It’s always pleasant when something that’s expected to fail turns around into something worth paying attention too, and popular franchises often have a lot of people cautiously expecting how things will turn out. When trilogies or long-running film franchises stick around, there’s usually a chance for things to either steer the course and end effectively, or crash and burn on the way down, as has been shown by several examples throughout the years. However, a more positive turn is when a messy franchise turns around and shows more promise as it keeps going. Sadly, the third installment of the Fantastic Beasts movies fails to do this.  Set (apparently) five years after the last film, the dark wizard Grindelwald (played now by Mads Mikkelsen) continues his mission to start a war with the muggles, and the great wizard Albus Dumbledore (played by Jude Law) is unable to fight his old boyfriend due to a blood pact they forged in their youths. Wishing to find a solution to resolve this, a team is formed in order to confuse Grindelwald and prevent him from achieving his goal of becoming head of the wizarding world through a rigged election. This team consists of Newt Scamander (played again by Eddie Redmayne), muggle Jacob Kowalski (played by again by Dan Fogler), Newt’s brother Theseus (played by Callum Turner) school professor Eulalie Hicks (played by Jessica Williams) and Newt’s assistant Bunty (played by Victoria Yeates). This plan, from both Dumbledore and Grindelwald, involve a magical beast called a Qilin, which has the power to see the purity of one’s soul, and the two teams need to complete their missions before the election is held, all the while Creedence (played again by Ezra Miller) wishes to confront Dumbledore about their shared heritage. The third in this franchise, Secrets of Dumbledore was received much more positively by critics and audiences in comparison to the previous two entries, but this didn’t prevent it from becoming the lowest grossing Harry Potter film of all time, showing that a majority of people are just tired of this franchise’s direction  by now. While not the worst thing imaginable (even within this franchise), the mediocrity of this spin-off trilogy is just too much to handle at this point.

This sub-section of the Harry Potter universe has had an incredibly rocky history from background involving J.K. Rowling’s offensive comments causing a boycott on the writer, to the controversy surrounding the firing and recasting of Johnny Depp as the lead villain, and this is even ignoring the obvious film flaws that plague the previous films that just kept people uninterested in this new wizarding adventure. Overall, this film is arguably the least offensive in comparison to the previous two films, but that also results in it being the least memorable and even the least interesting. As a whole film, this movie is better than its predecessors on a base level, but that doesn’t automatically result in this movie being incredibly enjoyable. Each Fantastic Beast has a significant flaw in it that holds it back from being that great a movie, but to their credit, each also has something that does work about them. The first film is horribly bland, ugly to look at, has a boring cast and lacked a narrative punch, but has a innocent likeable charm to its premise and concept, Crimes of Grindelwald is horribly written, had an awful villain in Grindelwald, has a cast of character who majority don’t have a purpose for being in the film, and gets overly confusing and complicated in its plot, but upped the stakes from the last and feature some legitimately interesting scenes and ideas. Secrets of Dumbledore is easily the best told out of all the films; it has a clear direction, most of the characters feel more purposeful, the writing isn’t all over the place and makes enough sense, there are stakes and an inkling of build-up in its structure.  Unfortunately, with good structure comes a pretty lackluster and underwhelming narrative. Being situated in the ‘’middle period’’ of any trilogy, the story itself is weirdly politically driven and features a lot of talking and wizarding governing which, while nowhere near Star Wars prequel garbage, doesn’t have that charming simplicity of the original series, or even the first film. This franchise has been plagued with so many retcons and changes in story-line and scripting that nothing feels consistent or carried over, and whatever is carried over has a weirdly anti-climactic payoff in this film. Its idea of remedying flawed writing of the previous two is just giving an answer that while not confusing, is definitely not interesting and honestly wastes more time than anything.

This cast of characters used to suffer the problem that nobody was willing to give them a chance against the original Harry Potter cast, but now people are less focused on that and more that these characters are just poorly handled in many different ways. The one shining beacon in this is thankfully the titular character himself, Dumbledore. Not only is he decently written in this and arguably feels like the actual main character of the film, but Jude Law’s portrayal really brings a bit more life and flawed humanity to the character, while still carrying the charmingly above-it-all energy that the character always carried. His past with Grindelwald is legitimately interesting even though the resolution to that by the end of this film is also weirdly handled and it’s a shame that they needed to take a franchise about fantastic beasts’ hostage to tell this story. Grindelwald is also slightly improved upon from his past iterations; Mikkelsen is a much better choice for the character than Depp, bringing a suave yet psychotic charm to the character that is appreciated. The tragedy with Grindelwald is that each actor has failed in some manner in portraying him because the character is just not that interesting; fans of the book might know more about him, but film-viewers only see a guy with zero motivation, a bland personality and no strong connections that make him more intriguing (even with Dumbledore). For the focus of these films, he’s really boring. What also suffers is that the original main cast of characters do feel secondary in this franchise now; Newt especially just feels like a chess piece avatar to act as a protagonist in someone else’s story. This group is led by decent actors who with a better screenplay and a more realized narrative could’ve worked, but that just isn’t the case. Newt is still without a character arc or purpose even if he’s not unlikeable, Jacob is quite likeable in these films (easily the best out of this group) but he doesn’t carry the lead status that he arguably deserves, Queenie wastes a lot of potential for what was also a pretty likeable character and suffers a weak resolution, and Tina was used so poorly in the last films, they cut her out of this film altogether. This franchise has so much wasted potential with its characters, its almost criminal how many interesting ideas and character directions are just glossed over for something more mundane. Creedence feels like he could be a really great tragic character, but the movie’s have never been able to write him that well, and in this film, he’s arguably at his weakest. With a reveal that is quite underwhelming and barely any screen time, it feels like the movie forgets about him the second they can.

Another flaw that has plagued these films is the incredibly bland and ugly looking production design. David Yates has had directing control over these films and has shown from his past inclusion in the later Harry Potter films that while his directing is perfectly acceptable for these movies, they have resulted in incredibly washed-out environments that never feel magical in the slightest. Despite these films going to various different countries, there’s always an abundance of grey, stony lifeless environments in the wizarding world and it never gives people a chance to experience how new cultures use magic in a unique way because it all feels the same. This movie goes to China, Germany, and the Himalayas, yet they don’t look the least bit unique from other locations shown in this world, and despite this film arguably having the most variety in color (which means having more than just one), it still looks ugly. That translates over to the fights as well. Action in the Harry Potter films have always been pretty mindless as they kept going (point stick at enemy and force push them away) and here, it does feel like it’s at its lowest with no real variety to its combat and nothing special about its execution. There thankfully isn’t much of it, but it’s a shame that wizards dueling each other isn’t very engaging. For a franchise named after Fantastic Beasts, they really don’t play too much of a role in the grand scheme of things, with only one playing an actual relevance to the plot and the others only existing as background obstacles which even then feel forced in (there’s an entire section involving a jail break which leads to absolutely nothing of worth).

When usually a franchise has the chance of either staying good or falling down, its a shame that Fantastic Beasts will not get the chance to evolve past frustratingly generic as there are no plans to continue this franchise past this film. Secrets of Dumbledore is nowhere a garbage movie, its even debatable how much better or worse it is from its predecessors, but the reason this feels like the final straw for so many people is because this was the third attempt and it didn’t do anything to try and elevate itself. If you have a soft spot for these films, it pretty much gives the exact same stuff so you’ll probably be okay with this one, but it shows how unbalanced and confused this sub-story is that it was taken hostage by another narrative. Its better structured, the cast is likeable, and it does feel more well-rounded than its past two, but that still leaves its wasted potential, bland visuals, messy storytelling, and lack of purpose for some of its characters. It’s still a mess of a film, but thankfully one that isn’t quite as deep in ‘controversy’ and gives exactly what the trailers advertised (even though, it doesn’t have nearly as much gay as was promised). Decide for yourself if this film won you over to this franchise, or if you’d still like to stick with the classics.

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