Even the second one was better. They finally had the potnetial to tell a interesting story here, and instead it was 2 hours of filler with not much happening in. Just cancel the rest of this franchise already.
shareI would agree that the film felt fairly dull. But it was absolutely not as bad as the second.
However, its main problems, aside from pacing and general writing, are the same that the 2nd suffered from.
Credence should have stayed dead after the first movie. He was a tragic story, that ended tragically. But that's that. His presence in the third, and how it ended, proved my belief that it was stupid as hell to have him still be alive, and pointless "be a Dumbledore". You could have completely removed him, and the entire idiotic "lost/switched baby" subplot from 2 and 3, and it would not have changed the core story much at all.
On the same token, Queenie. She was a wonderful character in 1. They completely fucked her over in 2, writing her completely unlike what we saw in 1: manipulative, unstable, gullible, lost. In the first she seemed calm, collected, resourceful, compassionate. Not someone that ever would have tried to force the "man she loves" to marry her. And certainly not someone that would lose her shit over next to nothing, and just up and join Grendelwald. But that's just it. As stupid and awful as that was, AGAIN, her presence in 3 just proves how utterly pointless it was to have any of that happen. As in at all. She did next to nothing as one of Grendel's lackies. And then by the end of the film, she's BAM back to being good ol' Queenie from the first film, and she marries the dude anyway (even though they don't explain on-screen whatsoever that "Hey magical/muggle marriage is OK in America now).
I will say, while the first was a pretty solid movie, this should have been a trilogy, tops, with no filler, NO five films. It would have been more focused, and likely done better at the box office. I think between these and that stupid play, it's obvious whatever creativity Rowling had, she completely spent on the OG Potter series.