Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a fully "okay" movie. I still like the magic and the creatures. It raises some questions about characters I previously thought of as "good," like Dumbledore and Queenie. I'm interested to see where they go with the rest of the series.

I had a lot of problems seeing Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. I wanted to see it in a theater on my birthday. It was only playing into theaters by then, one in Shoreline, and one in Tacoma. The one in Shoreline only had one showing a day. I don't see movies in theaters very often (in fact, it's about once a year, on my birthday). I didn't realize that a lot of the theaters have switched over to having you pick your seat when you buy the ticket.

I didn't get to the theater until about five minutes before the movie started. The only tickets that were left were in the front row. I tried it out, but it was impossible to see anything. I should have just seen a different movie, but I wound up not seeing anything at all, which really sucked.

I wound up waiting until Grindelwald came to the $4 theater to try again. I normally sit in the back row of the theater, but the screen at the Crest was so small that I wanted to sit in the middle. I ended up not being able to do that, even though there were open seats where I wanted to be. So I had to sit all the way in the back. For about the first third of the movie, I felt like I couldn't even see it, and I kept missing a bunch of dialogue because I couldn't hear it, either.

I read a review that said Newt's affect gets really annoying. Maybe my perception was just colored by that, but I definitely agreed. Like, just stand up straight at least.

Dumbledore doesn't seem like a very good guy, just tricking Newt into doing stuff all the time. It was cool getting to see him teaching, but what's up with him making kids reveal their worst fear in front of the entire class? And Queenie isn't any better, basically drugging Jacob to marry him. It seemed out of character for her to join Grindelwald, but I guess when you think about it, she really didn't respect Jacob at all.

Grindelwald seemed like an allegory for Trump, gathering people together who aren't happy with the way the ministry is running things and vaguely promising them something better. Although the ministry doesn't seem to be running things very fairly, either.

I couldn't really identify with Credence joining Grindelwald just because he might have information about his parents. It's just like his girlfriend said, who cares who they were? It doesn't matter. I was confused about what happened with the maid. I guess the ministry guy killed her and Credence freaked out about it.

I felt bad for Bunty. They tried to make a joke out of it, her trying to get Newt to take off his shirt to deal with the Kelpie, but it's really sad that she's so into him and it's not going to go anywhere.

I don't mind that they're doing such a slow burn with Newt and Tina. They've got a lot of movies to go still. At least they established in this one that he wasn't engaged.

I liked the alchemist. The reviews said there weren't enough creatures, but I thought there were. The CG was terrible on a lot of them, anyway. The baby nifflers were cute, though. I liked that Grindelwald threw the lizard out of the carriage, because it seemed out of character for him to be so affectionate with it in the first place.

Grindelwald is a strange villain. He seems really sickly and unhappy, like you just want someone to put him out of his misery, kind of like the actual Johnny Depp.

I still like the parts with the magic. Grindelwald's blue fire was cool, and so was the fight between his magic and the other wizards'. It was sad that Leta died. She was such a lost soul, having been tormented all those years about accidentally being responsible for her brother dying. It's almost a copout, like she was too far gone, she might as well just be killed. It would have been better to see her somehow work through it.

I hope we get to see Newt work with his brother in the next one. He seems like a good guy. It was weird seeing Newt being so violent with the spirit cats. I think he did say they weren't truly animals, though, so maybe that's why he was like that.

The Lestrange storyline was interesting. I wonder if it's accurate, though? I think Grindelwald had the family tree book, so he could have tampered with it.

The score was good. It was really instrumental in shaping how you felt during certain scenes, especially the ones with more action. And the movie looked good overall. I liked the costumes, and the general aesthetic.