filmlover

Hard to say when so much of this movie was a pointless exposition dump. It feels like it hardly matches up with the Harry Potter series even though they're supposed to be taking place in the same exact universe.

PTA average of $12,500. Not great. We'll see how it does next week.

Queenie going evil made absolutely no sense. Yeah, putting a love spell on Jacob was a bit much but she came across as bubbly and jittery and not at all sinister. Her going bad was just one of many things in this movie that made me go "wut?!"

Yeah, but it's still got three openers, one of which will be in well over 3,000 theaters (Spider-Man) and another that's a fellow WB release (The Mule). Theaters will start cleaning house before doing a total purge the following week.

A $65M opening would even make a sub-$150M total possible tbh. This thing is gonna have no staying power in the weeks ahead and will be almost completely gone by Christmas.

Watch Rowling shove even more forced Harry Potter connections in the next one. I wouldn't put it past her to even throw in one of the main trio somehow. After all, I'm sure Rupert Grint is available.

Because the movie obviously didn't have enough characters. It was like Infinity War except most of the characters have barely been established (and thus gave us very little reason to care).

It's hilarious how much they were hyping up Jude Law's Young Dumbledore and in the end he basically amounts to a glorified cameo. He was great with what little he was given though. Rowling should've just gone the Cinematic Universe route and given us different stories instead of trying to shove everything into one.

Heck, even the nostalgia play with the Hogwarts scene felt sloppy. Whenever we saw the school and the John Williams score kicked in all I could think was that I would have rather been at home watching the Harry Potters again than sitting in a theater enduring this hot mess.

Like the rest of the movie, it just made no sense at all. Rowling is clearly the biggest liability against these movies.

Yesterday was an extremely busy day at my theater with most movies selling out so I imagine increases were great for everything.

The stuff with Leta and the baby had me going:

I'm fully expecting Fantastic Beasts 2 to completely fall off a cliff after this weekend after seeing it last night. It's completely incomprehensible for anyone who isn't well-versed or knee-deep invested in Harry Potter lore (and maybe even for people who are). Won't be surprised if it's pulling sub-$10M weekend grosses by post-Thanksgiving in two weeks.

There is a scene where Grindelwald's henchwoman finds her outside the Ministry of Magic crying asking her if she's alright and has a place to go and then boom, that's it. Such an odd route for Rowling to go for a character in the previous film who gave off zero vibes of having sinister inclinations. Then again, this entire movie left me with a headache trying to make sense of everything that was happening on screen and how it fit anywhere within the already established Harry Potter universe. Very disappointing to see Rowling showing such disregard for her beloved franchise and turning it into a hollow shell of itself.