Let's start off with the good points. Livia (Vera Farmiga) and teenage Tony (Michael Gandolfini) were both good in this, and managed to do more with the script than maybe anyone else. A highlight for me were the interactions between the two of them, and the overall excellent depiction of a toxic narcissist. There were other good actors in the film, but they didn't have a lot to work with.
Pretty much everything else was weak and superficial. Part of it may have been David Chase's inability to work within the sharp time constraints of a movie as opposed to a TV series, but that's not all of it. Maybe a third of the film was wasted on the rise of a black gangster that nobody cared about, and was nothing more than a nod to woke culture. I'm tired of it.
Some of the characterizations were really bad. Even in the original, Silvio was imho a little overacted, but here it's ridiculous. Uncle Jun is depicted as a bumbling fool privately consumed with vindictiveness, but even in the original we are shown signs of a clever old man who was deeply respected by the likes of Richie, and even though he is deteriorating, he can still basically outsmart anyone outside of other Sopranos. In fact, the original series revealed the entire Soprano family as intellectually gifted criminals and psychopaths, but in TMSON, they are merely backdrops for Dickie Moltisanti. Dickie was hinted at in The Sopranos as a dynamic guy that Tony looked up to, but also a drug addict. Okay, that works. He could have been conveyed with the addict's energy and boldness that would appeal to a young Tony while Jun and Johnny were quietly calculating in a way that only an older Tony would appreciate. Remember when it was said that they ran the whole family though neither was never officially the boss? What I'm getting at with these examples is that the movie does not mesh with the series.
Pretty much everything else was weak and superficial. Part of it may have been David Chase's inability to work within the sharp time constraints of a movie as opposed to a TV series, but that's not all of it. Maybe a third of the film was wasted on the rise of a black gangster that nobody cared about, and was nothing more than a nod to woke culture. I'm tired of it.
Some of the characterizations were really bad. Even in the original, Silvio was imho a little overacted, but here it's ridiculous. Uncle Jun is depicted as a bumbling fool privately consumed with vindictiveness, but even in the original we are shown signs of a clever old man who was deeply respected by the likes of Richie, and even though he is deteriorating, he can still basically outsmart anyone outside of other Sopranos. In fact, the original series revealed the entire Soprano family as intellectually gifted criminals and psychopaths, but in TMSON, they are merely backdrops for Dickie Moltisanti. Dickie was hinted at in The Sopranos as a dynamic guy that Tony looked up to, but also a drug addict. Okay, that works. He could have been conveyed with the addict's energy and boldness that would appeal to a young Tony while Jun and Johnny were quietly calculating in a way that only an older Tony would appreciate. Remember when it was said that they ran the whole family though neither was never officially the boss? What I'm getting at with these examples is that the movie does not mesh with the series.
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