Marco Polo Season 1 Review
Okay, I have to start off this by saying that I’m a big fan of Netflix’s Marco Polo. I really, really like this show. I recommend it completely.
And why do I like it so much? Well, here comes my totally-not-biased review of the first season of this Netflix Original Series.
Marco Polo is, well, the fictionalized account of Marco Polo’s potentially fictional adventures in Kublai Khan’s court. It is a dramatization of a fiction/tall tale, so prepare for things to go off the rails and for history to be ignored and not to care one bit. The general events still happen, but in broad strokes. Although the history is iffy, there is some surprising authenticity in the culture of the places shown and the casting of the characters. The casting is, of course, diverse in the sense it is not 90% white and 10% minority. It is basically 90% Asian and 10% of other races. This is pretty spectacular.
However, the main character is still white, yet this isn’t handled as it normally would. Typically in movies and TV shows the white male protagonist is the lead and most noticeable. This is not the case in Marco Polo. Yes, the show is titled after him, but the character is neither interesting nor the main focus. Likable, to be sure, and the actor, who is actually Italian, does a good enough job and feels right in his role, but Marco Polo is not the star of Marco Polo.
The star is Kublai Khan and all the other characters. The other characters include a wry blind monk, a prince struggling to deal with his Chinese upbringing and Mongol identity, a Chinese concubine who is trying to escape the clutches of her scheming brother, a warmongering Chinese Chancellor, a princess with a past that haunts her, and many more characters with backstories and personalities fleshed out. There wasn’t a character that I felt strong hatred for. I understood them, I may not have agreed with them, but I wanted to see where they ended up. They all felt like people to me, which is very important.
But that is just the side cast, the semi-main, semi-supporting characters. I didn’t mention in detail the true star, Kublai Khan. It is hard for me to describe him objectively because he is one of my favorite characters of all time. Benedict Wong gives a definitive performance of this leader who is striving to live up to the lofty ideals of his grandfather, the great Genghis Khan. His struggles, choices, wisdom, and beliefs are beautiful to watch unfold on the screen. He is so complex and I understand completely why all the other characters pledge loyalty to him, for better or for worse. He is an inspirational leader one would want to follow.
Anyway, enough of my undying reverence for Kublai Khan. What else is going on in the show asides from a ton of great characters?
Plot, of course. The plot is centered around Kublai Khan fighting some dissent/internal schemes against him while also trying to take a Walled City that Genghis could not take. How this is accomplished in the show in the finale made me very excited. I’ve watched the first season twice and I became giddy the second time just waiting for it to happen. It is really great.
The show is just filled with really entertaining moments like that. There are grand epic events and scenes throughout the first season. There are battles on horses, well choreographed martial arts fights, and some pretty decent uses of CGI. I found the special effects to be quite reasonable. It didn’t take me out of the show. There really wasn’t much that did, save some sex scenes that dragged on a bit, but that kind of goes with this type of show and it makes sense in the period of time and culturally.
One thing (another thing) that really brought me into the show, asides from the characters, is the cinematography. It is gorgeous. I mean gorgeous and breath taking. The show is pretty. The costumes are great and the sets are intricate and the camera always has these nice sweeping shots of them. You know this show had a large budget; they didn’t skimp out on the the visuals at all. I would watch it for the eye candy alone.
I could continue going on on all the things I liked and loved about Marco Polo season 1, picking it apart piece by piece until there is nothing left to talk about. But I don’t want to spoil it or ruin the experience. Just watch it and hopefully enjoy it as much as I did.
