Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) I am not convinced at all that there’s anyone competent at the helm of the “Wizarding World” franchise. Not writer J. K. Rowling, clearly unable to keep the story straight now that she’s out of the Harry Potter cycle. Not perennial series director David Yates, who can helm efficiently but is unable to improve the material he’s given. And certainly not the executives at Warner Brothers mismanaging yet another franchise into the ground. How else to explain the zig-zags and multi-level inconsistencies to plague even a trilogy with the same creative people? The first Fantastic Beasts film was laborious, but had a few interesting ideas about how to reinvent a fantasy series protagonist. Then the second film went crazy in another direction with magic Nazis, incoherent plotting, a bunch of new characters and inconsistent characterization for those that returned. Now, in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, the good news is that this third entry is a marked step better than the previous one… but that the inconsistency and incoherencies are worse than ever, and any trust that the series knows where it’s going has been shattered. The story is more focused on a specific plot, what with the accession of the evil wizard Grindlewald to political power, and the merry crew associated with Dumbledore trying to prevent that. There are glimpses of competence in the way it’s put together, whether we’re talking at the surface level of the presentation or the deeper mechanics of storytelling and worldbuilding. (Although those wizards are certifiable morons when it comes to democratic institutions.)  Still, it’s hard to be all that enthusiastic about the result when it’s jerking around so much – I’ve seen unrelated triple-bills with more narrative and thematic consistency than this so-called trilogy. As with the new Star Wars sequel trilogy, it’s rather amazing that no one sat down to write a coherent plan for a massive filmmaking/cultural investment and then stuck to it. Although that same elementary mistake may become amusing if you’re the kind of person that despairs at the algorithmic determinism of powerful profit-making entities. No matter the cold alien mindset that leads to “intellectual property management” taking over “plain old storytelling,” everyone is humanly fallible, from writers trying to craft narratives to megacorporations built for quarterly earning report maximization. The Secrets of Dumbledore may not be worth buying on 4K UHD, but it’s almost comforting in how the evil wizards of corporate accounting don’t get to win over the merry crew of messy creations.