The first season of Netflix's Castlevania series, written and executive produced by veteran comic book writer Warren Ellis, was long-anticipated. But is it any good? Well, depends what you're looking for. On one hand, there's a lot of strong action and animation, memorable exchanges, humor, and lots of gore.
On the other hand, it also has a wildly inconsistent tone, weak character motivations, so much edge it gets cheesy, some bafflingly badly-written dialogue exchanges, and ham-fisted 'commentary' on the medieval Catholic church. It's a mix of moments of extreme cool mixed with a laundry list of annoyances.
We go from a gory massacre to a discussion about goat-fucking. Dracula is introduced in detail and given motivation before stepping away from the series so that the real antagonist can be a cartoonishly evil Church that poses no threat to the main character (this is after they're the instigation for the central conflict, burning Dracula's wife at the stake for witchcraft because she did science - because conflict thesis just will not leave our popular culture).
The season's fourth episode is easily its strongest, having the best pacing and action, but the season ends before any actual plot happens. It remains to be seen if the next seasons will improve on it.
As it is, it's a mixed bag, but at four twenty-minute episodes it's easy to knock out in a single binge-session and is a fairly low investment. Some viewers will enjoy the humor and action scenes, while others will be put off by the tonal problems and barely-contained author tracting.
Runs on Rule of Cool and Not Much Else
The first season of Netflix's Castlevania series, written and executive produced by veteran comic book writer Warren Ellis, was long-anticipated. But is it any good? Well, depends what you're looking for. On one hand, there's a lot of strong action and animation, memorable exchanges, humor, and lots of gore.
On the other hand, it also has a wildly inconsistent tone, weak character motivations, so much edge it gets cheesy, some bafflingly badly-written dialogue exchanges, and ham-fisted 'commentary' on the medieval Catholic church. It's a mix of moments of extreme cool mixed with a laundry list of annoyances.
We go from a gory massacre to a discussion about goat-fucking. Dracula is introduced in detail and given motivation before stepping away from the series so that the real antagonist can be a cartoonishly evil Church that poses no threat to the main character (this is after they're the instigation for the central conflict, burning Dracula's wife at the stake for witchcraft because she did science - because conflict thesis just will not leave our popular culture).
The season's fourth episode is easily its strongest, having the best pacing and action, but the season ends before any actual plot happens. It remains to be seen if the next seasons will improve on it.
As it is, it's a mixed bag, but at four twenty-minute episodes it's easy to knock out in a single binge-session and is a fairly low investment. Some viewers will enjoy the humor and action scenes, while others will be put off by the tonal problems and barely-contained author tracting.