Since the first episode, the seriesand Blockbuster he makes it clear that he will be basing his premise on a curious version of the metanarrative. Timmy Yun (Randall Park) must deal with a customer who reminds him that, for better or worse, the store he works at is “out of fashion.”
Especially since Netflix is everywhere. It’s a rather brazen move on the part of the platform to include itself in history of the last whereabouts of one of its closest competitors. At the same time, he can gloat – from a surprisingly simple distance – about his fall and disappearance.
From this point of view, Netflix products boasted frank self-awareness. After all, this is the story of a slow business disaster that opened the door to what the platform is today. The last remnant of a way of consuming entertainment that has already disappeared.
blockbusterthe giant that collapsed
The show lacks the guts to do something like that. Instead, the argument blockbuster it emphasizes the transience of everything that a generation can define. But it lacks subtlety, so that the message is little more than misleading criticism, almost sweetened and lacking much interest.
Director Peiman Benz’s camera carefully observes the recognizable shelves and uniforms of the chain’s employees. The message is clear: the series is pure nostalgia.. A complex mix around the idea of how the entertainment world cannibalizes its own media and ends up devouring its own symbols.
blockbuster – chain – refuses to die. So both Timmy and the few other employees who stayed on the premises despite the collapse of the business believe that overcoming disappointment is a form of loyalty. Elisa (Melissa Fumero) accompanies him in the company of the resisters. The chemistry between the two characters is obvious, and it’s perhaps their connection that gives the series its best moments.
Good humor as peaceful resistance
Timmy is a dreamer, convinced that despite the evidence, the past can coexist with the future. Eliza has some reservations about such idealism, but she does her best to accompany him on his journey to keep this place open. The dynamics between them makes it clear that in blockbuster what really matters is human relationships. Especially as these rapidly transforming entertainment became the bastion of a rare form of intimacy.
The pair are joined by Hannah (Madeleine Arthur), Connie (Olga Meredis) and Carlos (Tyler Alvarez), also buoyed by the victory over disappointment. Finally, Kayla (Kamaya Fairbairn) is the voice of cynicism. His character is the only one who realizes that the importance of the venue comes down to Timmy’s persistence in resisting the inevitable. But even for her, the odyssey is something like a simple crusade.
The series makes the best use of the differences between the group of characters and the small antagonisms that inevitably arise. blockbuster it’s a comedy that draws on its own internal dynamics, but lacks the brashness to create a less predictable atmosphere. For his fifth episode, it’s already clear that he’s going to try to endure a speech about fighting adversity. At best, to avoid harshness change from good intentions and kindness.
Nostalgia wins by criteria, though not by blockbuster
But the script by Vanessa Ramos, David Caspe and Jackie Clarke can’t balance humor with nostalgia. It is far less to achieve a production that achieves its own identity, in addition to looking at its highlights. blockbuster spends most of its time trying to justify itself as a production that is nothing more than Netflix’s take on its immediate past. So by the end it breaks up into a mild mixture of derision and a sense of identity.
The combination leads to an incomplete view of the passage of time. Especially when the argument does not forget that it explores the notion of the rapid evolution of pop culture in a home environment. But instead of analyzing blockbuster as a symbol, he does so as a disgraced giant.
Everything from reference humor and countless nods to the downfall of a corporate giant for mistakes that are hinted at but never shown. The essential interest of the production is to return again and again to the perception of the past as a source of wisdom and the future as a source of uncertainty.
For its last chapter it’s infamous that blockbuster more interested in making people laugh with superficial jokesthan in the study of his peculiar point of view on social transformation. In fact, he completely misses the point of his premise in favor of an unconvincing sense of lost innocence.
The series seems to have to go through a thankless path, remembering that, in the end, the great emblems of the decades will crumble. But it makes so little sense and much less ingenuity that it ends up being a bunch of platitudes about collective identity. A missed opportunity to reflect on the inevitable changes in pop culture and how they will further affect the world beyond the multi-screen.
