“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” was supposed to firmly establish the spin-off as the next big franchise by JK Rowling. However, the lackluster response by the fanbase has turned it into the first disappointment since the beginning of the “Harry Potter” series. The film has managed to make some profit, but the next film will have to be a good course correction to make sure it continues to make money in the future.

In a way, trouble for the film started long before its release. There is a section of the fanbase that isn’t happy with the casting of Johnny Depp in the important role of the villain Grindelwald. According to a review by Screen Rant, which calls the sequel the first misfire from the franchise, the other problems that the fans had were related to the changes to the “Harry Potter” lore that the film was making.

“Fantastic Beasts 2” introduced the major “Harry Potter” character Nagini, played by Claudia Kim. Fans are not happy about the backstory of this character. The other big character was the younger Professor McGonagall, played by Fiona Glascott, but there was also trouble because of problems related to the timeline.

There was a plothole related to the Elder wand as well. “Harry Potter” movies have already established that this wand owes its allegiance to a wizard who defeated its former owner, Screen Rant noted. The first “Fantastic Beasts” movie has already shown how Grindelwald was defeated, which means that the wizard who disarmed him should be the one the Elder wand owes its allegiance to.

A review by Forbes compared the problems of “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” with that of the “X-Men” movies. The report explained that the last superhero movie focused more on the plot rather than the characters and even here it focused on the wrong character. Michael Fassbender’s Magneto got too much attention while the other new characters got very little, which means the next film will have a few characters that the fans may not care so much about.

Just as the “X-Men” movies have supposedly focused too much on the conflict between Xavier and Magneto, the report noted that “Fantastic Beasts” appears to be set on making the same mistake in the next few movies, which are expected to focus on the rivalry between Albus Dumbledore, played by Jude Law, and the villain Grindelwald.

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