It's better than the last one for sure, and beautifully mounted from a production perspective. The two and a half hours definitely move quickly, and Jessica Williams is a fun addition. But still this franchise suffers from a major lack of urgency and general feeling of pointlessness. It continues to feel like they're just treading water until they can make the Cursed Child movie you know is on their agenda. Still might be worth checking out for fans of the Harry Potter series though. B-

Kinda feels like they don't really need to make another film tbh... lol not that this felt like an epic conclusion but if they never made another one then ok, there wasn't really a huge cliffhanger.

I just rewatched the first two before seeing this and this one was leagues better than #2. The problem with these movies are the script/story.

Probably intentional since they new this one was a financial risk. Don't see how it does more than about 400m WW

I liked this one a lot. Definitely wasn't on par with the Potter films, but leagues ahead of the second. Good character work, and it makes much more sense for Aurelius to be Aberforth's son rather than his little brother. Gorgous sets costumes, I don't know if this was shot on location but it was convincing if it was not.

Enjoyed it. Solid B/B+. Think critics were, well, too critical here due to outside factors and not the film itself (it has much stronger audience scores than the second film).

-Jessica Williams was great as Prof. Hicks. Honestly, she might be my favorite character in the FB series after Newt.
-Mads Mikkelsen was superb as usual. His facial expressions during the climax were particularly good.
-The set design in general has always been strong in all the HP and FB films, and this one is no different.

The soundtrack was a little bit of a disappointment this time. It features many of the great tracks from the previous two films, and the new ones Howard composed didn't really connect (very samey).

Unless I'm missing something story-related, I feel this could have ended here though. Not that I want that, I'd be glad with another film or two, but if it ends like this it'll be pretty disappointing.

The big Dumbledore/Grindelwald duel could have happened here versus giving us a tease of it we got here. If I recall correctly, their duel is mentioned as the greatest duel anyone had ever seen, and since the world was watching here, it would have made perfect sense to have it at that moment. The ending of the film also seemed fairly concluding, and would have been a good farewell afterward.

I actually liked Crimes of Grindelwald more than this. That movie completely unravels at the end, with a poorly timed exposition followed by characters making stupid decisions that made us like them so much less. However, up until that point, I remember a fun little romp through the wizarding world. Comfort before devolving into frustration.

Secrets of Dumbledore is mostly just boring though. And the story, while given a much more satisfying wedding ending, is just as much of a mess as last time. The main difference is dumping all the exposition at the beginning. So the momentum of the movie is never killed like in Grindelwald, but honestly it never really has a chance to build up either. The whole election storyline never makes any sense. So Grindlewald is randomly pardoned of his crimes by the German ministry, but then gets to run for Supreme Mugwald, the leader of the entire Wizard World (was this ever estasblished before)? What about the countries that still view him as a criminal? And then it all comes down to some magic deer picking the winner? And also, why would people trust in the process of the magic deer if they had direct proof that the magic deer could be manipulated a few minutes earlier? And also also, why did they build up Jacob as pure of heart through the entire movie, ready to prove the wizard nazis wrong about muggles, only for the magic deer to bow to Dumbledore? What was Jacob even doing there then?

I actually missed Tina. Not just because of her character, but Next just seems so empty without her around. The ever-so-chawming Southern-American teacher is fun for awhile, but considering she never does anything but be confident it actually lowers the tension in key scenes.

So yeah, I could rant more, but I'm just ready for this franchise to be done. It started decently with some fun new characters in some fun new locations ... and it should have stayed like that. C-