- Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
A FALLACY OF FRANCHISES
For the last decade, Hollywood has mostly burped remakes, sequels, and reimagined continuations of things already in our collective minds. I have nothing against a good sequel or even prequel, but lately, we rarely get that. Now, we need to be honest and accept Hollywood is only doing what they set to do from the beginning. Entertain the masses. However, takes so little to entertain them, the Studios don’t even need to bother with creating a decent movie.
We’re talking about a population easily content with 1-minute videos of random (but usually hot) people doing the same asinine dances (slash challenges). Or commenting on daily important and/or not-so-important topics with all the authority vested in them by their access to the internet. Regardless of actual experience and/or knowledge of said topics/situations.
Everybody has an opinion and swears theirs is the only one that matters.
You could say that I am doing exactly that, having an opinion about a movie. The difference is, that I’m not going to harass you on social media if you disagree with my comments about this particular train wreck.
FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third installment of the Fantastic Beasts franchise; it was supposed to round with five movies, but this is probably the last of the saga.
The previous installment, The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), gave the fandom way too much time to either conceive spectacular theories about the origins of Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) or completely forget about the whole debacle. You can’t finish a movie with the allegedly biggest revelation in the Wizarding World and not expect the people invested in that world to wildly speculate. This is a fictional setting that has been extensively detailed, so there’s abundant knowledge available. Be it about the magic, about the characters, about how things are supposed to work in it. You have books, movies; and a website constantly producing information about new and old situations. It’s a lot.
Then FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore comes and retcons the hell out of everything everybody already knows.
As a creator, you have the right to do whatever the heck you want with your creation. However, there comes a point when those creations stop being only yours and become part of others’ lives— in an almost tacit transfer of ownership. In the same way, you would have the right to whatever opinion you have but need to be also ready for its consequences. The Author Who Shall Not Be Named has said things and a lot of people are trying to separate the creator from the creation. Others started a war against her. Regardless of which side you’re on, it doesn’t matter because that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re trying to review a darn movie.
Nevertheless, the problems with FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore (and the franchise in general) steam from the author’s lack of cohesion. In pace, tone, and consistency. Yeah, it’s your fictional world, but you can’t trash the rules you already set. That’s just making shit up as you go. The big thing about You Know Who is she basically had the entire outline of the 7 Potter books settled before she started writing them. Whether that’s true or not, there is a clear consistency in the stories and their progression. You cannot say the same about this new iteration of the Wizarding World adventures.
THE SEXUALITY OF SECRETS
There are enough jokes on the internet about gay people not being brainwashed by the incredible amount of heterosexuality constantly thrown in their faces since childhood as opposed to the conservatives’ outcries about today’s rising normalization of “otherness” by the media. I think representation matters. When you’re from a minority or marginalized group it’s nice to see someone who looks like you or is going through the same situations portrayed as overcoming insurmountable odds. Or simply just being there in the light, showing that you’re not the only one going through stuff.
FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore opens with two ex-lovers having a very tense conversation.
Two men, who not only felt but still feel for each other even when they are on opposite sides of a war. But the movie treats this particular bit of their history as if it were a childhood misdeed you need to be ashamed of. Neither Dumbledore (Jude Law) nor Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) is shy about their past. Apparently, Warner Brothers, She Who Shall Not Be Named, and close-minded governments are. And that messes a lot with the film’s tone and flow.
The film is aware a long time has passed and it feels the need to constantly remind you of things you’re supposed to know or dump new information in the most explicit way. This might be nothing for someone who just discovered this and went to see it. Ha! Who am I kidding? This is the kind of film you watch because you know the story and want to see how it unfolds. Still, there are ways to do this without treating your audience like harebrained children.
We know Dumbledore and Grindelwald cannot fight each other because they made a blood pact when they were young and in love.
The movie regurgitates this without having the balls to show a montage of that fabled summer so many decades ago. Five minutes of those two powerful wizards just being infatuated young men would’ve gone a long way. Far more than the verbal declaration of something beautiful turning into toxic manipulation every twenty minutes. By the time the blood pact is finally broken, Grindelwald asks Dumbledore, “Who’s going to love you now?” and we can’t get a real reaction because someone somewhere is going to get offended. They even decided to stop calling it a blood pact. They use another name so stupid I can’t even remember it now. I mean. Come on.
I wasn’t expecting FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore to be Brokeback Mountain (2005), but Studios need to stop pandering to close-minded people/governments just for box-office numbers.
If you have an internet connection, you should know about what’s happening with Johnny Depp and his ex-wife. Regardless of why Warner Brothers decided to bring Mads Mikkelsen to play Grindelwald, the most real truth is that Depp’s over-the-top cartoony villain could have never convinced the audience that he and Dumbledore were once an item. The chemistry between Law and Mikkelsen on camera is one of the few redeemable things about this movie.
Imagine a world where you have to prove (even in a fictional setting) you’re pro-heterosexual romance but have the gall to remove one of the other few redeemable situations of the whole franchise aka Newt (Eddie Redmayne) and Tina (Katherine Waterson)’s romance because Waterson had the audacity of openly speak against She Who Should Not Be Writing Movie Scripts On Her Own.
In reality, these brands of movies don’t need romance of any kind; they are adventures. According to Hollywood, you cannot have people around each other without some romance being forced to happen. It’s silly and unnecessary. I’m not even going to waste my time with Jacob (Dan Fogler) and Queenie (Alison Sudol) because that’s just another nail in the Coffin of Inconsistencies.
MEANDERING MEDIOCRITY
After the second movie’s explosive revelation of a new member of the Dumbledore family, You Know Who informed her adoring fans the next movie would be set mainly in Brazil (the first one was in New York). Everybody was excited to learn more about an unexplored part of her sprawling world.
We barely got a whiff of samba in the form of a Brazilian candidate for Grand Poobah of the Wizarding World. Was she even the Brazilian Minister of Magic? Who knows? The tall headmistress of the French School of Magic five or six movies ago was more memorable than that lady.
Jumping from place to place, FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore never anchors anywhere. It’s just a bunch of pretty places with almost pretty magic without any real foundation.
The movie starts with the slaughter of a fantastic beast and ends with the slaughter of the viewers’ expectations. Every resolution seems rushed, uncoordinated, and weak-legged. It’s almost as if the true secret of Dumbledore is this is the last one because even the actors are tired of a doomed franchise. From a café in London (?) to a jungle, to a train on its way to Germany, Hogwarts then to Bhutan (or was it Nepal?), then back to New York. You know where you’re supposed to be, but you never really understand why you’re there.
You can’t fully comprehend if you’re watching a drama, a thriller, a heist movie, or a political manifesto. Seriously, no one is asking to be in awe as when we were introduced to the School of Magic the first time, but give us something. True, this is not a movie for kids— far from it; still, that doesn’t mean it can’t be exciting.
The Fantastic Beasts franchise started with fun characters and a compelling mystery. But by the time we arrive at The Secrets of Dumbledore, it’s just a sad messy plot with identity issues.
With the departure of Depp, She Who Shall Not Be Named’s retrograde points of view regarding gender, and with the latest shenanigans of Miller (who doesn’t even appear among the cast of the movie on Google ), real-life was turning the general public against a movie already flawed.
At the end of the day, what were the secrets of Dumbledore? The only thing truly revealed was the origins of Credence. Even that, it’s in the most unmagical way possible. Not brother to Albus but the son of his brother Aberforth Dumbledore (Richard Coyle) with some random unnamed woman from their village (when he was 15!). It’s never even disclosed if she was a witch or a muggle.
But when you think about it, that was a stroke of genius. No one has ever given a shit about Aberforth Dumbledore, have they? We barely remember he even exists. By screwing with all the rampant theories, She Who Cannot Write a Script to Save Her Life gives a resounding F U to theorists and fans alike. More than disappointed I was bored. Admittedly, I went to see this movie with a seriously very, and I mean basically two feet above the floor, low bar.
This is not even a complicated concept; it was supposed to be magical Pokémon. Instead, FB – The Secrets of Dumbledore turns into an unnecessary political discourse no one cares for.
We have enough political BS in our daily lives. We are barely out of the presidential period farted out of a tired satire. Nevertheless, You Know Who had to bring up the forbidden romance of the previous Voldemort with our Hunky Jude The Law Dumbledore. Why? To be honest, I’m not as invested to go and find out if the first movie concedes with those statements that put her at war with the rational world.
If that were the case, the drama of the two wizards would be another way to unleash her vengeance on those who disagree with her obsolete views.
“Well, they are gay,” I can almost hear her saying, and after that a colossal “Mwahaha”. Sure, you’re bringing the so-called visibility up, but in such a shitty way nobody wants to even talk about it. Or if they do talk about it, it’s in a negative way. We know someone somewhere is going to say the movie bombed because the main characters are gay. Regardless if it’s barely mentioned or acknowledged within the actual film. They always need a scapegoat to slaughter. Why not use the one that is already vastly demonized?
I’m going to give this movie 5 out of 10. Oddly enough, it has its share of moments amid all the emotional and visual dumpster fires and train wrecks.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is currently in theaters now.