(1) Only Rowling – A: Only J. K. Rowling could get away with making such a disastrous stand-alone movie. Film goers not well versed in the characters, relationships, and plot points of the first film, heck, the entire Wizarding World mythology, are going to be lost from start to finish in Crimes of Grindelwald. This is to skip over the large ensemble cast, the hurried-to-the-point-of-blurring character development, and the series of go-nowhere references and unfinished bridges in the story-line signaling “On To the Next Film!” Only Rowling and her team of film makers would have been given a pass from Warner Brothers to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to make and market this blockbuster production that will leave non-Potter-philes wondering, “What the hell was that about?” And delight the fandom base…

(2) Only Rowling – B: Really, the depths and tricks and McGuffins and literary magic in this movie! I hope to be writing four longish posts in the coming month on the ring structure of Crimes, the alchemical points, the narrative slow release and misdirection, and the requisite ‘Hidden Text’ that the characters are trying to interpret as we try to interpret the story they’re in. This is Rowling at the top of her game and unleashed in another medium, free to break the rules to create the episodic story only she can pull off.

(3) The Gamesmanship: I am so glad I stayed out of the “Figure Out Every Clue from the Trailers!” blogging and YouTube interpretative frenzy before the film’s release. I can think of several pictures and sequences that weren’t even in the movie — and the direct hits the frenetic seekers after secrets before we had the text came up with (and there were a bunch, of course, most remarkably the blood oath token) did little to dull the effect of the many surprises and story shifts of the final product. The Warner Brothers marketing team that kept that part of fandom who followed all their clues in a feeding frenzy without giving away the fun deserve some kind of Honorary Oscar for Deceit In Pre-Release Hype. They are the masters.

I am out the door to buy my copy of the book, the Surely-not-Original Screenplay, and to watch the film a second time. Because, again, this is an ‘Only Rowling’ experience in movie making; as with her novels, you will not, cannot get it until you begin the re-reading — a re-reading with the knowledge of the tricks she has in her kit and her preferred tools to transform our vision. Please share your first thoughts below!

The owls from around the world are coming in to ask what the HogwartsProfessor team thinks of the new Wizarding World franchise film, The Crimes of Grindelwald. My son has seen it and charted the scenes at his lonely viewing on Tuesday (only fifteen fans showed up for the Fandungo early release showing in OKC — Dumbledore’s scene with Leta is the storypivot, his chart says). I hope to see the movie and buy the screenplay tomorrow — or buy and read the screenplay before seeing the film. That would be different, no?

What I hope will happen in this post’s comment thread is that serious film viewers and readers will share their thoughts down below about Crimes of Grindelwald, ask questions you hope we will try to answer here in the coming weeks, and begin discussion yourself of the actors and actresses, director’s cut, the music, the scenery, the costuming, i.e., the movie’s successes, failures, and what your best guess is about films three, four, and five. Let the criticism,interpretation, and speculation begin…

If your review runs to more than several hundred words, send it to me via the contact page here and I’ll see if it is appropriate for a Guest Post. The more the merrier! Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts, your questions, your answers, your complaints, and your praise for Crimes of Grindelwald below. See you there.

If you want to read the first published reviews of Crimes of Grindelwald, there are twelve thumbs up-thumbs down reviews posted at SnitchSeeker.com or go to this one-stop collection at Variety online. I hope to see the film on the 13th but may not be able to; whether I am or not, though, we won’t be discussing the film here until the 16th when everybody gets to watch and when the authorized screenplay is published. Much of the fun of a new book or movie is experiencing it for oneself, so I will refrain from commentary until a week from today.

That being said, I am excited about this short film clip below from the screenplay writer in which she discusses what she is after in the second Fantastic Beasts franchise chapter and in which she makes no ‘reveals’ or ‘spoilers’ with respect to plot points. She even shares her thoughts, believe it or not, on the “structure” of the film.

I do really enjoy a challenge. It was finding the structure to make sense of all these different strands, so that people understood when they hit our climactic scene, what was at stake, and why characters were reacting as they were reacting to Grindelwald. 

A transcript of these comments can be found here. “Finding the structure” — let’s make that our first task in figuring out how Crimes of Grindelwald does or doesn’t work. Enjoy! Accio 16 November!

The first fan screenings of Crimes of Grindelwald have happened and, remarkably, the audiences there have not yet tweeted out all the secrets of the latest Fantastic Beasts film. [Stand by for the inevitable wave of spoilers!] For those of us who have to wait until the 13th or 16th, enjoy the snippet above with some of the new Beasts in Crimes, and, for the readers more interested in what Rowling is after thematically in this series, check out these interview comments she made about the film, especially those about the Obscurus and Maledictus.

On Credence:

Rowling: “You could justifiably have believed Credence had been killed, but, in fact, you can’t kill an Obscurial when they’re in Obscurus form. He survived, but the big question for him now is, ‘Who am I?’ His quest for his true identity is what propels him and becomes one of the major story strands in this movie. Who is Credence?”

“He developed an Obscurus, which is both a coping mechanism and something that will ultimately kill you. Except it hasn’t killed him, so we know he must be very powerful to have survived this condition for so long.”

On Nagini, the Maledictus:

Rowling: “A Maledictus is someone who carries a blood curse that, over time, turns them into a beast. They can’t stop it, they can’t turn back. They will lose themselves…they will become the beast with everything that implies.”

“These movies have given me the chance to tell a story about Nagini’s origin. There were always hints because the Naga are mythological snake beings, so her name was an allusion to the fact that she may have had human antecedents, or she may once have been human herself. Through the years I have been asked about it, but I never wanted to give away this dollop of her backstory. But now I get to reveal it, which is very satisfying and fits perfectly into the theme of this movie.”

Have you wondered about the Christian content of Fantastic Beasts compared with the Hogwarts Saga? All signs — not to mention this post on the literary allusion implicit in the Maledictus by Beatrice Groves — point to this “beast within” theme as the heart of it and the path of fallen creatures to redemption after temptation and, well, sin. This may very well be the heart of the Dumbledore story, “how Dumbledore becomes Dumbledore,” and the crux of the Credence/Corvus ‘power vs love’ story-line. ‘Accio, November 13th!’