Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

 

If you have been following recently, you will not be surprised to see that I am a fan of the Harry Potter films. In the past month I have seen three of them on the big screen, and I was happy to get the opportunity to write about them since I had not yet started blogging when they first arrived. The Wizarding World is an umbrella label that Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling have coined to cover an expanded universe of materials, including this second series of films that are basically a prequel to the original stories. The first in the series, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", was a welcome addition to the fantasy world and id a great job at setting up a new set of characters. The follow up film, "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" is another case altogether. While it had the requisite visuals, it lacked the spark of the first film, misused some of the characters that had been created, and was basically a series of exposition dumps that were hard to keep track of and boring to begin with. "The Secrets of Dumbledore" needs to pull the series back from the brink of self destruction, and it largely does that.

This movie is not as narratively strong as the first film was, but it is a lot better at keeping us involved and it uses the characters pretty well. Ever since the back story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald in the last of the Potter Books, it has been believed that there was a love story gone wrong there. This film confirms that in the stories, and as a side note has created problems for the studio as a result. Apparently the Chinese market is not ready to accept a gay subplot in a western made film, so references to that aspect are being trimmed for that market. There is a little bit of hypocrisy here because of the attitudes of Hollywood to stateside policies. but as an economic decision it is inevitable. The film needs as big a market as possible to justify what they have invested in and to be able to pursue more films. 

There are two or three course corrections her in this story that help put the series back on proper footing. The most important of which is that there is plot not just narrative. We know the objective of our antagonist (although the background on why Grindelwald is motivated in this direction is very murky. Power! seems to be all that is there). Jude Law as Albus Dumledore is much more a part of what is happening in the film.  Newt Scamander is more engaging in this story than in the last one, where his character was the dullest thing in a dull movie. He is used expeditiously as one of the main characters, rather than as the lead character. That helps keep the story from becoming tiresome. Eddie Redmayne continues to mumble and remain understated, but at least his characters brother is around to translate on a regular basis, and he has a couple of charming scenes that do play off of his character, rather than just inserting his character into a scene where the personality does not match up. If he were on his own in a scene confronting the International Wizards Confederation, it would be a disaster, but fortunately, his brother Theseus, is more articulate, and a new witch "Lally" is around to fill in gaps. This new character is a welcome addition to the film and fills in where the moping drudge of Leta Lestrange would have dragged the film down more. Katherine Waterston must not be available for shooting most of the time, this would have been a part that she could have played, but she only shows up in a couple of inserts and right at coda. 

The biggest miscarriages of the second film were the misuse of  Queenie and Jacob. The way Queenie gets drawn into Grindelwald's circle is not convincing, and Jacob was barely noticeable last time out. Queenie is still a little out of place but at least we can see why she was needed in the camp of the dark wizard. Her character is conflicted in this story and that is exactly the way they needed to go. Having stumbled with her, J.K. Rowling and returning co screenwriter Steve Kloves, find a way to at least use their mistake and get out of it by the end. Jacob Kowalski, the Muggle/No Maj, played by Dan Fogler, is the most entertaining character in the films and his charm has been completely restored in this story. He and Redmayne play off of one another really well, and he gets to be included in the plot in a way that makes sense, not just as a tag a long character. The scene where he interacts with the students at Hogwarts is delightful. 

The series is titled "Fantastic Beasts" so it is perfectly acceptable to have the fantasy creatures play a part in the story. Their presence was overdone in "The Crimes of Grindelwald", but there is just enough in this film to make them relevant without becoming obnoxious. There is a mythical creature with the power to see the future and the decency of a person, the Qilin is charmingly visualized but be ready for a horrifying moment early on in the film, it was disturbing. Newt gets a chance to return to his quirky persona in a prison break scene set in a black site which is a German Wizard's prison, along the lines of Azkaban, but even more gruesome. In spite of the grim setting, there is a very humorous element that reminds us that we are watching something that should be fun, and this scene reaches for that goal and achieves it.

There are still problems with the narrative. Most of these would have been solved if Rowling had written full books for each of the films, and then adapted the stories so they could be coherent. Because there is not a literary history to fill in details, certain things just have to be taken as a given, and that does not always work. Holes in the plotline are rushed. Grindelwald goes from loathed fugitive to favorite for political office, almost instantaneously. The current head of the International Wizard Confederation is a character with inconsistent actions, and looks substantially like Mads Mickelson who is playing Grindelwald, and that suggests some collusion as well. The Credence plot line is resolved with the least annoying retcon possible, but the whole family connection was a mistake in the first place. 

I don't know that this film can keep the franchise going. The theatrical revenues will be affected by changes since Covid, as well as the missteps of the prior film. There are still plot lines that could be followed up on, but if it ends with this entry, the conclusion is satisfactory. I'd still enjoy seeing more of the characters, and I would be interested in the timeline and the way it gets integrated into actual history, but that might be a landmine that Rowling should take a lot more time to figure out. The film is largely successful and I would keep following the plot, I'm just not sure it will do enough to expand the audience back to Potter sized proportions.   

Chaos Walking

 

The advantage of being an older adult is that I don't feel compelled to try to know everything by searching the internet constantly. I had only a vague notion that this movie existed, and I had no idea that it was based on a YA novel series. As a result, I was mostly uncertain of where much of this was going or even what the hell was happening at times. The concept of "The Noise" gets introduced fairly early, and that is the key twist in the story. I don't think it is a spoiler to say that the men in this world are basically displaying their thoughts out loud and visually to those around them. This makes secret keeping and lying difficult. It also sets up the main flaw in the premise which you will probably identify before I get to it below.

The two young leads might have been a tell as to the YA origins of the film if I had been paying attention. Daisy Ridley is a rising actress with the latest Star Wars films under her belt. Tom Holland is of course the current "Spider-Man" and his winsome manner and somewhat nasally voice are perfect for the kind of character he is playing in this film. This is a combination western/sci-fi/fish out of water story. Daisy's character is Viola, a space traveler who in a scouting mission to the new world her group is traveling to, crashes into an environment that is not only unfamiliar to her but presents a communication scenario she never could have imagined. Tom is Todd, a native of the new world who's family immigrated but died long ago. He is also out of water because in his world there are no living women. 

Once the story starts rolling out, the plot line has only a few surprises. The two leads have to go on the run, they are pursued by an implacable foe, and there are complications along the way. Despite being set in the future, the setting feels like a western. Maybe because there are horses involve (and there is even an explanation of why there are horses on this new world). So Butch and Sundance have to evade the posse, and reach an objective. I suspect that the film has compacted many elements of the novels. As I listened to some of the teen girls in the audience chat with each other after the film, it seems the story has material from all three source novels and not just the first. It ends in an open enough way that sequels could be possible, but if another film is never made, the conclusion is perfectly acceptable, it does not leave us dangling. 

The director Doug Liman, is a competent action director who has made a couple of films with Tom Cruise, a Bourne movie and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He keeps enough chase scenes and fights with the influence of "The Noise" to make the movie feel like it is active, but some of the complications from the thing that distinguishes this story from all other dystopian YA, "The Noise", gets lost in tying to keep things moving. "What Women Want" was a movie that took the same premise essentially and made it intp a comedy concept. This is a more serious story but it is still trying to avoid being too dark. All of us have had abhorrent thoughts in our heads that we are glad that no one else can know, What would the consequence be if those thoughts could not be hidden. This movie does not come close to that. "The Noise" becomes a trivial inconvenience that allows some mental magic, but that's about all. The one character who makes it potentially dark, David Olelowo's Aaron-the Preacher, mostly lurks in the background and arrives as a boogeyman to commit the most horrendous act of the story, but his demon's are never really explored. That is probably the main difference between an adult sci-fi story and this YA concoction. 

Visually, the movie works well. The effects masters have come up with an interesting way to share "the Noise" so that we don't just hear a continuous  internal monologue. There is a combination of traditional frontier living and space age colonization, but there is not a very clear explanation of why the technology process has largely been abandoned. An alien race is introduced, and I suspect it plays a much bigger part in the books than it does in this movie. The landscape that the story takes place in is shot beautifully and there are just enough f/x elements around the edges to suggest a different planet, but that is barely part of the story. 

At the heart of the plot is a secret that drives the main villain, the Mayor of settlement where Viola's craft lands, played by Mads Mikkelsen. As I said in opening paragraph, there is a flaw in the premise of this plot. If everyone knows what really happened before Todd grew up, how is it that they have kept that knowledge from him? The Mayor is the only character who seems to have the strength to hide some of his thoughts, but the settlement is populated with a variety of other men, two of whom have raised Todd. How did they keep the secret from him? The Preacher is openly antagonistic, why would he have kept this a secret? It does not make any sense and as a result, we are required to dip into out bag full of suspension of disbelief and pour a cupful on this story for it to make any sense.  As the plot plays out there are a number of intriguing events that feel like they would make a better story than the one that we are following at the moment. 

Overall I enjoyed the movie in spite of the flaw that I saw. The actors are engaging and well cast. There is enough action to keep us hooked on what is going on, and the movie looks great. I will end with one warning. If you are more sensitive to animal deaths on film than human deaths, this is a movie you might find to be challenging. There are at least two moments where that scenario plays out and one of them is haunting in a way that some of us might have a hard time with it.