David Yates’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a dreary, nonsensical, plotless slog of a movie – one that is so stuck in the trivia and minutia of its own world-building and lore that it forgets to tell a story. Characters from the first film are reset to have the exact same issues, qualities, and personality quirks as they did in the previous installment with little regard for how they have changed and grown. Since characters have no arc, they also have no motivations for the choices they make, and while the villain makes compelling arguments for using magic to stop World War II and save the world from the evils of Nazism, the script can’t provide a compelling counterpoint to his arguments. The cinematography is muddy, covering lazy and sloppy visual effects that overwhelm rather than seamlessly integrate into the world. The entire narrative is incredibly low-stakes, and even the sacrifice at the end of the film comes out of nowhere and doesn’t appear to be particularly necessary when all is said and done. But maybe the obnoxious element of the film is the low-key sexism and misogyny running throughout – from women being pitted against one another in jealousy over a man, to women pining in unrequited love over a man, to women behaving irrationally because of a man… This is a series that places women in very narrow boxes – love interest, nurturer, someone who can go toe to toe with the men… It’s tiresome, much like this film.