It’s easy to forget that the Fantastic Beasts franchise is even a thing. Next to the monstrous popularity of the Harry Potter books and films and the wider franchise’s increasing controversy thanks to its contentious creator, these films barely register as anything more than a shallow attempt to recapture the magic. The third film The Secrets of Dumbledore leans even further into the Harry Potter mythos we know and love as a cheap nostalgia ploy to attempt to conceal yet another jumbled, poorly planned instalment filled with weak characters, zero emotional investment and more plot holes than J.K. Rowling herself could imagine.
Following his climactic encounter with Grindelwald (formerly Johnny Depp, now Mads Mikkelsen) in the events of The Crimes of Grindelwald Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) finds himself on yet another quest at Albus Dumbledore’s (Jude Law) request to recover a Chillen, a mythical creature with the ability to identify the purest of heart amongst the magical community. With Grindelwald’s follower Credence (Ezra Miller) – newly revealed to be a Dumbledore – hot on their heels, Newt, his brother Theseus (Callum Turner), Professor Hicks (Jessica Williams) and muggle Jacob (Dan Fogler) must embark on a desperate mission to prevent Grindelwald from gaining power over the entire magical world, encountering all sorts of terrifying beasts and dangerous magic along the way.
The most unforgivable curse the Fantastic Beasts series casts is its complete lack of planning. Film to film, the connective tissue just isn’t there, with each subsequent movie never feeling as if it is written to continue character arcs or even basic story threads. The Harry Potter films were convoluted, sure, but here it feels as if every scene introduces a complicated new concept or set of rules before throwing them out the window shortly after and dumping needless exposition on us to explain why those rules were broken. It leads to a larger story that feels muddled and totally unsure of what it is even about. Who is the audience supposed to view as their protagonist at this point? Newt seems moved to the side of what was once his franchise, Dumbledore postures a lot but his contributions to the action are minimal and Grindelwald remains the ever present threat, rarely seen but often mentioned.
Claudia Kim’s Nagini, framed to become a much larger piece of the puzzle in Crimes of Grindelwald is completely absent here, as is Katherine Waterston’s Tina Goldstein – a franchise stalwart gone without a trace save for one small, unexplained appearance. Then there’s Gellert Grindelwald, essentially this franchise’s Voldemort, who has undergone a change in actor with each film. The shift from Depp to Mikkelsen was necessary, and Mikkelsen does a fantastic job at finally establishing a character that is charismatic enough to warrant the legions of wizards and witches that pledge themselves to him, whilst harbouring a darker side that makes him a sufficient threat to Dumbledore.
Still, Farrell’s original shift was unnecessary and means that each subsequent actor has had to work harder and harder to make Grindelwald the threat these films constantly remind us he is. After 3 films of a planned 5, he is only now coming into his own as the villain he has always been positioned as and whether intentioned or not, that makes for significantly less investment than Potter had garnered through Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort after the same number of appearances.
Then there’s Credence, a character once considered the linchpin of the series due to his powers as a mysterious Obscurus, who is unceremoniously tossed to the side; his lineage – the prior film’s big cliffhanger – warranting mere minutes of mention before the film promptly moves on to some new confusing plot point. Simply adding new wrinkles to a character’s backstory without addressing the previously established beats is lazy screenwriting, and while it likely means the end of Ezra Miller (good riddance), it yet again makes for a messy, unfocused film.
With the state of the franchise in general covered, we can focus on this latest car crash. Grindelwald, for one, is given an utterly ridiculous arc; shifting from the most wanted fugitive in the world, to an acquitted freeman without even being caught, to a sudden nominee for leader of the entire magical world (a political position that you think would have been important during Voldemort’s reign but was strangely absent) in the blink of an eye. It’s an unsettlingly close Hitler allegory that even relies on the German Minister of Magic to set the pieces in play for Grindelwald’s rise to power. As if that wasn’t enough, the dark wizard’s political platform is entirely based around cleansing the world of muggles, a view that gains far too much traction too quickly amongst the wizarding community. Oh, but it’s ok, because the leader must be chosen by the Chillen, an animal that can detect the pure of heart and has been tasked with deciding the leader of the entire magical world because… well your guess is as good as mine.
The only thing that can prevent this rise to power, of course, is Dumbledore, who is unable to act against Grindelwald thanks to the powers of a blood pact the two made decades ago. It’s a spanner in the works for all of five minutes as both Grindelwald and Dumbledore set their minions to do their dirty work for them, despite the film showing us that either will literally perish if they do this. By the end of the film it’s all swept aside, meaning this becomes yet another filler film on the way to the two former lover’s inevitable showdown. Speaking of showdowns, the action is the film’s only bright spot – with several engaging set-pieces sparking brief glimpses of the magic of old, largely thanks to familiar props and musical cues from the Harry Potter films. A cheap but effective form of nostalgic manipulation that manages to be the only thing the film does competently.
The Secrets of Dumbledore is yet another misfire for a franchise that has no idea how to escape the shadow of the much more successful Harry Potter or how to further that lore in a meaningful way, through a story that actually warrants telling. Each scene seems to contradict the one that came before and needless complications cloud an unsure, poorly planned story from ever becoming anything other than a series of events vaguely reminiscent of a world that was once beloved. With two more films confirmed to be on the way, it is going to take a hell of a lot of magic to bring the fantastic back to this franchise.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore stars Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller, Jessica Williams, Callum Turner, Alison Sudol, Richard Coyle, William Nadylam, Katherine Waterston & Mads Mikkelsen – In cinemas now.