#newt was literally born to die he was literally put in the trial as a control never meant to survive

[chaos-and-all]

cause you (Thomas) and I (Newt), we were born to die.

[regrettablewritings]

Okay so I got asked earlier about elaborating on my feelings towards Fantastic Beasts 2...

Disclaimer: These ramblings are my personal feelings on the most recent addition to the HP franchise, Fantastic Beasts 2: Crimes of Grindelwald. You needn’t agree with them, but I have a right to express my feelings concerning the film and how it handled its story, its editing, characterization, and motivations. If you liked the movie, great! I didn’t. And here is where I will dispense why. Also, as if it bears mentioning, spoilers.

So...There’s a lot to unpack here. And, unfortunately, most of it is not fantastic beasts – mainly because aside from a few creatures that only exist as trailer fuel, the story’s pretty much departed from the importance of creatures and the allegories they can potentially offer. I mean, on one hand, I understand that it must be difficult to make five films revolve continuously around weird creatures and Newt’s efforts to utilize them and be the magical Crocodile Hunter. But on the other, they’ve made, like, five films centered around people reviving dinosaurs so this frankly isn’t impossible if done with good planning.

This, in my opinion, was not done with good planning. Rather than be done with the intention of being a suitable continuation to the promising first film, CoG wound up being a jumble of poor editing, nonsense twists, and character bastardizing to name a few.

But before I get into that, let me make it clear that I didn’t hate everything about it. The movie had some good qualities about it such as:

Theseus is actually a good brother. For years, we were kinda inched towards the idea that because he was the socially favored Scamander brother, that he must be a golden boy and even a bit arrogant. Newt’s impressions of him didn’t exactly help, either. But what we wound up with was a well-meaning if a bit primmer guy who’s affectionate (“a hugger” according to Newt), controlled, and ultimately does love his younger brother even if he doesn’t necessarily see eye to eye with him. I was talking with a friend about him and their relationship makes a bit more sense and even gains more points if you consider how Newt is coded as autistic: Theseus doesn’t get his brother and admittedly does wish he’d calm down, but he clearly isn’t comfortable with others looking down on Newt for his oddities.

Plus, Newt stepping out of his comfort zone to give Theseus a hug in his time of need is especially heartwarming even if in the face of something tragic.

Leta Lestrange being an example of how Slytherins aren’t all prejudiced assholes, rather they are characterized by their ambition and cleverness rather than the evils that can result from those traits going untamed.

Newton Scamander is the only person to make “your eyes look like salamander eyes” romantic.

“WALK WITH ME!”

Niffler babies!!

And, uh . . . yeah, that’s it. Everything else either left a bad taste in my mouth or punched me in the brain. So without any further ado or necessary order, let me just air my grievances and get this one-ton pain off my chest:

Too many storylines. I know this was a common complaint directed at the first installment of the series, but here, it’s really evident because we’re following Newt and Jacob following Tina who’s following Credence who’s following a trail and eventually following Grindelwald and Yusuf who’s following Tina to follow Credence and Grindelwald who’s not exactly following Credence but whatever then we got Leta who’s not necessarily following anyone but holy shit that’s without delving into the respective meat of all of the A, B, C, D, E, and so on plots

Queenie. Just. Queenie. What did they do to our favorite blonde Goldstein sister?! In the first movie, Queenie was established as being the more openly soft sister. Yes, she was more emotional than Tina, but it was never to the point of her actually making stupid decisions – especially because it was proven that the airheadedness was all a ploy and that Queenie’s actually pretty smart and intuitive (you know, when not reading minds). Which makes her decision to bewitch Jacob into marriage the first sign that something was wrong. The thing that made their attraction to one another in the previous film unusual yet still enjoyable was that it signified that not all magic-doers in America were against interacting with No-Majs and a potential allegory for interracial marriage, given how her initial intrigue towards Jacob as a No-Maj quickly evolved into genuine intrigue for him as a person.

By the time of CoG, however, this care has evolved into obsession wherein Jacob’s treated more like a commodity rather than an actual person. Yes, he does return Queenie’s feelings, but robbing him of his consent regardless is just an awful thing to have done to him. Jacob’s unwillingness to marry Queenie isn’t one born of fearing commitment; it’s because as much as he loves her, he hates the idea of her suffering for his lack of magic even more. Unfortunately, to Queenie’s now apparently rapid mind, this translates as him being too afraid and that it’s up to her to make any moves – moves that are highly concerning for everyone, let alone somebody who displayed such consideration in the previous film.

Going off of this, her decision to join Grindelwald is just . . .? The man will literally have people like the one you claim to love killed. Maybe not all, but the ones that do survive will likely not live well. This includes Jacob. So what sense is there to this?! And this is without considering she can read minds

Credence. I mean, I think everyone was sort of prepared for him to do what he did in the end, but actually watching it honestly made me realize how stupid it was for him to do that. I mean, you could argue that as far as he’s concerned, Graves and Grindelwald are two different people, as whatever was left of him managed to wisp away before the big Scooby Doo reveal. So as far as he may know, Graves did him wrong; Grindelwald is only trying to help. But even still, I hate what they’re doing to this guy.

Going off this . . . The whole Aurelius thing. I’ll admit that by that point, I was dead in my seat so I wasn’t sure if I heard the specifics, but did Grindelwald specify that Aurelius was Albus’ brother? Because if not, he’s just a relative in the Dumbledore family. Which kinda defeats the previous claim of Credence’s importance to the wizarding world imo.

Newt’s sudden infatuation with Tina comes off as clumsy. Yeah, it’s cute, but it seems so out of place. Sure, we can assume during the time skip that they kept in touch decently, but I sincerely doubt that in that amount of time, Newt managed to fall for her, let alone to the extent that he displays. I know I keep referencing the first film, but considering they’re, you know, supposed to be part of the same franchise, it’s key. But in the first film, the attraction is hinted at in the lightest of ways. We know they’ll get married, but that doesn’t mean they need to be immediately into one another, much less to the extent wherein Tina displays jealous tendencies and Newt is full of Freudian slips about how attractive he finds her. This wouldn’t seem too out of place later down the line, but to have that already just seems misplaced.

The situation regarding Yusuf and Leta’s mother and Corvus Lestrange . . . If this was supposed to be a sort of reference to the r@pe of black women from white men, yeah, it happened, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it being used here, mainly because it winds up contributing to Leta’s “tragic mulatto” trope. However, it also makes me wonder if it would be as intensely questionable if Leta’s mother had been white but that doesn’t really make it any better considering that the marriage was nonconsensual and resulted in death by childbirth.

This is more of a nitpick, but it bothered me how a lot of important exposition seemed to come from the mouths of those bearing hard-to-decipher accents.

This is just what I remember and what I condensed by the by. There’s probably a few other gripes I have rattling around up in the old noggin but I’m already exhausting myself here and this is already a pretty damn long list as is. But I the thing is, I don’t think I would’ve been this frustrated if they had just waited to do some of these things in a later film.

Some of these motivations and whatnot would’ve made more sense a little ways down the line after putting the characters through situations that pushed them to do the things they do. For example, Queenie’s nonsense decision to join a man who’d rather her lover’s kind mostly die doesn’t make sense in a movie that we acknowledge has had a timeskip, but doesn’t show what occurred within the timeskip. Choosing to join Grindelwald should be what happens after the audience sees her struggle to maintain the relationship. We need to have a reason to understand her dive into a darker mindset. The audience needs to see a woman who has been through trial after trial and snuck high and low to little success just to be with the one she loves, not a yandere flapper girl in the making.

Likewise, we need to see how Credence put himself back together. If the sequel to Fantastic Beasts couldn’t showcase that, they needed to at least dedicate time to Credence familiarizing himself with the magic world. The dude was a stranger to it all before, how did he wind up finding a magical circus? They’re not exactly lying about, especially in America, so who did he find or who found him and brought him into the wizarding world? I wanna see that, not him suddenly knowing how stuff works. (Going off of that, how did a mind and body-consuming form of dark magic go from a means of death to basically an Overwatch Ultimate? An Obscurus isn’t like a Hulk serum you can whip out and reel back in, that shit is deadly and nearly wiped out half of Manhattan.)

Anyway, by showing Credence’s further involvement in the magical world, he can be introduced to further situations that may arguably make him more pushed toward Grindelwald (even though it’d still be kind of dumb no matter what way you slice it). Having him suddenly join to find out who his parents were just feels . . . weak. Even for Credence, who’s in a constant state of vulnerability.

Like, Jo. Joanne. JK. Ms. Rowling. Please: I get that you’re trying to live up to the hype or what have you, but try not trying. Your stuff flowed better when you were just trying to tell a story, not hash out a story with intent on it becoming famous. I get wanting it to thrive from a business standpoint (anyone who pretends they wouldn’t want their shit to make beaucoup money is a damn lie), but it just doesn’t work when you’re forcing it.

So . . . yeah, that’s the gist. There’s definitely people who can say it more eloquently but whatever, you chose to read my take on it, so you got it. Like I said before, if you liked Crimes of Grindelwald, that’s fine. I like quite a few films others find trouble enjoying. I just didn’t like this one.