Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

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[Dobber]

Still a fan and looking forward to it.

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

My girlfriend's a huge Potter fan so I know I'll get dragged to see it regardless.

That said, I absolutely adore the attention and care the production crews went to in recreating the period dress and architecture and I'm VERY curious to see how Mads Mikkelsen will do as he steps into Johnny Depp's former role as Grindelwald.  I really didn't care for Depp's performance in The Crimes of Grindelwald, and I kind of suspect that Mikkelsen is going to be a much better fit for the role.  He's playing almost-literal Wizard Hitler, someone who oscillates between social awkwardness and bombastic rage and charisma, which seems like a good fit for Mikkelsen's more reserved acting style.

[Dobber]

Since you mentioned it, as a huge Wizarding World fan, I have wondered one thing….when did the Magical community start dressing all odd? They clearly  dressed, mostly, like the rest of the world around them. Then by the time of Harry Potter, they all dress in robes and odd garish outfits. Always kind of bugged me.

Chris

[Thom]

@Dobber  Not the only one...

 

And of course I'm interested. The trailer looks good, though I was concerned by not seeing Katherine Waterston in it. She's apparently in the movie, but I hope her character has not been shorted. Esp since she had such big roles in the first two, to not be in the first trailer at all is odd.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

Since you mentioned it, as a huge Wizarding World fan, I have wondered one thing….when did the Magical community start dressing all odd? They clearly  dressed, mostly, like the rest of the world around them. Then by the time of Harry Potter, they all dress in robes and odd garish outfits. Always kind of bugged me.

Wasn't that kind of a books-only thing?  It's been a while but IIRC it was only really Voldemort and the Hogwarts teachers who wore robes everywhere in the movies and everyone else would throw the occasional robe/cloak over a regular suit or school uniform.  It'd be harder to do action sequences if everyone were pantsless.  

(That and, y'know, since they tried to grim things up a bit they don't have accidental comedy from folks going around dressed like the dumpster behind a Goodwill.)

We should probably count our lucky stars they haven't gone back far enough to see pre-modern bathroom Hogwarts where students and staff canonically just sh*t on the floor and cleaned it up with magic.  (J.K. Rowling is a very strange person.)

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[Thom]

Did they forget Porpentina AKA Tina..?

[no3Ljm]

39 minutes ago, Thom said:

Did they forget Porpentina AKA Tina..?

https://screenrant.com/fantastic-beasts-3-tina-goldstein-katherine-waterston-missing-where/

[Thom]

36 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

https://screenrant.com/fantastic-beasts-3-tina-goldstein-katherine-waterston-missing-where/

Well, I'm hoping they're just building suspense about her character's arc. Hope it's good.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, I'm still keen to see where this one is headed... and obscurely pleased that a few of Newt's critters got posters of their own.

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[kalvasflam]

Weren’t they trying to squeeze six movies out of this series?  JK needs to be paid some more…

so, they are probably saving Tina for ep 4,5,6, unless the actress honked off the wrong producer.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

Weren’t they trying to squeeze six movies out of this series?  JK needs to be paid some more…

so, they are probably saving Tina for ep 4,5,6, unless the actress honked off the wrong producer.

Other way around, actually.

Fantastic Beasts was originally planned as a trilogy, but after the first one they announced they were going to do five of them.

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[505thAirborne]

This sums up my whole take on these movies. 

 

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[Seto Kaiba]

I hate to say it, but they've made Credence look like Lord Farquaad from Shrek.

[no3Ljm]

 

 

 

 

 

'Tina Goldstein' attended the Premiere.  

[Bolt]

Saw the first one. It was mildly entertaining. I may catch this at some point. But I'm not a HP fan either. I think there's way better fiction out there that should be made into movies.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

Saw the first one. It was mildly entertaining. I may catch this at some point. But I'm not a HP fan either. I think there's way better fiction out there that should be made into movies.

It's enjoyable for what it is, IMO... and we should all be grateful that nobody's been stupid enough to do a film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

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[no3Ljm]

 

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[no3Ljm]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Getting ready to watch this one later this evening.

I've managed to avoid spoilers thus far, so about all I've heard is that there's a fair consensus that it's both the best of the Fantastic Beasts trilogy so far and still kind of a train wreck of a movie.

From the news about the cast, it certainly sounds like it was a problematic production on all kinds of levels... one key actor fired, one supporting actor imprisoned, and two other key actors unable to get involved due to the pandemic and schedule conflicts. 

[jvmacross]

Saw this the other day, since it was on HBO Max and I'm paying for it...didn't like the first one and can't recall if I ever watched the second one or just simply can't recall anything about it...

Anyway, this was one of those movies that I continue watching in the hopes of something...anything...interesting would happen....

At least the Star Wars franchise still has a heartbeat.......The HP franchise seems to have been OK'd to have the life support removed....

Not a huge HP fan to begin with, but I did enjoy most of the originals.....I would be more interested in movies with the original cast as adults and their kids...surely if the Emperor can be resurrected, Voldemort can easily be brought back...

[sh9000]

I haven't watched it but my wife did and she liked it.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Well... I have now watched Fantastic Beasts: the Secrets of Dumbledore.

I'll say this for it, Mads Mikkelsen's performance as Gellert Grindelwald is vastly superior to Johnny Depp's in every respect.  He's a lot more subtle, nuanced, charming, and quietly malevolent in a way that better fits the style and tone of the piece.  Depp's performance (and makeup) always felt out of place, like he'd wandered onto the wrong set while filming some new Tim Burton movie and nobody could pluck up the courage to tell him he needed to leave.

As for the rest of the feature... it's better than the previous two, but it's still no better than mediocre.  

It's increasingly obvious that the writers are struggling to justify the title's premise with each new installment.  Curiously, that seems to be reflected in the title card too, with each successive film making those two words smaller.  There seems to be a bit of a struggle to come up with enough story for the film's runtime as well.  The first half-hour of the film has no fewer than three separate instances of characters recapping the events of the previous two movies aloud to each other.  It wouldn't have stood out so much if they hadn't done it three times in quick succession, and/or if the ones on the receiving end of that recap weren't the ones who did the things being recapped in the previous two films.  What we got story-wise is halfway between being a heist movie and a political thriller, which does neither especially well.  

They feel compelled to spend a few minutes hanging a lampshade on Katherine Waterston's (Tina Goldstein's) absence from the plot and introducing the new character, Eulalie Hicks.  "Lally" is pulling double duty as a replacement for Tina and Leta, as the story's main minority-representation character and the designated action girl.  Unfortunately, she spends most of the film as Jacob's minder and consequently gets very little character development apart from Newt and Dumbledore gushing about how amazing she is.  That kind of leaves her feeling like a flat, generic Strong Female Character™.  Her one distinguishing trait apart from being The New Girl is her... attempt... at a transatlantic accent.  It makes her every line of dialog sound stilted and unnatural to the point that she's actually kind of headache-inducing to listen to.

 

Spoiler

The promised big showdown between Albus and Credence is ultimately a nonevent.  It's not even really a fight.  Albus sees Credence coming and traps him in some kind of mirror world where he can't hurt anyone or anything with his powers, lets him flail around like a spaz doing lots of CG damage to strictly illusory buildings, then swiftly takes him down without breaking a sweat or even letting Credence land a pity hit or two.  It's so utterly one-sided that it feels like we've been cheated, TBH.

"Lally" gets two that are just as one-sided, one where she starts an indoor tornado to foil an assassination attempt and then legs it and one where she and Theseus Worf a good two dozen of Grindelwald's goons before being captured on purpose to trick Grindelwald's goons into opening the boobytrapped cases they were carrying.  Jacob has an extremely brief but funny one where he clubs two goons with the case then runs off, leaving them to be buried under a tidal wave of infinitely self-replicating pastry.

Newt gets beaten down twice in a row and in a rather undignified manner both times.

Dumbledore and Grindelwald get some kinda weird, strictly imaginary showdown for a minute or two, but that's about all.

 

For what it's worth, The Secrets of Dumbledore does tie off the bloody stump that is Credence's storyline and the whole Queenie-Jacob thing as well.  So if this one underperforms to the point that one or both of the remaining two planned films are cancelled at least there's some closure.