La Cruzada

A few people don't remember that this is not a new show. The Original concept for the show came out back in 2014 on ABC.

Then it was 12 people with the contestants aging from 19 to 40.

In the history of mankind there have been several epic falls from grace: Lucifer's Fall, Highlander 2, Lost Boys 2 & 3. Eclipsing even the Morning Star, burned into humanities psyche is The Quest 2022.

As all of you most certainly know The Quest 2014 was an amazing fantasy competition that combined LARPing with reality TV. The 2022 Disney+ reboot was as tragic as the Two Corey's last film Lost Boys: The Thirst and a non-sequitur on par with Highlander 2.

A few details: Changing the show from a LARP competition among Survioresque candidates, to entitled young adults spouting aphorisms. The challenges that once were actually challenging and interesting, became trivial and even worse entirely faked. Character development (good or bad, influenced or not) which is a backbone of competition and reality stories was replaced by middle school acting with a bad script.

In short, I've seen it and I curse my eyes. Don't follow my path.

A good effort, with some decent acting, creature make-up and some interesting sets, but sadly lacks any kind of humour, spontaneity and all the things that made TV series like Knightmare, The Crystal Maze and even Fort Boyard interesting and fun to watch. It's far too polished and controlled by the producers and is in no way "immersive" as they claim to be.

The stakes are so incredibly low. There is literally nothing to lose here other than the plot of the storyline. There are no prizes to be won. The contestants are therefore not much more than glorified actors that occasionally must solve puzzles - the rest of the time they're told what to say and do.

Plus there's far too much post-production work that further drives home that this is highly controlled, cheap way of getting a knock-off fantasy series that's disguised as some kind of real-life puzzle adventure game show. It doesn't know which genre it wants to be in.

The bad reviews are likely grown adults. I could see this as a positive show for young children. Not scary, positive messaging (team work, wisdom, perseverance). Lots of fun makeup and corny characters.

This show is about teens from modern times being "transported" to a medieval reality show. Its basically LARPing there is zero chance of pulling off the concept without being corny.

If you can make it past that its a fun watch. The actors do a decent job. The costuming and creature makeup is excellent. The world building is so so, but immersive enough.

The weakest part is the reality show aspect. The format doesn't give much room for the participants to show personalities or interact in a non-forced way. They mostly sit around listening to the characters speak and then run from challenge to challenge. Sometimes they say, "Ewww bugs" or "wow we did good on that challenge." That's the extent of it.

The challenges they face are pretty vanilla and low stakes. Although its really a kids show so don't expect things to get too scary or the storyline to be anything special.

Again, mindless fun and a decent attempt by Disney at this concept.