In the process, he reveals himself to be gay (by way of some conveniently excisable dialogue) and a onetime wizard supremacist. But it’s woefully pleasure free from the first scene, in which Grindelwald’s underlings kill a rare animal called a qilin and steal its young, to the final showdown in a village high in the mountains of Bhutan.Įddie Redmayne, hunching his shoulders and exuding hesitancy as Newt Scamander, is still the nominal lead, but after spending two films with an unconventional hero, The Secrets of Dumbledore is champing at the bit to shift its focus to a more standard one - like, for instance, the dashing Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), who comes to the forefront and offers an explanation for why he has been so committed to staying on the sidelines. It’s slightly more coherent than 2018’s The Crimes of Grindelwald, which is saying something given that its characters embark on missions they don’t understand in an effort to stymie the clairvoyant ability that Gellert Grindelwald (played by a game Mads Mikkelsen, taking over for a now radioactive Johnny Depp) bloodily obtains.

Rowling, this time with the help of Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves. The Secrets of Dumbledore is, like the first two films, directed by David Yates and written by J.K. Fantastic Beasts is in the middle of floundering through a planned five-film run it may never actually finish - a decision that hinges on audience interest but may also owe something to the fact that no one involved in these movies seems to have any idea what their appeal is supposed to be.

Or maybe all The Secrets of Dumbledore is yearning for is some structure and reason for being. It’s viscous with a nostalgia that goes beyond fan service, as though the film itself were yearning to return to a simpler time - when its leads were played by carefully chosen unknowns instead of trouble-prone stars, when its source material’s author was a fairy-tale success story rather than an infamous transphobe, and when it could hawk some cozy, magical British boarding-school details rather than devote all its focus to an approaching war with Wizard Hitler. The movie is a dour-looking thing overall, but it briefly turns honey-colored in a sequence that glimpses a student swooping by on a broomstick, wanders through the Great Hall, and visits the Room of Requirement. The Secrets of Dumbledore, the third and most recent installment, is about nothing short of a skirmish for the soul of the wizarding world, and it still finds a way to make a stop at Hogwarts. Like a listless 20-something who’s moved home after college with no idea what to do next, the Fantastic Beasts series keeps seeking out the familiarity of high school.

New dumbledore movie