Not really sure how I can elaborate more on what other people have said, but yeah, very boring, long winded and confusing. If I hadn't watched the movie with someone who already saw it, I would have been lost. I had to keep pausing it and having them explain the plot to me. I was worried I was being a moron, but looking at other reviews, it seems I'm not the only one who was completely lost. Characters seemed to turn up out of completely nowhere, and some of the time, they're characters who have already been in previous scenes but since they weren't very well introduced or explained, I just kind of forgot they'd been in the film before. It's called "crimes of grindalwald", but he doesn't really do much of anything except walk around, all the film does is establish lore for the next movie.

The reason I hated the first Fantastic Beasts was because it felt like one long trailer for the next movie. This movie just felt like a world building info dump for the third movie in what I presume will be a trilogy. I'm still waiting for the movie I went to watch 2 years ago and they keep holding it off. The characters aren't nice or lovable, or memorable, so when they turn evil or die, I simply don't care about it.

The main character, whatever his name was, (just had to google it, Newt Scaramadger) is entirely unlikable and didn't really need to be in the film. Like, leave him as just a character for exclusively the first movie, and put all the content of the third movie into this one. all the grindlewald world building would only take like 15 minutes with him gone. And have grindlewald actually commit a ton of evil acts. His henchman does one or two bad things, but the man himself is legend for being a dark wizard and general menace, in this he just seems to be an extreme politician. I get the social commentary and all, but for a film called "crimes of grindalwald", i wanted to see him commit some. This film should have covered the period it skipped over. Why was grindalwald in jail? lets see him be friends with dumbledore. how did he become a dark wizard? all the stuff I'm actually interested in is skipped over, in favor of having some weird kid who turns into a floating black cloud who I don't care about be tracked down by everyone and treated like he has some important destiny that we aren't privvy to.

But yeah, the plot was very messy and didn't make much sense. You shouldn't need a 300 IQ to piece together the plot of a Harry Potter film. I also felt myself questioning holes in logic in the wizarding world I never even had before, because this film didn't portray the universe very well. none of the charm of harry potter, just a bunch of special effects and a drab, predictable fantasy world that didn't make me excited one bit. Overall, will only watch the next one out of obligation, and will definitely wait until a friend or family member gets a DVD so I don't have to pay to see it.