Critics like Fantastic Beasts 3 more than the last one…but only just

When Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them came out in theaters in 2016, I think most people were at least willing to give it a chance. Okay, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was returning to the world she created to write a lower stakes prequel about a magical animal lover, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who has some adventures in the 1940s. That could be cute, right?

And it was, more or less…but even then, there were warning signs; like, didn’t planning for five movies seem a bit much? Why not just make one good one and see if there’s an appetite for a sequel? The second film, The Crimes of Grindelwald, was widely panned as the story drifted away from Newt and clumsily brought in darker themes. That movie made far less money than its predecessor and was embroiled in controversy over star Johnny Depp. And that was before Rowling herself decided to air out bigoted beliefs so backwards that only Vladimir Putin remains on her side.

That brings us to the third film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Depp, who played the dark wizard Grindelwald, is gone, replaced by on-call villain Mads Mikkelsen. Is this new movie the one to usher the series into the promised land, or is it too late to right this ship? Was it ever upright in the first place?

The Secrets of Dumbledore is an improvement over The Crimes of Grindelwald

Reviews for the movie are coming out, and they…could be worse? The movie seems to be going over better than The Crimes of Grindelwald, at least, if not as enthusiastic as they were for the first movie. “Secrets of Dumbledore is not quite so overpopulated as Crimes of Grindelwald, but some further scything or characters would have done no harm,” writes Donald Clarke of the Irish Times.

Critic Perri Nemiroff is also back on board for the new one. “Secrets of Dumbledore is a big bounce back for the Fantastic Beasts series — back to enjoying the group dynamic and caring about the main mission, which is a far more engaging and emotional ride than the last,” she said.

Brian Truitt of USA Today agrees that the movie is a step up. “There’s a renewed emphasis on magical creatures and another decidedly political bent to the franchise as it  digs into dark themes and offers a bewitching goofy side,” he writes. Numerous reviews also mention that the series is done dancing around the sexuality of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), whom Rowling revealed was gay way back in 2007 but who has resisted including that in the text of her work ever since. This time, the stormy relationship between him and Grindelwald is talked about openly, although not explicitly.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is overstuffed, undercooked

All of this is encouraging, but enough critics have enough problems with the movie to just barely get it a “Rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, at least as of this writing. Charles Bramesco of Polygon, for instance, points out that Newt Scamander has become a side character in his own series. “His presence has been reduced to a handful of whimsical interludes that feel severely out of place in what’s otherwise a morose political thriller,” he writes. “An evident attempt to right the ship has turned into a calamitous case of mission drift, as a property with no identity travels in nonsensical circles, looking for a sustainable new direction.”

A common complaint is that, although it’s not quite as bad as in the second movie, there’s a bloat of mythology, backstory, and secondary characters in this movie that makes it feel less like a rousing adventure and more like homework. “It’s hard to care much about any of the many, many characters in The Secrets of Dumbledore because hardly any of them have a meaningful storyline or character arc of their own,” writes William Bibbiani of TheWrap.

And then there’s the concern that has haunted the Fantastic Beasts saga since the beginning: is this series really necessary in a world that already has Harry Potter, which does everything it does but better? “Three installments in, Fantastic Beasts can’t shake the impression that it is merely a footnote in comparison to Harry Potter’s coming-of-age saga,” writes Tim Grierson of Screen International.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore comes out in theaters on April 15. I think I’ll skip this one, but I’ll be curious to hear what fans say when the doors are open to the public. What about you?

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels