My favorite thing about these Fantastic Beasts films are the interludes of mysterious animals in their mysterious habitats. Nature documentaries for fictional, and wildly strange animals. I don’t really care about the Third Reich retelling. Boring. Truly boring. Maybe important for these audiences, but the Potter brand is losing some cultural capital as of late so maybe it’s more important to focus on what the series does that none other can.

The visual effects in the film are top notch, with lots of worthless but lovely minor visual touches (weird gate handles and sentient garments and trinkets), and the music is also fantastic, especially some of the period jazz pieces, not to discount the incredible string and orchestra work at all. Don’t watch it on a small screen on a trans-pacific flight like I did, though.