Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Rating

Director

David Yates

Screenplay

J.K. Rowling, Steve Kloves

Length

2h 22m

Starring

Jude Law, MadsMikkelsen, Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Poppy Corby-Tuech, Ezra Miller, Paul Low-Hang, Alison Sudol, Callum Turner, Richard Coyle, Dan Fogler, Jessica Williams, William Nadylam, Victoria Yeates, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Oliver Masucci

MPAA Rating

PG-13

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Review

Where can Warner Bros. go with a franchise that is diminished by the presence of a transphobic progenitor? Not very far when that individual in question is still writing the material. While it’s possible to focus in on the myriad actors and technicians who stand against her, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is suffering and the trendline isn’t favorable.

The rocky history of J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.’ attempts to keep the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in constant production has led to an uneven batch of semi-prequels. Originally slated to be a single film and then split into several, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is ostensibly about Newt Scamander, a foremost creature expert in the original books and author of a book of the same name. That titular association helped launch a solid opening film, but the subsequent two films have tried to shoehorn in Newt and his creatures amidst a widening World War II-era story about the impending wizarding duel between future Hogwarts Headmsater Albus Dumbledore and the villain-who-came-before-he-who-shall-not-be-named Gellert Grindelwald.

This third film presents an interesting battle between the pair that will ultimately be dwarfed in comparison to their final duel. While the gay subtext of the first film is blown wide open in this third with Dumbledore directly telling Grindelwald that he had loved him, we’re in a brave new world where gay Dumbledore is a standard-bearer for the LGBT movement even if Rowling wants to erase the T in that movement. Matter of fact whereas the original Harry Potter series was notably bereft of major minority characters, this film has two (one and a half if you can really consider now-mustachioed Yusuf Kama a major character here). It’s a brave new world for diversity.

Sarcasm aside, the film does well at presenting a complex world that hews very closely to the real world events taking place simultaneously. Grindelwald is attempting to purge muggles from the world to create a wizard-pure environment where secrecy is no longer required, not unlike Adolf Hitler’s pogrom against Jews, Africans, and gays. It’s no surprise then that Rowling, who never met a parallel she couldn’t exploit, positions the rise to power of Grindelwald by way of the German ministry of magic alongside it. The obviousness of this decision isn’t lost on a particularly well educated viewer, but younger audiences might not get the comparison, but that won’t impact their understanding of just how dire the situation will be.

Rowling’s skills as a writer are strictly limited to the written page. Her Harry Potter novels are fantastic works of fiction, written for younger audiences, but pleasurable to read for older ones. As a screenwriter, however, her abilities are a bit leaden. Even Steve Kloves can’t work out many of the bugs in her prose, which is presenting more youth-friendly dialogue and situations in a more adult-oriented series of pictures. As such, the dichotomy between cute critters and simplistic machinations isn’t well balanced against the dark and insidious events that are happening on the screen. For Potter fans, there’s plenty of new information to engage their minds, but like the feeling of depreciation that followed the release of The Hobbit films, fans are likely getting a bit tired of being treated like commodities rather than engaged audiences.

The production values are as always spectacular and director David Yates does a tremendous job keeping the narrative moving and hitting all the major beats with emotive skill. James Newton Howard’s score does some heavy lifting near the end, but otherwise blends into the background, the strains of the Harry Potter theme occasionally piquing an observant viewer’s attention. Even the symbolic parallels between this film and the The Sorcerer’s Stone with Newt arriving by lantern-lit wooden raft at the opening of the film are agreeable. So too are the performances, each actor giving a deeper and more compelling performance than in previous films, the gravity of the situation weighing more heavily on each of them.

Special note must be made of Mads Mikkelson standing in as Grindelwald. He’s the perfect villain for this kind of film. He has the look, demeanor, and intelligence of a dangerous villain and plays him in such a way that his charm and knowledge help sell the notion that this man could convince so many of the righteousness of his cause. A welcome replacement for a character that had been presented as a moustache-twirling egomaniac previously. While it might have been nice to have Colin Farrell back in the role, there’s no question that Mikkelson is a perfect transitional figure.

Is there a way to extricate Rowling from the proceedings? It’s unlikely. No doubt there’s a contract that permits her to continue writing and producing the series and making money off of it. The series’ catastrophic diminishment from its $811 million worldwide high six years ago isn’t just evidence of a drop in quality. Much of what made the first film a success, its wonderful creative elements, is still there. They’ve even managed to improve by bringing in a far better actor for the villain’s role. The issue will be that as long as Rowling is involved, the series will not be able to reach a successful conclusion. Warner Bros. can’t just drop her, but they could minimize the damage she’s doing to her own cultural icon. Letting others who love it take it beyond its origins is just what Star Wars did under Disney and that can happen here, but it will take a seismic reconfiguration, not an ignorance of its flaws.