Fantastic Beasts 2 Trailer 2 Reactions: 6 Ups & 2 Downs
More beasts, more badass...
It might not be out until the end of the year, but Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald is increasingly looking like one of the most exciting movies currently heading towards release. We'd already had one trailer for the forthcoming sequel, which promised a trip back to Hogwarts and lots of cool young Dumbledore and now, thanks to Comic Con, we have even more reason to be excited.
The trailer was part of Warner Bros' excellent Comic Con presentation (which also had the excellent Shazam! and Aquaman trailers) and it might well be the best of the bunch (which is saying a lot). The world-building is great, there's lots of new elements in there to get excited about and the look at Johnny Depp's Grindelwald goes some way to establishing that he is genuinely a threat to stand alongside Voldemort.
Yes, there will be controversy around his casting, but you really get the sense that Fantastic Beasts 2 would survive any sort of mooted boycott. It's what Harry Potter and Wizarding World fans continue to live for, and it's great to see Warner Bros appear to be delivering.
Here's the trailer:
It's not entirely unblemished, of course, so let's look first at the negatives...
Downs
2. The Shoe-Horned Romantic Tease
Despite the firm confirmation from several sources involved in the film that we WON'T be getting any explicit exploration of Dumbledore and Grindelwald's romantic relationship, there is a slight allusion to it in the trailer thanks to the Mirror Of Erised sequence.
Unfortunately, it feels like it's been shoe-horned in retroactively (because of the reaction to the news that it wouldn't be in there, perhaps?). It also makes no sense in the context of the Mirror itself - the mirror is supposed to show the user's deepest desires, not just a projection of someone they like. What he sees should be he and Grindelwald fully rendered side by side, not a floating head and shoulders.
Anyway, it feels slightly disingenuous.