I'm a (fairly casual) fan of the Wizarding World and love the original Harry Potter series. I enjoyed the first "Fantastic Beasts" film, but this sequel ("Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald") is a dumpster fire. The film is focused primarily on trying to set up sequels. In fact, it's so focused on trying to set up sequels that it completely shuns good storytelling and entertainment value. The film's first 20-25 minutes are admittedly good, with a thrilling and suspenseful opening scene and some good set-up of the narrative. After that, though, it's all downhill from there.

What also makes the film a complete misfire is that the film even fails to develop a primary conflict arc between Newt and Grindelwald. After all, do we really care that much about the extended family trees of various supporting characters? The movie gets unbearably convoluted even for fans of the Wizarding World, and goes out of its way to alienate casual fans. Unbelievably, the film's characters are either too developed to make further sense of them (which almost never occurs in mainstream filmmaking) or underdeveloped. After all, while I like the first "Fantastic Beasts" film, I'm not a huge fan of any of its main characters besides Newt. The acting is mostly sub-par, and Johnny Depp's performance as Grindelwald is flat and wooden. Speaking of Grindelwald, he's a very disappointing villain: one devoid of motivation or even any sort of personality. The Wizarding World was never going to top Voldemort or even probably Bellatrix as villains, but J.K. Rowling should have been able to write a more engaging antagonist. Jude Law is good as Dumbledore, but gets far too little screen time. The Hogwarts scenes probably only last a total of 10 minutes, which was very disappointing.

The film's messy climax lacks any sort of impact on the viewer and rather simply comes off as "blue lights vs. orange lights," and the resolution at the end makes the narrative even more convoluted and ridiculous. All in all, barring amazing marketing or reviews, I'm out on "Fantastic Beasts 3." 3/10