The change in approach might be worth it if these movies were at least good at telling “adult” stories, but that’s not the case. The second Fantastic Beasts tries to give itself some weight by introducing the idea that the villain was trying to prevent the horrors of World War II (heavy stuff for something based on a 128-page illustrated children’s book written as a charity throwaway) but he’s still very obviously a bad guy who secretly wants to murder all humans and is just throwing the Holocaust stuff in there to con people. There’s no real moral dilemma for the other characters; the dude’s just evil.
In the new movie (spoilers ahead), he gets himself elected Wizard President via election fraud … which consists of putting a spell on the magic dragon-horse who picks the winner. Nobody actually votes for him — in fact, the characters have no actual political opinions beyond “evil bad.” (At least until Rowling reveals them on Twitter 10 years later.)
Even if you think the last few of the Harry Potter movies ended up being a drag, at least the darker tone there was a natural result of the characters growing up and the ongoing story reaching a somewhat logical conclusion. Here, it’s just a calculated decision to appeal to a specific target audience and squeeze more money out of a generation that has already given J.K. Rowling more than enough. Let us hope that when they inevitably turn some other short work of hers into a five-movie series, at least they’ll keep it consistent with what made this franchise beloved in the first place. (Hopefully, that “short work” isn’t one of her tweets, because oof.)
Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok‘s heroic effort to read and comment on every ’90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.
Top image: Warner Bros. Pictures