10 Great Performances That ALMOST Saved Disappointing Movies

10. Mads Mikkelsen - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore

The Fantastic Beasts franchise has not had an easy ride. Starting from a strong base, it has since been mired in controversy and has struggled to stretch a wafer-thin plot across a five-film timeline. Warner Bros giving the boot to Johnny Depp midway through the series probably didn't make things any easier either.

Nevertheless, though taking over from Depp in a franchise role was never going to be easy, Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen arrived at the perfect time, bringing some old-world menace to the role of series antagonist Gellert Grindelwald.

The Secrets of Dumbledore shows Grindelwald's rise to power in parallel with Hitler, and Mikkelsen, who has something of a penchant for playing icy and authoritative villains, plays the part to perfection. Unlike Depp, he doesn't ham up or oversell the role - he steps into it as though wrangling a particularly tight glove, caught between some dwindling sense of humanity and the evils he must commit to meet his ends.

Alas, even the great Dane's gifts couldn’t save what is undeniably a filler movie in an already convoluted and overstretched series trying to capitalise on the last dregs of the Wizarding World IP. Poorly received by critics, Fantastic Beats: The Secrets of Dumbledore took less at the box office than any other Potterverse film. C'est la vie.