“It doesn’t bode well for any film, let alone “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” a fantasy adventure that cost at least $200 million to produce, when its opening salvo—the scene that’s supposed to grab you, pull you in and prepare you for further delights—finds two grim-faced gents at a restaurant table staring at a pendant that contains drops of their blood and talking disconsolately about how they once loved each other and planned to reshape the world.

“One of them is Albus Dumbledore, the Hogwarts headmaster played as a younger man by Jude Law.”

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