Citadel

Mason Kane (Richard Madden) was once one of the top agents for an independent global spy agency called Citadel that operated outside the controls of any government with its mission being to protect humanity from global threats. During a mission alongside Citadel's other top agent Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), the mission turned out to be a trap by insidious organization Manticore which lead to Citadel's collapse and Mason losing his memories believing himself to be an alias Kyle Conroy. 8 years later, Mason/Kyle is now married to Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) with a daughter Hendrix (Caoilinn Springall) with still no memory of his life beyond these 8 years save for flashes in dreams. When Mason/Kyle attempts another DNA test, this brings him to the attention of Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), his former tech support specialist in Citadel who tells him that Manticore are preparing something major and he needs to use his dormant skillset to stop it.

Citdael is the long awaited collaboration between Amazon Studios and producers Joe and Anthony Russo that has spent five years in development with the intention being to create a globe spanning spy franchise consisting of a mothership series along with several planned local language spin-offs with an Indian and Italian series both confirmed at this point with several others in various stages of development. Totaling a six episode first season, Citadel is noted for being one of the most expensive series ever produced with an estimated $300 million production budget that's largely credited with reshoots that were undertaken when the original showrunners were replaced with David Weil. With the first two episodes now available, Citadel certainly has scope and production value to spare, but it's all in service of a very safe and very generic spy thriller that feels like a remix of the "greatest hits" of the past 20 years' worth of spy movies.

It's honestly pretty hard to discuss much regarding Citadel because the first two episodes have basically been very standard scenes of exposition, macguffin chases, and fight scenes with very little that actually gives Citadel much of an identity of its own. While I did like Stanley Tucci giving some personality to his tech expert character Bernard Orlick by adding some punch to his lines, most of the cast aren't really given all that much to work with and as a result Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas just feel like placeholders in roles that could've been played by anyone and it'd hardly make a difference who you chose to play them.

Citadel just feels like time filler, albeit handsomely produced and competently made time filler. It's amazing how you have a series that not only has this level of financial backing but is coming from major producing powers and there's just nothing all that much to talk about in what's supposed to be a major hook to get viewers.

From the beginning of the show, it is clear what they were trying to do with the whole story, the concept of the Citadel universe as a whole is great, but it is indeed badly executed. If only they worked on the execution more; as in story telling, how the series of events would run after one another, noticed that there's a lot of flashbacks at wrong points throughout the episodes, and sometimes even too many flashbacks back to back, forgetting sometimes that the series is also taking place in real time. The whole high tech part of the series is also amazing what they tried to accomplish but their ambition was their undoing. This series is capable of being top notch, but the story telling needs refining, while watching you'd feel that the episode is out of place or out of sync with the story, you'd feel that it's missing something. Again more work is needed on execution.

For now, just a big parade of shallow clichés.

Maybe it's an attempt to bring a teenage audience closer to spy genre. The intended audience would then justify the insubstantial plot, the characters' constant explanations of what's going on, the TikTok editing, and an almost cynical lack of engagement with the real world. By the way, do these plots involving nuclear artifacts still make sense? Why don't screenwriters experiment with contexts closer to the experiences of the new generations, such as pesticides, industrial secrets in medicine and food, disputes over geolocation data, etc.? Why not explicitly place industries and their business interests at the center of the story rather than these government agencies with their political overtones?

Boring.

Probably the script was written by ChatGPT. They fed the program with some famous spy movies, took out its soul and that was it. It's worse than shows with one-twentieth of the budget. Where did they put $300 million? And making jokes about another movie doesn't change the fact that it's copy and cliché like when the protagonist's wife says he's not Jason Bourne just to alleviate the plagiarism. The scene where the protagonist goes to retrieve equipment that his enemies have been looking for eight years is embarrassing. My mother going to buy bread at the bakery is more exciting. Boring and copy of the copy of the copy of other movies. Not to mention the numerous plot holes and absurdities. I gave 3 because of the good actors.

Y'all know the trope of an amnesic spy is that we audience gotta discover the protagonist's backstory together with him, right? Why on earth would you begin the show with a complete flashback? There might be plot twists and betrayals down the road, but you also need to entice the audience to keep watching to see that happen.

Besides starring Richard Madden as discount Matt Damon, we also have Stanley Tucci being a discount Mark Strong. Sounds familiar? Good-guy independent spy agency? Add a sprinkle of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and you get this utter lack of originality show.

Also what kind of incompetent spy agency keeps a list of all their agents and black sites in one document, and all their secrets together in literally one briefcase?

Not impressed.