(Elsewhere in the universe, the viewer can learn more about Stefan’s personal history and his sense of loss around his mother: A motivation, thin as it is.) Noting that many of the choices “Bandersnatch” presents stand out for their dithering lack of advancement of the plot doesn’t take away from the fact that there is ingenuity at work in building out a story that moves in different directions, one presented in an at-first bewildering user experience. Then again, the psych med digression exists down some narrative corridor that many viewers may never go. When Stefan is presented with psych meds, the viewer is given the option to “throw them away” or “flush them.” Moments like these - as Whitehead winces and grimaces in close-up, waiting for the viewer to deliver a meaningless verdict - make “Bandersnatch’s” claim to grandly advancing what television can do feel a bit tenuous. Along the paths I took through “Bandersnatch,” various choices are either false ones (you’re given the option for Stefan to take LSD or not, but if you decline, he’s drugged against his will) or not really choices at all. To wit, if you instruct Stefan to accept an offer of help working on his game, a more experienced game designer (Will Poulter) says “Wrong path” and you experience the story all over again. Early choices, like what cereal Stefan eats in the morning or what tape he listens to, are facile - and they prime the audience, accurately, for a filmed entertainment that’s quite a bit like old “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels, one in which many choices have absolutely no consequence. After obtaining the hands-off support of a leading tech company, he struggles in solitude with completing the game, and begins to descend into mania.Īs far as I can tell, that’s the premise more or less whatever choice you make. Stefan is an aspiring video game designer working on a game whose many binary choices yield a massive volume of potential outcomes. On the other, “Bandersnatch,” as creative work and not as experiment, falls so short of the standard “Black Mirror” has set that to put it forward is to risk the credibility the series’s first four seasons have earned.Īfter a brief preamble explaining the way the show functions - viewers are able to click and choose which forked path protagonist Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) takes - we’re plunged into a story that seems even at first blush a bit thin.
#Black mirror bandersnatch series
(That’s fitting, for a stand-alone entry of “ Black Mirror,” an anthology series that thrives on simple enough philosophical conundra.) On the one hand, a branching film with multiple endings, so formally unlike what television generally is, could not be made and broadcast to quite so many people without the imprimatur of a well-loved series. “Bandersnatch,” the new film released on Netflix Dec.
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