The Crimes of Grindelwald - It Could've Been Great

hi I'm Stefan and this is a Grindelwald video about the movie of Grindelwald but first before I get into that I want to cover a few things first off I didn't make this video to shame anybody for liking it or to shame anybody who made it even like I don't want to dunk on anybody that's not my goal I'm gonna poke fun here and there for the sake of fun but my goal here is really just to understand what went wrong with the movie and explore what could have been done to make the movie more what it could have been what we wanted from it as Harry Potter fans which I am one my microphone is falling off just stick to my skin that's asking good I just won't move my shirt anymore so yeah what's with those caveats out of the way let's just get into the video wait actually no let's not get in the video because before that we need to talk about all right so I liked fantastic beasts and where to find them it was a fun little movie and overall did a good job of introducing four fairly likable characters who I felt could hold a franchise together fairly well I just had one huge issue with the movie after the big climax the villain of the film Gideon graves is revealed to have been Gellert Grindelwald all the whole time oh no well it's him the bad guy who's played by Johnny job it's unclear how he was posing his graves you would assume it was a Polyjuice potion but as far as we know there's no spell that instantly undoes it but yeah those are nitpicks the real problem is with the reveal itself I believe it was a complete mistake to have this reveal at the end of the film and my reasons are threefold firstly it reduces Grindelwald menace if graves had been revealed to be an agent of Grindelwald then it would have very capably established his ability to manipulate people in Makua itself a man with the power to install agents and positions of power in the government is frightening a man who had to do his dirty work himself is less so especially when he just gets captured at the end of the movie with like goofy little animals and stuff that's not he's not scary speaking of not scary he looks like a goddamn idiot and thirdly saving the casting of this character for the next film where he actually serves a purpose would have allowed them to cast somebody good for the role casting him before casting your actor for Dumbledore is also a huge mistake in my opinion because it's incredibly important that all these actors have chemistry together auditioning the two at the same time having them even act out some non-canon scenes together in the audition process would have really given them the opportunity to ensure they had the right people for the parts but they didn't do that so what we died what that's all I have to say about fantastic beasts specifically that's my big problem with it as a film but that said before I go back to being negative let's list some good things in this movie Newt Jacob Queenie and Tina are all fun characters who I thought worked really well as an ensemble the beasts are pretty fun to fall around in the film and they were utilized well I really like how the obscurest lore subtly matches up with Ariana Dumbledore Dumbledore's little sister her stories of struggling with using magic and whatnot that's really cool to me Creedence was a fairly sympathetic character and they did a good job of establishing him Colin Farrell did a great job as graves if they were going to reveal he was actually Grindelwald I actually wouldn't have minded if Ferrell ended up playing him permanently I know that wouldn't have worked but he's better at this than Johnny Depp the music is pretty good particularly Jacobs theme what you can hear here I'm gonna sing over the song here because of copyright strikes and that one jazz song and the wizard speakeasy though I wish the entire film had been jazz inspired with you know that nice magical twist it would have given the film a much more fun vibe as the majority of the score is fairly standard and now with that out of the way we proceed to [Music] there are numerous things in the crimes of Grindelwald that are kind of fun to complain about but aren't actually important problems that affect the movies actual quality so I will have a section right here dedicated to nitpicky problems that don't matter distinct from actual critique McGonagall so she's a teacher when newt is a kid that makes her way older than she's supposed to be and she's teaching transfiguration already which is like well it leads into the next problem Dumbledore is teaching defense against the dark arts Dumbledore was never established in the books or the movies as a teacher of defense against the dark arts ever he was a Transfiguration teacher so what's going on what why next nitpick wizard clothes they don't where was her clothes they wear people clothes this skull bong thing is stupid but I kind of like it you're the Wold vapes guys once I let me see if this thing has an actual name oh and you know there's also the just a big thing which it hasn't been fully you know flushed out yet so I'm not can consider this real critique but uh big spoilers here's your one warning of the big reveal at the end of the film that I'm going to talk about and just complain about real quick so Creedence is uh Dumbledore in which how Greenawalt specifically refers to Koreans as Dumbledore his brother and maybe that what he was just like saying that like not literally but like pretty sure Dumbledore his dad died way before this could ever be possible given credence his very young age like an Aberforth probably probably did not birth this child there was a woman with credence when you take it from like the hold of strange thing and I just don't I don't know I don't know how this is even possible in the Canon it's bad it's really bad dude don't let this be double doors kid JK Rowling this better not be double doors kid I swear to God okay so I think I got it on my system now I'm gonna talk about the actual problems in the movie let us begin alrighty so I'm gonna do what I have done in other videos which is I'm gonna go through the film chronologically but don't worry too much I'm not gonna dwell on much of it I just I'm gonna slow down when I hit a point where I actually have something to say so let's jump right in the pillow opens with the tail break Grindelwald has turned one of the Cuza agents over to his side and the agent helps him with his jailbreak by posing his Grindelwald while the real Grindelwald defeats everyone else and kills an animal that loves him just because he's evil I guess cool anyway I like the concept of a jailbreak it's a good opening action beat and his ability to manipulate other people is firmly established in this scene overall it's good stuff my only issue is with the the blatant displays of cruelty but I'll get into why later yes there they were his crimes his disgusting crimes did you see them I did and then I told you with them title haha is that Jack here Alex voice next we see Newton the Ministry of Magic and we meet his brother Theseus and Lidl estranged DC's his fiancee and newts old crush also a side note they they keep doing shots here they look like they're in first person because of huge close-ups and characters looking directly at them camera and I don't know why this is happening there's definitely logic to this like David Yates is a good enough director to make these decisions intentionally I just I don't understand the cinematography decisions in the scene I don't know why it's here I don't know what the purpose is even after re-watching the film yeah this is why why Newt has a meeting with Ministry folks who tell them that they're gonna give him a passport if he joins the Ministry and helps them track down credence who appears to still be alive after the events of the first film I don't really have a problem with this because I actually did notice that there's this little wisp of obscuri ol stuff that got away at the end of the previous movie that said I only noticed when I watched it like a couple days before I watched the crimes of Grindelwald so I get why most people are like what why the hell is he alive how the hell is he alive however this offer comes with a caveat that if he finds Creedence the ministry is gonna you know kill him so news says no he's not really into that idea until Dumbledore shows up and talks Newton distracting credence down for him instead which is to say illegally because double doors most consistent characterization in both the movies and the books is him being a manipulative [ __ ] to be fair however Dumbledore doesn't seem to want to kill credence you know that puts him above the Ministry of Magic at the moment also we're in Dewalt has a scene where he kills muggles in order to have their house and there's a baby there and then he has the baby killed because he's evil I guess I guess that's the that's the reason he's just so evil good to know that the bad guys evil new clothes home and tends to magical animals until Queenie and Jacobs show up at his door which is kind of weird because last time you saw him Jacob was obliviated well it turns out Jacob just sort of remembered again which whatever something still off though it turns out queenie has drugged him with a love potion yeah she uh she just full-on drugged him in order to marry him in still which is uh woo boy newt undoes that and jacobs pretty upset that queenie brainwashed him it turns out he has refused to be in a relationship with her because he doesn't want her to be a fugitive but she however wants to go for it anyway at some point jacob apparently ends up thinking in his own brain that she's crazy which a queen he notices being you know illegitimate Sandahl now seeing as she just violated his mind and then insulted him by calling up a coward it'd be pretty reasonable for that thought to be going through his head in my opinion though it would still be bad to say it but queenie is obviously pretty emotional about all this and she leaves to go find Tina in France which is also where credence is as it turns out Newt decides to bring Jacob along with him on a secret mission to find Tina and Creon seeing as he's there anyway and wants to talk to Queenie again so for the record as of this moment we have three stories currently ongoing one we're in Dewalt doing his nasty crimes to newton jacob looking for credence in tina three Queenie and now we had a fourth as we cut to Creedence in some sort of wizard carnival which is also where we meet Nagini which I guess we should talk about that in this film we learned that Nagini is actually a human woman with a blood curse that means she will eventually turn into a snake forever like Tobias in Animorphs now I don't necessarily hate this idea but this film does nothing with the concept and nothing with Nagini as a character and I do mean literally nothing McGee me serves zero purpose in this story she adds nothing to the plot and also adds nothing in terms of compelling character moments like you could remove her from the story and absolutely nothing would change I don't know why she's here also a real quick side note and while I'm editing all those clips you just saw of her standing around besides her introduction those encompass every single sequence she's in and you know what on a whim nothing in the script here I know I'm just gonna do this during editing I'm gonna go through and see how many lines she actually has Graydon's civil Kofi's madam credence her plans take care of the likes of us per sport he knows what you were born not who you are anyway credence some [ __ ] up and escapes the carnival with a Nagini tina who was also there asks what he was doing there and the carnival guy says he was looking for his mother and also she talks to some guy about Koreans has passed and like oh he might be Alice train just secret Lestrange and that's important for some reason and who gives a [ __ ] this brings us up to five concurrent plot lines now with Creedence and Tina each having their own distinct threads Grindelwald smokes from a skull bong and drones on about cranes and then talks to a lackey who he questions the allegiance of meanwhile Newton Jacob illegally go to France by a portkey and then find some clues about where Tina went a fun little scene meanwhile meanwhile Queenie goes to the French Ministry magic and gets rebuffed then gets sad then thoughts get really loud for her so she yells at them and then a grin Dewald agent takes her somewhere while comforting her next credence looks like he finds his mother but then he doesn't because she was his nanny than a guy look working for the ministry but is actually working for Grindelwald kills the nanny before she can give him answers and then credence ghost supersaver newton jacob tracked down the mysterious guy who talked to Tina then find out he's doing bad stuff and imprisoned her and they get captured along with her so you know now we've consolidated Tina nude stories bringing the number of stories down to four but unfortunately we're about to add more so that doesn't even matter but first the bet the the bad man passes out and Newton the others break out of their cage but then they catch a fantastic piece in a scene for some reason then Theseus and Leda show up with a bunch of ministry people to question Dumbledore at Hogwarts and they do and Dumbledore does some low-key queerbaiting even Grindelwald who's closest brothers we were closer than brothers and then there's suddenly a long flashback scene of Newt and Lita doing stuff movie suddenly thinks Lita is a main character in the film even though we're about halfway through the movie and this is the first time we've seen her since the movie started so yeah theseus and Lita become their own story thread here so now we're back up to five great we come back to Queenie now who meets Grindelwald face to face which brings me finally to one of the biggest problems in this film Queenie is one of the standout characters from the first fantastic beasts film endlessly likeable seemingly ditzy but actually extremely self-aware and extremely empathetic and emotional and JK Rowling made an extremely brave choice with her in the sequel have her join the bad guys Queenie ends up falling for Grindelwald rhetoric and ends up becoming radicalised now some people may humanly disagree with me about this but I think this story has a lot of promise making arguably the member of the group with the biggest heart fall for Grindelwald makes a very good point anybody can fall for fascist rhetoric even with the best of intentions Queenie wants to live in a world where she and Jacob can marry without facing discrimination and she's right to want that Grindelwald promises her world where that's possible which is of course something she desperately wants in an emotional state where she feels isolated and alone someone who presents himself as a friend could be extremely convincing if Queenie weren't firmly established as a person who can read minds Queenie should be able to read Grindelwald mind and know he's manipulating her as an audience member it's hard to not think that it isn't a tiny bit pick this is an important aspect of her character this informs damn near every aspect of her personality they draw attention to it in the previous scene with her if she can't read his mind the film needs to provide a reason why and it would be so easy to [Music] hey maybe he knows ah clemency it's extremely likely that a wizard as powerful as Grindelwald would had this skill especially one whose private thoughts are likely very important to keep hidden be maybe his thoughts aren't in English brinda Wald's not British he went to durmstrang and is therefore from Eastern Europe somewhere like probably Austria his thoughts are likely not in English at all and Queenie only speaks the one language presumably so her not understanding his thoughts would make complete sense in that respect too if either of these explanations have been brought up in the film that would be fine but unfortunately they didn't and this part needs to be explained to the audience and unfortunately there's only this one singular scene that exists to show us how Queenie gets radicalized nowhere near enough screen time is given to her and as a result her heel turn at the end doesn't feel earned at all and that really bums me out because that story has so much potential but this bad start unfortunately neuter is it forever people will never buy it now in speaking of Grindelwald let's get to what is arguably the film's biggest problem period Johnny Depp's performance as Grindelwald is terrible going by the Queenie plotline the way the script handles him and the descriptions of his influence in the books Grindelwald is meant to be a charming and utterly convincing figure he's also an evil fascist yeah but one who convinced people through the power of his words alone that is a great concept for a villain unfortunately Johnny Depp at least at this juncture is not capable of bringing that level of nuance to this character and as a result we end up getting a concept for a villain that is utterly wasted in this film that said a lot of the writing isn't doing this character any favors either in the books Dumbledore revealed to Harry that Grindelwald eventually regretted what he did but the movie gives us a man completely lacking in any empathy for other living things I mean first off he killed an animal that he's gotten to love him just because he can I mean already he's been reduced to a pretty boring guy who's evil for the sake of it cuz like this isn't even practical having a fiercely loyal servant be BAE person or animal should be useful to him so this exists simply to show him being cruel which is entirely unnecessary the next scene we see him in involves his servants going in and killing muggles in order to give themselves a hideout now we cut some shots here where it seems like he maybe finds this distasteful he won't even do it himself so maybe you can do something with that but no next we see him needlessly have a baby killed and all that potential nuance is just thrown out the window oh there it goes right out the window any shred of potential nuance is just gone and so when Queenie ends up being swayed by him later as an audience member you can only see him as an evil monster so mind-reading aside she kind of looks like an idiot for being fooled they didn't even try to play him up as being manipulative his scene with her is extremely understated the film does basically nothing to establish his ability to be charming and manipulative aside from showing the aftermath of him doing it if you really wanted to have your cake and eat it too in this scenario you could tease the audience into believing he has a conscience do small things to make it seem like he's questioning what he's doing all leading up to the scene where he speaks to his followers about a world where muggles and wizards could actually live together convince the audience that he believes this and then when all of his supporters can no longer see him have him do something evil that contradicts all of it in this scenario structurally you've told a story where the audience was tricked along with the characters and when you do that you've managed to show the audience firsthand how he manipulates people I mean hey you are watching he manipulated you you see that can help make them understand how he could have tricked the characters were supposed to empathize with as it is now they just look gullible and stupid it's a waste of a potentially good story and villain all right let's get through the rest of the movie now basically hijinks ensues Nicolas Flamel is in the movie for no reason Alain rom-com subplot with Newton Tina's taken care of they run bolita everybody for whatever reason ends up in the exact same graveyard and then we get a big long drawn-out exposition scene technically to exposition scenes what do you think about it first the bad guy here is revealed to be leda's long-lost brother but he's not al is strange and the reasons why would require a Content warning so I'll just skip over the details basically Lita and the guy share a mom and the guy believes that Lita and Koreans share a dad and that credence his real name is Corvis Lestrange the guy wants to kill Corvis at a revenge for what happened to his and litas mom however leader reveals that Corvis is dead because she killed him whoa she then proceeds to tell the story of how her brother wouldn't stop crying so she put her brother in another quieter baby's crib while they were on a boat headed towards america with every intention of getting him back later unfortunately the boat sank and while the other baby and Lita got out safely Corvus ended up drowning which is why in a previous scene when Lita had had a boggart like show up it looked like this creepy drifting cloth and that's because that's the swaddle of her baby brother as he drowns which I'll get I'll get the movie discredit it's haunting imagery by the way that's a two dead babies in this movie for for counting the dead babies the baby Lita switched Corvis with was Creedence which means Corvis died and Creedence still doesn't know who he is which you know that means that there is literally no reason for the audience to hear any of this because it has done nothing to serve the story all I did was informed leaders character despite the fact that she's barely even in this movie in a book this stuff could have been very good and engaging however due to the way it's been presented here when I was watching the film I simply didn't care about it I can see pieces of a very good mystery here JK Rowling is nothing if not a writer who is spectacular at creating compelling mystery but she simply did not have the room to explore it adequately as a result it ends up being a plot that just didn't belong in the film at all and let's we're going into third act now Jacob is suddenly in the scene inexplicably and everybody heads down to find out that they're at a Grindelwald rally Jacob meets up Queenie again and everyone listens to weird all talk including Theseus who has shown up with ministry people to sort of like overseeing the event and see if the Grindelwald people get violent Grindelwald talks for a bit about wanting a nice happy world he vapes out visions of world war ii and says he wants to prevent it and then Grindelwald makes the ministry goons feel unsafe by having his supporters intimidate them one of the ministry guys kills a Grindelwald supporter and Grindelwald uses that to fuel the idea that his people are being suppressed despite being completely nonviolent which is a pretty good depiction of government overreach and fascist uprisings at times going hand-in-hand as fascists prey on very real problems that people contend with and from here the movie goes crazy Britta what makes a big magic fire circle and it'll kill people who don't want to work with him but it'll leave alive people who are on his side basically Queenie does her he'll turn in a scene that should have been more emotionally resonant than it was oh you crazy I mean let that interaction should have been great but instead it's like oh I mean I see we were you were doing there but it didn't quite work grievance also joins Grindelwald both character leaves and that all that's left is Lita the movie acts like we think she'll join him when I pretty sure most people know she won't and then after a poorly executed fake out she dies which is why the movie shoved in backstory for her JK rowling kills off her character prematurely and so she tried to compensate with flashbacks and a big pointless mystery but like he didn't work and from there Grindelwald turns into Jack Sparrow for a split second I hate batters and then tries to kill Paris with a big fire dragon despite preaching it is not we love only a few minutes earlier because we need an action scene I guess even though this action scene is not exciting at all oh yeah like the Dragons quickly taken care of in a really underwhelming sequence Newton Theseus have a trite make up scene and then the movie ends with Newt showing Dumbledore that he got a blood oath thing for him said he can fight Grindelwald now and then credence finds out that he's apparently a Dumbledore and gets a wand and a movie that uh I guess that's that that is a third act JK Rowling wrote this and the first fantastic beast film all in her own reportedly she had literal giant stacks of notes I have zero doubt that she worked very hard on the story I just I really would have preferred it to be a book the thing is this film is filled with numerous elements and ideas that I think are good there's so much here worth preserving and salvaging so much that could work if it had been handled differently the issue from my perspective is that JK Rowling strengths lie in writing novels screenwriting is simply a different beast entirely and at the very least I think she needs a writing partner who's willing to challenge her ideas and help her to create a more cohesive screenplay because what this movie needed was focus focus on a thematic center for the story including only the plot lines that served this theme and worked toward creating an emotional climax that felt earned because as it is now the sheer volume of ideas that coexist in this film end up diluting the whole thing [Music] number one hire a different actor is Grindelwald there's lots of people who could have done this role a lot more justice and you know just sort of going with the theme of somebody from like Eastern Europe like you could go with Mads Mikkelsen he's my personal favorite for the role Nikolaj coster-waldau he's you know he's Jamie on Game of Thrones and he could totally work you get one of the many scars guards whatever the [ __ ] names are like like The Young Ones I'm not skilling you could get any of those guys I guess number two don't make Brenna waltz so cartoonishly evil play up Grindelwald ideals as genuine make him genuinely believe he wants to subjugate muggles for their own good to save them from themselves that gives us a far more interesting character and from Queens perspective that's exactly what she was trying to do with Jacob control him in order to give him what he actually wants she thinks she knows better than him someone else with similar goals and a similar idea of themselves and their ability to make decisions for other people could make a lot of sense to her you could have like some somatic cohesion there and it also explained why Queenie wouldn't see him as a liar during his scenes with her because he wouldn't be lying in this scenario he doesn't kill people just for the sake of it only when he believes it's necessary for his cause number three cut bill estranged plot entirely it simply does not add enough to the core story you can still have cretins trying to find out who he is the whole conspiracy angle just needed to be drastically simplified number four make Lita and Theseus matter there needed to be far more opportunities for Newton Theseus to actually interact throughout the film play up Newt squabbling with his brother show them having fundamental disagreements with how to deal with problems have Leda constantly playing the referee keeping them from figuratively claw each other's eyes out give them a real relationship we see throughout the film and the best way to do that I think would be for thesis and Lita to track Anouk down when he leaves the country illegally and then use that to strong-arm him into helping their search for credence since they have the same goal anyway that puts them all in the same story so they can interact together and you get a sort of like buddy cop feel throughout the entire movie which can be the character building as well as fun number five have Tina help credence instead of Nagini consolidating Tina's story with credence --is having her join credence in his search to find his mother would make a lot of sense and give us a lot more opportunities who see some real character development for both characters they hadn't implied a big sister little brother relationship and fantastic beasts and JK Rowling could have made good on that here this would also um you know as a result or move negate me from the film which is fine because she does nothing for this movie there's nothing saying she couldn't be a character later in a series if you have a place for her but she's dead weight in this particular film number six flush out Queenie's story with multiple storylines cut down and streamlined that gives you a lot more time to spend with Queenie and Grindelwald having scenes together watching him slowly manipulator her over the course of the film instead of in one scene where he monologues at her it also gives you an opportunity to flush how Grindelwald as a character to in this case Queenie story actually feels earned in the end and with all these stories consolidated you basically end up with three main threats one nuke Jacob Theseus and Leda searching for credence to Tina and credence looking for his mother and him trying to figure out who she is and Tina trying to help him and then three Queenie and Grindelwald with Queenie slowly being brought over to his side over the course of the film now I this like as ways to fix it in none of that is to make any claim that I am a better writer than JK Rowling I'm not it's much easier to editorialize and play script doctor in retrospect then create a story from scratch this video has just been my way of lamenting what I feel is unfortunate loss as a Harry Potter fan I don't want to write this movie off as pure crap because I don't think it's that cut and dry it's a story with promise that unfortunately fell short in my mind and I just wanted to show people what I see when I watch this film a movie that could have been great and that was my crimes of grunwald video but before I leave I'm gonna tell you now about my patreon that I have reopened cuz yeah I used to have a patreon I got rid of it because I got a job which I'm actually I'm at right now I'm not complaining I like my job but it does keep me away from doing these videos as much because I'm focusing on that rather than focusing on my YouTube channel so yeah I have a patreon um it it only charges on a per video basis not monthly because I don't think I can do it monthly like if I make something that's under ten minutes I'm not gonna charge anybody for that but in over two it's video that like actually has some substantial meat to it that's the kind of stuff I charge for and of course there were patron rewards you can go to the page if you want to read about that I just wanted to tell you about the patreon which I've done so I guess I'm done [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 239,235

Rating: 4.8451982 out of 5

Keywords: comedy, funny, silly, humor, satire, spoof, laugh, joke, video essay, harry potter, dumbledore, newt scamander, fantastic beasts and where to find them, fantastic beasts, wizarding world, review, editorial, johnny depp, eddie redmayne, jude law, zoe kravitz, jk rowling, fantastic beasts the crimes of grindelwald, grindelwald, gellart grindelwald, writing, filmmaking, cinematography

Id: 8EqlSuz6UsM

Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019