JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald premiered in Paris on November 8. The upcoming fantasy movie is scheduled to release in a couple of days but things are not looking too good for the Warner Bros. movie. Based on the recent comments made by critics, the movie from the Harry Potter expanded universe reportedly failed to impress several critics.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the sequel to 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The film features the powerful dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), who has now escaped from the MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) and is trying to build an army to raise pure-blood wizards — the same ideology followed by Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter books/movies.
The movie also features Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who enlists Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) in an effort to put an end to Grindelwald's plans.
Based on the premises, the fantasy movie does sound intriguing but apparently fails to impress on several levels. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a rating of 57 percent. The review aggregator's critical consensus reads, "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has glimmers of the magic familiar to Harry Potter fans, but the story's spell isn't as strong as earlier installments."
Many have even pointed that Rowling reportedly made Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald too cluttered, and failed on the basic narrative level. Based on the reviews, it looks like the world-acclaimed author created too many characters and tried to tell multiple stories and because of this, the narrative has suffered.
That being said, several critics have praised Jude Law and Johnny Depp's performance in the fantasy film. The chief film critic at The Guardian noted that "This Fantastic Beasts film is as watchable and entertaining as expected... but some of the wonder, novelty and sheer narrative rush of the first film has been mislaid in favor of a more diffuse plot focus, spread out among a bigger ensemble cast."
Fantastic Beasts 2 is directed by David Yates and scheduled to release worldwide on November 16. The film is projected to gross $70 million in its opening weekend. It will be interesting to see how the Harry Potter movie fans will react after watching The Crimes of Grindelwald.
