum Turner, Jessica Williams, etc.) to stop him!
Dumbledore claims the plan is to have no plan, as Grindelwald can see the future. They have to confuse him, which means confusing us. Very convenient! Things just kind of happen, people just kind of get kidnapped and taken to German wizard prisons… there’s nowhere to hang your hat. Magic mostly consists of throwing objects around and teleporting. Ezra Miller is doing a Snape thing but has no spark. Even the so-called “secrets” of Dumbledore amount to things we already learned back in the Harry Potter days, except I guess that he has a nephew? I don’t think you should make a $200 million movie based on that. What are we even doing here? This is not what movies are.
The readers of Boston Hassle are not seeing this movie. You know better than this. I am not here to change minds, I am simply registering my disgust with a woman who has lost herself to hatred and fear, trying to hide behind a series of books for children. Dead fish cinema. Let’s see how involved she is when they try to reboot with something like a Quidditch movie or something a few years down the road.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Dir. David Yates
140 min
2022
In theaters Friday 4/15. Don’t bother.
