Anyone else anticipating this return to the world of the Sopranos? I love the idea of a prequel telling us the story of how the family became Tony's to run. Michael Gandolfini is his father's spitting image. Streaming and in theaters today!
I started out loving The Sopranos, and I stuck with the whole thing because it was downright addictive. But by the time it was over, I hated every character and never wanted to hear about them again.
So I took an extended lunch and watched it and I have to say it was good on many levels. The script and acting were excellent. This isn't so much about Tony Soprano as it is about his mentor, Uncle Dickie Moltisanti, and the influence he had on Tony growing up. Frankly, I think it would have been better served as a limited series, or even a two-parter. Some things happened a little too fast, and the ending screams for a continuation (which, I guess, you could argue that the Sopranos is exactly that). There is a lot of foreshadowing, which was nice, but it didn't all work for me. I'll give it a strong B+
Yes, these are not nice people. They may do nice things from time to time, but they are still murderers and sociopaths. We were meant to sympathize with Tony because he still had a small bit of a conscience left. I wanted Tony to be redeemed somehow, but the rest of his crew were too far gone and most got what they deserved. I think David Chase did more to “unglamorize” organized crime than anyone else. His characters were ignorant, backward, petty and cruel, just like gangsters are in real life.
Casting Gandolfini’s son to play young Tony is a turnoff, to me, though I’ll probably see it eventually. I mean, can the kid even act?
I saw it. It was meh. It felt to soft and that is likely because it's harder to do the edgy stuff they did on the show these days. If they ever do another movie they need to get the edge back and IMO focus a story on Carmelo in the present day doing something that pisses off Paulie and creates a bunch of drama when he talks about wanting to kill the wife of a former made man in Tony. She thinks about going on the run or the FBI. Some innocent and not so innocent people get killed in the process.
This is assuming that... Spoiler: Sopranos series ending in the Sopranos series finale, Members Only Jacket Guy doesn't simply whack Tony's whole family along with him. I mean, they were all there at the table...
I was disappointed. It felt like the pilot to a new series, not a movie. Worse, I was bored during it. I totally get why the reviews for it are so mediocre.
I thought the first three seasons were excellent but it kinda went downhill from there. It just got so predictable who was going to live and die just because for them not to die would mean Tony dies or goes to jail and the show ends. They just kind of ran out of new things to say, had more innocent civilians murdered arbitrarily left and right without it even seeming like it gained the killer anything, and had weird gimmick episodes more often. I thought from the flashback in season 1 Tony was a young child during the Newark riots.
That's presuming a lot about the ambiguous ending we got. I guess Chase has since said that's what happened to Tony, but originally they were talking about doing a Sopranos movie before James Gandolfini died, so I think when Gandolfini died he retconned it to that. In fact I wonder if the reason he made it ambiguous is so he always had the option of the movie, but if the movie never happened, he could always say he was killed. I would love to see a Carmela show, like a Sopranos version of The Connors, just cause Edie Falco is awesome. But I wouldn't want the mob super involved in that show. I'd want to see her struggles with building a career after being the wife of a famous mobster. I want to see AJ's struggles as a millennial with that stigma. I want to see liberal affluent 40 year old Meadow in her job as a civil rights lawyer. I don't want Paulie threatening to murder them all. If anything I want to see him struggling as a prostate cancer survivor constantly dealing with the fear of remission. And I want to see Bobby's traumatized messed up kids struggling just to retain their mental sanity.
It wasn't really that ambiguous unless one completely ignores the almost blatant foreshadowing in the episodes leading up to it.
There was nothing concrete to directly indicate what happened after the blackout. Just circumstantial thematic hints. If Gandolfini hadn't died there probably would have been a movie.
So despite all Chase's tall about how it was a true movie and needed to be in theatres etc. the reason it felt like a TV pilot was.... Drum roll please.... Because it was a 2 hour TV pilot. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-sopranos-prequel-series-in-the-works
It felt like that. The black criminal element in the movie felt kind of forced as if they were setting up a whole other kind of show while tossing in tons of disconnected fan service to the old show that barely felt like a story. Should have just focused on young Tony Soprano slowly being corrupted to a point where he basically has a little gang at the the end or do a sequel focusing on Carmelo trying to live a life of privilege even though Tony is dead and maybe butting heads with Paulie who is the mob boss but is kind of disrespected like Uncle Junior was when he was boss but everyone looked to Tony for leadership. The show though would be less about mob life and more about the negative effects on a mob wife when getting hitched to one of these toxic men. Might seem okay at first with the nice house and gifts Tony would bring plus children but the party kind of ends if the guy gets killed and your all of sudden alone with no real job skills and living in a society that will look down on you or look at you as a Burden which would be the case with Paulie.
I was looking so forward to this and was so disappointed by it. No coherent plot anywhere through it- just dropped thread after dropped thread. Tony just sort of meanders in and out of the movie without any real impact or plot. Not a good Sopranos movie. Not a good mafia movie, period. The one tidbit I found interesting was how they made Vera Farmiga, as Tony's mother, almost a spitting image of Carmela in looks and voice. That, plus a single scene of dialogue between Tony' mother and a school counsellor, makes you wonder if Tony had sort of an Oedipus Complex going all along.
I think it was more about having his mom having one motherly loving moment with him. For a child any moment of affection can feel special especially if they don't receive it that often.