Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Review

This is the point where the series stopped being a story and became a schedule. The plot is a crowd of people converging on Paris, almost none of whom have a reason to be there that survives a second of inspection, so the film advances by having someone new appear and explain the next thing. Newt is sidelined in his own franchise.

Tina and Queenie are handed motivations that reverse without preparation, and Queenie's turn toward the villain in particular is written across one scene the character has done nothing to earn. The retcons are worse than the plotting. McGonagall teaches at Hogwarts decades before she was born, a blood pact rewrites what the books established about why Dumbledore would not act, and the closing claim about Credence's parentage is a twist that cannot be true without breaking the family tree it depends on.

What holds up is craft. James Newton Howard's score is the strongest music the spin off run produced, the Parisian sets are lovely, and the thestral drawn carriage breaking away over New York is a real image. Jude Law is a very good young Dumbledore stranded in a film with nothing for him to do.