The thing is, all of the Harry Potter movies - at least until the last 3 - told mostly self-contained stories. You can do that while telling one big story at the same time.
What I find I need to do with the Fantastic Beasts movies is watch them, read the screenplay, and then watch them again with a better idea of what’s going on. Now in the post-reading stage I think I understand the plot better. (For the original HP movies, I’d read all the books before seeing the films so that helped too.) Maybe there are other movie-watchers who follow along better first crack out of the box, but not me.
I thought Grindelwald was clearly putting in a fair bit of exposition and setup, but I enjoyed seeing all the characters again and it was very fun to watch. Also, baby Nifflers!
Yeh, I’m sure we’ll see her again, for all the good that’ll do us. I do think the plain-frumpy-adoring-assistant to the scientist-hero is a really overworked and tired trope. The most enjoyable tech-sidekick character I’ve seen in the movies in decades was the zany Holtzmann in the Ghostbusters remake, and I’m surprised someone as inventive as Rowling can’t think of somebody equally interesting, even if so far it’s just a bit part. Can’t Newt’s Bunty have an actual personality or aims of her own instead of being merely frumpy and adoring? Say, crossbreeding enthusiast? Exotic-poop-potions experimenter? Spoiled-brat posh felon working off community service? C’mon, somebody get that character a life.
Okay, I’ll give you that. The baby Nifflers were adorable (as was the adult one).
I’m playing the “Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery” mobile game, and I’ve fallen in love with Nifflers ever since. I didn’t care much for them in FBaWTFT, but since then…yeah. Nifflers are cool.
I found the movie utterly incomprehensible and I’ve seen every HP movie and the last Fantastic Beast movie and liked it enough to watch this. One pretty CGI laden nonsense scene after another leading up to a twist that by the time it came around I didn’t care anymore. I have not had that issue with any other Rowling movie.
Is there anywhere in the extended HP Universe (aka JK’s ramblings on Twitter and such) that say where Newt is during the Harry Potter saga? Is he dead? Hiding? Just chilling at the zoo?
Well, the “About the Author” note in the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2017 edition) claims that Scamander “was born in 1897” and that he was “awarded the Order of Merlin, Second Class, in 1979” (when he would have been 82 years old) “in recognition of his services to the study of magical beasts”, and describes him as “now retired” and living in Dorset.
So while we may learn at some point that the nonagenarian Newt was involved in the events of the Second Wizarding War in the 1990s, I would not be surprised if it turns out instead that he was long retired and pretty much out of the picture by that time.
Given that the first-person “Foreword by the Author” mentions the earlier “Muggle reprint” of the book in 2001, it seems reasonable to assume that the reader is supposed to infer that Scamander was still living and writing in 2017 at the age of 120. (Note, however, that that same reference to the 2001 reissue claims that Albus Dumbledore “agreed to provide a foreword” for it, whereas Dumbledore died in 1997, so I’m not sure how trustworthy the chronology really is. Unless the 2001 reissue is supposed to have been in the works for several years before it was actually published.)
According to Pottermore, Luna Lovegood marries Newt’s grandson, Rolf.
I really thought it was one of the worst movies I have ever watched in a theater.
I kept waiting for the story to get going and then suddenly I was told it was the climax…and I cared not at all about what was happening.
I think the returning characters were sadly sidelined in service to a larger story.
Queenie had an interesting arc but Tina could have been omitted from the story completely and not have made a difference. It was just truly terrible.
I really wanted the ending to be with Grindle and Crispus? Corpus?..Ezra Miller…standing in that villa in Austria and Grindlewald says to him. “I will tell you your true name… you are… ADOLF… HITLER!” and instead of a tiny bird, he hands him a tiny mustache.
At that point… just embrace how awful this is.
At some point I do hope they explain why the Wizarding World had adopted fanciful magic-y dress by the 1990s because in the 20 they apparently dress exactly like rich Muggles.
Pottermore has been edited to remove the year of McGonagall’s birth. It used to say 1935, but now has no year at all.
I only just got around to seeing the latest Harry Potter world movie. I was disappointed. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but I didn’t really like it either. I think Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was better because the Grindlewald stuff was secondary. But The Crimes of Grindlewald pretty much put Grindlewald up front (duh) and that story, oddly enough, is super dull.
I liked the big kitty and the little kitties, and the niffler. Those were pretty cool.
I felt that shoehorning in references to the HP1-7 stuff was unnecessary and needlessly convoluted and confusing. So are all the Lastranges dead now? I guess Bellatrix is like a distant cousin or something? Totally pointless. There is no need for Lita to be a Lastrange as far as I can tell.
I think prequels stand better when they only gently touch on material from the original material. FB1 was better in this regard as well.
Bellatrix was married to a Lestrange, so she’s not related by blood at all to Leta.
I have a fan theory, which is that Headmasters were expected to wear proper “wizard attire”, while the teachers did not have to.
In the HP movies after the first two films, they pretty much had the wizarding population wear muggle (No-Maj for you Americans!) clothing. Maybe slightly old fashioned ones, but stuff normal people would wear. It was obviously since the alternative looked silly.
Even in the books Rowling could never remain consistent as to what they wore. She would say “robes”, but most of the time the description seeemed to imply normal clothes.
Nope! This is where I draw the line. 
“Muggle” is such an awesome word for mundanes. “No-Maj” is so stupid I can’t even bring myself to say it. Even typing it was hard! So magic-wise, I am proclaiming myself an honorary Brit, and reserving the right to call them Muggles. 
My daughter took me to see it. Both us big HP fans, both saw all the other movies. It was dreadful. The plot is too hard to follow, the CGI is great but who cares, and it took me too long to figure out what the huge reveal even meant.
They are starting to throw out the backstory as set up by all the Harry Potter novels and substitute their own. If they want to start a new story arc, that’s fine - but make it new. Don’t just be throwing in characters from the original series and hoping nobody notices the changes. Because I do, and I don’t like it.
Regards,
Shodan
How is the backstory being “thrown out”?
It’s 70 years before the events of the novels.
Some incredibly minor details from the novels and Rowling’s website (Prof. McGonagall’s DOB, Dumbledore was described as being a Transfiguration teacher, not DADA, the whole robes vs Muggles clothing thing) are being changed in the movies, which is giving superfans the vapors.
It’s okay to dislike the movie but it is also true that every franchise will eventually last long enough to get hated by its fans. Now it’s Harry Potter’s turn.
I saw it yesterday in the cinema, and didn’t really like it.
It was just a bit messy. Not a lot actually happens in the movie, it’s clearly more of a setup to the next one (or next 3?) and the movie experience suffers.
The CGI critters were good, but the CGI dragon thing at the end to contain Grindelwald seemed to be just an exercise in showing off the tech.
I dislike the way that they try and shoe-horn all the stuff from the “current” HP world into the prequel, especially so long back, because you end up with that Star Wars thing of the entire world only consisting of a few different families.
And there’s really no need at all for Newt to be going on this particular adventure.