Saw it Sat. because I love Eddie Redmayne. The movie was very entertaining, but awfully disjointed. You had to ask yourself why some of the characters were even in there, because they never fit into the narrative or came together in the end. I can only hope it will get better as the series matures. It was not quite up to the Harry Potter standard.
I saw it recently. Overall, I enjoyed quite a lot. I liked the main character, and several of the secondary characters very much. The creatures were often very entertaining, and there were a lot of excellent flights of imagination.
I'd go see it again, and I'd recommend it to friends.
My only real quibble was that some of the "second-tier" characters were so stupid in what they said and did that I kept wishing that I could just have the magical power to rewrite those parts of the script.
It seemed that they existed in the movie only as types --- as in:
We have to have an ultra-arrogant-commander-who-consistently-makes-the-wrong-decision type. It's actually possible to have dynamic, wise people in leadership, and still have a great movie.
And we have to throw in a second-string villain-who-shows-up-to-screw-up-the-good-guys type. Well, not really. There were already enough perfectly good nemeses in the movie.
That was really annoying. One can make an exciting and entertaining movie without the plug-in-a-stereotype characters. If you are creative and have the time and money, you really can keep the plot moving forward in a compelling way without throwing in the extra jerks.
It does take a little more effort. But the rest the movie showed that there is plenty of talent to make that effort. Apparently, some arrogant commander once again made the wrong decision.
Still, those were relatively small flaws in a fun and imaginative show.