Fantastic Beasts is making one of the biggest problems with the Harry Potter movies worse, not better. Counting the prequel series, there have now been ten movies set in J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World (with three more at least on the way), together making $7.7 billion worldwide and only one (this year's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) having scored a negative assessment on critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Despite such obvious commercial success and a slew of successful spinoffs from the movie world, the Harry Potter movie series are hotly debated in all tiers of fandom. They are admittedly strong adaptations of Rowling's phenomenon-creating books, yet as with any literary adaptation, not everybody's imagination is accurately presented on the big screen; some felt the magic was lost as the series went along, with darkness of image mistaken for darkness of mood. Where the Harry Potter films are most divisive, though, is not in their interpretation of the world, but the story they chose to leave out.

Related: Fantastic Beasts 2 Is Harry Potter's First Box Office Misfire

It was long held that, fitting of J.K. Rowling's skill as a storytelling, if the movies followed the books, no amount of questionable filmmaking decisions could hurt the narrative. However, as the novels grew in size, so too did the differences. And while it had been assumed that some of these gaps would be cleaned up by lore-heavy prequel Fantastic Beasts, so far the new series is only making things more confused.

Harry Potter's Later Films Messed Up Voldemort & Dumbledore's Backstory

Harry Potter and Ariana Dumbledore

The Harry Potter movies were always going to have to cut things down by nature of being two-hour adaptations of a dense secret world, and that's before taking into account the increasing length as Rowling went on (to the point Warners wanted to split The Goblet of Fire in two, and eventually did with The Deathly Hallows). However, most of the cuts and alterations in the early films felt like they were for the benefit of the whole. It was only with The Order of the Phoenix where A-plot elements were cut, often at the expense of more distant character moments.

The first major removal was the full extent of Trelawny's prophecy, which revealed the destined connection between Harry and Voldemort, albeit with one massive wrinkle: Neville Longbottom fit the exact same rulings (born in the end of July to parents who thrice defied the Dark Lord), with Harry only becoming the chosen one when Voldemort attacked him. The movie side-stepped anything involving the Neville possibility, removing a key factor of regret and doubt from Harry's arc (and a subversive look at the destiny trope), while also meaning that his friend's transformation into a dashing hero is only the result of puberty and nothing more. In fact, it's become something of a fan theory among movie-only fans that he could have filled Harry's role, despite it being so overt in the books.

Things got even more removed in The Half-Blood Prince. Although the subtitular character of the book is Severus Snape, it is undeniably Voldemort's story; he's entirely absent, yet through a series of spiraling memories, the Dark Lord's heartless part is laid bare. And while Gaunt family politics and the love potion used to conceive Tom Riddle may not seem like massively essential to the story at first glance, they are fundamental to understanding the differences between Harry and his opponent (not to mention plainly fascinating). The movie cut almost all of it, leaving only moments that tie directly into the Horcrux mission at hand. Making this more frustrating, the space left by these story choices was filled not even with Snape scenes but excess love-quadrangle teen drama, of which the films had thus far had an adept balance of.

Related: Fantastic Beasts 2's Biggest Harry Potter Retcons (And Plot Holes)

But the biggest removals came in The Deathly Hallows, again to a character physically absent but still important. It was here that Albus Dumbledore's true past came out: his close relationship with future dark wizard Grindelwald; his father sent to Azkaban after attacking muggle boys how bullied his squib sister; how that same sister died in a duel with Grindelwald; and that Aberforth, now landlord of the Hog's Head Inn, really liked goats. This reframed the once sage character, showing the human cracks in his Gandalf-like facade and making the film's eventual reveal - that Harry had to die to defeat Voldemort - all the more devious. Once again, this was only alluded to in the movies, mainly for the benefit of books fans who already knew all the secrets.

There are a lot of other ways where the movies seemed to remove the wrong elements, in part down to the ending of Rowling's tale not being known until the time of the fifth movie (Kreacher was almost cut from The Order of the Phoenix, while Dobby sat four movies out before making a return for an emotional death in The Deathly Hallows - Part 1), but it's these discussed aspects - all of which are clearly important without knowing the story's end - that leave the biggest hole. There is an argument to be made they aren't fundamental to Harry's hero's journey, but they do inform the expectations and obstacles that he's battling through and against, and their absence greatly simplifies the plot.

Page 2 of 3: How Fantastic Beasts Is Struggling To Fill The Dumbledore Gaps

Fantastic Beasts Is Trying To Be The Dumbledore Prequel

By far the story that fans were most clamoring to see explored was Dumbledore's past. Even in the books a side idea that never got fully explored - one of the biggest teases was that the defeat of Grindelwald may not have happened as the world and Chocolate Frog Card makers believed - and it remained a narrative black spot as J.K. Rowling expanded the Wizarding World in Pottermore.

It turns out, that's because it's going to be realized with Fantastic Beasts. Although ostensibly the story of magizoologist Newt Scamander and how he wrote the titular Hogwarts' textbook, two movies (out of five) in, the prequel has adjusted its focus to be an entry point into the Dumbledore/Grindelwald conflict, with teases of their past relationship, Ariana's death and overt set up of the battle to come. All the major twists - Graves is Grindelwald, Credence is Aurelius Dumbledore - center on Albus, with the sum of Newt's actions being to follow his teacher's will: we learn that Dumbledore orchestrated him being in New York, and the resolution of The Crimes of Grindelwald is a Niffler stealing Albus and Gellert's blood pact.

Related: Fantastic Beasts 2's Blood Pact Can Explain Dumbledore's Biggest Secret

This looks to have always been the intention in some form - there's a lot of ideas baked into first Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, from timeline setting to Newt's relationship with Dumbledore - but the overtness has evolved. Indeed, the expansion of the series from a trilogy to five movies (announced around the release of the first entry) appears to be done to do that "justice". Unfortunately, such a half-intended retrofit is not the best path forward.

Fantastic Beasts' Dumbledore Focus Is All Wrong

Fantastic Beasts 2 Jude Law as Dumbledore

While overall perfectly standard big-budget tentpoles, there are a lot of issues with the Fantastic Beasts movies. And the most pervasive that really makes them stand out as inferior to Harry Potter is the lack of focus. The title and premise of the first movie suggested this as Newt's story, but it spent a lot of time invested in barley tangential subplots involving American politics. In The Crimes of Grindelwald, Newt is just one thread alongside other underserved arcs for Credence, Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Leta Lestrange and more. This makes for confused movies, and hurts the individual strands.

As a result, the Dumbledore prequel is happening in the foreground, directly influencing the plot, yet is mostly unrelated to the supposed protagonist. There's not enough information provided in the films for those not already read-up on the Harry Potter timeline to truly grasp what's going on (the same problem with the handling in The Deathly Hallows), but they're now too essential to be ignored. What's really perplexing, though, is that the mysterious elements from Harry Potter - his sister, his relationship with Grindelwald - are now being taken as writ, with totally new Dumbledore family secrets pushed to the foreground.

All of this means that currently we're still only getting a bastardized, brief take of Dumbledore's past. Obviously mystery is a fun story commodity but eventually, with so much purported payoff, it needs to be explored straight. By the time things are complete, it will be 17 years (assuming Fantastic Beasts continues with a movie every two years, the fifth entry will release in 2024) since Rowling first teased Albus' secrets, and there'll be seven movies that each give only a piece. It reaffirms the decision to cut it from The Deathly Hallows while pretending to correct it.

Related: Fantastic Beasts 3: Release Date, Story Details & Every Update

The Dumbledore story should have either been the prime focus, with a series of movies exploring his backstory in detail, or the deep backdrop to Newt's tale. The former would have certainly been what fans most wanted, but the merits of the latter are a layered experience that benefits deeper analysis without getting in the way (just as it was first told in Harry Potter). Considering how well Rowling threads narratives in the books, having the secrets of Albus, Gellert and Aurelius unfold in the background could have been a novel way (in both meanings of the word) to play with cinematic worldbuilding.

Page 3 of 3: Fantastic Beasts Shouldn't Be Movies

Fantastic Beasts Is A Book Story As A Movie

On paper, the Fantastic Beasts movies have an interesting story exploring not only the known past of the Wizarding World but the prejudice between magical and muggle societies, with various intersecting narratives exploring this theme in different ways. That's an idea one with real potential and is easy to see why Rowling is so fired up to tell it. However, that story hasn't really been at the forefront, and that may be because the narrative route taken isn't suited for two-hour movies.

In her books, Rowling told deceptively complex stories. You have Harry Potter and his friends at the core, with their day-to-day schooling at Hogwarts slowly making way for a darker mystery that has further ties to the wider mythology. It's then through those connections and more throwaway winks that the books built up a living past that drew threads together. Fantastic Beasts is adopting a very similar storytelling approach, only on the big screen; the plot structure is more reminiscent of one of Rowling's later Harry Potter books than it is any of the film adaptations. There are teases for the future, nods to the mythology, and massive detours, but while that flows fine on the page, it comes across as obtuse and forced on screen.

It's quite obvious that the Fantastic Beasts story as it is should have been told by books. There, what we've got regarding Dumbledore and Grindelwald would have been comparable in its delivery to the Gaunts or Neville's role in the prophecy in print, and the same would go for Leta's extended flashbacks or even the wink-wink Sorcerer's Stone appearance. However, it couldn't because the constraints of the series (no more sequels can be made until the original cast are old enough to play the 19 Years Later versions of themselves from The Deathly Hallows' epilogue for a full movie) and so the idea has been strained.

Related: Why There'll Be Another Harry Potter Movie (Eventually)

It's somewhat ironic that a series semi-pitched on filling gaps of the previous movies has now gone too far the other way. Fantastic Beasts attempts to use Harry Potter book storytelling techniques to expand on the Harry Potter movies, but the medium dissonance doesn't allow it.

Grindelwald and Credence in Fantastic Beasts and Dumbledore in Harry Potter

This is why the Harry Potter films took liberties in the first place; what works on the page may not work on the screen, and it requires someone who knows the cinematic medium to bring it across. Steve Kloves, who wrote all but one of the original films (The Order of the Phoenix), evidently understood this and streamlined narratives, even if it did mean important aspects were removed. That filter doesn't exist this time, and it may be that Rowling isn't quite up to the task of making her storytelling style work on-screen.

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Just as Dumbledore vs. Grindelwald is just one part of Fantastic Beasts plot, so too is it just one part of the series' problem, albeit an indicative one. The way that this narrative strand is being handled is very similar to every other aspect, it's just that thanks to two decades of build-up, here it's more pronounced.

But it's not too late. There are some wonderful characters introduced in Fantastic Beasts and some of Rowling's bold canon alterations really work. It just needs a proper sense of focus if it's going to be something truly magical.

Next: What Fantastic Beasts 3 Needs To Do To Save The Harry Potter Prequel Series