Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald - 17 WTF Moments

7. The Lame, Forced Newt-Tina Romance

Though the end of the previous film only mildly hinted at a flirtation between Newt and Tina (Katherine Waterston), this sequel feels like it skips over a ton of romantic development and shoehorns in a lame, sentimental love story between the two.

Especially contrived is the inevitable misunderstanding where Tina believes Newt's getting married to Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz) after seeing a picture of the two in a newspaper. It evokes the laziness of a low-effort rom-com and doesn't really have any place in a supposedly smart, sophisticated fantasy film such as this.

Then there's the toe-curlingly cringe-worthy recurring gag about how terrible Newt is at talking to women: the "your eyes look like salamanders" gag and its subsequently payoff, where Tina is receptive to it, is pure, weapons-grade embarrassment.

Furthermore, didn't Newt basically seem oblivious and asexual in the first film? To go from zero to him literally venturing out of his way to win Tina's heart feels like we missed a movie's worth of character development.

Plus, it doesn't help that Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston have no sexual chemistry whatsoever. They seem more like siblings than lovers, honestly.