Key Sentence:
- Empire Review: A potentially exciting tale of palace intrigue lost in the consistently dull Disney + Hotstar adaptation of Alex Rutherford’s Mughal-era novels.
With all Sanjay Monkeys Lila Bhansali the scenes from Game of Thrones, forts that look like. They’re made of styrofoam, and stone floors that sway when people fall on them, Empire would be inadvertently hilarious if not too boring. OK, Computer isn’t the country’s first sci-fi comedy, and “Empire,” which aired with sub-CGI and cheap prostheses. Certainly not “the greatest show made in India” as Disney claims it is + Let Hotstar guess.
What a strange-directed project this.
Basic techniques Sanjay Monkeys Lila Bhansali like inserting or blocking seemed foreign to series director Mitakshara Kumar. He appears to have instructed his crew to turn on the cameras and point them in the general direction of their actor. Who performs their scene with the collective gaze of a deer in the spotlight. But storytelling is much weaker than the visual approach.
Empires are episodic and need not be non-linear. I would complain about the action of time when things get interesting. But this is a complaint based on the assumption that things get interesting in the first place. You do not. This is quite confusing because, conservatively, at least 60% of these shows are in politically charged Mughal private chambers.
The Empire treats powerful subjects like greed, ambition, and power as if they were the gangrenous accomplices of the slain Sipahi. Instead, he spent a lot of time talking—so many stories. People often mention the word “dorsal.” And all of this happens in a gloomy tone. As if every time the characters open their mouths, expecting this to be the last time.
It’s almost like they know they’re being filmed. “Talwar sees Zameen destiny ki jaati hai aur sense se logon ki wafadari,” says Emperor Babur in one scene. But the show never bothered to convey that strategy visually. Maybe we feel too slow to keep up with them?