Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald - 17 WTF Moments

9. The Dumbledore Queer-Baiting

As is almost always the case in expensive blockbuster movies, The Crimes of Grindelwald just can't commit itself to its very obviously gay character, Dumbledore (Jude Law), for fear of hurting those ever-important overseas box office figures.

Just as Disney has flirted with including gay characters in a number of their franchises - to the point that actors will often insist their superheroes are bi or gay while the studio cowardly vetoes any on-screen expression of such - so too does the Wizarding World want to win easy PR points for featuring a gay character without fully following through.

It's no secret that Dumbledore is gay: Rowling has freely admitted this, but the movie dances around it with innuendo, such as Dumbledore saying he and Grindelwald were "closer than brothers", with the heavy implication that they had a prior sexual relationship. A flashback showing the pair holding hands is a metaphor so blatant it ends up both comical and embarrassing.

Vanity Fair published an excellent think-piece on the movie's shameless queer-baiting, and while you can at least argue that homophobia was as widespread among wizards as it was muggles in the 1920s, that feels like a cop-out.

We all know the real reason, and it'd be nice for a major movie studio to actually have the "courage" to represent these relationships more meaningfully in blockbuster films.