Up to this point, I have loved the JK Rowling universe. This latest film didn't really do it for me. It just didn't seem to be about the magic and the characters, it was all set up to be a slick deceit which got most of us, but to what end? Newt Scamander is again the central character, for whatever reason, it seems it should have been Dumbledore of the Harry Potter fame, but he is tricked out of the equation by a very smart bad guy. Johnny Depp, who we are all trained to love immediately, this time plays the bad guy and he basically comes up with a new -ism, like racism or ageism, he hates and or holds beneath him anyone who isn't a pure blood wizard. It is already against the law and punishable by death for wizards and muggles (non wizards) to marry. We are clued into this by the love between Jacob and Queenie who were more or less comedy relief in the first installment of this series. Queenie has put a love spell on Jacob to get him to agree with her to marry. Newt realizes this when they drop in to visit and upon waking up from the spell, he declines to marry her, he loves her, he just fears punishment from the wizarding world. So she does as a woman scorned, and leaves, just poof, gone.
This leaves Jacob available to join Newt on another adventure, this time to go to France to find and possibly fight Grindenwald, and locate Credence who both sides are trying to get because he is a powerful wizard who doesn't know his abilities yet. Newt also finds out Tina, his love interest from the first movie is after Credence, she is still an auror.
I didn't understand why Dumbledore charged Newt with this mission, there was nothing that made him the man for the job, he even seemed to disappear and just about forget meeting any new animals, other than the cool black cats that were used as guards and the lion festival creature, the movie was pretty thin with creatures. Thinking about it, the movie reminded me of one of those Star Wars prequals where there was a ton of business dialogue which bores the crap out of the viewer but seems important in the moment.
I fought silently and quietly with Javalina who sat next to me throughout the movie. He originally sat between Wife and me as a buffer because he was small, but he is no longer that small, I may as well be sitting next to Wife, he wants to fight me for the armrest, he eats more popcorn than me, and then he elbows me every time I breath a little heavy because he thinks I might have fallen asleep.
We saw the movie at EVO again and I really like it. We got there at 4:50 and at Alamo Drafthouse, we might have missed the movie, but here it wasn't a big deal, even after stopping to get popcorn and soda and even going to the bathroom, we still walked in to a lit room and the trailers just starting.
I have really enjoyed all the Rowling movies and there was a lot to like, like seeing Hogwarts in a different era and seeing a young Dumbldore and McGonagall working with a young generation of kids. The coolest thing I probably liked was the statue that moved slowly to allow them to sneak into the wizarding street corner right in front of all the Muggles. As I was told, this is a movie that is setting the landscape for a fight against good and evil, so even if it wasn't great, the next ones should have a lot more action and possibly violence. I personally stayed awake but barely, there were a couple of soliloquys where I almost zoned out.
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