This show suffers greatly from my expectations. If I’d never seen the animated show, I’d be more excited about this live action version. I also just rewatched some of the animated A:TLA because I feared that my memories of it might have been too fond, and…
Right around the release of Masters of the Air, I saw a number of moderately critical reviews of the show. None of them were harsh pans, but there was a thread of dissatisfaction that wound through their titles. I didn’t want spoilers, so I limited myself to browsing and skimming. I concluded that these reviews were mostly fluff pieces composed of many words saying little, building a 500+ word post from two rumors, an impression, and a handful of vibes—what I think of as publishing-padding, intended to fill post slots on a website.
For the most part, these reviews changed in tone as the show ran its course.
What I gleaned from these negative reviews was that the reviewers, or whomever they were sourcing their impressions from, had mismatched expectations. They were frustrated, I guess. They were watching Masters of the Air and expecting Band of Brothers.
The first episode of Netflix’s The Gentlemen reminds me of Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain without the leavening of self-awareness. Pain & Gain leaves us, the audience, with enough room to see the idiocy and toxic obsession involved. From the movie’s first moments we are offered a perspective that might empathize with the main characters, but doesn’t ask us to sympathize with or believe them. In that way, Pain & Gain feels like a critique of the stupidity and myopic ambition of its characters.
The Gentlemen might critique its characters’ beliefs… maybe. But The Gentlemen doesn’t offer the distance and outside perspective that Pain & Gain does. Even when it showcases the absurd, the first episode of The Gentlemen takes the main characters seriously and takes their perspectives. It believes its own hype. Instead of offering a self-aware critique of people’s unwillingness to admit that they’re stuck swimming laps in a shallow pool, this first episode puts us inside the fishbowl, trying to find a better fishman.
It’s flashy and stylish and dramatic. It also feels a bit stupid.
I love fantasy strategy games. I’ve played piles of them. That includes most of the Age of Wonders series, Master of Magic (the original and the new version), Warlock, Fallen Enchantress, Heroes of Might and Magic 1 through 5, and more. But Dominions outshines those games in multiple ways.
If you’re already someone who plays the Dominions games, you’ll have heard about Dominions 6 and you’ll (probably) already have it—or you’re waiting for the right moment to buy it. I’m more interested in those of you who haven’t played Dominions.
The last time I wrote at length about a Dominions game was a decade ago (damn), for Dominions 3. I said around then that I feared falling into the game, feared losing myself in its intricacies. That fear was appropriate. But I also wrote about the lure of a game that offered such stories—can my demon monkey kingdom raise enough hordes of undead and bleed the land dry fast enough to destroy the other would-be godly tyrants?—and I was right about that too. Dominions 6 isn’t accessible in the same way that I’d want if I were introducing novices to strategy games, but if you’re willing to dig into this game it will scratch itches that other games could never satisfy.
Check out a game that will let you turn your warriors’ skin to tree bark, throw fireballs, hunt the minds of enemy mages, accelerate time so that the whole world withers and dies, and steal the sun.
Fistful of Wits 