‘Citadel’ Is Amazon’s Latest Costly Attempt at Making a TV Franchise
After the mixed response to the outrageously expensive The Lord of the Rings: The Power Rings, Prime Video is back with a $200 million series that feels like a SparkNotes version of an action show
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and for the most expensive television series of all time, its long-awaited debut has been a mixed bag at best. In an extensive feature of The Hollywood Reporter Earlier this month, sources at Amazon Prime Video revealed this The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power domestically had a boring 37 percent completion rate — in other words, just over a third of viewers completed the first season. (According to Prime Video insiders, a 50 percent completion rate would have been considered solid.) Although The Rings of Power Receiving mostly positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for its production value, such viewing metrics paint a bleak picture of Prime Video’s grand ambitions: Rather than a home run, its biggest swing in the ongoing Streaming Wars was doubly true of a fundamental rule.
The Rings of PowerThe overwhelming launch of is emblematic of larger issues at Prime Video, which, such as The Hollywood Reporter as also noted, despite skyrocketing production costs, it lacks a coherent vision for its line of original programs. (Along the way, the streamer fell short of Jeff Bezos’ lofty goal of creating the next one game of Thrones— like Megahit.) While Prime Video is essentially a side hustle for one of the world’s largest online retailers — a way to gain more subscribers who, for example, have access to Thursday night soccer– Streamers’ current spending habits are becoming more apparent as yields plummet. But if Amazon wasn’t quite ready to hit the panic button on its recent streaming efforts, it was the launch of citadel could push the company over the edge.
A global thriller executive produced by Joe and Anthony Russo. citadel is arguably Prime Video’s most ambitious (and risky) project to date. not how The Rings of Power, citadel is not based on any pre-existing IP, and the series will serve as a flagship for a new small-screen universe. (Prime Video has already greenlit foreign-language spin-offs in Italy and India.) The show focuses on spies working for the eponymous Citadel, a secret international organization loyal to no nation — rather, it exists in the shadows, um to protect all of humanity from dark forces. On paper you can understand the appeal citadelThe premise of : a new action-oriented franchise with a global reach burned into its DNA, orchestrated by the duo responsible for some of the most lucrative blockbusters of the last decade.
Of course, what sounds promising in theory does not always work in practice. The problems for citadel started with original showrunner Josh Appelbaum leaving the project over creative differences, which required extensive reshoots after David Weil (creator of Amazons Hunter) was discontinued in its place. As a result, citadelThe budget exceeded $200 million, making it the second most expensive series behind Prime Video The Rings of Power. The reshoots also meant that much of what was filmed under Appelbaum remained on the cutting room floor: the first season was supposed to be eight-hour episodes, but the final product will be six episodes with significantly shorter running times. (Of the three episodes made available to critics, none lasted longer than 40 minutes — including opening and closing credits.)
It is not necessary to know the chaotic context behind the scenes to watch citadel, but it goes a long way towards explaining why the first season is so disjointed: a haphazard collection of high-octane moments in search of narrative glue to hold them all together. The series begins on a train traveling through the Italian Alps, where flirtatious Citadel spies Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) and Mason Kane (Richard Madden) are tasked with tracking down a Russian agent looking to sell uranium. As Nadia soon discovers, the situation is a ruse devised by Manticore: a nefarious Illuminati-like syndicate whose members manipulate world affairs in order to amass greater wealth and power among themselves. Someone within Citadel has betrayed the organization, and Manticore is in the process of wiping out its worldwide spy network. A tense gunfight ensues on the train, with the Russian agent detonating a bomb.
While Nadia and Mason survive the blast, both lose their memories in the aftermath. Eight years later – the sudden jump in time is as harrowing as it sounds – and Mason has settled in rural Oregon with his wife and daughter; Meanwhile, Nadia works at an upscale restaurant in Valencia, Spain. Mason’s new life as a family man is interrupted by Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), one of the few surviving Citadel agents after the global massacre, who needs his old colleague on a new mission: recover a case containing nuclear codes before it falls into Manticore’s hands. (Nadia is brought back into the herd shortly after.) Unfortunately, that’s all there is to do citadel in the first half of the season that has the brevity of a Quibi series at four times the price.
It’s rare that a series’ biggest flaw is that it could have had longer running times – more often than not, longer episodes are seen as a sign of prestige, even when a series has little room to fill the extra space. (Do you remember when Teddy Lasso was a half-hour sitcom?) But citadel is the SparkNotes version of an action series so lacking in detail and narrative verve that you’d be wondering what the heck happened to the production if it wasn’t already covered in the entertainment industry. Even a sequence that should be the bread and butter of a spy series – Mason steals the case of nuclear codes from a closely guarded Manticore facility in New York while re-familiarizing himself with his special abilities – is over in minutes. deprive citadel of any dramatic tension (or sophisticated fight choreography) in service of burning through what is already a bare bones act.
If any, citadel feels like the small screen equivalent The Snowman: a high-profile disaster whose own director admitted the crew were unable to shoot the entire script due to a rushed production. (We always have those snowman memes.) citadel was supposed to have footage left, it’s just that most of it fell victim to competing visions for the show – the end result is a rough cut masquerading as a finished product. It is difficult to reliably assess what has been omitted citadel after extensive reshoots, but what little remains is hardly encouraging as a launch pad for a new franchise. Even as the international spinoffs and future seasons of the flagship series fix some of the kinks, Amazon can’t expect viewers to stay loyal to something that doesn’t impress them from the jump.
Considering how much creative input the Russians had citadel, the show must go down as another flop from the filmmakers whose post-Marvel slate leaves a lot to be desired. (To be fair, the Russos have a flex on their last resume: they were producers Everything everywhere at once.) For all who have suffered The gray man on Netflix – the streamer’s most expensive film to date, directed by the Russians –citadel treads familiar ground for all the wrong reasons: shallow action scenes and MCU-esque jokes meld into something that doesn’t aspire to be anything more than ordinary. citadel may not mark the end of the Russos as sought-after Hollywood creatives – for all their flaws, The gray man gets a sequel And a fork. But the show’s disappointing debut, coupled with its recent directorial efforts, underscores the limitations of the Russians when not coloring within the MCU’s lines.
The fact that it was Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke who originally approached the Russians for the prospect of creation citadel means the streamer has made their own bed in many ways. There’s still time for Prime Video to turn things around – carve out a TV niche for dads with meat-and-potato thrillers reachers And jack ryan is a promising development. But with Prime Video’s two most expensive shows struggling out of the gate and the service still lacking a brand-defining hit like Netflix’s stranger things or Apple TV+ Teddy Lasso, you have to wonder how much longer Amazon can afford costly setbacks before it ponders its future in the streaming wars. With all the money that Prime Video has gone into citadel and its international spin-offs currently in production, it’s no surprise that the series has already been renewed for a second season. But unless citadel can make a remarkable turnaround after such a disastrous start, its next mission may well be its last.