The only thing that was attractive was the visualisation of mystical creatures and monsters. Witches transforming into dragons, weird demons getting summoned were spectacular but unfortunately nothing else in the movie could carry it on. The plot was on the slightly boring side but that could be over looked. The real sins are listed below which would have made it much better despite the boring story.
1) Relationships lacked serious development. Grumpy teacher-"hardworking but useless" pupil relationship was so cliché it pained me to see what interesting skills would be learnt (other than sprinkling iron or silver filing). None. Dashing Ben Barnes (Tom) and Alicia Vikander (Alice) had potential for a wonderful romantic relationship HOWEVER, the lack of proper development made it look (sadly) like a superficial crush of a boy who was never met a decent looking girl. Calling the relationship true love just because you had visions of her and seen her swimming in a lake under the moonlight made this look like an "Anna-Hans" relationship from Frozen.
2) With such a powerful antagonist such as Mother Malkin, there was definitely much more room to level up our dear protagonist to her level, have a spectacular one-on-one showdown before finally having her die a spectacular death. Instead, it was more like the work of the mystical staff that Tom could suddenly activate, killing most opponents with a single strike. Killing Mother Malkin with a single random hidden dagger was truly insulting, seeing how Mother Malkin was previously impervious to most attacks. Oh and Tom did not really kill the creature in the woods, he kinda kamikazed with it, and he was lucky the fall down the water fall killed the creature and not him. The amount of luck this kid had to escape every situation really deducted his perceived ability to actually defeat Mother Malkin.
1) Relationships lacked serious development. Grumpy teacher-"hardworking but useless" pupil relationship was so cliché it pained me to see what interesting skills would be learnt (other than sprinkling iron or silver filing). None. Dashing Ben Barnes (Tom) and Alicia Vikander (Alice) had potential for a wonderful romantic relationship HOWEVER, the lack of proper development made it look (sadly) like a superficial crush of a boy who was never met a decent looking girl. Calling the relationship true love just because you had visions of her and seen her swimming in a lake under the moonlight made this look like an "Anna-Hans" relationship from Frozen.
2) With such a powerful antagonist such as Mother Malkin, there was definitely much more room to level up our dear protagonist to her level, have a spectacular one-on-one showdown before finally having her die a spectacular death. Instead, it was more like the work of the mystical staff that Tom could suddenly activate, killing most opponents with a single strike. Killing Mother Malkin with a single random hidden dagger was truly insulting, seeing how Mother Malkin was previously impervious to most attacks. Oh and Tom did not really kill the creature in the woods, he kinda kamikazed with it, and he was lucky the fall down the water fall killed the creature and not him. The amount of luck this kid had to escape every situation really deducted his perceived ability to actually defeat Mother Malkin.