Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Skippable, and it is the weakest film carrying this brand. The creature premise of the first film is almost entirely gone, replaced by six or seven plotlines about parentage, prophecy, blood status and who is secretly related to whom, pursued simultaneously and resolved in a crypt.

The structural fault is that nobody in it wants anything simple. Newt is passive throughout, moved between locations by other people's plans, and the film's actual protagonist is the mystery of a young man's identity, which is explained in the last two minutes by a revelation that contradicts the established family history of a major character and was never satisfactorily reconciled.

There are good things in it, which is what makes it frustrating. Jude Law's young Dumbledore is well judged, a charming man who is managing everybody in the room, and the scene in front of the Mirror of Erised is the best in the trilogy. The Paris production design is lovely. Leta Lestrange is given a real tragedy in among the exposition.

The rally sequence at the end, in which a crowd is persuaded by a speech that sounds reasonable, is the one moment the film achieves what it is reaching for. Everything else is setup for films that were never made in the form planned. Skip it unless you intend to finish the trilogy.