movie thoughts: Fantastic Beasts 2 (2018)
So, this happened today.
I sat down to watch Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald. I steeled myself because I knew the reviews for this were all over the place. But something about it bugged me right off the bat and I ended up sort of live-tweeting my viewing:
Why do storytellers who have created well-loved worlds have so little faith in them to bring the audience in? ‘Fantastic Beasts’ went from a new story to a prequel by bringing in Dumbledore, even for a matter of minutes.
- orangerful (@orangerful) October 13, 2019
Yeah, I signed on for the misadventures of Newt Scamander, but instead it turns out this was just a Album Dumbeldore story.
At least, I think it is. Maybe it's a Creedence story. No wait, maybe it's Grindlewald's story. OH hang on, how about Nagini? Queenie? Tina? Jacob? Lita Lestrange? Newt's brother? The double agent(s)? That random half-house elf? The little baby?
Do you see what I'm getting at? The first movie was already at the character limit, barely giving us enough to go on to invest in their story. But JK decides to go into fan service mode and begins to bring in characters from or related to the 'Harry Potter' series. WHY? Have FAITH that fans are there to see the Wizarding WORLD. Not the Wizarding small town where everyone knows everyone.
It undoes pretty much everything I enjoyed about the first movie.
FB - only romantic relationship is Queenie liking Jacob.
FB2 - Queenie and Jacob are a cluster and now Tina is *jealous* of Newt because for some reason he shows up in wizarding tabloids and Newt is all *I don't know how to talk to girls* and it's just **eyeroll** especially when these things are happening in the middle of important story.
FB - Newt is his own Wizard, doing his own thing, stumbles into this darker story and manages to help because of his love of creatures.
FB2 - Newt becomes "chosen" by Dumbledore to complete this task that "only he" can complete.
FB - new characters, new country, different story
FB2 - old characters...I guess Paris is new. But we're back to EVIL Nazi Wizard. (missed opportunity - this could have gone the X-Men route! Xavier vs Magneto. But they've made Grindelvald too icky. Or maybe that is just because they cast Johnny Depp
And should we even talk about the problematic Nagini plot (or, more like, token appearance because she has no story to go along with her plight, she's just the girl to go with Credence). Or what about the random rape story that is tucked away as a flashback? Oh sorry, he *enchanted* her.
Anyway, yeah, this movie rubbed me the wrong way. Are there no editors in Hollywood? No one to take JK's script and say "okay, I see what you're going for but let's trim the fat." No one to work with Yates and say "you know, this is a mess right?" Where are the script doctors?
And there are THREE MORE in the queue??? There is nothing new about this story and it is so disappointing.
TL;DR if you skipped this one, you made the right choice. The more I think about ti, the more frustrated I get with what a huge, wasted opportunity this was.
This entry was originally posted at https://orangerful.dreamwidth.org/1338073.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I sat down to watch Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald. I steeled myself because I knew the reviews for this were all over the place. But something about it bugged me right off the bat and I ended up sort of live-tweeting my viewing:
Why do storytellers who have created well-loved worlds have so little faith in them to bring the audience in? ‘Fantastic Beasts’ went from a new story to a prequel by bringing in Dumbledore, even for a matter of minutes.
- orangerful (@orangerful) October 13, 2019
Yeah, I signed on for the misadventures of Newt Scamander, but instead it turns out this was just a Album Dumbeldore story.
At least, I think it is. Maybe it's a Creedence story. No wait, maybe it's Grindlewald's story. OH hang on, how about Nagini? Queenie? Tina? Jacob? Lita Lestrange? Newt's brother? The double agent(s)? That random half-house elf? The little baby?
Do you see what I'm getting at? The first movie was already at the character limit, barely giving us enough to go on to invest in their story. But JK decides to go into fan service mode and begins to bring in characters from or related to the 'Harry Potter' series. WHY? Have FAITH that fans are there to see the Wizarding WORLD. Not the Wizarding small town where everyone knows everyone.
It undoes pretty much everything I enjoyed about the first movie.
FB - only romantic relationship is Queenie liking Jacob.
FB2 - Queenie and Jacob are a cluster and now Tina is *jealous* of Newt because for some reason he shows up in wizarding tabloids and Newt is all *I don't know how to talk to girls* and it's just **eyeroll** especially when these things are happening in the middle of important story.
FB - Newt is his own Wizard, doing his own thing, stumbles into this darker story and manages to help because of his love of creatures.
FB2 - Newt becomes "chosen" by Dumbledore to complete this task that "only he" can complete.
FB - new characters, new country, different story
FB2 - old characters...I guess Paris is new. But we're back to EVIL Nazi Wizard. (missed opportunity - this could have gone the X-Men route! Xavier vs Magneto. But they've made Grindelvald too icky. Or maybe that is just because they cast Johnny Depp
And should we even talk about the problematic Nagini plot (or, more like, token appearance because she has no story to go along with her plight, she's just the girl to go with Credence). Or what about the random rape story that is tucked away as a flashback? Oh sorry, he *enchanted* her.
Anyway, yeah, this movie rubbed me the wrong way. Are there no editors in Hollywood? No one to take JK's script and say "okay, I see what you're going for but let's trim the fat." No one to work with Yates and say "you know, this is a mess right?" Where are the script doctors?
And there are THREE MORE in the queue??? There is nothing new about this story and it is so disappointing.
TL;DR if you skipped this one, you made the right choice. The more I think about ti, the more frustrated I get with what a huge, wasted opportunity this was.
This entry was originally posted at https://orangerful.dreamwidth.org/1338073.html. Please comment there using OpenID.