I’m not feeling it, myself.
Also, this show has been through production hell and the budget exploded. It’s the second-most expensive TV show ever, after Rings of Power. Amazon spending like a drunken sailor.
The view out the windows on that train could not look more fake and greenscreened in.
It’s an immediate turn-off, yeah. Looks cheap as hell. Except it cost $175 million.
How many different spy show cliches can we pack into on trailer?
ALL OF THEM!
You can rotate your screen to any angle and have the same experience with the trailer!
I’m guessing it’ll be like the The Gray Man: an agent action-thriller thing that doesn’t seem particularly interesting, doesn’t look as expensive as it supposedly is, and will be forgotten about a week after its release.
Uh, sunk cost fallacy, I suppose?
Ah, it’s a series and not a movie? The trailer really feels like a movie trailer. I hope they have lots more characters and interesting plots they aren’t showing us.
A far more costly and troubled production was the Russo brothers’ Citadel, which debuts on April 28. Anthony Russo says Salke first approached AGBO, the Russos’ production company, with a general concept of making a U.S. show with international foreign-language versions. AGBO came up with “a global spy show where you would have a mothership U.S. language show” alongside foreign-language versions in other countries, Russo says. The various versions are “related to one another, but they also exist independently and distinct from one another.” Some of the international shows may be set in different time periods, he adds.
Amazon has committed to three seasons of three versions of the show; so far, a local-language production is underway in Italy and in early stages in India. “We love the ability to communicate with people all over the world, and to connect people through stories,” Russo continues. “Amazon and Jen basically brought us a brand-new opportunity to do that at a scale that’s never been attempted before.”
But in December 2021, with production well underway, the Russo brothers decided to replace showrunner Josh Appelbaum. “It was clear after some audience feedback and discussion that some changes needed to be made,” says Mike Larocca, president and co-founder of AGBO. “We felt like it needed some more character work early to draw people into the show. It was that straightforward.” Appelbaum declined to comment.
David Weil took over as showrunner. When Joe Russo came on set, a “huge bunch of material” was tossed out, an insider says. Sources say the cost of the series climbed toward $300 million, making it Amazon’s second-most expensive show after LOTR.
While the original plan called for eight hourlong episodes, the show that will drop on Amazon in April ended up at six, roughly 40-minute episodes. Amazon has already renewed it for a second season of six hourlong episodes. “There are a couple of relationships where I don’t really understand the bet that is being made,” says one Amazon veteran of the commitment to the project. “But Jen believes in the Russos.”
$300 million for six 40-minute episodes. Yikes!
Just now seeing this thread after Woolen_Horde’s post that is exactly the sort of tear-down I want to read for a show I’ll never watch. This passage from Telefrog’s link caught my eye:
Anthony Russo says Salke first approached AGBO, the Russos’ production company, with a general concept of making a U.S. show with international foreign-language versions. AGBO came up with “a global spy show where you would have a mothership U.S. language show” alongside foreign-language versions in other countries, Russo says. The various versions are “related to one another, but they also exist independently and distinct from one another.” Some of the international shows may be set in different time periods, he adds.
That’s an interesting idea, but it’s a production method, not a story or even a setting–unless you consider “countries that are not the United States of America” to be a setting. Business objectives (i.e. “we want to make money all over the world, not just in English-speaking countries”) driving creative direction.
I watched the first two episodes, and won’t be watching the rest. It’s a cliche-filled snoozefesta, and it is pretty clear from the first two episodes that there’s not going to be any kind of satisfying conclusion at the end of the season. Probably there won’t be any conclusion to the whole series either; the spinoffs will be canceled, they’ll do a bare-bones season 2 that resolves nothing, and then cancel the series.
The obvious twist seemed obvious from the setup, but given they reveal it in the “here’s whats happening in the rest of the season” teaser at the end of the 2nd episode, I guess it’s a fake-out (and actually Mason was the mole, but Kyle won’t be, and wasn’t it lucky that the memory vial broke before he managed to use it).
The production values are nothing special, both in terms of action sequences and sets. There’s no sense of place because the plot is just teleporting the characters to each location for 15 minutes. Everything feels really compressed and rushed, which is probably not a surprising given they cut the season’s runtime in half.
If this is the version with more early character work, I can’t imagine what that original version would have been. Everybody is a stock character, nobody has an interesting motive or character arc.
$300 million on this? I feel like the brief episodes allowed them to cut out anything interesting. But, stuff blows up real good. In fact, Stuff Exploding would have been a better title.
I got about 10-15 minutes into the first episode and quit. It was boring, and the premise of UNCLE vs CHAOS is dumb in 2023. And I like spy shows, but this is just tedious.
I was hoping I’d see some positive comments here so I’d give it another chance, but it seems the reaction is otherwise.
Apparently it’s a big success for Amazon?
Saw an extended ad for it this weekend and it looks pretty bad.
EDIT: just for reference, the ad was in the movie theater, before Dungeons and Dragons
Eh, it depends on how many watch the entire series. The debut of Citadel was second only to their LotR series, but that show sort of flopped. Only 37% of the viewers watched the entire series.
Citadel is not reviewing well but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a large viewership.