Everyman Bristol
The Crimes of Dumbledore definitely exists. It is definitely a movie. The three young people I watched it with appeared to enjoy it. The older people sitting behind me yelped and gasped at every plot development.
I am not sure how to describe my feelings. Ennui? Existential horror? Despair? It was like one of those acts that wins a TV talent contest: brilliantly presented, well packaged, slick, doing all the right things, but unable to disguise the fact that they have nothing to say; no reason to exist; no purpose except to be the kind of act that wins TV talent contests.
I am wrong. Secrets of Dumbledore is not a movie. It is the opposite of a movie. I am not even completely sure that it can be said to exist.
If I have got this right, a villain, Grindlewald, is trying to get elected as Chief Wizard, in order to start a war between the Wizards and the Trade Federation Muggles. A slightly sinister secret agent figure in a long black cloak who we are supposed to believe is a younger version of the dotty, amiable headmaster in the Harry Potter books, gathers some characters together and sends them on a Quest to stop him. Dumbledore isn't allowed to fight Grindlewald directly because of a Plot Device: a magic "can't fight each other" charm they made when they were dating.
Although the story is meant to be taking place in the 1930s -- and possibly even Berlin in the 1930s -- there is no suggestion that social attitudes to gay people are any different from what they are now. Dumbledore and Grindlewald at the Kit Kat Club might have been worth the price of admission. One of the Young People felt that the brief glimpse we saw of them together was very much a straight person's picture of a queer couple.
The team consists of Newt Scamander, who was meant to be the main character in a trilogy about magic animals but got sideline by the backstory; his brother; the comedy baker from the first movie; and two others who had entirely dropped out of my memory.
Grindlewald can see into the future, which means that if the player characters have a coherent plan, he'll be able to predict it. So they have to have multiple contradictory plans or one big incoherent one. This is, I admit a clever way of apologising for the more than usually confusing plot. The film is weirdly credited to "J.K Rowling and Someone Else" "based on a script by J.K Rowling", which makes one suspect that a lot of midnight oil was burned script doctoring it into coherence.
And off they go: mostly to Germany but also back to Hogwarts, trying very hard to stop the bad thing from happening. There's a big scene in the German Ministry of Magic, possibly, and at a banquet, and a big climax in India, possibly, and also an over-extended Jacksonesque epilogue in New York. People try to infiltrate things and assassinate each other and the wrong people get framed for it and captured and escape.
The big twist at the end of the last "movie" was that the weird kid from the nasty orphanage, previously called Credence Barebone is actually named Aurelius Dumbledore. He was thought dead but actually rescued from the Titanic (possibly) as a baby. He is now operating as Grindelwald's henchwizard, and tries to kill Albus Dumbledore, in one of those fight scenes in which all the street furniture goes wibbly wobbly, like Doctor Strange and before that Inception. Dumbledore Snr. survives and Dumbledore Jnr. starts to think that siding with the bad guys may not be such a great idea after all. It transpires [GASP! from back row] that he's actually the son of (o god) Abeforth Dumbledore's brother. The one who sells the kids non-alcoholic beer in the Hogwarts theme-park attraction. So, the film really does reveal the Secret of Dumbledore, but it's a different Dumbledore from the one we were expecting.
At the beginning, it looks as if the Chief Wizard is going to be elected democratically, but it turns out that in order to get the job, a CGI Unicorn, called a Quillin, has to lay its head in your lap. Grindewald is going to nobble the election by means of a zombie Quillin he prepared earlier; but Newt smuggles a real Quillin into the wizard-choosing ceremony. The beast rejects Gindlewald and choses Dumbledore instead, but Dumbledore doesn't want the job so it goes to...er...someone else.
Grindlewald and Dumbledore have a fight. They aren't supposed to be able to have a fight due to the blood-charm-plot-device-thing, but Grindlewald's initial attack spell breaks it, which is said to be an amazing stroke of fate. I could think of other ways of describing it.
The pre-cred sequence showed Newt finding a pregnant Mummy Qullin and helping one of its babies escape from Grindlewald's agents. Later on, when his brother is framed for murder Newt frees him by charming a lot of nasty magical lobsters that inhabit the German wizard prison. He performs a very elaborate magical dance that the critters have to join in. These two sequences are very funny and rather charming, and reminded me of those whimsical Harry Potter books that some people used to quite like. This is what Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find them really ought to have been like: The Amusing Adventures of Wizardy Indiana Jones And His Collection of Funny Animals in the Olden Days. But somehow, it became about Wizard Politics and Wizard Committee Meetings.
I didn't not enjoy the film. I have said that as a young Marvel fan, I rather liked reading the odd DC comic because, not knowing who any of the characters were or what was going on, I could just revel in the superhero tropes. I like Dune and Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. There is a certain pleasure in watching people in long black cloaks having portentous, slightly over acted assignations in dramatic locations, even if you have entirely lost track of the where's and whyfores.
Characters who I hardly remember. Lines being drawn between them. A backstory being laboriously shaded in. Casual fans being whittled down to hard core fans and even harder core more fanatical fans. The ones who read all the books; the ones who read all the books multiple times; the one who watched the last two films; the one who watched the last two films multiple times; the ones who watched the last two films multiple times and queued up to get tickets for both parts of the stage play; the ones who watched the stage play and studied The Official Harry Potter Website TM to learn even more lore...
It's the lore that made the people behind me salivate in their salted caramel milkshake. Not the plot: there wasn't one. The lore.
Oh my god.
This is what Star Wars must look like to the rest of the world.
5 comments:
I'll probably watch it for free somewhere if they decide not to cancel the series.
But I am mostly amused by how badly it's doing.
I am not that invested in the series: the 'Wizarding World (tm)' feels more of an artificial construct than Middle Earth or even Narnia. I do wonder if JK Rowling's name on the posters is at her instance that she is not going to be marginalised in her own creation. I gather that the romance between Dubledore and Grindlewald was the toned-down version which even then failed to get past the Chinese censors, who were presumably not distracted by the magical Chinese unicorn or the Chinese candidate in the wizard election. Compared with the wizard council in the first movie which looked like a child's idea of the United Nations, everyone seems to wear dark suits and trench coats, and Germany may have been banned under the Treaty of Versailles from having any bright colours or sympathetic characters: it does feel a little as though the Germans were chosen as a 'safe' villain who would not offend any potential markets for the movie. That being said, there were odd details that worked: the Niffler eying up the jailor's gold teeth, a monster that fears light and then your lamp flickers out, and Newt's loyal secretary commissioning a series of duplicate suitcases for a husband who is so absent-minded that he forgets she exists. The fight scene with the six briefcases is also well-staged. The art direction is pretty, from the Art Deco train to the austere inn which reflects Aberforth's desolated soul. Some of the twists may be less arbitrary than they first seem: replacing democracy with a traditional magic unicorn is proposed by someone who turns out to be a traitor, and the breach between Dumbledore and Grindlewald kind of happens through a plausible freak accident which may bypass the block on consciously attacking each other. However, it did feel like dining in a nice takeaway chain rather than proper home cooking.
Fond as I am of both fantastic beasts in general and Jude Law in particular, I did wonder if I was missing anything. Then I read that Warner Bros managed to de-gay it sufficiently to satisfy the Chinese censor by cutting *six seconds* of dialogue and I thought 'screw them all'. Not queer enough to upset the bigots isn't representation worth a damn.
Is Dumbledoor still Native American, it did that idea then out to be too silly even for JKR?
It's funny that the film got gasps and sobs from the audience at every completely predictable plotbeat. I experienced that while watching Revenge of the Sith. Sometimes you're annoyed with a movie while everybody else seems to be completely immersed.
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