Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
2022, Fantasy/Adventure, 2h 22m
231 Reviews 2,500+ Verified RatingsWhat to know
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore avoids some of the pitfalls that plagued its predecessor, but lacks much of the magic that drew audiences into the wizarding world many movies ago. Read critic reviews
It's a little long and the effects might be better than the story, but for fans of the franchise, this is a fairly Fantastic sequel. Read audience reviews
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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Videos
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Movie Info
Professor Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) knows the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) is moving to seize control of the wizarding world. Unable to stop him alone, he entrusts Magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to lead an intrepid team of wizards, witches and one brave Muggle baker on a dangerous mission, where they encounter old and new beasts and clash with Grindelwald's growing legion of followers. But with the stakes so high, how long can Dumbledore remain on the sidelines?
Cast & Crew
Eddie Redmayne
Newt Scamander
Newt Scamander
Jude Law
Albus Dumbledore
Albus Dumbledore
Mads Mikkelsen
Gellert Grindelwald
Gellert Grindelwald
Ezra Miller
Credence Barebone
Credence Barebone
Dan Fogler
Jacob Kowalski
Jacob Kowalski
Alison Sudol
Queenie Goldstein
Queenie Goldstein
Critic Reviews for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Audience Reviews for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
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May 29, 2022If ever a film franchise looked to be in decline, I submit to you, the Fantastic Beasts movies. Begun in 2016 as a presumed five-part series, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was the one writing the screenplays this time and going back to 1920s America. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, chronicling bashful magical animal caretaker Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), made $800 million worldwide. In the years since, Rowling has burned through much of her good will with transphobic comments, Johnny Depp has been replaced as series villain Grindelwald by Mads Mikkelsen, and 2018's Crimes of Grindelwald made $150 million less than its predecessor. Now with COVID transforming the box-office, the question remains whether the Wizarding World franchise (as Warner Brothers has been calling the Harry Potter universe) can survive without its Boy Who Lived. The third film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, finds young(er) Dumbledore (Jude Law) confronting his old foe –- franchise fatigue. It's hard for me to fathom anyone, even the most ardent of Harry Potter fans, watching this movie and exclaiming, "I can't wait for two more of these!" The Secrets of Dumbledore feels more like a regular episode of an ongoing TV series than a story that demanded to be told as a big screen adventure, something that meaningfully reassembles the key characters and moves the larger wizarding world story forward. By the end of the movie, Wizard Hitler still looks like Wizard Hitler. The end. The last movie set the stage for a looming wizard-vs-wizard civil war that would push the magic world to choose its sides. That's why it's so bizarre to then go right into a weird election conspiracy with a weird magic deer creature. This is a fantasy world with crazy characters and weird rules and I can't adequately explain why this whole plot point with a magic deer wrings so silly and ridiculous for me. It's like if we replaced our electoral system with letting the groundhog choose the president on Groundhog Day. Why bother with democratic elections when we can just have a pure magical creature provide its endorsement? The big scheme for Grindelwald to rig the election at any costs, which has a bizarre 2020 Donald Trump political parallel that also makes me dislike the plot more. The entire movie is hinging on this little creature making its opinion known, so why not guard it better if it's so integral to their foundation of wizarding governance (warning: animal cruelty early)? This plot line does not work for me, and it feels clumsy both in contemporary political parallels as well as an effort to find reason to continue inserting Newt Scamander into these movies. The franchise began as a light distraction with a goofy zookeeper for magical creatures. Now it's become a political thriller about the fate of the world against Wizard Hitler. It's a bit different tonally, and perhaps it's time to let Newt tend to his animals off-screen, much like what has happened to Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), the co-lead of the other movies, casually "staying home." This is also the first Fantastic Beasts movie where Rowling is sharing screenplay credit, with Steve Kloves, the man who adapted all but one of the Harry Potter movies. It feels like another act of trying to salvage this franchise. I've read plenty of critics claiming that this movie corrects the screenwriting miscues of the past films, and to this I do not agree. Reaching out for help from an industry veteran used to adapting Rowling's imagination is a smart move, but the movie still suffers like the previous Fantastic Beast movie from a plot overburdened with incident and less on substance, willfully obtuse and convoluted in its plotting. Since Grindelwald gains the power to see into the future, a power that is woefully underutilized, the only way to disguise Dumbledore's plot to uncover election fraud is through sheer confusion. They have to make things purposely confusing and hard to follow on purpose, dear reader. A purposely convoluted and confusing movie is the only way they can beat the bad guy. It's like Kloves is speaking directly to the audience and admitting defeat at keeping anything clear. I went to brush up by reading the Wikipedia summary for this review and even that made me tired. A wizard heist is a great setup, but Secrets of Dumbledore cannot live up to that potential. The set pieces don't lean into what a wizard heist could bestow. There's one memorable sequence where Newt and his brother must escape from a crustacean prison by literal crab-walking. It's the only light in an otherwise dismal, overwhelmingly grey movie. It all feels less transporting and more plodding. What even are the "secrets of Dumbledore"? If it's that he's gay, well at least the movie finally has the temerity to finally say that Dumbledore and Grindelwald were more than just really special friends who decided to wear vials of each other's blood as necklaces. The movie unequivocally confirms that they were lovers, had a relationship, and yet it's all also contained in a prologue flashback that can easily be cut for foreign markets that would object. So congrats, Warner Brothers, for going far enough to at least say Dumbledore and Grindelwald were boyfriends at one point. However, this secret has been publicly known since Rowling outed Dumbledore in the late 2000s, so that's not it. I guess we're carrying over the revelation at the end of 2018 that Credence (Ezra Miller) is a Dumbledore, except that it's revealed he's the son of Dumbledore's brother, meaning the big reveal in 2018 was... Dumbledore had a nephew? This character has even less screen time than the other two movies and it feels like the filmmakers are actively trying to work him back to the sidelines (perhaps Miller's penchant for legal trouble accelerating matters). This all seems pretty minor, and I suspect the filmmakers are ret-conning a direction they thought would be pivotal and have since changed their minds. That's all I can gather as what might constitute a "secret of Dumbledore," although allow me to posit a different theory why the third movie has this subtitle. This is a franchise that has been leaking cultural cache and fan interest, and so the producers say, "Nobody knows a Newt or a Grindelwald. They know Dumbledore. They care about Dumbledore. That's the title." It's about rescuing a flagging franchise with the only character that reaches forward to Harry Potter. It's also a little strange that the movie doesn't even comment that Grindelwald's appearance has changed. This is made more confusing because of that prologue flashback where Grindelwald had the face of Mikkelsen, so I guess he just chose to hang as Depp for a while. Even a passing reference to this being his "preferred form" would have sufficed. It was established that the big bad wizard could alter his visage, but we shouldn't just go movie-by-movie with a brand-new actor (really the third actor in three films) as the main antagonist without even the barest of references for the audience. I guess it's just all assumed. I think this franchise also needs a break from David Yates as its visual steward, the same director of the last two Beasts films and the last four Potter movies. This is the dankest, most greyed out blockbuster movie I can recall. Yates' muted color palate and somber handling of the material has begun to drain the fun and magic from this universe for me. I said 2020's Ammonite was "all grey skies, grey pebbles, grey shores, grey bonnets, grey leggings, grey carts, grey houses, grey this, grey that, irrepressible grey." This movie is the Ammonite of studio blockbusters (it's not quite Zack Snyder's Justice League, where color is not allowed to exist by force of law). The last time someone else directed a Wizarding World picture was 2005's Goblet of Fire. Yates has served his time, although considering he's only helmed one non-Potter movie in the same ensuing years (2016's The Legend of Tarzan), maybe he's just as reluctant to walk away from this universe. My personal interest in this franchise has been decreasing with each additional movie, and at this point I'd be content if the planned fourth and fifth movies stayed purely theoretical. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore feels, front to back, like a filler movie, a story that is rambling and haphazard (but on purpose!) and a franchise that has outgrown its initial parameters and is struggling to explain why these adventures are persisting and what the overall appeal would be. If you're happy to just step back into this special world one last time, then you'll at least walk away satisfied. I still enjoy Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalksi, the Muggle pulled into the crazy world, the character that should have been the protagonist of the series. Mikkelsen is an upgrade for any franchise. I liked Jessica Williams (Booksmart) and her posh British accent. The special effects are solid if a bit twitchy. I just don't see the driving force to continue this series, and Warner Brothers as of this writing has not greenlit either of the two proposed sequels to close Fantastic Beasts out, so we may end as a trilogy after all. If that's the case, what will the legacy be for Fantastic Beasts? It feels like a franchise that started in one direction and was quickly course corrected to another, leeching the initial charm and light-hearted energy. Just like The Matrix universe, I think there are more creative stories that can be told here, but maybe it's time to allow some fresh voices into the creative process. Maybe it's time for Rowling to gracefully open her storytelling sandbox for others to dabble within. In many ways, it feels like the fan community and even the movies themselves have simply grown beyond Rowling. Nate's Grade: C+Nate Z Super Reviewer
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