The Crimes Of Grindelwald: Why It's The Worst

the consensus is in fantastic beasts to is regarded by most as the worst film associated with the Harry Potter IP the question is why now there are many flaws you could pick apart whether it be the fact this movie simply has too many characters so many in fact that most come across as dead weight serving next to no purpose in the narrative I mean you could cut the cast in half and it would barely affect the overall plot you could put the terribly executed plot twist at the end as to creedence his true origins the big twist of this movie has no foreshadowing I mean simply put if you have a mystery story and the big reveal at the end is impossible to predict that doesn't make for a good mystery although it does make for a very unsatisfied audience now I could go on and on nitpicking all the little details and ways in which JK Rowling to put it bluntly screwed up when writing this movie but for me there was one reason one core aspect of this film that trumped all of the others and this reason in my opinion is the reason why this film deserves to be considered a bad one fantastic beasts - is one of the worst structured and movies I have ever seen now how can I prove that statement well first off if I had to boil it all down into one sentence fantastic piece - is a film with no second act meaning the middle half of this movie is entirely missing but in order to truly realize why this film has such a poorly executed structure let's first explore the three acts now there are many ways to structure a film but one of the most popular methods in the screenwriting world is called the three acts you have the first the beginning the purpose of the first act is setting the stage this is the chapter of the story where we see Bruce Wayne begin his path to become Batman this is where we first meet Mad Max and furiosa where the setting of the war boys and the apocalypse is introduced the first act is like laying the pieces on the chessboard before the game begins that way when it all does kick off around 20 minutes to half an hour into the movie we understand the setting and the cemre characters as well as their motivations as well as all of the other pieces at play the second act is the core of the story this is where the tensions grow as do the characters undergoing their arcs from their quest to achieve their goals personally I think that act 2 is the most important and also the hardest part of the story to get right and finally you have act 3 this is the culmination where all of the tensions and a built up over the course of the movie are released we get a brief epilogue where things write down then the credits roll generally speaking the first act takes at the first quarter of the movie the second act takes up the middle half of the movie and the third act takes at the last quarter now this isn't the only way to structure a story but it is a tried and tested method when I watch this film for the first time and the climax with Grindelwald came up and people started dying I convinced myself that this wasn't the climax even though we were almost at the film's end I thought we had about an hour of runtime left that this was the protagonist first encounter with the villain marking the midpoint for the story where a few of the key characters die and then they would regroup the tensions and stakes would build and build and then we would get the real climax so when all the characters started professing their love for each other and dying and the music swelled it slowly dawned on me that no joke this poorly built up fight scene that I had no investment in really was the climax of this story and I think the fact I was in disbelief that this really was the story's climax is symptomatic of this movie's crippling structure problems I believe the reason why I thought this was because of the lack of a basic storytelling building block in this film now it doesn't matter if you're using the 3x or the 4 or the 5 or any other that's out there your story needs to have something that's called rising action to break it down to a digestible definition racing action is where the stakes of the story slowly grow as the plot goes along if your stories about the Joker trying to destroy the city then your rising action is what builds as the Joker gets closer and closer to achieving his goals if your film is about Thanos trying to destroy half of all life then your rising action is what you get when the gets closer and closer to finally snapping his fingers that's what rising action is it's a pretty simple premise and it's so simple it feels almost like I'm a patronizing you by trying to explain it but rising action is a necessity in good storytelling all of the best stories have it the reason why is conflict is the core of any story and rising action marks the rise of said conflict and building a story without conflict is like trying to build a car without putting an engine in it now this is leading towards one of the critical structural failings of fantastic beasts - now when I first realized what I'm about to tell you I was in total disbelief I questioned myself and I truly thought that I was wrong but the more I thought about it the more I realized there actually this is true fantastic beasts - is a film with no rising action it just so happens to be a film with a level of conflict stagnate so right from the beginning of the story all the way up until just before the climax that's the reason why the climax didn't feel like a climax to me because a climax is earned when the rising action builds to a certain point in a well structured story if that story uses the three acts the conflict as the film goes along should look something like this now I am no artist says every teacher who ever wrote on a whiteboard ever but this is the general idea of what raising action should look like and by the way this isn't some kind of concrete rule there are exceptions to this that genuinely work I believe the five act structure doesn't quite look like this but as you can see the tension what is at stake builds and grows as the story goes long until it grows to such a degree the tension is too much to bear and it leads to the ultimate climax but if you were to plot the crimes of Grindelwald in this matter you'd get this if we were to take how we define the three acts earlier and apply them to fantastic beasts they would fit like this now I know you're thinking this can't possibly be true there's no way that JK Rowling forgot to have a second act in her movie but let me explain how she did because the purpose of act 1 is to deliver exposition is to lay the groundwork for Act two but um okay but take this thing for example the one where the orders go to Hogwarts and have a chat with Dumbledore they talk about Dumbledore helping Newt Scamander break the law then we get a flesh rack and it's revealed that Dumbledore made a magical patch with Grindelwald meaning they can't hurt each other now what are the purposes of these to Hogwarts scenes with the exception of the obvious nostalgic ashen well it's purely exposition airy that exposition being it tells us the Auris think Dumbledore is helping you and a second is telling us why Dumbledore can't fight Grindelwald now inherently there's nothing wrong with this type of same sometimes in the storytelling you have to have this kind of scene where exposition is delivered these scenes are some were a necessary evil because if you don't have them it can lead to a confused audience now all that's well and good but here's the problem and it's a pretty major problem these scenes mark the midpoint of the movie right slap bang in the middle of its runtime the midpoint in any story it doesn't matter what structure you're using the midpoint is not the time for exposition by now in your story the plot should be in full swing and all that necessary information should have been delivered ages ago when the movie started okay so here's a few examples to better demonstrate what I'm trying to say so the Miss point in the Avengers is when Loki attacks the Helicarrier and everything goes horribly wrong in Agent Coulson dies the midpoint in aliens is when all the Marines go into the alien hive and get massacred completely changing the status quo of the film the midpoint in gladiator is when Maximus finally faced down the emperor who murdered his family we get the iconic line I will have my revenge in this life or the next and the whole dynamic of the movie changes and the midpoint in fantastic beasts - is an exposition dump of Dumbledore and some auras having a little chat in his office where nothing really interesting happens the midpoint is one of the most important beats of your story I think that's the invisible reason why so many dislike this film because the crimes of Grindelwald feels like it's in a pipette we'll Act one the status-quo never really changes there is no moment of tremendous conflict apart from the very final climax and I think what's really damning is there's a scene moments before the climax and this is yet another scene that serves purely exposition purposes where a bunch of characters have flashbacks telling you their life story I mean literal moments before the clanks begins is the last place you want to have your exposition dumps having conflict grow as the runtime ticks away is one of the most basic rules of storytelling and it's something that Rowling's seems to have entirely forgotten when she wrote this screenplay if I were to boil down the main plot of this movie forgetting these subplots with credence with a tremendous oversimplification it would be this we spend the first hour and 40 minutes following mute and the other characters as they bumble around Paris for with a no particular direction when they seemingly by pure chance stumble into grin der waals rally where they end up having a fight that fight being the climax there's a small epilogue where the movie wraps up and then the credits roll really everyone critiquing this film has been talking about character motivations and the world-building pauline and plot twists and not capturing the sense of wonder the prior films did and all of those are valid critiques but they all pale in comparison to this movie's overwhelming crippling conflict and story structure issues the real crime of this movie isn't Grindelwald its Rowling's for doing such a poor job at structuring the whole thing so let's take a closer look pun intended at those Hogwarts scenes again because I think by looking at these scenes we can really realize the flaws in Rowling's writing when she wrote this screenplay so we've already established these scenes serve two purposes a nostalgic ashen and also to deliver exposition now nostalgia is cheap it's a hollow purpose so if you ask me that hardly classifies as a purpose so let's just ignore it so these Hogwarts scenes pretty much exclusively serve the purpose of exposition now counting it all there are a total of four scenes that take place in Hogwarts added together that's a total of 11 minutes and 40 seconds in runtime the first of these scenes is the auras talking to Dumbledore the purpose of this scene is to tell us that the hora suspect Dumbledore of helping Newt leave the country the second scene is a flashback of lestranges childhood this tells us that Newt and Lestrange were childhood friends the third is Dumbledore having a heart-to-heart with a strange and the fourth is Dumbledore in front of the magic mirror where you find out about Dumbledore's and grin der waals magic pacts now on this channel there are a few lessons that I really love to hammer home about and what are these chief among them is this if your scene serves no purpose in the overall narrative you should remove it now when you're writing novels you can almost get away with having meandering scenes like this because novels are a longer form of storytelling which means you can get away with that slow burn but in screenwriting you have far less leeway in this respect so when thinking about this especially if you're doing a screenplay you need to be cutthroat an efficient screenplay is a good screenplay now going back to these four Hogwarts scenes I want to explain why they are really symptomatic of Rowling's botched job when writing this script so let's start with the third scene this is one where Dumbledore speaks to Lestrange this scene fundamentally serves no purpose it does nothing to advance the plot it doesn't deliver any exposition this scene is irrelevant so thusly it could and therefore should be removed from the movie so then we have the first scene when we find out that the Auris are suspecting Dumbledore is helping newts only we have a pretty major problem here because we already know this information there was a whole scene earlier when Newt and Dumbledore torture each other and tried to escape a Nora who was trying to follow them we already know the ORA suspect Dumbledore is helping newts so in this scene growling straight-up repeats exposition we already know so this scene is redundant it can be cut therefore it should be cut then we have the second scene the flashback to lestranges childhood this scene does two things it tells us that the strange had a very lonely childhood and also tells us that she was good childhood friends with nudes own these two bits of information never really play a role in the story there is a scene where Lestrange catches new trespassing in the ministry and they act like old friends but that's the only payoff for this exposition and it's a very small payoff at that meaning the purpose of this scene is barely relevant to the main story so it should be cuts this leaves us with the final scene and ironically the shortest scene in Hogwarts of Dumbledore looking into the mirror and having the flashback of the two making the blood pact this right here this is the only Hogwarts scene that is indispensable to the story it would feel quite odd to have a single scene Hogwarts which is nothing but Dumbledore staring longingly into a mirror so how about when he first meets new and gives him the mission Dumbledore simply says then this line of dialogue that me and Grindelwald made a Blood Pact when we were together it's a powerful spell and that makes it impossible for one of us to attack the other and if one of us were you it exacts a terrible price or something to that effect now this all comes back to what I said earlier an efficient screenplay is a good screenplay and what I'm saying is every one of those Hogwarts scenes could have been flat-out deleted entirely removed from the story and in their stead all Dumbledore needed to do was deliver that one single line of exposition that's 11 minutes and 40 seconds of runtime that could have been replaced with one single line of dialogue I mean if you wanted to find a better piece of evidence that this movie is an example of criminally inefficient storytelling I don't think you could if someone ever tells you that you should always show over tell then it's always preferable to have a long scene to organically deliver exposition rather than a few lines to serve the same purpose if anyone ever tells you show don't tell is an absolute rule in storytelling then they have no clue what they're talking about now obviously showing is better than telling it makes for a more engaging story I mean if it wasn't true it wouldn't be the most common piece of writing advice but there's a quality that telling has wish in some circumstances makes it the lesser evil that being telling is so damn efficient because sometimes you are faced with too options do you either a want to have a 10 minute long scene to convey a single piece of information or do you Bea want to have a single line of dialogue that fulfills the exact same purpose only it takes 10 seconds rather than 10 minutes to say it by doing so you're breaking the show don't tell rule you're doing what your creative writing professor told you to never do but in doing so you're making your story significantly more efficient which means sometimes telling is the lesser of two evils and those 4 scenes at Hogwarts are evidence it's a lesson that rousing has failed to learn or at least one she's failed to apply to fantastic beasts - now today I want to end this video on a note that hits quite close to home that note being internet security so naughty PN has very kindly sponsor today's video and frankly I couldn't be happier I only accept brand deals from companies that not only do I respect but also provide a service that I used myself and nordley PN is no exception to that but why do I use nought and why should you - simply put if you want to stay secure in the digital age then having a VPN is really a requirement I mean when you see a free Wi-Fi to connect you you never know if it's truly legitimate or there's some criminal who set it up because he wants to find your banking details for example I mean I don't know about you but when I'm messaging my friends and family I'd rather keep those messages private but with Nord VPN they use military-grade encryption so every last bit of your data is scrambled meaning if anyone was appear into what you're doing they would just see a bunch of gibberish meaning your data is safe so only you know what you've been accessing and that right there is only one of the reasons why I use nor VPN I mean one of the others is it disguises my IP so it means getting attacked by methods such as ddossing becomes exceptionally harder and gives you that added layer of security and I've personally had experience with that and let me tell you it wasn't very fun and also here's another one I use if you're trying to watch content nuts reach and locked in your country then all you have to do is open up nor VPN say you ought to be connected to the USA for example or whatever region what you're trying to see is available in wait about 20 seconds and then you can get around it so any of region block well it ceases to be a problem when you're using lor VPN and that's something I've done at least a few hundred times and really the list of reasons why you should have a VPN is endless I could make a 20 minute video about it if I wanted to and the real icing on the cake is right now nordley pn has a deal on where you can get 75% off a three-year plan meaning you can get no VPN for only two dollars 99 a month and viewers of this channel will get that really good deal and a free month on top for no extra charge if you're interested in securing yourself online then please click my link in the description that's nore pn comm /the closer look or when you're at the checkout use my code the closer look there I employee what I'm saying next isn't something that Nord asked me to say this is genuinely my opinion nor VPN is an absolutely fantastic service I personally find it invaluable and at $2 99 a month it's a no-brainer at a price that low this is an absolute steal so again please keep my link in the description or use my code the closer look at the check out for 75% off a three-year plan and a free month extra on top anyway thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,011,620

Rating: 4.8061309 out of 5

Keywords: fantastic beasts, fantastic, beasts, crimes of grindelwald, crimes of, grindelwald, fantastic beasts 2, jk rowling, rowling, dumbledore, harry potter, the crimes of grindelwald, two, sequel, trailer, review, video, essay, video essay, the closer look, the closer, closer look, closer, how to, dialogue, writing, creative writing

Id: 3hyU6OtlC4E

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/SausageMcWonderpants]

For someone who just watches these movies without any back story or in depth knowledge, it was like watching total filler. Nothing really happened and it was like they were terrified to advance the story.

I was confused and pissed off by the end as it was just a complete waste of time.

[u/Fish141]

If youve read all the books so many things click in this moive like mayb it wasnt great to a bland audience but i feel like the whole moive is putting the puzzle pieces in place for the next