The third Fantastic Beasts film, The Secrets of Dumbledore, was released today in the United Kingdom, in Ireland, Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain, and in China. It has been on screens in Holland and Belgium since Wednesday and this weekend will expand into forty-four other markets, including France, Italy, Korea and all of Latin America. It will not be available for viewing in the United States until 15 April.

[Ugly Aside: Please explain to me that this delayed release was not simultaneously an acknowledgment that anti-Rowling animus is centered in the US and a way of preventing protests here and the attendant twitterati hate-fest that might distract from appreciation of the film elsewhere. I expect there are important marketing reasons, etc., but I am obliged to suspect the reason Warner Brothers intentionally diminished box office returns from the franchise’s opening weekend take was somehow related to the Transgender Tweet controversy.]

The film is receiving thumbs-up reviews for the most part, much of which seems to be relief that the new Magizoologist movie is a big improvement on the disappointing Crimes of Grindelwald installment. The Forbes review posted yesterday may be typical in its lede statement, “Yes, The Secrets of Dumbledore is better than The Crimes of Grindelwald, but it’s still (strong production values aside) mostly awful by any other standard.” Other reviews can be found here, here, here, and here.

I have not seen the film and have not read any reviews. My preference is to read the screenplay first, but that would mean missing the film first run in theaters because the hardcover will not be published until late July. I suspect I’ll give in and see it at the local Cineplex before the book comes out or it moves to HBO, 45 days from today. Iconoclastic as I find the medium, movies are made for movie theaters (or they used to be).

I may hold out, though, for the book and watch it on DVD. If I do, it will be just because this screenplay, unlike the first two, claims to be “The Complete Screenplay” rather than “The Original Screenplay,” a subtitle I have derided here again and again through the years as ridiculous and willful misrepresentation. My fantasy is that The Presence agreed — and this “Complete Screenplay” will include what she wrote rather than just a transcript of the cinematic sausage David Yates and David Heyman conspired with Steve Kloves to make of her work. As Kloves once put it, they have to make “the lady fit the dress,” i.e., Rowling’s genius hacked into block-buster formula…

Odds, of course, are very good, regardless of my holding out or giving in, that by the time I see it I will know more about it than any film since the Harry Potter adaptations were made, when everyone knew how each story would end, more or less. Not only are reviews now ubiquitous, but discussion here at HogwartsProfessor will necessarily include spoilers to get at the meat of the movie and to scorecard predictions. I look forward to reading the reviews here by our more film friendly faculty as much as our regular readers do though it will mean I will not experience the movie myself with anything like a suspension of disbelief (as if that were likely anyway).

To conclude with the point of this brief post, the plot of Secrets of Dumbledore has been posted at the film’s wikipedia page by an early viewer in a five paragraph summary that spills all the beans. I have not read it but Chris Calderon tells me that it is as complete an exposition of the story as you will find on wikipedia. Follow that link if you want to find out about the story before watching the film — and desist if you don’t! If you’ve seen the film, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment boxes below.