Fantastic Beasts 2 doesn't have particular elements that stand out as terrible, but it's more of a letdown across the board. The biggest problems come from the characters being poorly developed and uninteresting. In the first, Newt was a fun, quirky protagonist who was easy to root for and a pleasure to watch in his adventures and with his animals. There are still a couple warm scenes with his beasts and interacting with his friends, but the movie spends less time with him and it feels less like his story and more of an overplotted broad one. Tina doesn't have a moment of development in the film, and Jacob is relegated from a funny muggle who dives headfirst into the wizarding world for his friends to irrelevant and frustratingly obvious as only having value in comic relief. Queenie was a terribly written character after being an interesting one in the first - her manipulation of Jacob seemed unusual, and her utter weakness and malleability for Grindelwald was at odds with her strong powers and character from the first. It felt like a lot of exposition and no emotional attachment to the characters. Even the character and performance I liked the most by a mile, Leta Lestrange, wasn't fully developed and we have no idea what goes on in her mind or why she's marrying Newt's brother. Nagini is a fascinating character to introduce, and Flamel holds significant weight for obvious reasons, but both felt like pieces thrown out as exciting, recognizable characters from Harry Potter who didn't actually do anything here. The tone of the movie is consistently very dark, and the gritty, urban feel is pervasive. This contributed to the build and uncertainty of the core question of the movie: who is Credence? The theories thrown around are not clear until late in the movie, but for a reveal that was heavily built up, it didn't fit and felt more like a big twist for its sake. I also found the "climactic" battle scene with Grindelwald to just be atrocious. Sure, Grindelwald makes a ring of blue fire (though if he wanted to kill everyone why not shoot it at them immediately, and not just when they try to apparate away?), and Leta's sacrifice was reasonable. But then they go outside, Grindelwald starts tossing blue fire all over the city, so Flamel tells everyone to work together and they all just put their wands into the ground and make orange fire that cancels out the blue fire? I'm sorry, what??? How many died versus escaped, and exactly how Grindelwald's fire moved and affected people was very unclear due to poor editing and effects. Why Newt was so essential and more important to Dumbledore's plan and the Ministry than the others fighting Grindelwald was also never made clear. Grindelwald's view was simple and clear and drew obvious parallels to Nazi Germany (especially that last speech), but the concerted effort by the Ministry and friends to stop him was much less clear. In general, from scene to scene I just wasn't invested in the characters or intrigued by the plot, and the big reveals and events the movie built to were disappointing and some even embarrassing. Plenty of elements that don't seem to fit with canon, so many plots and characters thrown in there for no good reason, and no real positives or enjoyable scenes makes for an utterly unenjoyable experience. It's a bummer, because the Harry Potter movies were so well made and Fantastic Beasts was light and warmhearted with great effects, but this one tried for a dark tone and lots of characters and major plot events, and managed to bungle just about all of it. Hopefully the third will be a return to form for Yates and this ends up as an aberration.