It's visually stunning - but the plot is drawn-out and confused, and the film drags in the middle.
Star rating: ★★★
*******WARNING - LOTS OF SPOILERS*******
After four years and multiple setbacks, the third Fantastic Beasts film has finally arrived. I didn't have high hopes, having not enjoyed the last one that much, and my expectations were pretty much met. I liked this one more than the previous one, where I pretty much lost the thread by the last 30 minutes. Well, I still struggled with the plot this time round as well...
The main characters of this film were Newt (Eddie Redmayne), Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen, replacing Johnny Depp, who took the role in the previous two films). All gave good performances, though I found the revelation of Dumbledore and Grindelwald's relationship to be somewhat startling as it's never mentioned in the Harry Potter series. However, it does mean that the story has a bit more of an emotional thread than it might have otherwise had. Newt remains as sweetly nerdy as when we met him in film 1, and his relationships to his "Fantastic Beasts" are beautifully played by Redmayne, who in real life is presumably acting opposite the old CGI stand-in of a tennis ball on a stick.
It's a bit of sore point with me that Tina (Katherine Waterston) has got less important as the series goes on, and she was all but written out of this film, featuring for a total of about 3 minutes. Newt's comment, "[Tina]'s very busy being the head of the American Auror Office" felt like it could easily have applied to Katherine Waterston. (I thought she didn't feature much in the second film, but Wikipedia tells me she was fairly involved: I have forgotten all but the most basic storyline of that one, so I'll believe them.) Her character disappearing is symptomatic of a wider problem within the series: there are too many main characters, and new ones keep being introduced. What this franchise lacks is the strong central group of characters that Harry Potter had in the form of Harry, Ron and Hermione: we thought Newt, Tina, Queenie and Jacob were the new "Golden Trio", but now there are about 10 (debatably) main characters so there isn't the same connection as we had to Harry and his friends.
One example of such a character is Lallie Hicks, a Charms professor (played by Jessica Williams). She is a fantastic character, especially when paired with Jacob, but she is yet another supporting character to join Newt's gang of misfit adventurers. Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam) makes a reappearance in a woefully underdeveloped storyline where he acts as a double- (or triple-?) agent for Dumbledore. Newt's brother Theseus (Callum Scott) also returns to deliver more dry remarks and be generally sarcastic. Bunty (Victoria Yeates), Newt's apparently "indispensable" assistant, has her character somewhat fleshed out in this film. Bunty clearly adores Newt, which the actress plays it in a nice understated way. I enjoyed all of these characters, but there are so many "main" characters now that we didn't really see enough of them. Another example of this is Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol): a key player from the first film, she barely appears in this one. Her side-switching at the end feels sudden, and not in a good way, as we've hardly followed her through the film.
Failed assassin Credence (or Aurelius) Dumbledore is played by a broodingly menacing Ezra Miller. His eventual reveal as Aberforth's son ties up the loose ends nicely but feels a bit underwhelming. Why didn't we find out who his mother was? I'm sure J.K Rowling has got it squirrelled away in a notebook somewhere - she knows everything about the Wizarding World!
The set and visual effects were stunning; arguably the best part of the film. The Bhutan set and the animation of Newt's "Fantastic Beasts" are particularly well done. The duels and explosion effects were also incredible, but there were so many of them that it started to feel almost ordinary that another thing had exploded. Colleen Atwood's costumes maintain the strong Wizarding World sense of style, showing off the Hogwarts house colours as well as the dark robes and soft-brimmed hats we have come to expect of Newt's world.
My main problem with this film is the plot, which is overlong and overcomplicated, and loses its sense of direction in the middle. Their excuse is that Grindelwald can see the future, so they need to have no plan, or multiple overlapping plans, but it just makes the plot feel directionless and confusing. It gets exciting towards the end - the chase round Bhutan injects some much-needed energy - but then slows down again with the drawn-out reveal of the true Qilin. Then after tying up the loose ends of the election plot, we shift quickly to Queenie and Jacob's wedding. The wedding feels very sudden, and like a complete genre-switch: after spending almost no time on relationships throughout the 2 hour 20 minute runtime, the film suddenly becomes a romcom in the last 5 minutes. It gives a vaguely satisfying, fairytale-esque ending, but it is quite a jarring shift, and the fact that their relationship was so underdeveloped up until that point doesn't help.
I enjoyed watching the film overall, but at least half an hour of it could, and should, be cut. It feels like they are trying to do too much with too many characters, but it just ends up being convoluted. I would definitely watch the next film in the series though, if it is made, but with slightly adjusted expectations from this time round.