The Writing and Photography Blog of Kevin J Sabo

I went in to Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindewald with mixed expectations.

It’s not that I was expecting it to be a bad show, but after how well done the first one was I wasn’t sure how a sequel would do. 

In a word: WOW. 

From the opening sequence to the end credits, the movie succeeded drawing you in, and kept moving at a breakneck speed. This is one of very few movies where I didn’t check the time on my watch once during the show. 

Despite how contentious a figure Johnny Depp has been recently in real-life, his casting as Grindewald was fantastic, as was the casting of Jude Law as the young Albus Dumbledore. 

Without getting into spoiler territory, I have to say that I was surprised at the direction this movie took. In the context of the first movie, the second movie creates some more questions about the first, such as what was Newt really doing in New York?

Where the first Fantastic Beasts could easily be watched and enjoyed as a one off movie, Fantastic Beasts 2 definitely feels like a part of something bigger, answering some questions from the first movie, but leaving quite a few more by the time of it’s conclusion. I look forward to seeing where the story goes from here. 

Kevin