mm’s review published on Letterboxd:
We used to be a society that made well-lit, extremely horny fantasy epics with excellent production design and terrible performances. What happened to us? Why did we let Ronald Reagan do this to us?
Watching this triggered a deeper think about something I’ve become a little obsessed with recently: the concept of what storytelling should be. And where I’ve settled on it for now is that we’ve become a little too concerned with thoughts and people explaining them to each other than motivations and action. It goes back to the old adage: who needs a monologue when a look and a well-chosen piece of music can do the same job just as well? And why use three chords when two will do?
Maybe that’s a symptom of the 8-episode miniseries/TV season becoming the dominant artform and it’s bleeding into everything else, or maybe we’re just in a world where everyone’s got something to say and our art is reflecting that, but I kind of yearn for the simplicity of these kind of stories.
Arthur’s born by an act of deception, and he conceives a son under similar circumstances (except with his vengeful half-sister sorceress! Wow!) who’s destiny is to kill him. Nice, simple, icky and to the point. I love it! It all happens within two a 2ish hour runtime and it works!
When Netflix was peaking, the phrase “8-hour movie” started popping up, and I’m not sure there’s a phrase that I despise more than that. That mindset is what turns tight stories like this into bloated, meandering series that either overstay their welcome or get cancelled before they’re finished.
Time, in my opinion is the ultimate enemy of storytelling. I don’t claim and never will to be a TV aficionado, but what I have seen of the “8-hour movie” crop feels like empty calories, or glorified deleted scenes to a movie that should have been.
I hope some of this made sense and it’s not just me shouting into the void at nothing, but something flipped in my brain when I finished the first episode of The Penguin and felt no interest in continuing it, and I’ve been grappling with that conflict ever since.
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