I Watch Films: The Crimes Of Grindelwald
In the first Fantastic Beasts film Newt Scamander went to New York, unleashed some animals, fell in love, was sentenced to death, discovered possibly the greatest wizard in the world, and also found out that the man who sentenced him to death was the notorious wizard Grindelwald, then defeated and captured him. Rather than executing him out of hand, their go to method for evil wizards in the first film, in this one the Americans send Grindelwald to Europe. He promptly escapes.
Newt meanwhile is barred from leaving Britain, for obvious reasons, unless he becomes an Auror, a wizard-cop. Newt’s no lackey for the man and refuses which is awkward as his brother is a cop. Also he is a lackey for Dumbledore, who sends him to confront Grindelwald again, because Dumbledore won’t.
They all go to Paris where there are fantastic beasts and a lot of incoherent plotting.
This film is a mess story-wise, and four-fifths of the time it doesn’t matter because either there’s some good wizarding/beasting going on on-screen or the actors are doing their best with the scene they’ve got (and most of the scenes are okay, just don’t fit together too well). It all crashes together in the final confrontation when Grindelwald tells his fans that he intends to conquer the world to prevent World War Two following which the cops try to arrest him, fail because he has a blue fire that can tell friend from foe, and then a cool new character improbably sacrifices herself and one from a previous film joins him for reasons that make even less sense.
Other than being very muted colour-wise not a bad metaphor for the inexplicable rise of fascism I guess.
Watch This: For 1920s wizard nonsense in Paris
Don’t Watch This: For a cleverly plotted story or for the characters in Fantastic Beasts to move on more than half a notch
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