24TH November, 2018
REVIEW: Fantastic Beasts - The Crimes of Grindelwald by J.K. Rowling
Well, let me start out by saying that I haven't seen the film yet. I've made it a rule to always read the book before I watch its adaptation and even though this here isn't a novel but a screenplay, I still wanted to read it first. So this is a review of the book, not the film.
My thoughts on The Crimes of Grindelwald are ambivalent: I liked this second story way better than the first, but I'm unfortunately still not in love with the new series as for me it's somehow lacking the magic that the original books have. Don't get me wrong: Grindelwald is a wonderful villain, Newt's nerdy weirdness is kind of cute and I adore Queenie but... (and this is a big BUT)... somehow I have trouble really connecting with these characters. I just don't feel WITH them like I did with Harry, Ron and Hermione. Dumbledore as a youngish man is interesting enough but he's still lacking so much of his fatherly character traits that we know from the original books that he feels like a completely different person altogether.
A lot of fans have complained about these new stories taking too many liberties with making changes in the so-called canon but, honestly, these changes are not what is bothering me. (As a literary scholar I have a tendency to be quite careful with the word canon anyway.) However, I'm simply not sure whether I really need to learn about the wizarding world's past and I do have my problems with the very extreme marketisation of the franchise. I know that this is probably an unpopular opinion but, personally, I would have been quite content with the original books ending where they did and the stories of the wizarding world closing with them. Right now, I have the feeling that the new franchise is taking a little bit of magic away from the old stories.
Rating: 3/5 stars