Ranking Every Harry Potter & Wizarding World Film Worst To Best
8. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
In 2022 the Fantastic Beasts leg of the series is a lumbering, incoherent, barely-alive beast that's begging to be put out of its misery... but you wouldn't know that from the first film.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is actually a lot of fun. It's not particularly memorable and it does have a poorly-structured, overly low-stakes story that randomly shoo-horns Grindelwald (Colin Farrell/Johnny Depp) into the final act, but the film does plenty to make up for its narrative shortcomings.
It's another technically superb and brilliantly acted fantasy flick that's filled to the brim with heart, humour, excitement and of course, adorable creatures, and unlike its sequels it's a genuinely well-judged spin-off.
It explores the magical world in a very interesting new light, the fan service is intelligently subtle and it never feels like a Harry Potter re-run, instead being very much its own story.
You won't remember it much and it doesn't match most of the Harry Potter films, but it's a good viewing in the moment. It's also got one of the very best scenes of the whole series - that gorgeous obliviation rain scene at the end.
With hindsight, Warner Bros. should've left this as a stand-alone film a la Rogue One and then made a trilogy focusing on Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Maybe then, this series wouldn't be in such an awful mess.