// PICTURED ABOVE: Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald in the fan-beloved “Fantastic Beasts” series. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Gage Skidmore.

Boom. Crash. Bang. You’ll definitely need a specific taste to enjoy the “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” The two hour and thirteen-minute long movie was action-packed and sometimes hard to follow.

The PG-13 movie came out on November 16, and it’s a spin-off of the J.K. Rowling’s beloved Harry Potter series. It helps if you are a Harry Potter fanatic because you can connect small references that relate back to the original series. The fans of the Harry Potter series generally gave the movie a higher rating, while the critics gave harsher reviews.

The film was written by J.K. Rowling and directed by David Yates. The Crimes of Grindelwald is a sequel to “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which was released in 2016. In the movies, the characters fight for their sides, whether it be bad or good. One side is made up of wizards who want to take over the whole world, including the non-wizard realms, while the other side fights for peace and harmony with non-wizards.

In”Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” friends band together and go on a mission to find a mysterious boy, who might be the last of the pure-blood wizards, and attempt to persuade him to join the side of the wizards fighting for peace. Many chaotic problems happen on their journey and secrets are revealed.

There are so many characters in the film that it makes the viewers struggle with concentrating on what was going on. One of the main, complex characters in the show was Newt, played by Eddie Redmayne. The dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald, was played by Johnny Depp.

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” connects to Harry Potter in ways including owls, elves, secret doors and phoenixes. The critics of the movie stated that, although the film was magical like Harry Potter, it was not nearly as good overall compared to the original movie.

The movie is very creative and had many visually appealing scenes with unusual creatures. For the majority of the time, the shots are dark and shaky, which help convey the emotions of the scenes. Because of the shaky shots, the Crimes of Grindelwald is sometimes overwhelming.

The beginning of the movie is very chaotic and hard to keep up with, and it seems like they just dropped the viewers into a random setting. Music in “Crimes of Grindelwald” is very loud with an aggressive tone. The setting of the movie starts in New York, where a dark wizard named Gellert Grindelwald is kept in prison. After a few minutes and chaotic action, the setting changes to London, England. The rest of the movie takes action in Paris, France.

Crimes of Grindelwald has a semi-satisfactory ending. The secrets of the boys’ identity are revealed but it still left some questions. The viewers got some disclosure about who the boy was in the past but they don’t know what he is going to become after discovering it.

Story by Julia Donovan, Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Gage Skidmore