Whereas the first “Fantastic Beasts” imagined J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world in the Roaring Twenties without Harry Potter, the legacy of the boy with the lightning scar looms large in the expansive sequel.
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Nov. 16), the second of five planned spinoffs written by Rowling, is a darker and bolder film that intertwines different eras of the “Potter” mythology and delivers a more relevant cinematic villain than that malevolent snake face, Voldemort. Old-school Potterheads will rejoice, though fans of the charmingly quirky group of heroes from the first “Beasts” may lament their do-gooders getting lost in a growing magical landscape.
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“Crimes” picks up with animal-adoring protagonist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) several months after he and his friends – No-Maj (or Muggle, if you’re fancy) pal Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), Newt’s quasi-love interest Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and her mind-reading sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) – helped take down the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) in New York.
Since then, Grindelwald has escaped authorities and hightailed it to Paris, where he’s gathering followers interested in his sinister ideology: The antagonist believes pure-blood wizards have been in the shadows too long and should rule the entire world, not just the magical one. And he sees intensely repressed youngster Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), who houses a powerful black energy known as an Obscurus, as an important key to taking his deadly plans to the next level.
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