The first fantastic beasts wasn't all that complex and the quantity of characters was few enough that I was able to follow everything. At times it seemed like the first film spent too much time on just visual antics of trying to find the missing creatures.

I read a few reviews claiming that this film made similar miscues, and I heartily disagree. This one did have some boring stretching of action and cgi. But it wasn't boring because tbe film was lacking in ingredients. Crimes of Grindelwald seemed to come up short because it was overpacked with new characters, new settings, new relationships and new dilemmas without much of a foundation as to why we should care about the ordeals the new characters were going through. There were a few Hogwarts scenes and flashbacks which were likable. Although, I thought Dumbledore taught Transfiguration rather than DATDA. Jude Law as Dumbledore almost seemed to make up for how terrible it felt to have Johnny Depp playing Grindelwald. I'm not a fan of Johnny Depp playing sinister or wacky characters. Letta Lastrange or her fiancé didn't come off to me as very well established, but it seeemd we were supposed to care deeply about them. There were about 4 other characters which were similarly thrown into the fray without much to go on.

The actions scenes seemed entertaining and dramatic. But I was never on the edge of my seat because there wasn't enough established leading up to the war for all the new characters to carry significant interest. And this is probably what made the film seem boring. As I hinted in my title, it felt like there should have been an additional movie or two to set up all the stuff prior to the climax of this film. It felt a lot more like Justice League than the first Avengers movie in that there were so many characters together who we had so little time to know anything about prior to the war starting. There were a lot of peices to the story. But not enough depth regarding the peices to warrant a ton of interest.

There has got to be more than familiar names, characters and creatures to keep me excited. And I'm a big Harry Potter fan. But Harry Potter is good because the story and adventure for the characters is more engrossing than the sum of its parts. Fantastic beasts so far is looking a bit like a mess to explore many things including things to setup the Harry Potter. Which is unnecessary and often uninteresting. Even though I like the calls to the original source material, it almost feels the story would have worked better if they had kept the bulk of the story showing the American environment or British environment, and only introduced a few new characters rather than throwing so much into action.

I hope this chapter in the story is at least more interested after the later films are released or perhaps after a review. But for now I was more mystified than pleased by what I saw.