Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is already a couple weeks into its theatrical run, and one thing has become abundantly clear for many people: the honeymoon period is officially over. While its predecessor, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them wasn’t necessarily received with an amazing response by fans and critics, enthusiasm for a new Wizarding World story seemed big enough to make up for any shortcomings in the actual film.

This isn’t the case with The Crimes of Grindelwald. The film had the softest opening of any Wizarding World film to date, and even worst, it’s the lowest-rated film in the franchise, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 40%. It’s not terrible, but in a world where our lives are overflowing with blockbusters, audiences generally won’t make the trip out to see a mediocre one (unless it’s Venom, for some reason).

Many are blaming this on Rowling herself, claiming she’s gotten too cocky, or that no one around her is keeping her in check, leading to many bad ideas making their way to the films. But is that really the case? Personally, I agree she isn’t being kept in check, but I don’t think it’s led to bad ideas necessarily, just weaker film experiences. Before we dive into that, let’s take a look at what made Harry Potter work and Rowling’s more recent work, post-Harry Potter.

Harry Potter And The Solid Story Structure

It was the 1990s. The time of myths and legends. A time when Rowling was a single mother on the edge of poverty. Somehow, a novel that had been accused of being unmarketable to the current batch of kids made its way onto store shelves and into the hands of countless children all over the world. People like to tout just how much the novel beat the odds, and while on a surface level, that may be true, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone still had a universal and timeless quality that all but guaranteed its success.

In order to get your stuff made back then, your stories had to be solid. They had to have a beginning, middle, and end, and had to feel complete on their own. Yes, I know, the whole overarching plot with Voldemort was still left unresolved, but for the first four books or so, you could theoretically hop in, get a complete experience, and hop out. Hell, even the later books, which were more serialized, allowed for enough of a standalone plot to hold up, and that’s why they have since held up so well with their film adaptations.

Rowling’s tried-and-true trend of creating standalone stories with overarching plots really worked, and was actually reflective of some TV shows, which had similar structures — something I’ll get into later.

Too Dense For Its Own Good

A lot has changed since then.

Rowling is a bajillionaire and master storyteller, and has gone on to pen books like the boring Casual Vacancy and the four amazing Cormoran Strike novels, the latter of which is written under the pen name Robert Galbraith. In the case of the four Strike novels, we have books that are dark, twisted, and convoluted. Rowling has always created intrigued, layered mysteries, but with this new novel series, she was able to do so without restraint. And for novels, they work pretty well. They don’t feel bogged down, nor do they feel overly-convoluted.

This is where I think we’re getting into the real problem with Fantastic Beats: The Crimes of Grindelwald. I don’t think it’s a bad story. On a minute-by-minute basis, I was intrigued by what was going on. But its first problem is that it is too layered and convoluted for a film. But it worked for those mystery novels, right? Well, the Cormoran Strike series were recently adapted…for TV. there’s a reason why. The pacing in them, along with the multilayered nature, is more fitting for the TV medium — which, in and of itself services the novel adaptation very well, if you’re looking to be faithful.

Film doesn’t allow as much nuance or as many layers without things feeling either rushed or, ironically, slow. There are fewer places you’re allowed to breathe and digest, and it, overall, makes for a less inviting film experience. I believe she attempted to bring in her more layered sensibilities into this story, and while it could have worked in a novel, they simply don’t work well in film.

But this isn’t the only problem we have in terms of the film medium.

Blurred Lines Between Film And TV

As I mentioned before, the original Potter franchise had a structure not unlike mystery TV shows like the X-Files, where there’s an overarching mystery along with a “monster of the week,” so to speak. In the years since those films finished, however, there’s been a real trend in TV to go full serialized, and with the advent of shared universes, some may argue that’s bled into film.

Personally, I do not think it’s fully bled into film. Marvel has always been careful to make each film feel like a cohesive experience, and for the most part, so have other studios. Sure, the lines have become blurred, but I still think the lines are there, as most seem to realize that audiences, while generally happy to be offered a tease of what’s to come, still want to feel satisfied after sitting down for a two-hour film.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald does not offer that experience.

Going Too Far?

We first felt this with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Yes, the story was relatively self-contained — find the beasts that escaped Newt’s case — but its biggest weakness, in my eyes, was that Newt never grew in the film, thereby making it a comparatively shallow experience.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, however, isn’t really a complete story on any level. Sure, there is the goal for Newt to track down Credence, but it culminates in a sort of weak, soft way that I hesitate to even call a climax in a film. More than anything, it felt like an arc in a TV series. All the threads of made progress, but have yet to come together in a wholly satisfying way.

Personally, I’m okay with that. I’m a patient dude, and so long as I’m entertained, I’m okay to wait another two years to get the next episode in this story. Plus, I have faith it’ll come together in a satisfactory way when all said and done. Most critics and most fans are understandably less forgiving. While at least the Marvel films show the characters growing in each movie, and their stories culminating in a tried-and-true traditional climax (not unlike the ones in each Harry Potter novel), Fantastic Beasts seems content to be just another intriguing chapter in an ongoing mystery rather than one novel in a novel series.

What Next?

I mentioned above that some fans are rallying against author and screenwriter, saying she needs to be kept in check, and while I agree that’s the case, I don’t think it’s for the same reason. I don’t think Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is bad. I actually kind of love it. It’s just an incomplete, unfulfilling story, one that I’m sure will come together nicely, just as any good mystery novel would…but that’ll take another six years of films, and I don’t think audiences will tolerate that anymore.

So what’s the solution? Pair J.K. Rowling up with Potter film scribe Steve Kloves. Let her do her writing, but have him come in and make sure it stands alone as a solid standalone experience. While audiences have a wide range of complaints for this film, I think most would have been forgiven had this felt more like a complete story with an ongoing arc.

So, while the backlash against Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald may seem like a backlash against an author set on retconning her work, I think it’s actually a backlash against the increasing trend of films feeling more and more like TV shows. With the increase in TV serialization, audiences are hungry for a different experience on the big screen, and with that in mind, I can only hope Warner Bros. is able to heed these signs before it’s too late.

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