Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

A movie with some solid ideas for character development and a promising overall plotline that constantly loses itself in meaningless subplots and ridicoulus moments of mere fan service. Overall the movie ended up being a visually impressive gathering of missed opportunities.

Instead of focusing on Newt, Dumbledore or Grindelwald the writers included screentime filling action for a number of side characters that does not influence the outcome at all. This only prevents the main story from progressing and (apart from the admittedly hilarious sidekick Kowalski) creates passages that you just have to endure.

Plus the faceless army of Grindelwald's followers is so utterly incompetent that there never is any real danger to the heroes. They get shot down like puppets in a 15:1 strength ratio, are knocked out by Quidditch balls that wouldn't even cause a twelve-year-old any problems (see Harry Potter Part 2) and get beaten up by a Muggle with a suitcase.

The whole "we meet at Hogwarts to make a plan to save the world"-scene could have been replaced by a simple letter and wasn't any more than an excuse to include the castle in the trailer.