What I really liked about the first Fantastic Beasts movie was how everything was new and different yet still part of the Wizarding World that I was familiar with. I loved all the characters. I really liked that Grindelwald was a subplot and not the focus of the story. I guess I should have understood "The Crimes of Grindelwald" was a clue on what this movie is about.

I can't even tell you how many times I've watched the Potter movies but it's been a lot. I do appreciate the little snippets of background information and a few of them are quite exciting and surprising. That's my favorite part of this movie. To be honest I felt like a thick-head most of the time. I really didn't understand what was going on, sometimes I wasn't even sure were the action was taking place? I was confused, I kept feeling like I missed something. It almost seems like they edited out a bunch of scenes making the movie really choppy. I wanted to like the movie but it left me feeling empty. The characters were not as lovable or endearing, they were chaotic and emotionless. They didn't seem consistent with their original portrayals. Frankly I don't understand why they even brought some of the characters back? I saw familiar faces but felt like they were totally different people. They didn't make sense.

The special effects are amazing, the scenery is amazing but also frustrating. I cannot understand why a production spends so much money on making everything look real then they film in almost total darkness or in the rain. This movie was almost entirely filmed in the rain, obscuring the wonderful sets. The rain was really distracting, it was so heavy and loud it became irritating, it was so dominant it should have received a co-starring credit. I can imagine the director sitting in his chair behind the scenes screaming through a megaphone "More Rain! MORE RAIN! I NEED MORE RAIN!!!" like some kind of rain maniac. I wonder if he was having some kind of depressing manic episode in his life and felt the need to transpose it into the movie?

I do love Jude Lawe as Dumbledore I love that we get to see more of who he is and how he became the Dumbledore we're familiar with. Jude seems too young to be playing this part, the timeline seems off. Ron and Harry made jokes about Dumbeldore being incredibly old and gave us the impression that he was abnormally old yet this movie suggests he aged naturally. Newt seems more like a minor character, well everyone seems like a minor character, no one really stands out. I think they missed some opportunities to make the characters more realistic. Remember in the first movie we had a lot of "awe, isn't that sweet" moments? I liked that and I miss it. I wanted to see sweet, adorable, sad, loving, caring, funny Newt but all I saw was, confused, cold, boring Newt. It's like he's not the same person.

I feel like Magical Creatures sold me a bill of goods and didn't follow through on it. I had the impression the show would be more about Newt and his magical creatures and not another set of movies about good vs. evil wizards. I've seen that already, I know how it ends. We see Grindelwald in the last 2 Potter movies, we know what happens to him. I want to see what happens with Newt and his friends, I want to know their story.