I really considered copying my The Crimes of Grindelwald Reaction and replacing all those mentions with “The Secrets of Dumbledore” and see if anyone would notice. I’m really not into this franchise even after being pretty optimistic about the first one. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was low stakes and presented Newt Scamander as a Doctor Who character they could use for standalone adventures exploring a different facet of the Wizarding World each time. By the second movie though, it became clear that they were using the franchise as another saga, and that the strengths of J.K. Rowling as a novelist were very different than as a screenwriter. Not much has changed for the third installment except that I feel even more left behind.
The Secrets of Dumbledore picks up shortly after The Crimes of Grindelwald. Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen replacing Johnny Depp) has his army of followers and is carrying out a plot to get elected as the head of the Ministry of Magic, at which point he’ll kill all the muggles. He somehow acquired the power of foresight, so when Newt (Eddie Redmayne), Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), and others hatch a plan to stop him, they have to be strategically uncoordinated (i.e. If they don’t know what they are doing, then how can Grindelwald?). In theory, that sounds like a really fun idea for a movie: a bunch of characters using their guile and creativity to combat a logical paradox. Like an improv show to save the world. This is the kind of playful idea that made the Harry Potter books so much fun. That’s how you get things like the time travelling in the third book or Harry getting the Philosopher’s Stone from the Mirror of Erised. The problem is that the idea is never fully embraced in this. Dumbledore always seems to know the entire plan. Toward the end, there’s a twist that seems to rely on the audience not knowing how to count to 5. None of it seems very thought out on a screenplay level. It actually requires a lot of work to make it seem like characters are making things up as they go along.
This comes back to a problem I had with the last film too. J.K. Rowling as the co-screenwriter for these is a problem. A writer has a lot of control over a novel. The publisher and editor have input but the lion’s share of the work is the author’s. With the success of Harry Potter, Rowling barely had to listen to an editor after a while. When those books were adapted to films, they were fully formed stories. This is important, because so much of a film is made in editing. The screenplay can point to the source material to argue for hinge points in the story. It’s clear what can and can’t be cut out to maintain the core of the story. With the Fantastic Beasts movies, I get the feeling that the screenplays were written more like a book, with a specific sequence and each scene mattering. That makes editing or changes during production super difficult. The Secrets of Dumbledore feels like a movie where the balance of the screenplay was compromised and the resulting film could never find footing. Nothing about this screenplay feels clever. It’s very perfunctory.
Similarly, I don’t find these movies very accessible to the non-obsessives. This film often feels like it was written entirely from liner notes in a book. It approaches much of the exposition from a perspective of “as you already know…” as opposed to “in case you didn’t know…”. I could follow the basics of it, but I sure felt like I forgot to do the summer reading before class started.
At the end of the day though, it is a Wizarding World movie from people who know what they are doing. It’s director David Yates’ 7th film in this franchise. He can make a competent Wizarding World movie in his sleep. This film does make the argument that his take might be getting a little stale. There aren’t many franchises, good or bad, that keep on a director for that long. He’s on his 4th US President since he began making these. Similarly, this is the 8th movie in the franchise with Steve Kloves credited as a screenwriter. Pair them with J.K. Rowling who must be tired of this too, and you have a creative team who know what they are doing well, possibly to the detriment of the franchise.
The cast balance in this movie is off too. It doesn’t seem interested in Newt Scamander as a main character anymore. He isn’t a POV character and no one in the movie is that amused by him. Going back to my Doctor Who comparison, that character works because there’s a sidekick always trying to figure him out. There are no characters curious about Newt in this, and the way Redmayne plays the character, he tends to disappear. And I like Redmayne’s performance. It’s the franchise that has changed around him since the first movie. It wants Jude Law’s Dumbledore to be the lead. I wouldn’t be against that. Law is pretty good in this. It just feels like every scene he’s in, the camera eventually drifts to him and he has to respond with some version of “oh, you want this to be about me now?” Dan Fogler as muggle Jacob Kowalski has the story of a main character. He’s the chosen one of sorts. They bring him in on the mission for absolutely no reason other than “you were popular in the last two movies”. The movie would’ve been very dull without him, but they make no good case for his inclusion on a story level. Jessica Williams is a fun addition as Professor Lally Hicks. She doesn’t really get a character, but she’s competent. That might as well be a character, right? Alison Sudol returns as Queenie although right away, the movie is confused about why she’s following Grindelwald. She doesn’t have a heel turn. It’s more like she accidentally getting in the villain line at the amusement park and said she’d meet up with her friends when she got off the ride. I don’t know what to make of the recasting of Grindelwald. Mads Mikkelsen is a better actor than Johnny Depp at this point. This movie really didn’t need another stoic character though. Mikkelsen’s Grindelwald is very buttoned down and calculated. Most of his action happens in his eyes. That’s great, except I thought the point of Grindelwald was his charisma. Johnny Depp at least tried to bring that in the last movie. Mikkelsen felt like a stand-in in a very literal sense. I’d like to know the story of Katherine Waterston’s involvement in this. Was she busy with something else? She’s barely in the movie, but she’s in it just enough that I don’t think she was opposed to being in it more. While I like Jessica Williams, I don’t understand why Waterston didn’t step into that role on the team. I have to stop listing the cast there. It’s a Wizarding World movie. There are so many people in it. No one really stood out.
I am getting a lot of Solo: A Star Wars Story vibes from The Secrets of Dumbledore. Right now, this movie looks a lot worse than it probably will in a couple years. It’s a decently fun Wizarding World movie with a good cast and solid production value. Like Solo, there are a lot of flaws with the movie. It’s surely going to mark a course correction for Warner Brothers with this franchise. Going in, the film was marred by behind-the-scenes turmoil that colored my impression going in. With some distance, I’m sure this will look less bad and more mediocre. I’m not rooting for another one, but it’s entirely possible that they could repair this franchise with another one. It’s got the ingredients. The recipe just needs some work.
Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend
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