Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Review

The third Fantastic Beasts exists to fix the second, and it does, in the way a legal correction fixes a contract. Kloves rejoins the writing and the result is legible at last: a plan with steps, a villain with an objective, a rescue you can follow from one room to the next. It is also inert. The stated subject is an election for Supreme Mugwump, settled by a creature that bows to the purest heart, which places the fate of the wizarding world in the judgement of a deer with a moral compass.

Mads Mikkelsen is a clear improvement, playing Grindelwald as a soft spoken politician rather than a poster, and the thing between him and Dumbledore is finally said out loud after two films of hedging. But the retcons keep coming, Credence is disposed of with a shrug, and Jacob is handed a wand and a plot function in place of a story. The German sequences are handsome and the Berlin ministry is a welcome change of scenery from castles. George Richmond shoots it flatter and greyer than the first two. Nothing in it explains why two more of these were planned, and neither was made.