Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 4, 2019

J.K. Rowling had a veritable grab bag of characters upon which to base what was correctly assumed to be her post-Harry Potter work keeping the franchise alive (would you simply walk away from something generating untold millions, maybe even billions, of dollars?). That plethora of available folks upon which to base a new franchise might then beg the question as to why Rowling chose one Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), since (as any devoted Potterphile will know) the character doesn’t really appear in any of the Potter books, and is in fact mentioned only very briefly and in passing as the author of another book in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Now I should probably confess up front that I was pretty spectacularly underwhelmed with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (my colleague Michael Reuben liked the film quite a lot, though my other colleague Brian Orndorf wasn’t nearly as impressed). I found J.K. Rowling’s screenplay to be way overstuffed and too full of detours, in what was an obvious and probably understandable attempt to set up all sorts of shenanigans for what most probably correctly surmised was planned from the get go as another multidunious series of releases. The through line of the first film in this still nascent new franchise was decent enough, and that actually helps sustain this second outing, though I personally still found this film stuffed to the gills (literally in the case of one underwater creature) with needless sidebars that often seemed designed (literally and figuratively) to give the CGI crew something to work on (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

While I’ll include a few thoughts of my own about this second outing in the following paragraph, rather than rehash the rather baroque plot of the film, I’ll refer you instead to our “collection” of reviews by a number of my other other colleagues. These include the Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Blu-ray review and the Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 4K Blu-ray review by Randy Miller III, as well as the theatrical exhibition review by Brian Orndorf. (You’ll note that as in the case of the first film, there are variant opinions about this one as well.)

I actually liked this second outing a good deal better than I did the first film, but again, that’s taking a rather low set bar into consideration. One of the things that repeatedly bugged me about the first film was what I perceived to be Redmayne’s incessant mumbling in the role, to the point that I simply could not understand what he was saying without utilizing subtitles. (Maybe it’s an age thing, but I discovered after I posted about this on social media that a number of other folks in my same general demographic had exactly the same response.) I'm not sure if Redmayne was coached or my ancient ears have simply adapted to his peculiar enunciation, but I found him much easier to understand this time around. But making the first film even more incoherent for me than not being able to decipher Redmayne was a lack of focus about which villain exactly we were supposed to be in mortal fear of. Rowling’s writing excesses were kind of like the cinematic equivalent of ADHD to me at times, darting hither and yon but never staying any one place long enough to let things develop naturally. She does a much better job this second time around in offering a generally clear exposition, though she still has a tendency to go off on tangents which are neither structurally cogent nor really revelatory in any way in terms of character — they’re just kind of there.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 2K Blu-ray.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is presented on 3D Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment with an MVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. I refer you to Randy's review of the 2D (1080p) Blu-ray, linked above, for general thoughts on the really excellent overall image quality of this disc, in terms of things like palette and fine detail, divorced from their 3D rendering. For my thoughts on the 3D presentation itself, read on:

Kind of strangely (at least in my opinion), if our usually reliable database is accurate, there are two other 3D Blu-ray releases of this title, and both of those come with a 2D Blu-ray disc, unlike this Amazon Exclusive (I'd sure like a confab with some of the marketing "geniuses" behind these ideas.) Is 3D dead? That seems to be the scuttlebutt in some circles, but if Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is any indication, it's a format that isn't going down without a fight. All things considered, including this film's emphases on rather dark environments and a palette that is often drenched in chiaroscuro, without a ton of "pop" in terms of color, this was one of the more consistently engaging 3D viewing experiences I've had lately. The presentation is rather nicely balanced between depth and "in your face" approaches, and that's evident from the get go with the classic Warner Brothers logo, which juts out toward the viewer with a nicely immersive background supporting it. The first scene in a jail cell with Grindelwald sets the bar nicely high with a bug buzzing around which is clearly "out" toward the viewer. The big pre-credits SFX sequence featuring a kind of Dickensian funeral cortege madly gallivanting through stormy nighttime skies also delivers fantastic simultaneous depth and thrust. There are a ton of really impressive moments on display throughout the film, from owls flying in the labyrinthine corridors of the British Ministry of Magic to (in one of the film's predictable visual tropes) wands pointed directly at the viewer, seeming to come close to "you'll poke my eye out with that thing" territory on more than one occasion. Whoever did the 3D design and imaging seems to have had a sense of humor about that particular aspect, though, as there's a funny moment where Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) is under an enchantment spell at the hands (wand?) of Queenie (Alison Sudol), and a "POV" shot of Newt pointing his wand toward Jacob to undo the spell is comically exaggerated since Jacob is a little "drunk".

While not hugely disappointing, there are a few isolated moments where there's a strange lack of depth, including some establishing shots of various locations (Paris is a notable example). Also, while generally speaking I found the ability of this 3D presentation to overcome almost formidably dark environments, there are some moments where black characters against equally shadowy backgrounds simply look relatively "flat".

All of this said, I found Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald to be a nicely entertaining and immersive experience, and the 3D presentation actually helped the film to elide some of its structural and writing issues for me.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

In yet another little technical "issue" I'd like to bring up at a confab (it can be the same one as I mentioned above, I'm not picky), this 3D Blu-ray appears to be the only release of this film on high definition home theater media that features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. While I didn't have time to watch the entire film with the Atmos track, I did sample pretty large swaths of the 2D Blu-ray version with the Atmos track so that I could hear whatever differences it offers. Randy scored the Atmos track on the 1080p and 4K UHD discs at a 4.5, so take that into account, since I'm giving this a 4.0 to indicate it understandably doesn't have the vertical presence of the Atmos track in effects like the bug in the jail cell, thunder or some of the flying objects. That said, the 5.1 rendering is consistently immersive and offers a glut of side and rear engagement, notably in the big set pieces, but also rather nicely in some of the quieter dialogue moments, where discrete effects — like the "pitter patter" of little animal feet — can populate individual channels, or pan engagingly through the soundstage. I really had no major complaints with regard to LFE (Randy wasn't overly impressed with the Atmos track in that regard), and there are some great rumbly effects that erupt in various "magic" moments, including a spectacular explosion of a building (that's another sequence where the Atmos track provides a clearer rendering of upward movement).

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 3D Blu-ray has no supplemental features. This does come with a redeemable digital code for an Extended Version with Deleted Scenes.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When I was doing my "get off my lawn" rant about Redmayne's mumbling on social media, I also mentioned how I felt that J.K. Rowling should not be writing the screenplays for these films, or at least should not be writing them alone. As with the first film, there are some decent ideas and even some standout moments, but the overall effect this film has is of a more than slightly out of control roller coaster, one that unfortunately has come untethered from its tracks and is just careening wildly all over the place. It may be intermittently exciting, but after a while you just kind of want it to stop. The good news is that this 3D Blu-ray provides a really surprisingly dimensional viewing experience, given the oppressive darkness of the film. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is also excellent in and of itself, though my score reflects a certain "relativity" after having listened to parts of the Atmos track offered on the 2D Blu-ray and 4K UHD discs.