The Crimes of Grindelwald - Ruining a Franchise

[Music] fantastic beasts to the crimes of Grindelwald is the worst movie that I watched last year and yes that's counting Aksum I say this because a movie with this much money put into it has no right being this bad I know this movie already did its rounds in November and everybody already knows it's bad but since I saw it I can't stop thinking about it it's kind of beautiful how horrible it is I was gonna do a quickie on it when it came out but I knew I needed to wait and give this movie its due course so for those of you who haven't seen the last movie or just don't know your Harry Potter lore let me recap it for you oh and by the way Warner Brothers is gonna cut me if I use too much footage so whenever I get into my rants I'm gonna alter the footage like this or use pictures like this alright let's get started what happens in the first fantastic beasts movie so the fantastic beast series is set sixty-five years before the Harry Potter saga in this movie we follow pokemon master noob salamander he goes around and gathers magical animals and writes about them and does other stuff with them I guess so he's on a trip to bring his Arizona Phoenix to Phoenix Arizona but he has an extended layover in New York City while in New York he gets into a bunch of shenanigans after some of his Pokemon get loose he meets new friends like John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt who is a normal non magical human who's caught in the middle of all this goofy [ __ ] Tina an American magical cop and her sister Queenie who's the sexiest woman ever to be put on film EP fit pious turtle Eve refers to doha honey yeah negro she can also read minds and she falls in love with jacob while this cute little story is happening we have the side plot where we have Ezra Miller trying his very hardest to look at least a little bit ugly in this movie Ezra plays an orphan boy with secret dangerous magical powers he's actually a fantastic beast himself in a way and he has a chance of [ __ ] exploding and killing everybody if he gets too upset and he gets upset a lot because the lady who runs the orphanage that he lives in is a huge [ __ ] oh and Colin Farrell is here too and he plays an American wizard trying to tempt Ezra Miller to the dark side anyway after some magical adventures Newt tries to save Ezra from falling to the dark side and exploding but he fails as her blows up and he dies and it's revealed that Colin Farrell is actually Johnny Depp aka Grindelwald aka a super evil wizard nazi that likes to kill non-magical people for fun he gets arrested and he goes to magical Jail Newt goes back to London he says goodbye to all his friends jake gets his memory wiped and the story ends all things considered the movie is not very complicated the thing is the movie isn't even really that bad either I'm among the three people in the world who actually kind of like it the movie feels like a big departure from the other Harry Potter movies the script is actually pretty good in some places and the characters are all likable and relatable I absolutely loved the character of Jake Kowalski and he shines is the best character in the movie I really don't like the Johnny Depp twist but I do like how newt is kind of a small part in a larger story he isn't a powerful or skilled wizard and they make a point to show us that when he goes into the final battle he gets his ass kicked and then he fails to save the person that he tried to save I like that it makes him more interesting than being the chosen one who's destined to save the day it's not an amazing flick by any means but I really like slow-paced movies with good scripts the interactions with these characters are subtle and they drive the film you learn everything about these characters without long bouts of needless exposition I know a lot of hardcore Harry Potter fans that don't really like this movie but I'm a pretty big fan and I like it just fine I think it's pretty cozy now the problem is it doesn't feel like there should be a sequel to this movie like not a direct sequel all of these characters stories end in this movie and that's where our first problem arises the second movie now has to invent new reasons why these characters have to get back into the story now normally I just go straight into the next movie but first we have to start with how this movie came to be so despised so before we get into that let's talk about the fall of JK Rowling JK just kidding rallying is the author of the Harry Potter books she also wrote both of these movies as you probably know she is a gazillionaire and she has control over all executive decisions in the wizard universe as a whole her power goes farther than you'd probably think - for instance she figured hey Hermione could be black so instead of just making her black in the story Hermione is now black in the stage adaptation of the cursed child even though in the books she's white she literally only did this to appease the black Harry Potter fans and has a black Harry Potter fan myself yeah it didn't work this is something that JK likes to do a lot she'll make a tweet and she'll retro actively change the story sometimes it's to make her world more diverse and inclusive than it actually was and sometimes it's just weird the first sign of trouble was back a few years ago when she revealed that Dumbledore was gay the whole time now why didn't she just say so in the books well because he wasn't gay in the books she changed her mind later she later revealed that there was also a secret Jew Hogwarts student in the books the whole time that we never hear about and his name was Anthony Goldstein which is probably the most stereotypical Jewish name I've ever heard in my life why wasn't Anthony Goldstein in the books or movies because he isn't real she made him up later when people asked her why there weren't any Jewish kids the problem isn't that she has a political agenda as some might say the problem is that she wrote an all white all straight story in the 90s and she's embarrassed about it now and wants to pretend that it was secretly diverse the whole time I'm not mad that you made a story about straight white kids I'm just mad that you keep lying to me but even though she's clearly lying the fan base for the most part didn't really make a big uproar about this habit until very recently and nowadays things have gotten even more insane with her going so far as to say [ __ ] like this Hogwarts didn't always have bathrooms before adopting muddled plumbing methods in the 18th century witches and wizards simply relieve themselves wherever they stood and vanished the evidence [Music] Jesus and beyond that we have the official sequel to the Harry Potter series Harry Potter and the cursed child a story where Harry's son goes on a time-travel adventure to stop Cedric Diggory from being killed by Voldemort I wish I was making that up so no the crimes of Grindelwald isn't her first to failure but despite all that came before it I think it does stand as her biggest failure so without further ado let's jump right in let's talk about what happens in the crimes of Grindelwald so crimes Grindelwald takes place a few months after the first movie the main idea behind this series as a whole is that for some reason JK Rowling thinks we really need to know about Grindelwald and all of his evil deeds a character that's only briefly mentioned a few times in the original series the thesis of this series is based on an unseen event in the books where Dumbledore and his secret gay evil lover Grindelwald had a duel long ago a duel that was recorded as the craziest most badass wizard duel of all time so now naturally we need a reason to make this story happen on screen but instead of just making a movie about dumby Doran Grendel nuts we have a movie about Newt Scamander who has almost nothing to do with this conflict you know when I was a kid I kind of always just assumed that Newt Scamander was just a guy who wrote the monster book and no point did I think that he was instrumental in the first wizard world war so this movie opens up with Grindelwald who is still in wizard Jail but he has to be moved to another wizard jail now first I'll mention how this is one of the most overused tropes in any film an evil character is captured and being safely stored in jail but for some reason we have to drive them to another jail and give them an opportunity to break out but this isn't even the worst part of the opening scene if we're being honest the worst part to me is that this is a world where people can teleport like it's [ __ ] nothing but instead of just operating him to the other jail or using a port key or using flu powder or teleportation toilets they have to drive him on a flying carriage you guys have so many faster and more convenient ways to get around but I guess this is what we're doing so whatever anyway so this Grindelwald that we're seeing right now is actually not Grindelwald at all it's actually one of his followers the real grinde switched places with him before the movie began so this breakout scene is just Grindelwald coming back to break out the guy who broke him out earlier and this is just really unnecessarily complicated this is the first scene in the movie is already being stupid now you could say that this scene exists to show us that Grindelwald values the loyalty of his followers after all he's not even in jail anymore but he went back to save this guy and that's what I thought at first but then Grindelwald looks at this lizard that helped him escape and just to show us that he is indeed evil he just throws it out the window anyway right after the super dark and bleak intro we see mr. salamander again playing with his Q Pokemon this moment stands out as being a little too cute where after we watched men drown and fall to their deaths this is actually a problem with the whole movie I'd say 90% of the movie is a violent or depressing but then we have very brief scenes of Newton his cute mascots doing cute things it just does not fit the tone of this movie is all over the place so anyway now Newt is in the Ministry of Magic and why is the camera so close to these characters can we can we back up please goddamn now I know why he doesn't like other people they don't give him any space so Newt is here because he's in trouble for causing havoc in the last movie so the big important Wizards tell him he's not allowed to travel internationally anymore but they say they'll get rid of his travel ban if he joins the government as a wizard cop but why why do they want new to be an Auror he's not a very good spell caster and he's a weirdo who doesn't even get along with people they specifically want him to help take down Grindelwald but but why why do you think he'll be any good at this and why is that the only condition for lifting his travel ban what's wrong with letting a magical zookeeper go to Guam the movie is literally just inventing a fake reason to pull this character into the story the whole arc for newt in this movie is that everyone tells him he has to pick a side in this conflict but why he just wants to do his own thing he's a [ __ ] zookeeper why would either side even want him this badly it's only been 12 minutes so far and everything has been stupid and to top off the stupidity it's revealed that Ezra Miller survived exploding in the last movie everything has been kind of dumb so far but this is the first incredibly stupid thing that we hear because he [ __ ] exploded the whole idea of the last movie is that Ezra Miller can't survive he was destined to die they say the obscurus disease disorder thing is not something you can just walk off but now he's just fine and he doesn't even have that problem anymore and they never even asked for an explanation we never learned how he survived exploding and we don't learn why he's not at risk for exploding anymore we just have to accept it as the truth who's writing this stuff away and I remember in the next scene we watched Grinde goo as he breaks into a muggle house and kills everybody inside and then he kills a baby 15 minutes into my Harry Potter movie and we've killed our first baby and yes I did say first baby I'd also like to point out that Johnny Depp looks absolutely goddamn hilarious in this movie when I was a kid I just assumed Grindelwald was like a normal-looking guy but in these movies he looks so odd for no reason because we see Grindelwald in the original Harry Potter movies and he looks like a regular human being we also see what he looked like when he was younger and he looks like a regular human being you don't just naturally grow off looking like this anyway so now Newton meets with Dumbledore who's played by Jude Law and all things considered Jude Law is playing the character really well he has almost the exact same line delivery as Michael Gambon in the other movies the purebloods think he's the last of an important French iron a baby everyone thought lost the tale is thrilling if I say so myself but now is not the time to publish however I don't know why he goes from dressing like a normal member of society to dressing like well like a [ __ ] wizard I don't know I guess he got old and he just wanted to wear pajamas to work to be honest I can relate to that so Dumbledore tells a newt that he needs him to go after Grindelwald in his stead and I ask again why Newt he is just a zookeeper the movie is so concerned with making Newt seem more important than he is but at the end of the day he's just a guy at this rate they could get any other wizard to do this stuff instead of him I'm sure there's plenty of skilled wizards who would be glad to help out Newt just doesn't want to deal with any of this [ __ ] and I don't think it fits his character to take part in this conflict at all now since Newt is being forced into this story for no reason we now have to force in Jacob and Queeny - they go visit Newt and they revealed that Jacobs memories just came back he says that the potion only erased his bad memories and since he didn't have any bad memories he's fine and this is the dumbest [ __ ] explanation I've ever heard this is an enormous retcon and it doesn't even make any sense why is this memory-wiping potion so flimsy at that rate everybody's memory should just come back so we retcon to Ezra Miller exploding and we retcon Jacob losing his memory and you can't just put emotional scenes into a movie and then undo them when you don't know how to address them in the sequel this is already some of the worst writing ever and I would like to point out again that the movie just started anyway Queenie and Jake are getting married now except no they aren't Queenie put a spell on Jacob to kidnap him and marry him against his will so now instead of being a feisty but kind-hearted woman Queenie is a [ __ ] psychopath she says that he gave her no choice but to brainwash him now I rewatched these movies one after the other so I have to say that this is not in character for Queenie like I said none of these characters are written the same at all except for Jacob because he's not really a complicated person and yeah he has no reason to be in this movie but he's also the only likable person here and he also has the one good line in the whole movie my own problems it's also revealed that Tina apparently is mad at Newton now because she read fake news that claimed he was getting married to the other girl that he knows what the [ __ ] this plot point is so unimportant it contributes nothing to the story at all this movie just started I should now mention that in the next scene we learned that Nagini Voldemort's pet snake is actually a sexy human woman and when I tell you that that's one of the least strange aspects of the movie I want you to know that I'm being serious however what doesn't make sense to me is that she's a circus attraction her circus performance starts and ends with her just turning into a snake I mean I thought people can already do that though people can just turn in animals all the [ __ ] time now I do have to mention though that JK Rowling claimed in one of her infamous tweets that she came up with this Nagini backstory 20 years ago no you didn't why are you like this you know everybody's making fun of you right so in this scene we find out that after Ezra Miller exploded in New York he joined the circus and he is now in Paris anyway Tina's looking for him because she thinks he's still dangerous when she meets this guy named kama who reveals that he also wants to find Ezra Miller because he thinks they're related to each other I mean okay let's just summarize real quick what's happening so far this is the end of the first act so far Newt and Jacob are going to Paris to meet Tina because Newton wants to tell her that the news article she read was fake and that he's not getting married because he doesn't want her to be mad at him Jacob wants to find Queenie who ran away and tried to find Tina after she got mad at Jacob for calling her crazy because she tried to kidnap him and marry him against his will Tina is still looking for Ezra Miller so she can arrest him because she thinks that he's gonna explode uncontrollably but she doesn't know that he's not gonna explode uncontrollably anymore this comic guy secretly wants to kill as her Miller for unknown reasons as her Miller is traveling the world to find out who his parents really are Dumbledore is in Hogwarts waiting patiently for Newt to actually I don't know what Dumbledore is doing in this movie Grindelwald was in the house he stole in Paris waiting for Ezra Miller to go to him because he still wants to tempt him to the dark side but he says he doesn't want to approach Ezra Miller himself except he approaches him anyway because JK Rowling probably forgot that she had him say that the point is that this movie has way too much stuff going on and things are only going to get worse so anyway to get to Paris noot uses a portkey because him having a travel ban is the most unimportant element of the plot there are multiple instances in this story where I could just remove entire plot elements and the movie would be exactly the same oh and also he uses the Accio charm to bring one of his Pokemon back to him which is not possible because the Accio charm doesn't work on living creatures you know how I know that because she taught me that anyway Queenie's in Paris and she can't find Tina and her and Jacob aren't talking anymore so she gets lost but she somehow finds herself in the presence of Grindelwald man this guy is so lucky that all the major characters have a way of finding themselves to him next we see Newton and Jacob meet with comma because they believe that he knows where Tina is and he sure does because he kidnapped her and threw her in a [ __ ] dungeon off screen he tries to do the same thing with Newton Jake but then he passes out well that's convenient after that we watched Newton catch a new Pokemon because the movie really wants to remind you that it's called fantastic beast - while this is happening the ministry members from the beginning of the movie show up to Hogwarts to ask Dumbledore if he can fight Grindelwald for them and he says no thank you and then they tell him not to be in the movie anymore oh and also Professor McGonagall is here even then the movie takes place in the 20s and she was born in the 30s and if that's not enough she's also in a flashback that takes place in the 1910s oh [ __ ] me I guess in this flashback we see zoe kravitz his character Lidl is strange and we see her and Newt as kids and we learn why they like each other now since I like giving credit where it's due I will say that the kid who plays Newt in the flashback is pretty perfect like he looks the part he acts the part he's just really good oh and also this flashback is insanely long it seems like this where you really start to think about how messy this movie really is anyway before Dumbledore leaves the movie we see him also have a flashback where he remembers the time him and his boyfriend created a magical butt plug that makes it so they can't fight each other because you know the last thing this script really needed was a ridiculous MacGuffin for the characters to try and get from the bad guy in the following scenes we have Newt helping Tina find Ezra Miller while they dance around whether they like each other or not they break into this library vault thing for information and they meet up with Lita and then they get attacked by magical cats that are supposed to protect the government vault and I'd like to point out that Lita and Tina are both government agents is there any other way to resolve this situation I guess not I guess we just need a dumb action scene to break up the monotony luckily Newt summons one of his Pokemon and he uses its special ability to literally teleport straight to where the plot is happening now if you guys have been paying attention you may notice that most of the time these characters just up here where the story is going to be anyway common is here - for some reason and so is Jacob because he got bored with not being important in the movie so he wandered around a foreign country until he found out where the plot was happening okay I'm kidding about that one he actually got vague directions from a zombie oh and Ezra Miller and the snake chick are here too because like I said this is where the story is supposed to happen most of the characters just ended up here randomly and I should probably mention that we're about to watch one of the most insane scenes in the whole movie this one scene inside this crypt fits so many plot twists and retcons into a 10-minute time frame that it feels like a bad soap opera this scene alone is why I decided to make this video because it truly shows how you don't write a movie so all the characters meet here and comma immediately says this okay so yeah they're related apparently long ago commas family was living happily in France before a man named Lestrange got a little bit of jungle fever and he decided to hypnotize kamas mother into marrying him yeah we officially have magical sex crimes in Harry Potter you having fun yet after she's kidnapped she gives birth to his child and then she dies then he decides that he's done with black women so he gets married again and gives birth to a nice white baby that he likes way more and that white baby is Ezra Miller Ezra Miller is named Corvis Lestrange long-lost brother of Lidl estranged and kama wants to kill him for revenge for his dead mother wow that was pretty convoluted but you know I'm glad that we cleared it up what wait why are we entering a different flashback explaining the plot what is but it's happening okay so leta and white baby Corvis were sent on a boat to America for some reason on the boat ride Lita gets [ __ ] sick of the kid and she switches him for another white baby on the boat then the boat sinks and the first baby the real Corvis drowns in the ocean so Ezra Miller is just some other baby this is where all these subplots converge and then they all end at once Ezra Miller still doesn't know who he is , doesn't even care about kill and newt is literally just hanging out still here for no other reason than the fact that the story is forcing him to be here the movie builds this mystery for about 80 percent of the runtime and the resolution is that nobody knows anything anyway oh and since the movie has spent all this time conveniently getting our characters to places where the story requires them to be the Crypt opens up and everyone finds out that Grindelwald just happens to be hosting a wizard nazi rally inside yeah okay I guess he can tell the future by using his magical vape so I guess he knew this would work out in his favor but honestly that just adds more questions to the table and believe me when I say that this movie is not done being absolutely insane so Grindelwald reveals to everyone that he kills muggles because he saw the future and I [ __ ] you not he wants to stop the muggles from starting world war ii he implies that if everyone joins his side he can stop the Holocaust before it happens give me a second guys I just need one second real quick to say there is so much wrong with this that I can't even begin to explain not to mention that now we're rooting for characters that are trying to stop a man who's trying to stop the Holocaust from happening either way we don't even have any reason to agree with him other than this in the movie he tells these idiots oh I don't I don't kill people I'm not a violent person but the first thing we see the first [ __ ] thing we see in the fantastic beasts series is Grindelwald killing a bunch of people and the newspapers telling everybody about it everyone knows he's evil but they believe him anyway and then they have the audacity to make Queenie agree with him kind-hearted sweet Queenie watches him kill people right in front of her and she decides that he seems like a pretty decent guy I'd like to remind you guys that she can read minds for someone who reads minds she is very easily swayed by lies and dishonesty so anyway Grindelwald starts killing people and Leda decides to let Grindelwald kill her too I thought at first that maybe she was sacrificing herself to save Newt but no she just dies for no reason the strangest thing is that these characters can all leave this battle if they want to but they just decide not to oh and since the movie needs to end with something flashy and destructive we have all of our remaining characters fighting a world of warcraft raid boss this seriously comes out of [ __ ] nowhere in the wold summons elemental dragons to destroy Paras even though the whole reason he was here was to convince people that he isn't a violent maniac if our heroes hadn't stopped his spell from destroying the city he probably wouldn't even have anybody left to support him god this movie is so [ __ ] stupid so our main characters all decide to go visit Dumbledore and tell him what happened and this shot is particularly funny to me because we see that everyone is here Nagini comma even [ __ ] Jakob they're literally just here to watch Newt have a talk with Dumbledore I should also point out now that you are not allowed to operate in and out of Hogwarts you know how I know that because she told me anyway Newt reveals to dumpy door that at some point the death in chaos one of his Pokemon managed to snatch the magical butt plug from Grindelwald so now Dumbledore is able to kill Grindelwald and then they just leave and they go have tea they just leave the other characters on the bridge where the [ __ ] is Jakob supposed to go knew you were his ride [ __ ] before the movie ends we have the biggest middle finger of them all Grindelwald talks to Ezra Miller and he reveals to him that apparently Ezra Miller's true name is a ray leus Dumbledore he is Albus Dumbledore's long-lost brother and based on everything we know about the Harry Potter Canon this is one of the most ludicrous twists of all time anyway the movies over now so yeah this movie is absolutely bananas it's very hard to come up with things that I actually uh nya Annika lien joy in this movie I think the best praise I have is that the actors aren't really doing a bad job everybody's giving it their all and plus I do like the soundtrack but none of that matters because the movie has one of the worst screenplays of all time this movie wasn't tampered by the studio it wasn't cut together with another director's vision this is the entire vision of JK Rowling and David Yates untouched by anyone else none of the characters act like they did in the last movie and the plot just comes to the characters despite the fact that it feels like these events shouldn't even be related to one another I love seeing how one movie can be this much of a convoluted mess there are more retcons and plot holes in this movie than I've seen in a very long time and in my final score I think the only points the movie earned are because I couldn't stop laughing while watching it so I'm gonna give JK Rowling's Wizarding World of Harry Potter's fantastic beasts and where to find them too : the crimes of Grindelwald a three out of ten and I for one cannot wait for the sequel [Music]

Channel: The Cosmonaut Variety Hour

Views: 5,678,381

Rating: 4.8136358 out of 5

Keywords: jk rowling, Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts, review, satire

Id: 9AYVX6_6R2U

Length: 27min 53sec (1673 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Dayofsloths]

This is spot on, I spent the whole movie wondering what was going on and why characters were doing the things they did. It's nice to get confirmation that it was just crazy and pointless.

[u/dark-fiction]

Spot on and hilarious, well done. Only point I think you got wrong here was that JK Rowling did likely plan out the whole Nagini thing unlike her other manic episodes. If you look up the etymology of the word it relates to a half-snake half-woman Hindu demi-god.

[u/Sparky81]

I actually enjoyed this movie and the first one. My wife and I and looking forward to the next one.

[u/azz808]

I've read all the Original HP books and thoroughly enjoyed the films.

There were times when I had more knowledge about scenes, due to reading the books though. I'm sure the films could have been better, but there's limits on what film can or can't do that books have no problem getting away with.

I really liked the first Fantastic Beasts movie. I started half enjoying the 2nd one, only when I decided that the book must be hard to adapt or something, which is why nothing seemed to make sense in the film.

So I just kind of went along with it. Happily unaware of why things were happening.

Glad to see it wasn't my lack of knowledge, but lack of story telling.

This film was a fucking mess.