Three months after the capture of Grindelwald he is going to be transferred to Europe to get punished for his crimes against both the wizarding and muggle world. Obviously as the powerful and brilliant wizard Grindelwald is he has derived a plan for a clever escape and with no problems at all he kills all his guards and returns unharmed to Europe. Here he is taking the next steps towards his great plan to free the wizards of the muggle oppression.
At the same time Newt is trying to fight the governmental travel ban that has been brought down on him from the ministry of magic as followed of his travels to USA. The auror department is willing to lift his travel ban if he joins their side and travels to Paris in order to investigate the rumours of the young Credence being a live and then kill him. Newt refuses and decides to stay in London. Even Dumbledore tries to get Newt to travel out of England but for slightly different reasons. He wants Newt to help him in the fight against Grindelwald as he cannot fight him, himself. But it is not until Queenie arrives with Jacob to get married in London. Newt notices that she keeps Jacob under a charm as he is unwilling to marry Queenie because it would send her to prison. Newt releases Jacob. Jacob and Queenie gets in an argument and she takes off to find her sister Tina and Newt and Jacob follows her.
That is the slightly forced start that brings the main characters back together and on the track for the big plot of the second movie of the Fantastic Beasts series. For most of the movie we experience the characters run around seemingly aimlessly as they try their best to find each other and figure out the various details of Grindelwald's plan. But Grindelwald has it all well planned out and the four main characters find themself standing in the middle of it all trying to survive. It all seems a bit chaotic but I imagine that is exactly how it is when you have a very short time to find a mass murderer and interrupt his plans while you have no clue of what it is and no time to organise a proper plan. It makes the story a little more alive because the characters have no idea of what they are going to do. In many stories it can easily be too convenient how the story progresses as they suddenly just finds the thing or person they need. This movie leaves the conveniences to the start and a little at the end. The rest of the time they could all just have been playing a big game of murder mystery, running around in Paris trying to figure out what Grindelwald was orchestrating.
As expected this movie got many great magical effects showing even more capabilities of the magical world. They have downgraded the fantastic beasts part a bit; there are still many beasts all over the place but we are not getting the same introduction and education as we did in the first movie. They instead turn their focus on the bigger Grindelwald versus Dumbledore plot that is forming and the fight we all know will happen and cementing Dumbledore's position as the greatest wizard of all time.
And then there is the very dangerous part which can bring many discussions between very hardcore fans and the lesser hardcore fans. They do some name and lore mentioning that can confuse anyone who has not dived deep into the lore. A small spoiler and example is that we see a young Minerva McGonnagall around eight years before she is born which is quite confusing until you take a deep dive and learns that McGonnagall's maternal grandmother is also called Minerva McGonnagall.
It is not quite as good as the first Fantastic Beasts but I believe it is because this is a movie that builds up to an even bigger movie instead of having a fulfilling end here. It is more like Fantastic Beasts 2 part 1. But besides that it is an overall good movie with many interesting parts and small details to notice. I will give it four and a half star out of five.
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