Warrior Now episode 1: the new Buffy?
Warrior Nun" has everything it takes to overshadow Buffy. The first episode, however, doesn't live up to its potential. After 50 minutes, a major question arises: what's it all about?
Incarnated by actress Alba Baptista in the Netflix series "Warrior Nun", Ava is a young woman who has just died. She lies on a table in a Spanish monastery, surrounded by a nun and a priest who converse in English with a Spanish accent. Further on, in another room, we see two women dressed in black placing a third woman, who is seriously injured and dying, on a forensic table. Riddled with Divinium shrapnel, she is doomed.
A "cold open". "Warrior Nun" starts off quite well. There's the voiceover, Ava's, which condescendingly explains to the viewer that she's dead for good. In a series, if there's a voiceover from a character we see first who's definitely sure she's dead, but isn't in real life, then it's déjà vu. Because in reality, the character isn't dead. The protagonist now possesses superpowers because of an implanted halo that, minutes before, burnt a guy's fingers off. The end of the first episode remains unexplained.
This brings us to the main problem with the first episode. But the fact that it's déjà vu isn't a bad thing in itself, especially as the series positions itself as such. "Warrior Nun" tries to go all "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", but allows itself to swear all over the place and add sex appeal.
The trailer packs a punch. Good music, mystery, superpowers, demons, suspense, background information, kinetic typography. This could be the new Buffy, couldn't it?
Similar, but not identical
In-universe, i.e. in the universe of the series, the first episode "Warrior Nun" is strong and coherent. However, it fails by making heavy use of clichés - not bad in themselves if applied well - but seen time and time again in this form by audiences. Except that Jet Wilkinson, director of the first episode entitled "Psalms 46:5" loses it by the end. It even goes so far that by the end of the first episode, you don't really know what it's all about or who the main character is. Sure, Ava appears on screen most of the time, but doesn't do anything that seems relevant to a plot.
Ava was quadriplegic and dead before she was implanted with a mysterious halo, which is briefly mentioned at the beginning and end of the episode. It is this artefact that will enable her to walk again and live again at the same time. The scenes in which the young woman runs on the beach or dances happily in a nightclub would work just fine without the voiceover. The problem? Showing only half a second of Ava in a wheelchair and the explanations of a nun in her beige cassock a few minutes after the emotional scene. In cinema, we call that a belly dive.
The main character can't swim, jumps into the water before being rescued by a handsome guy? It would work if it wasn't a swimming pool. Swimming pools, in general, aren't very deep. A villa pool certainly isn't. As long as we get to see Ava dancing by the sea, why wouldn't she drown in it after all?
Worse still, during the nightclub scenes, Jet Wilkinson shows that anything goes. There's a lot of black, neon reflections, contrast and sound. That's how the whole series should feel. Stylised and gritty. Not flat with some memorable segments.
"Warrior Nun" misses chance after chance of a 30-minute desert crossing during which viewers are supposed to get to know the main character, a naive young woman with a zest for life and mysterious superpowers. Like a cliché, the series begins with an action scene. It's totally okay and it works. It shows the skills of the whole gang, the involvement and also where the budget has been spent and how. But then 'Warrior Nun' forgets the part with the 'Warriors' and the 'Nuns'. Except when someone has to say, knowingly, "It is a mystery" to the camera. It would work if there was something other than red smoke on the screen for 20 seconds, which would give the audience something to hang on to. So it's a generic secret that means everything and nothing. From "demons that threaten all existence" to "Your shoelace is open, but I'm not telling you", in short, very broad spectrum.
The series especially lacks the courage to expect something from the viewer and give them what they need to be captivated. It takes courage to serve up another lame cliché. The only big joke seems to be: "Haha, there's a nun and she swears". But that's nothing new either. We saw it in the 90s film 'Dogma', which paints a much more respectful and irreverent picture of religion, thanks also to its commitment to iconoclasm.
The 'Warrior Nun' series - or so it seems - tries not to step on anyone's toes, throws in a little blood here and there and drops the word "whore" once or twice to make us think it's cheeky.
But it doesn't take. At least not quite: What "Warrior Nun" does manage to do is land just on the other side of the line where it's not worth watching the second episode. Never mind if we get a little bored, Ava's adventures don't take off and Netflix loses viewers.
After all, the first episode of this series about demons and warrior nuns revolves mainly around a young woman wandering around Andalusia, doing the rounds of the clubs and moaning at the pool. What's needed here is a good intro. The comparison with 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer' seems obvious. The intro has everything that's important. Demons, a main character, a high school, a kick-ass soundtrack. The atmosphere is there. So is the suspense.
"Warrior Nun" has no intro. Cold opens are a good thing, but you still need an intro worthy of the name that makes a difference, even if it's just a script with mysterious screams a la "Lost".
Language and immersion
This series is a linguistic mess that doesn't work and breaks immersion at every turn. "Warrior Nun" is set in Spain, a country where Spanish is spoken. But because the series was filmed in English, the characters speak English to each other. So far, so good. Viewers have understood this over the decades. We're used to hearing our own language, even if the characters in the film or series speak a different one in real life. For example: technically speaking, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) speak English in the "Fast and Furious" films, even though they are dubbed into German. In "Warrior Nun", however, the characters occasionally revert to Spanish.
"You must miss her," the priest asks the little boy.
"Sí, very much", he replies.
Are the two Spaniards now speaking English on purpose because there's a camera in the room?
Good job, Netflix! It's hard to imagine we're in Spain and speaking Spanish there! It would be more immersive if the characters spoke unaccented English, the standard language, punctuated by a few Spanish expressions.
Or "Warrior Nun" could have used a brilliant technique from the film "In Pursuit of Red October" in which the crew of the submarine that gave the film its title speak Russian throughout.
In one scene, director John McTiernan's camera zooms in on the Russian's mouth as he reads a book. As soon as he gets to the word "Armageddon", he switches seamlessly to English. The case is clear: this is now Russian without subtitles.
This cinematic technique costs next to nothing, but has the merit of being much more effective than Spanish accents, especially when some people have that accent and others don't. Ava, played by a Portuguese actress from Portugal, speaks American English without an accent. The directors probably didn't want the audience to hear an accent all the time. But why the secondary characters then?
The situation gets worse a few scenes later when a guy throws at Ava in an English accent "No spitting" while swallowing the double T and she understands "No spinning". Aren't they supposed to speak the same language? They're both Spanish, aren't they?
After the 50 minutes that the first episode lasts, 45 of which are dedicated to Ava in holiday mode, there's still a slightly bland aftertaste. The only reason to watch the second episode is the Buffy-esque atmosphere: young woman, demons, superpowers,.... A modern audience knows what that can lead to. Except that the series doesn't go there either. The larger plot, which frankly leaves something to be desired, is supplanted by pretty shots that fall flat.
To measure up to Buffy, "Warrior Nun" needs to do more, dare more.
But there's still some appeal. What if Ava became the new Buffy? What if Warrior Nun became the new Slayer? This isn't Netflix's first try. The group knows how to captivate audiences. "Warrior Nun" may not be captivating enough, but in the context of pop culture, in the minds of people in front of the screen, the series can be extremely thrilling.
The second episode is about to begin.
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