Fantastic Beasts 3: What Went Wrong?

7. The Crimes Of Grindelwald's Negative Reception

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald
Warner Bros. Pictures

Speaking of that first film, it earned a strong 74-percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed over $800 million at the worldwide box-office, so by all accounts, it was an unqualified success - but sequel The Crimes of Grindelwald performed worse in every way imaginable.

Criticised for its bloated plot and uninteresting characters, it did the one thing you'd think would be impossible with a wizarding world movie - it made it boring. To this day, it's the worst-reviewed movie in the franchise (including Potter) with a 36-percent critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it also underperformed financially, dropping almost $200 million from the first instalment.

Even worse, in an era where plenty of movies resonate more with general audiences than they do with critics (Venom, The Greatest Showman), fans weren't pleased with it either, with several apparent retcons (McGonagall's age, Credence being a Dumbledore brother) and the overall poor quality of the movie leaving many viewers wondering how the hell it went so wrong.

The Crimes of Grindelwald's negative reception led to the third film being delayed so Warner Bros. had time to course-correct, and though that clearly didn't work out too well, the baggage of this lacklustre sequel would've held back The Secrets of Dumbledore even if it was a cinematic masterpiece.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!