Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the Fantastic Beasts series and stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander once again and this time he is recruited by Dumbledore (Jude Law) to help defeat the evil wizard Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp from the first two films) from taking over the Wizarding world and inciting a war with the muggles but Dumbledore also has to contend with his own conflicted feelings for Grindelwald and the Blood Pact they made to never fight each other many years ago.
Fantastic Beasts 3 is not a good movie I’m sorry to say but before I delve into those elements I want to talk about what I did like and that is the look of this movie, the production design and visual effects are terrific some of the best I’ve seen in any big film in a long time, the 1930s art deco design is rich and detailed and the wizarding duels create some imaginative visual effects work that actually made this worth watching on a big cinema screen unlike most of the Marvel movies outside of the X-Men movies where many of the fight scenes look dull and boring and really just consist of people hitting each other.
As for the actors their okay and here is where the problems begin, Law and Mikkelsen are great actors but have little to no chemistry as a pair which isn’t helped by the fact that the script is constantly treading on egg shells regarding their romance like they want to say they love each other but the words just garble out of their mouth as if the nerves have taken over and they can’t bring themselves to say I love you or I loved you like a heterosexual couple might and I can’t help but think that this has been done so it can easily be edited out for release in certain markets and its not good enough either do this properly or don’t do it at all, don’t try to take a bet each way.
Speaking of bets each way this has been the fundamental problem with this Fantastic Beasts franchise and like the sequel trilogy for Star Wars recently there has clearly been no roadmap, no plan, no throughline for this series in terms of its overall story arc, its characters and how they all fit together and this has created a group of films that are a tonal mess.
For on the one hand you have this more light hearted and whimsical creature film with Newt and his friends that Chris Columbus who directed the first 2 Harry Potter films would’ve done a great job with but on the other hand we’re back in the dark fascist tone of the later Harry Potter films which David Yates directed and has directed these films and their not that interesting and it isn’t helped that the casting changes regarding the chief villain have made a mess of things again stick with one direction in this case Colin Farrell or don’t bother now outside events didn’t help matters here but its so fucking frustrating.
And so that was Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore and this series is done and deep down I think Warner Brothers knows it and now with Discovery taking over from top to bottom I won’t be surprised if they pull the plug on the Wizarding World for a few years and hopefully give the Australian distribution rights to their overall WB slate back to Roadshow instead of Universal, 1.5 out of 5.
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