Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

Film: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, William Nadylam, Callum Turner, Jessica Williams, Mads Mikkelsen

Director: David Yates

Oscar History: Probably not?  The first film won a surprise citation for Best Costume Design, the first film in the Harry Potter universe to do so, but the second one totally missed, and given the baggage of this  movie, it's hard to imagine Oscar latching on even if notice for Visual Effects or Production Design might be worth considering.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We have not reviewed a new movie on this blog for a number of months for a pair of reasons.  First, like many people I am feeling overwhelmed these days, the pressures of work, health, life, expectations, & the world at-large weighing down too much to be able to do any of those things at top speed.  And secondly (and less depressingly), I have a Letterboxd account where I have been doing mini-reviews of every film I see.  If you've been missing my thoughts on modern movies, please follow me there, as I review every film (first-time or repeat) that I see at this point.

But exceptions must be made (I am still deciding and will have a decision by early summer whether or not I will return to doing full reviews on the blog or if only certain new movies will get this treatment), , and few exceptions make more sense to expand upon than the newest (and potentially last) Harry Potter film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.  For over twenty years, I have been obsessed with the world of Harry Potter.  I started reading the books as a teenager, and fell in love with the magical world they provided.  For a young closeted boy in a small midwestern town with few friends, the world of movies & books were my refuge, the place where I enjoyed spending so much of my time, and few places felt more far off & wondrous than Hogwarts.  Even as an adult, this world is a huge part of my personality (shut up-we all borrow from pop culture in 21st Century world to shape our personality...not everything can be Schopenhauer & Aristotle)...if you walk my home, you'll see little knicknacks & winks to the Harry Potter franchise everywhere.  When I went to Los Angeles last year and walked into the world of Hogwarts for the first time, I actually teared up behind my sunglasses, it was like walking into the world I'd spent my childhood imagining.

Being a fan of this franchise in 2022 requires nuance and a bit of self-reflection.  JK Rowling, who was once an icon to a generation of young writers & readers, has sullied herself in hatred & bigotry to the point where being a Harry Potter fan has become, at best, something you asterisk as being "not a fan of Rowling" and at worst, abandoning decades of fandom.  Stars of the franchise Johnny Depp & Ezra Miller have gone from being big enough deals for Warner Brothers to trust a billion-dollar franchise to them to basically unemployable in a matter of a few years (Depp isn't even in this movie, Miller's part greatly reduced from previous films).  But I'm still here-in a similar way that Star Wars became more than George Lucas and Marvel became more than Stan Lee, Harry Potter became far more than JK Rowling in the years since she first wrote it in a coffee shop.  And that teenager inside me who saw it as a refuge during a lonely period of finding myself still has his heart skip the second that he sees an aerial shot of Hogwarts or hears the strums of John Williams' iconic score.

(Spoilers Ahead) With that preamble over, let's dive into the movie at-hand.  Where last we left off (in full transparency, there were virtually no trailers for this movie, which I went with with six friends after a themed-dinner party, and so I missed the first maybe 90 seconds of the movie based on synopses I read about the movie afterward).  Grindelwald (then Depp, now Mikkelsen) had told Credence (Miller) that he was Albus Dumbledore's brother, Queenie (Sedol) had broken up with muggle Jacob (Fogler), joining Grindelwald, while Theseus (Turner) had lost his fiancee Leta (Zoe Kravitz) in the fight with Grindelwald.

Similar to The Crimes of Grindelwald, the film continues to shift focus away from the world of Newt Scamander, more safely into the realm of Albus Dumbledore & the tried-and-true Hogwarts universe.  This film takes place almost completely in Europe, frequently the UK & Germany, and with that shift it becomes at-best an ensemble, sidelining Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander and almost completely removing Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein from the movie (she shows up at the very end, but is otherwise removed from the franchise, fueling rumors that Rowling wrote Waterston's character out of the movie due to Waterston's public criticisms of Rowling's views on transgender rights).

This decision felt like fan service in the second film of the franchise, but with Secrets of Dumbledore I find it more forgivable.  This is partially because the movie puts Law's Dumbledore centerstage, but smartly doesn't give us that much back story as to ruin the mysterious nature of the character during the Harry Potter franchise (I loathe when movies take a character that works so well by being unknowable, and then feels they need to explain them).  Much has been made over the fact that Dumbledore is gay, but not particularly gay (i.e. there's no big kiss scene between he & Grindelwald like there is between Fogler & Sudol, and there's only two mentions of his homosexuality in the film, both of which have been excised from the picture in China), and it's hard not to be disappointed that they don't do more with his homosexuality to feed the character, other than, well, making him lonely because he lost his great love.  But, I'm willing to forgive for two reasons here-one, this is still bolder than I've ever seen from a movie with $200 million-the gay moments that Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, & Marvel have thrown at us in the past decade get less screen-time than Dumbledore's sexuality does...Dumbledore, a decade after Rowling was heavily criticized for making him gay only when the books were done, is canonically gay now.  And two, it works within the story.

Dumbledore as-written was always a bit of a tragic figure, someone whose life has lived on the edge, always sacrificing but never really living.  One of the things that made he & Snape both kindred spirits AND so selfless were that they gave much of their lives so that people like Harry, Ron, & Hermione could be free to live their own lives.  That works here-we see that Dumbledore was always going to sacrifice, that he might have been the most powerful wizard alive, but he also was incapable of finding a peace in himself...instead, he gives so that the people who can have that peace (in the original series the students, in this series people like Newt, Tina, Queenie, & Jacob) will achieve it.  It feels slightly problematic that it's a gay character who does this until you remember that Rowling's world is littered with such characters (Snape, Sirius, etc) & underlines the point that magic is no replacement for human connection & love.

This is the best part of the movie, which I think is the finest of the Fantastic Beasts series, even if it never quite becomes as enchanting as the original "boy who lived" pictures.  The lighting here is off (George Richmond's cinematography needed some lessons in lighting from Bruno Delbonnel), but the effects are fun.  I loved the scene where Jessica Williams' Lally Hicks jumps atop a sea of cascading pages so she & Jacob can escape, and the production design continues to show why Stuart Craig is the best in the business (love the street designs in the scenes in Bhutan). The acting is a mixed bag, with Sudol still the best of the group & Law bringing a weight to Dumbledore that isn't always on the page (that gives the film much more depth).  Recasting Mikkelsen in the Grindelwald role generally works for the plot, though I will say that Depp's seductive Grindelwald is a completely different approach, and honestly worked better with the idea of wise Dumbledore being seduced by an actor once called the "Sexiest Man Alive" (as Law also once held that title, this recasting means we didn't get to see two actors who shared that title play a love story with each other for the first time).  I also liked Williams...I know that people have taken a lot of issue with her accent (which seems to be akin to Katherine Hepburn attempting to be from Savannah), but I thought it was ridiculous enough to kind of work.  These people are riding dragons & casting spells...an unusual accent doesn't suspend belief.

So I'm going with 4-stars here, as I had a wonderful time, even if I'm aware that I'm giving this review with rose-colored glasses (if you're not a Harry Potter fan, your mileage will vary as the film is probably too long & has at least one too many plots...cutting Credence entirely wouldn't have made narrative sense to the last two movies but would've been in total service to this film on its own, and probably would've saved the Warner marketing team a headache).  Given the film's tepid box office (it has just crossed the $200 million mark after two weeks out, and with China's theaters being partially closed still, it'll be the first installment in the series to not hit $500 million), and the ending feeling so finite (with every character either married, on their way to that, or in Dumbledore's case, about to reach their destiny), it's probable that the film's final two chapters, long-promised by Rowling, are a mirage at this point.  If that's the case, Fantastic Beasts will likely be remembered in the same way we recall the Hobbit.  An unnecessary film that fans of the series embraced (albeit not as much as the first series), but casual observers tapped out on before the ending.  Given Warner's theme park investments in the franchise, it's difficult to know what comes next-do they remake the originals, do they try giving blank checks to Radcliffe, Watson, & Grint in hopes of getting them back for a big-screen adaptation of Cursed Child (I feel confident that that would be a $1 billion movie even if this one suffered), or do they hope that love for the originals is great enough to feed their investment for a decade to come?  It's hard to say, but I can confirm that if you are a fan of Fantastic Beasts (and I think at this point I am, regardless of Potter), you don't have to worry about this leaving you behind...you get an ending that satisfies.