For starters, the illogical decision to have Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol) join Grindelwald’s side at the end of the previous movie is a real blight on Secrets of Dumbledore.

Mikkelsen gives Grindelwald a genuinely terrifying edge, and the opening sequence between him and Jude Law’s Dumbledore is probably my favorite in the entire Fantastic Beasts trilogy.Īs noted the film is by no means perfect, there’s plenty of baggage from The Crime of Grindelwald that needs mopping up. The switch to Mads Mikkelsen from Johnny Depp pays off in spades. One of the biggest improvements in the Secrets of Dumbledore comes from the decision to recast Grindelwald. It’s by no means a fantastic film, it suffers greatly for the sins of its predecessor, but pleasingly by the time the credits roll the Fantastic Beasts series is in a better place than started, which should be chalked up as a victory. Secrets of Dumbledore is a course correctionįantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore feels like 142 minutes of necessary course correction. Let’s just skip ahead and say, in the wake of the second entry in the Fantastic Beasts series the franchise already appeared to be on life support. I could easily go on a long rant about all the issues and missteps within The Crimes of Grindelwald, but it’s a four-year-old movie that has been dissected plenty at this point. It’s not helped by the ultimate revelation about switched babies feels like something out of a bad Agatha Christie novel. Case in point, the whole subplot about Credence’s (Erza Miller) true linage feels like an unnecessary tangent. The plot is a convoluted mess of rapid-fire exposition and weird side stories that serve seemingly little purpose.

Dumbledore secrets