Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore [DVD] [2022]

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This is also the first Fantastic Beasts movie where Rowling is sharing screenplay credit, with Steve Kloves, the man who adapted all but one of the Harry Potter movies. It feels like another act of trying to salvage this franchise. I've read plenty of critics claiming that this movie corrects the screenwriting miscues of the past films, and to this I do not agree. Reaching out for help from an industry veteran used to adapting Rowling's imagination is a smart move, but the movie still suffers like the previous Fantastic Beast movie from a plot overburdened with incident and less on substance, willfully obtuse and convoluted in its plotting. Since Grindelwald gains the power to see into the future, a power that is woefully underutilized, the only way to disguise Dumbledore's plot to uncover election fraud is through sheer confusion. They have to make things purposely confusing and hard to follow on purpose, dear reader. A purposely convoluted and confusing movie is the only way they can beat the bad guy. It's like Kloves is speaking directly to the audience and admitting defeat at keeping anything clear. I went to brush up by reading the Wikipedia summary for this review and even that made me tired. A wizard heist is a great setup, but Secrets of Dumbledore cannot live up to that potential. The set pieces don't lean into what a wizard heist could bestow. There's one memorable sequence where Newt and his brother must escape from a crustacean prison by literal crab-walking. It's the only light in an otherwise dismal, overwhelmingly grey movie. It all feels less transporting and more plodding. All that being said, the future of the Fantastic Beasts series is still unclear, but a fourth movie hasn't totally been ruled out yet. There's every chance the new bosses at Warner Bros Discovery will choose to continue a known property, despite the box-office drops. Mikkelsen replaces Johnny Depp, who was asked by Warner Bros. to step down after he lost a libel lawsuit. He had sued British tabloid The Sun for calling him a "wife beater," in the contentious fallout after his divorce from Amber Heard. Mikkelsen spoke to GamesRadar about taking over the role "Obviously I have only been part of it for half the time that the rest of the gang has. It was a lovely experience," he said. "I think they had a really great script; a great, solid story."

The second official Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore trailer focuses on the wizarding war, giving fans of the Harry Potter movie something familiar (with less beasts, more rivalries). Mads Mikkelsen looks truly menacing as Gellert Grindelwald.That means nearly three and a half years will have passed since the second film, Crimes of Grindelwald. The current Fantastic Beasts 3 release date is April 15, 2022. But the U.K. will see the movie arrive April 8. After several delays, The Secrets of Dumbledore arrived in cinemas in April 2022, almost four years after the sequel. A large part of the delay was out of its control as the ongoing global pandemic affected its filming. Fantastic Beasts 3 could build on this and show that Grindelwald has amassed quite a lot of power in five to six years and has stoked fears to the point of WWII. Maybe he's behind the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Meanwhile, we may see Newt and his friends searching the world for the blood pact so that Dumbledore is released from it and can eventually duel Grindelwald. Fantastic Beasts 3 has recast the role of Gellert Grindelwald. The dark wizard will now be played by Mads Mikkelsen, a Danish actor and former gymnast most famous in the U.S. for starring in the series Hannibal. He recently earned a BAFTA nomination for Another Round, which won Best International Film at the 2021 Oscars.

Of course, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore's soft box-office performance doesn't guarantee that this is the end of the series. Rowling has said that the movies will cover 19 years of Wizarding World history. That will take the last one up to 1945, the year that Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald and claimed the Elder Wand from him.

This is obviously a more direct comparison because it’s the next film," Mikkelsen explained. "So we have done a few bridges that will allow us to recognize it, but we’ve also said we have to make it our own. I have been a fan of Johnny Depp since I saw him as a young man, and to try to bring his intensity and his way of doing it into my work is a no-go. I have to find my own, because his is unique, and I just have to let that be, and find a different path." Fantastic Beasts 3: The Secrets of Dumbledore plot and timeline

Could we see some Harry Potter favourites show up in a fourth movie? Ahead of the release of the third movie, Fogler didn't shut down the rumours that we could see a younger version of Hagrid at some point. I am from the Harry Potter generation, I grew up with the books and the movies so there's no denying that I am a massive fan of the saga, so when the first news of prequels came out I was as you might imagine expectant! Fantastic Beasts 4has yet to be officially confirmed by Warner Bros, although the series was always planned to be a five-movie series. The Secrets of Dumbledore finally landed in cinemas on April 8 in the UK and a week later in the US. It was received (slightly) better by critics with 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and the audience rating ended up higher (84%) than even the first Fantastic Beasts movie. It's a neat wrap-up of the three movies to date without a major cliffhanger to resolve as there was with The Crimes of Grindelwald's ending. Fans know from canon where the story is going and you could easily see it being the final Fantastic Beasts movie.There's a chance the movie could rebound on its home release enough to persuade Warner Bros that, maybe, one final movie could be worthwhile. Neither of the planned fourth or fifth movies has been written, so it's not out of the question that the events could be squished into one movie. This changed a bit when the second movie came around, Crimes of Grindelwald made a clear shift on the story and started to force itself in the "Harry Potter" timeline by navigating through the past of some of the beloved characters present in the original movies. As we mentioned before, perhaps Warner Bros was protecting itself against this with the way The Secrets of Dumbledore plays out. By the end of the threequel, Grindelwald has been exposed (again), Queenie and Jacob get married and Newt reunites with Tina Goldstein. Depp resigned at Warner Bros.' request after having filmed one scene as Grindelwald. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he will still be paid his full salary, however, to fulfill the terms of his contract. Will we see the next two movies in the series as originally planned? Your guess is as good as ours, but as of September 2022, there has been no definitive word about the future of the series.

The cast of Fantastic Beasts 3: The Secrets of Dumbledore is led by Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, a British Ministry of Magic employee in the Beasts Division of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Related: 13 major Harry Potter events that happen during the 19 years of the Fantastic Beasts series

Unfortunately, you'll have to wait as filming on Fantastic Beasts 4 hasn't begun yet, so it'll be a while before we see a trailer. Behind the camera, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them director David Yates (who also helmed the last four Harry Potter movies) signed on to direct all of the movies in the series. Not a ton is known about the plot Fantastic Beasts 3, but an interview, cast member Dan Fogler revealed that the movie takes place partly in Brazil. He also teased that it's set in 1939 before World War II.