#emphasis on the look pretty and judge dumbledore part

[starkcontrasts]

something abt theseus scamander in the new fantastic beast movie showing up just to look good, visibly judge both dumbledore and dumbledore's taste in men, be the Super Official Liaison™ so they could get in to the election party without questions asked, get damseled then saved by his baby brother, prove he'd make a lovely dad and that he does in fact have at least a bit of newt's affinity for animals just. yeah. love that for king

[dascarecrow]

Death Battle - Oscar Pine

Wiz- Since humanity’s earliest age the world of Remnant has been plagued by the creatures of Grimm. 

Boomstick- AKA a cheap rip off of the Heartless. These bad boys are destruction incarnate which sounds awesome at first but it really just means they live to ruin your day. 

Wiz- Yet for as long as the Grimm have haunted humanity they have been protected by the elite warriors known as Huntsmen. 

Boomstick- These kick ass fighters are the best of the best and the baddest of the bad. They also wield some of the most awesome weapons ever made. Because nearly all of them? Are also a gun. 

Wiz- Huntsmen are trained at combat academies across the world. And the greatest of them are trained at the main academies of each major kingdom. Shade Academy in Vacuo, Haven Academy in Mistral, Atlas Academy in Atlas- 

Boomstick- Real original there. 

Wiz- And Beacon Academy in Vale. 

Boomstick- Man a school where you learn how to beat the snot out of people, hunt evil monsters and build cool weapons? If they had that kind of curriculum when I was in high school I definitely would have paid more attention. At least try to get a B+ on something instead of all those Fs and Cs. 

Wiz- Unknown to the public however is that the headmasters of each Academy are part of a secret alliance dedicated to protecting the people of Remnant and ensuring their prosperity led by the headmaster Beacon Academy, Ozpin. 

Boomstick- And like any good conspiracy the Ozluminati knows a whole bunch of secrets. Like the true origin of Dust and who faked the moon breaking. 

Wiz- One of the greatest secrets that they have kept is existence of magic in Remnant. 

Boomstick- Like actual wave your hand and make stuff happen magic. Which I don’t really get keeping hidden. I mean Huntsmen can do a whole bunch of stuff that’s pretty much magic anyways. And even stuff that magic doesn’t do. So why hide it from people?

Wiz- That’s actually because of the prospective dangers that magic could bring. 

Boomstick- Oh yeah like what? 

*Scenes play of Raven, Penny and Fria using their magic and devastating their enemies* 

Boomstick- Never mind. I’ll take being able to call up hurricanes whenever I want over a scythe that turns into a rifle. 

Wiz- Ozpin led the other headmasters and select other agents in keeping several secrets, including magic, hidden away because he feared the turmoil and destruction that would result if they were ever discovered. 

Boomstick- And it actually went pretty well. Remnant had it’s problems but it was actually looking pretty good. Until some crazy fire lady *a picture of Cinder appears* found out about magic, went “I want me some of that”, teamed up with a terrorist organization and decided to get her hands on the nearest available bit of magic. Which was hidden under Beacon Academy. 

Wiz- Dark forces would attack in the tragedy that would become known as the Fall of Beacon. The school would be devastated, the students harmed and traumatized beyond measure and Ozpin himself would fall during the battle. But this would not be the end for Ozpin. 

Boomstick- Yeah turns out Dumbledore here actually had quite a few secrets of his own. One of which is that he was at this job a lot longer than anyone ever knew. 

Wiz- In ancient times the Gods of Light and Darkness who had created Remnant saw the trials humanity endured to survive with each passing day and sought to give their creation a chance at salvation. They reached into the afterlife and returned to Remnant the greatest warrior to ever walk its surface, a mage knight known as Ozma.  

Boomstick- Of course because Gods are kind of jerks they gave the Wizard of Oz a skewed deal.  

Wiz- The Gods tasked Ozma with uniting humanity together and calling them to return to Remnant so they may pass judgement. Should humanity be in harmony upon their return the Gods would walk alongside them once more and grant to humanity grand gifts as reward. 

Boomstick- Not a bad deal really. Everyone plays all nice and you get some sweet magic powers out of it. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? 

Wiz- But if the Gods returned to find humanity divided and selfishly demanding that which was never theirs then it would be final day Remnant would ever see for humanity would be destroyed. 

Boomstick- Oh right. How is that supposed to work then? I mean the gods come back and they see some guys arguing over their favorite sports team and they just go “Your no good. Gonna kill you all”. I mean I get the appeal of having magic powers but does that really outweigh complete genocide? Huntsmen have their own personal superpowers and Dust is as good as magic anyway.  

Wiz- Regardless Ozma agreed to the gods request, motivated by his sense of justice and belief in the inherent good of humanity. 

Boomstick- And the chance to see his ex again. *Picture of Salem appears* Can’t forget about that. 

Wiz- Indeed. Of course the Gods recognized that the work they tasked Ozma with could take quite some time so they made arrangements which resulted in a rather unusual return for him. 

Boomstick- The Gods kind of have a thing against full blown resurrection so they didn’t just zap their newest employee back to Remnant. No they decided to stuff Ozzy Osbourne’s soul into some random sucker so he could get to work. 

Wiz- The Gods did not wish Ozma to bear the burden of his work alone so they made it that he would return in the body of another, which carried a like minded soul that his own would merge with. In the course of his work Ozma would discover that death was no longer the same for him. 

Boomstick- The Gods basically made him the Avatar. *Shows picture of Aang* Whenever Willy Wonka wound up biting it his soul would crop up again in some other schmuck and merge with whatever soul was already living there. Rinse and repeat for the next few thousand years. 

Wiz- The man known as Ozpin would wind up being the latest in this long line of reincarnations, continuing his past lives work in uniting the people of Remnant so they may pass the Gods Judgement.  

Boomstick- And once Gandalf here was down for the count it was time for another round of musical souls. Where he stops who the heck knows. 

Wiz- Ozpin’s would wind up reincarnating in a young farmhand known as Oscar Pine, who would find himself continuing the work that Ozma had began millennia ago and the inheritor of his countless lives knowledge and power. 

Boomstick- Man I don’t know who to feel worse for. Pinecone for having an old dude stuck in his head that can see all of his private thoughts. Or the Clockwork Wizard for being stuck in the head of a kid that’s just starting puberty.  

Wiz- As a result of this merger of souls Oscar would inherit Ozpin’s memories and more importantly his fighting skill and powers. 

Boomstick- As the headmaster of a school for hunting literal soulless monsters Ozpin knew how to throw down with the best of them and Oscar got everything the old professor knew downloaded straight to his brain, none of that pesky learning stuff the hard way needed. He would even be given Ozpin’s own personal weapon... a cane. A cane. That was seriously this guys weapon? He fights for thousands of years to protect humanity, counter hordes of dark mosters and try to make it so the Gods give Remnant a passing grade and his personal way of beating people up was with a walking stick. Starting to see why it took him so long to get people up to snuff. 

Wiz- Don’t be so quick to judge Boomstick. Ozpin was supremely gifted with his weapon, often using it like a rapier to rapidly jab at enemies and wear them down faster then they could respond. *Scenes of Ozpin’s fight with Cinder* And because he has Ozpin’s memories Oscar can do this just as well. *Scenes of Oscar’s fight with Hazel* However Oscar has chosen to focus on his own fighting style instead of simply repeating Ozpin’s. Oscar’s own personal style has a greater emphasis on striking power than  speed, being centered around strong, focused blows instead of the rapid fire technique Ozpin preferred. 

Boomstick- Finally someone who gets that the best way of doing things is by hitting the crap out of them as hard as possible. And it works pretty well for the farm boy. He was able to one shot a Sabyr, which was about two and a half times his size. And keep in mind Grimm are pretty much all bulk. Oscar pretty much killed that thing by stabbing it with a blunt object. Not to mention that he was able to smack someone so hard that they tumbled down the stairs and made Hazel stagger back a few feet when they collided with him. Hazel, who was able to catch the mini wrecking ball that is Magnhild and was stabbed through his stomach by a giant ice wasp and got back up like it was nothing.  

Wiz- Given the loss of energy that would have resulted from rolling down the steps and Hazel’s own notable durability then we can safely say that Oscar used an extreme amount of force in this one attack. 

Boomstick- And if Alpine gets tired of trying to whack people with a overhyped brake lever than he has some decent hand to hand skill as well. He was able to round a corner, close the distance and punch Neo so hard that she went flying down the hallway, all faster than she could react. And Neo’s whole thing is that she can literally dance around just about anyone like they’re moving in slow motion. Oscar was able to outpace her a few times during their fight and that’s immediately after he’d already taken some bad hits. She’d have done even worse if he’d been starting fresh. Not bad for a farm hand. 

Wiz- Oscar’s impressive performance is probably helped by his Aura. 

Boomstick- You mean that rip off of the force from Pokemon? Wait do Pokemon live on Remnant? Are the Grimm actually Pokemon and they’re what happens when humanity doesn’t learn how to make Pokeballs? Does this mean animal slavery is actually perfectly justified? 

Wiz- No. On all acccounts. 

Boomstick (disappointed)- Aaaaah. 

Aura 

- Grants shielding 

- Empowers strikes 

- Environmental Protection 

- Heightened Awareness 

- Enhances Healing 

Wiz- Aura is the soul made manifest, the user’s essence rendered into tangible form. 

Boomstick- Is that supposed to be arousing or the complete opposite? 

Wiz- Aura grants anyone who possesses it a great many benefits, primarily in terms of defense. Anyone with an active Aura automatically receives a shield that protects them from harm and damage. Oscar was able to take hits from flaming boulders and barely showed any hint that he even felt the attack. 

Boomstick- Wait, wait, wait. You mean that if someone gets this Aura stuff they automatically become invulnerable to being hurt? Wiz I’m calling in three of the favors you owe me to give me some of that stuff. 

Wiz- Aura doesn’t just prevent users from coming to harm though. It can also enhance striking power, be channeled through weaponry to increase it’s power, protect the user from harsh environmental factors like extreme cold, give someone heightened awareness of their surrounding to the point they can detect approaching enemies and even boost one’s healing. 

Boomstick- Alright Wiz I’ll make it seven favors and I’ll use Jocelyn’s credit card the next time I get drunk and come up with an awesome idea. Man thousands of years of of combat experience and a personal force field that increases strength and healing? This kid must kick all sorts of- 

*Montage of Oscar getting attacked by Ruby, Qrow, Jaune, the Hound and ends with him being shot by Ironwood* 

Boomstick- *now depressed* Oh right. Aura kind of sucks. 

Wiz- While Aura is formidable it does have it’s limits. Every blow it takes will cause one’s Aura to wear down and deplete. The stronger the hit the more damage Aura will take from it. And even those gifted with extraordinary amounts can’t maintain it indefinitely. 

Boomstick- Yep. Take it from me folks it doesn’t matter how big the bottle is. If you keep drinking from it, sooner or later you’re going to run out. 

Wiz- And once it’s completely depleted Aura will break, leaving the user vulnerable. 

Boomstick- How the heck does that work? I mean it’s your soul. You always have it. So shouldn’t this Aura stuff always be going? And if it breaks shouldn’t you I don’t know die or something? 

Wiz- To be exact Aura isn’t actually the user’s soul, but rather a type of energy harnessed from it. So it’s depletion and breaking isn’t actually fatal to the user. It also isn’t something that runs automatically. Aura has to be consciously activated and dismissed by the user. So it is possible for someone to be caught off guard because they don’t their Aura running. 

Boomstick- Figures. You find a super cool energy that can give everyone super powers and it turns out to suck eggs. 

Wiz- Well just because your Aura runs out doesn’t mean it’s the end of fight. It does recover over time and trained users can speed up how fast it rebuilds with just a bit of focus and willpower. Oscar’s teammate Jaune has shown the ability to restore his Aura after focusing for a brief moment. And given Ozpin’s countless lifetimes of experience it stands to reason that Oscar has the ability to do this as well.  

Boomstick- And even if Oscar’s Aura does wind up failing him he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. Magic ones. Remember Ozma wasn’t just a highly skilled warrior he was also gifted mage. So his whole conga line of souls also gets cool magic powers. 

Magic 

Controls the elements (fire, ice, wind , lightning, etc.) 

Energy blasts 

Creates shields 

Telekinetic movement 

Wiz- Quite right Boomstick among all the denizens of Remnant, Oscar is one of the rare few gifted with magic in the current age. While the exact abilities Oscar can use are nebulous we can infer some details going by what other magic users have done. He can unleash streams of pure power as an attack. 

Boomstick- And these emerald streamers pack a punch. Salem was able to shrug off Hazel literally splattering her all over the ground and returned the beating without missing a beat. 

Wiz- While Salem can regenerate from any damage done to her she still feels pain and can be hurt, even if the damage is undone. 

Boomstick- Oscar brought her to her knees with one blast of his magic, which also left her in visible pain. So it’s safe to say he hit her way harder than Hazel was able to. And that guy dropped a friggin meteor on top of her. *Shows clip of Hazel doing just that* 

Wiz- We have also seen magic be shaped into different forms so presumably Oscar can do this as well. His past lives have been seen creating fields of magic that can move others in a telekinetic fashion and there’s no reason to believe Oscar can’t still do so in present day, albeit not quite on the scale Ozma was once able to. 

Boomstick- Yeah one of the lives of Doctor Who did something kind of dumb. A bunch of sisters came by his house and were all “hope, joy and love” and he decided to give them almost all of his magic because of good vibes or something. I mean why would you give up actual magic powers that made you such a kick ass knight in the first place?  

Wiz- (annoyed) Anyways... Oscar lacks the reserves of magic power that Ozma once held and while we don’t have an exact measure we’re going to go with about a rate of 5 to 10 percent remaining. Fortunately for Oscar magic doesn’t deplete the way Aura does so he can use it almost without limit. And the power of the Maidens, that is the sisters he gave his magic to, gives us a view of what Oscar can accomplish. Namely the power of the elements 

Elemental Magic 

Fire  

Ice 

Lightning 

Wind 

Plant life 

Boomstick- Most folks on Remnant can do stuff like throw around fireballs or lightning bolts with the use of Dust. But magic lets you do that stuff all on your own and with no limit either. 

Wiz- Mind you Oscar’s lesser reserves mean he can’t do anything on the scale of the Maidens but he does still have the capacity to control the elements, just to a lesser degree than most magic users.  But the greatest asset magic grants Oscar is his shield. 

Boomstick- Don’t let the fact that it looks like a glass bubble fool you, this mystical barrier is actually pretty sturdy. It’s stood up to the full power of the Fall Maiden, allowed Oscar to survive a several miles long fall without any injury whatsoever and is so strong that it let him crash right through the bottom of Atlas and keep on going with no problem. 

Wiz- Actually Boomstick that last feat wasn’t a result of Oscar’s magic. 

Boomstick- Oh? I guess you’re going to tell me that glorified bike handle of his did it. 

Wiz- It did as a matter of fact. 

Boomstick- Wait what? How is that possible? It’s a cane for crying out loud. It’s something old people use for getting around and whupping the young, not the tool of a seasoned warrior and mage. 

Wiz- Oscar’s cane, much like it’s holder, far more than it appears and has quite a few surprises. 

Boomstick- Oh this should be good. 

The Long Memory 

Oscar’s personal weapon 

Once wielded by Ozpin 

Incredibly durable 

Focus for magic 

Stores kinetic energy 

Wiz- Oscar’s weapon, known as the Long Memory, is a collapsible cane that he carries at almost all times. The cane itself is highly durable, able to take hits from a Dust empowered Hazel without any sign of strain or damage. Hazel boasted immense physical strength on his lonesome and the benefit of Dust significantly increased his damage output.  

Boomstick- Okay so it’s a pretty strong cane. But it’s still just a cane. 

Wiz- The Long Memory is also a channel and focus for Oscar’s magic, enabling him to use it on a higher scale than he would be able to on his own merits. 

Boomstick- Oh like a magic wand. 

Wiz- More like a scepter. 

Boomstick- Like a magic staff? 

Wiz- Scepter. 

Boomstick- I get you, it’s like a magic rod. 

Wiz- Boomstick I swear if I have to get the shock collar again... 

Boomstick- Geez calm down Wiz I’m just funning ya. So this walking stick is pretty much a *Wiz glares at Boomstick* “magic scepter” that lets pine tree use magic better than he can by himself. That’s kind of cool actually but why make it something that looks like an emergency brake? 

Wiz- The Long Memory has one more special trick, completely separate from Aura and magic. It can store and carry kinetic energy. 

Boomstick- I’m sorry what kind of energy? 

Wiz- *exasperated* Stuff that make bullets go shoot. 

Boomstick- I know what it is Wiz. No need to get snippy. Man you are so juvenile. Anyways why is that so special? 

Wiz- *trying to be professional* With each passing moment and every blow struck The Long Memory accumulates kinetic energy and having been crafted centuries ago it has quite a reservoir of power to access. Oscar can access this stored up energy whenever he wishes, unleashing bolts and waves sheer power. This allowed him to blast a hole through the bottom of Atlas when he was sent plummeting to his doom in the Vault of the Winter Maiden. 

Boomstick- Huh. Not a bad parlor trick I’ll admit but how much damage can he really do with that thin- 

*Scene of Oscar destroying Monstra plays* 

Boomstick stares in open mouthed shock while Wiz looks on with a smug grin.  

Wiz- You were saying? 

Boomstick- HOLY MOTHERF*BLEEP*ING S*BLEEP*T!  Did that kid just fire off a magic nuke?  

Wiz-To be fair Oscar can’t throw around attacks like that too often. This particular instance used up the majority of stored up power that the Long Memory had available. And that power was gathered across several lifetimes if not centuries. He definitely wouldn’t be able to use an attack on this level repeatedly. He would be able to recover some of the kinetic energy however because the Long Memory gathers and stores it away automatically. Smaller expenditures may not necessarily be reclaimed but the cane would definitely avoid running completely out of power with this aspect of it’s abilities. Anything you’d like to add Boomstick?

Boomstick- *still in shock* I-, Yeah not really, my mind is going to be stuck on that nuke thing for a while. 

Wiz- *shrugging it off* Okay then. Come back in a few days where we’ll cover Oscar’s opponent, Izuku Midoriya. 

[theconservativebrief]

As a deeply jaded Harry Potter fan, I sometimes have to make a conscious effort to focus on the positives. So I think it’s worth noting that I didn’t have to try too hard to find some positives to focus on in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

The second installment in the Harry Potter prequel series is now in theaters, and with it, author J.K. Rowling, who writes the screenplays, has introduced a host of serious wrinkles in her own established universe. The plot is confusing, disjointed, and seemingly devoted to setting up a convoluted storyline that will play out in future installments.

Watching the film feels a bit like being dropped into the middle of a very thick novel that’s full of words whose meanings you don’t know. And this holds true no matter your level of Harry Potter fandom; Rowling does a ton of worldbuilding on the fly, and expects viewers to roll with it and figure things out as they go. That’s difficult to do, and it makes The Grimes of Grindelwald hard to review, because it’s so obviously laying the foundation for some future film.

But even given all of that, there are things to like about it; and the things to like are, I think, pretty interesting things!

The Crimes of Grindelwald picks up where the first Fantastic Beasts film left off: with the dark wizard Grindelwald (the controversial Johnny Depp) sitting in jail after infiltrating the American magical congress. (Why he wanted to infiltrate it in the first place wasn’t ever fully explained, but it clearly involved being generically evil.)

In the opening moments of the new film, Grindelwald dramatically escapes prison, leaving Professor Dumbledore — an inexplicably de-camped Jude Law — to decide how to respond. Dumbledore, who was canonically in love with Grindelwald as a teen and may have once been in a relationship with him, is either unwilling or unable to fight him now, in adulthood, so he sends our hero Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to battle Grindelwald in his stead. This involves finding the one person who can effectively fight him: Credence (Ezra Miller), who we encountered in the first Fantastic Beasts film as a frightened orphan, confused about his identity and unaware of his own tremendous magical abilities.

The Crimes of Grindelwald then follows Newt as he attempts to locate Credence in Paris. It also follows Grindelwald as he attempts to locate Credence, and as he launches what must be the most hastily assembled and disturbingly muffled political allegory ever thrown together by a writer capable of much greater nuance than this. The driving force of The Crimes of Grindelwald’s plot — though it’s difficult to refrain from putting sarcasm quotes around “plot” — is for Newt to find Credence before Grindelwald can, because the implication is that whoever gets to Credence first will have the best chance at deploying his magic as a weapon for their side. (More on what those sides are fighting for in a moment.)

Along the way, the movie gets sidetracked by a tangled web of subplots. Characters keep tossing around fragments of prophecies whose origins are never properly contextualized and whose predictions are never fully explained. There are baby-killings, cases of mistaken identity, mysterious characters with mysterious backgrounds, dramatic flashbacks, and several different moments that disrupt the established canonical timeline of the Harry Potter universe in ways that are sure to break the brains of Harry Potter fans across the internet. There’s even a giant Chinese fire-dragon cat-thing that needs to be dealt with. (It’s cute!)

But none of these subplots further the narrative beyond providing an occasional dramatic reveal that ultimately goes nowhere. Characters show up, deliver backstory and dramatic revelations, and then, more often than not, die. The effect is basically that watching the The Crimes of Grindelwald feels like staring at that spinning top from Inception for two hours straight before eventually realizing it’s never going to fall over, because it doesn’t have enough mass to upset its inertia. There’s just no story, no substance . And what little substance there is essentially forms dramatic exposition for the next Fantastic Beasts movie.

It’s especially unfortunate that this wheel-spinning for the sake of expository setup was one of the chief complaints of critics who reviewed the previous Fantastic Beasts film. But the previous film had so much more actual plot than this one that by comparison, The Crimes of Grindelwald feels extra-flimsy and empty. At least in the previous film, there was a set of clearly achievable objectives involving the rounding-up of a bunch of fantastic beasts!

But. But! Do we watch Harry Potter movies for the plot, or do we watch Harry Potter movies for the wizarding world? Because The Crimes of Grindelwald contributes beauty and a solid sense of setting and depth to the Harry Potter universe, and it deserves credit for that.

One of the things I continue to admire and love most about the Harry Potter film franchise in its latter-day installments is how director David Yates, who has helmed all of the movies since the fifth one in the main franchise, remains fully committed to J.K. Rowling’s vision, no matter how obscure it might get. And let’s be real, Fantastic Beasts is a totally new franchise arc that’s headed who-knows-where, and Rowling’s vision is deeply obscured in The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Yet Yates, with the trademark mix of sensitivity, detail, and emphasis on sumptuous worldbuilding that he’s deployed in each of the six Harry Potter films he’s directed so far, manages to make things work on his end. The Gilded Age wizarding world, Art Deco with a splash of steampunk, moves from vintage New York to London and Paris over the course of the film, and it looks as lovely and inviting as ever.

While the magical elements can feel a bit paint-by-numbers at times, it’s clear that Yates, Rowling, and longtime Harry Potter screenwriter-turned-producer Steve Kloves are still thinking deeply about how to keep the details of this world feeling unique and magical. And I think, for the most part, they do feel magical; that is, they feel like a world I enjoy spending time in, even when I’m exasperated by the lack of story.

It helps that Fantastic Beasts’ characters are, for the most part, characters I enjoy watching. It’s hard to overstate just how unique Redmayne’s Newt Scamander is within the annals of fictional heroes. Not only is he plainly and unremarkably neurodivergent, but he subverts typical onscreen representations of masculinity in refreshing and unexpected ways. Rowling seems to have written him by consciously sidestepping the tropes of toxic masculinity, and the result is that Newt, however overshadowed he is by plot dramatics, always feels like the answer to the questions she’s trying to ask about violence and propaganda and side-taking.

Unfortunately, those questions aren’t very well-posed. Grindelwald’s dark wizardry is a tangled mishmash of World War I-era fashion, militant Fascism disguised as leftist rhetoric, and concern-trolling about Nazis and World War II, designed to appeal to pureblood wizards of all races, including at least one character who’s coded Jewish. What Grindelwald’s actual politics are beyond wanting Muggle genocide is anyone’s guess, but given that this film is arriving during one of the most politically confusing and polarized eras in recent history, it’s mildly worrying that Grindelwald’s actual message is as vague and “insert-your-own-ideology” as possible.

And then there’s Grindelwald himself. The sheer number of characters in The Crimes of Grindelwald means we spend less time with Newt and his core group of friends than before, but we arguably spend the most time with Grindelwald. And though Johnny Depp’s performance is notably subdued (for Depp, at least), Grindelwald still feels like the series’ flamboyant gay villain (a stereotype that’s exacerbated further due to how toned-down and butch Dumbledore has become) — he’s always standing a little too close to his potential allies, always tacitly seducing them into joining him on the dark side, always being framed by the film as representing something irresistible and innately evil.

It’s weird and uncomfortable to watch, and I wish I felt like more of that weirdness and discomfort is because Grindelwald is a Nazi and not because he’s queer. (All of this potential association of Grindelwald’s evilness with his queerness is built into the narrative of the Harry Potter books, but given that so far, there are only two known queer characters in the entire wizarding universe, and given that one of them is an evil genocidal Aryan and the other one is in love with the evil genocidal Aryan, we can be forgiven for feeling a little queasy about how things are playing out.)

But commenting too critically on The Crimes of Grindelwald could, at this point, amount to unfair speculation. Rowling is clearly in the middle of juggling eight or nine plot points at once, as she loves to do, and it seems somewhat futile to do anything more than stand back and let her at it, until we finally have a coherent 10-hour film that we can judge as a whole. What we clearly don’t have in The Crimes of Grindelwald is a movie; instead, we have a heavily fragmented, not terribly coherent piece of something larger.

Whether that other, larger thing eventually coalesces into the sparkling magical story we came for, or whether it disapparates into oblivion, remains to be seen. But for Harry Potter fans who’ve put their trust in J.K. Rowling for all this time, the best thing I can say about The Crimes of Grindelwald is probably this: It won’t make you want to put your wand away any time soon.

Original Source -> Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald feels like a giant prologue for some other movie

via The Conservative Brief