I don’t know what people expected from “The Sopranos” prequel movie, “The Many Saints of Newark,” but many of the reactions have been along the lines of, “It’s good; but not as good as the TV show.” (That happens to be mine, as well.)
Meanwhile, some of the professional critiques (mostly, it should be noted, by movie critics) have been downright harsh.Among the toughest was Manohla Dargis in The New York Times who called the film “a busy, unnecessary, disappointingly ordinary origin story.”
There are a couple of reasons these critiques aren’t surprising. For one thing, the expectations were off-the-charts huge for a new “Sopranos” story, so it would be difficult not to disappoint. For another, smaller-budget films are very difficult to pull off. Increasingly, they are not much in demand — even ones with lots of bang like a mafia story — because most of the cash, and commitment to theatrical runs, goes to those movies with car crashes, explosions and guys in capes and tights. That’s not new because of Covid. The trend has been gaining momentum for a long time, and it’s one reason why some great talents in filmic storytelling don’t work as much in the cinema any more and have found a happy home instead in good old, no-italics-needed, TV.
Source: ‘The Sopranos’ movie was never going to be as good as the TV show