Secrets of Dumbledore: a Review
We all have differing opinions on the Fantastic Beasts movies…for me, I think of them as separate fun from the original Harry Potter works for numerous reasons, the top reason being for my own sanity.
It’s quite similar to my thoughts on Buffy Seasons 6-7, The sequel trilogy in Star Wars, and The Hobbit trilogy in the Lord of the Rings universe. Did I dislike these things? Yes. Did it ruin my enjoyment of the original? No. Unlike say, Game of Thrones season 8, a season so toxic and terrible that I cannot even rewatch the first few seasons. The Fantastic Beasts movies however, I can turn off half my brain and enjoy them for what they are: entertainment in a world I love, even if they are nowhere near the quality of the original series. (Although fucking hell do I love Jacob Kowalski and Leta Lestrange.)
Let’s get to my 5 positive and negative spoiler-ish thoughts on Secrets of Dumbledore!
Five Faves
- Always and forever, Jacob Kowalski and his fucking fabulous bakery is my favorite thing about this series. I found myself smiling at every scene he was in, even when I probably shouldn’t have been smiling.
2. Jude Law as Dumbledore: Yeah I always wanted Young Jude Law as Gilderoy Lockhart, but Jude Law as middle aged Dumbledore is a wonderful consolation prize. He’s always been a great actor, and he knocks his performance as Dumbledore out of the Quidditch Pitch.
3. Mads Mikkelson as Grindelwald: Do I miss Colin Ferrell? Fuck yes I do! But Mads is a huge upgrade from Depp, who (controversial opinion alert) used to be a fabulous actor, but isn’t the same as he used to be, IMO. Mads fucking kills it as Grindelwald, and the chemistry between him and Jude Law is sizzling.
4. The action scenes slap hard. I don’t know what it was, but the action scenes and wands scenes in this one are what I always wanted out of magical scenes in movie form. Thank you Secrets of Dumbledore for finally getting it right.
5. Finally, the Fantastic Beasts actually factor into the plot! In the second Fantastic Beasts the magical creatures and Grindelwald plot were weirdly shoved together in a hodgepodge, in Secrets of Dumbledore the animals have a point and they matter. Yay!
Five Flops
1.There was a period of time where my mind actually wandered and I started thinking about my to-do list for the rest of the day. That is not good.
2. Where the f$!k was Tina?? Clearly someone decided that Tina (and maybe Queenie) needed to be minimized and possibly removed from the plot for…reasons?? Maybe they weren’t popular with audiences? But Tina is reduced to a shitty cameo. And while we’re at it, where the hell was Nagini??
3. What was the point of Crimes of Grindelwald? Really, now? I might be the only Leta Lestrange stan on Earth but my favorite part of Crimes of Grindelwald and my favorite plotline was by far the Leta Lestrange/Newt storylines. Then she just dies in front of Newt and her fiance after a long ass plot about a dead baby brother who maybe is Credence but isn’t really and no one gives a FUCK in this movie. I think she gets one brief mention? #justiceforLeta #loveyouletalestrange
4.The plot of the movie, just like the first two, is kind of murky and weird and…odd in ways that are hard to pinpoint. Instead of clear “wizard boy has a mysterious and action packed year at Hogwarts to reveals some backstory and plot and character development” we get…wizard politics, a magical animal that everyone is trying to get, Dumbledore’s mangst
Credence maybe being a Dumbledore while I frantically try to do the math and then remember canon dates established in the original seven books mean NOTHING to the screenwriters, double crossing double agents, dudes that show up and look vaguely evil and honestly, I think I left out half the plot.
5. Last, when we find out one of Dumbledore’s “secrets” that anyone who read the book over a decade ago knows (the Aberforth/Grindelwald/Albus fight that leads to Ariana’s death) we get an inexplicable change to backstory that enrages me. Dumbledore describes it to Newt as him and Aberforth getting into a fight while Grindelwald “just laughs” and Ariana sneaks in down the stairs and dies by accident…NOT the true story, which is far more powerful. We know Aberforth gets the Cruciatus cast on him by Grindelwald, Albus steps in, they three way duel over Ariana’s fate, and one of them kills her. A small change, but a crucial one.
Overall, I had fun but if you can’t separate the two series in your brain like I can it might enrage you like season 8 of Game of Thrones enrages me.
What did you think of the movie?
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