Fantastic Flaws: A Look at J.K. Rowling’s Least Magical Creation
Let’s delve into what is arguably the weakest link in J.K. Rowling’s otherwise stellar career: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Following the events of the first film, the dangerous wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is imprisoned. However, he soon escapes and heads to Paris to gather followers and seize control of the wizarding world. Grindelwald’s primary target is Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), whom he believes is the only one capable of defeating Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law). To thwart the villain’s plans, Dumbledore sends his former student Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to Paris, where he reunites with old friends to combat the powerful dark wizard.
In recent years, J.K. Rowling, the author of one of the best young adult book series of our century, has been making some questionable decisions. From allowing incompetent playwrights to continue the story of the Boy Who Lived to rewriting canon to fit a social agenda, it seems she’s determined to tarnish her own legacy. Against this backdrop of bizarre creative choices, the attempt to turn a small encyclopedia into a full-fledged film franchise almost seems reasonable. The “Fantastic Beasts” series has an interesting setting, and the story had the potential to add intriguing details to the world of wizardry and magic. However, with each installment, Rowling’s writing increasingly resembles fan fiction.
And that’s not an exaggeration. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” possesses almost all the hallmarks of bad fan fiction. Not just “Minerva McGonagall loved cats and sometimes turned into one” bad, but boringly bad, irritatingly bad. The kind where new, one-dimensional characters appear every five minutes, serve their purpose, and vanish into oblivion by the end of the film. The kind where the main intrigue revolves around family ties: who’s whose brother, sister, or third cousin twice removed. And no one asks if you even care about the genealogical tree of Ezra Miller’s tertiary character. Because this isn’t a film about wizards anymore; it’s an Indian movie, except no one dances. Which is a shame, because that might have brought something new to the table.
Rowling gets too caught up in describing the surrounding world and the biographical details of characters, which only hinder the overall story and pacing. It’s understandable that as a writer, she might find the setting as interesting as the narrative, but in film, unlike novels, this approach doesn’t work. Instead of focusing on the crimes of Grindelwald, as the title suggests, Rowling throws in a hundred plot hooks that might pay off in the future. Or maybe they won’t – just be sure to buy tickets for the next three installments to find out.
Everything that could have genuinely interested the viewer in the sequel has inexplicably deteriorated, even compared to the already mediocre previous installment. The first “Beasts” film could be forgiven for its simplistic characters, with the implication that their personalities would gain some depth later on. But “The Crimes of Grindelwald” simply doesn’t have time for familiar characters, as it needs to introduce a hundred new ones, just as flat and uninteresting. Newt Scamander suffers the most: the charming traveler from the original has become a caricatured “mad scientist” with a frozen, crooked grin. It’s as if Eddie Redmayne’s facial muscles, like his character’s in “The Theory of Everything,” have completely given out.
Grindelwald himself could have salvaged the situation – a charismatic evil whose gift of persuasion is so great that even good characters can’t always resist him. Unlike Voldemort, Johnny Depp’s character’s position is understandable and relatable, his figure far more ambiguous. Or rather, he could have been, if Rowling hadn’t been so eager to show everyone her “correct” social stance. So, to ensure no one gets confused about good and evil and doesn’t think there might be something ambiguous about an antagonist with a clear nod to Trump (aren’t you tired of that yet?), Grindelwald’s gang periodically kills children and old women. Well, at least they don’t eat them, so thanks for that.
Rowling clearly needs a good director, a guide to the world of cinema, who can cut away the unnecessary parts of her wild imagination and leave only what will work in film format. But the writer has been cunning: she hired David Yates, the most boring of all the directors who worked on the “Harry Potter” films, to direct “Beasts.” He has no hint of his own style: everything is by the book, by instruction – he sucks all the fun out of the film like a Dementor. In Yates’s hands, even the scene of returning to Hogwarts came out gray and ordinary – although it seemed impossible to ruin that.