Skipping my history with the series, assuming anyone who reads this has one as well, cutting to the bullet-point tango:

Rushed storytelling and brief references make you strain to piece together an over-complicated plot with no real substance at the bottom. No tension was built, no excitement was cultivated.

Because of that constant strain to figure out what was going on and why we should care, comic relief and other grace notes fell flat or got overlooked.

There was no character building or transformation to make us care about the players. It was hard to tell what the problem was. Johnny Depp did not have a role to inhabit, so he played his standby fantasy hierophant. Animated beasts were the most enjoyable characters in the show.

Edited to maximize sound volume with little in the way of environment-building sound texture or nuance.

There were so many missed opportunities to enrich the visual environment, not only through slick production, but through more thoughtful connection to the specific time and place.

Camera jogging even in serene moments was a constant distraction.

The previous movie was basically a buddy comedy with a frisson of romance. This movie was a series of poses in a solemn interpretive dance that you tried hard to follow and later learned was about the plight of the egret.

To end on a positive note: Jude Law did quite well, I thought.