The Fantastic Beasts Trilogy
published 2026-05-16 | tags: #backlog #movies
J.K. Rowling is vocally anti-trans, which I obviously think is an abhorrent stance to take; especially for somebody so famous and the creator of a series so beloved by so many young people. In an attempt to offset Rowling's toxic hate against the trans community, and offset promoting her work implicitly with this post, I have made a $25 donation to Basic Rights Oregon. I'm sure most of the people that worked on these movies are great individuals, and I think their work is worth celebrating, but Rowling is so prominent I didn't feel right just ignoring her very public hate toward trans people.
I watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), and The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) on a very strong recommendation from a friend who recently had a baby. In an effort to connect with that friend during her maternity leave, and because I didn't really have anything else to watch while I was exercising, I turned the first one on and honestly I was happy with it enough to watch all three over about a week and a half of workouts.
The stories flow well, there's plenty of action paced steadily, the story and character motives all track, it's a totally solid expansion of the wizard world established in Harry Potter.
My one gripe with the series that I can't shake is what I'm going to call the "Rule of Cool" flaw, which is that a lot of stuff just happens because it looks cool.
- Why is this specific monster here? It looks cool.
- Why are they casting this specific spell? It looks cool.
- Why did they recast the big baddie 2/3 through the series? That's actually just because Johnny Depp got canceled -- oops.
So yeah, totally solid series. If you like fun CGI action adventure you'll probably enjoy the Fantastic Beasts movies.