Alex Rider (2020) review

    I read the Alex Rider books in community college. They're basically the James Bond Junior show, except even younger with young Alex being a 14 year old boy who gets recruited into MI6 for complicated reasons and then sent against a variety of Bond villains. The villains are as campy and memorable as your typical Bond antagonist with one wanting to kill all the children in England, another making clones to insert into wealthy families to replace their loved ones, and a guy who measures the pain centers of the brain while torturing people. Poor Alex doesn't have a gun and couldn't deal with them if he wanted to but ends up doing so anyway.

   They are very silly books and yet I actually have picked up the continuation of the series that happened just awhile ago. I am a huge Bond fan and just can't let go of anything that is even peripherally related to it. It's why I created the Agent G series and Red Room Trilogy. Unfortunately, the movie attempt to adapt the series didn't quite work. It wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. So, I was both skeptical and intrigued by the prospect of a television series based on the property. 

    Surprisingly, I found the series to be really enjoyable. It makes the correct decision to really roll back the silliness of the books until it feels less like James Bond Junior and more like Jason Bourne the Third. It attempts to treat a somewhat silly premise (an adaptation of the second novel, Point Blanc), as seriously as you possibly can. This is definitely a different tone from the books but that isn't actually a bad thing as the silliness that's enjoyable on the page wouldn't translate to the screen. This is basically the Daniel Craig version of the Alex Rider universe.

    The premise is Alex's uncle is killed by a unscrupulous organization (Scorpia) when he starts investigating the strange goings on at a mysterious boarding school. Because Alex was being raised by his uncle, this hits him harder than it might have normally. His attempts to find out what happened to his Uncle using mundane technology and wits gets him put on MI6's radar. MI6 doesn't want to recruit a 17 year old (he's been aged up) but they find themselves in need a teenager to infiltrate the boarding school.

   The change of Alex from a 14 year old to a 17 year old has a kind of domino effect on the storyline because it massively increases the believability. It also changes a lot of the themes of the book. Part of the "humor" of Alex Rider books is that the idea of recruiting him was insane despite the many bizarre circumstances that a child spy proves useful. 17 year olds have fought in wars and it lose a significant amount of punch. On the other hand, it also allows Alex to be believable-ish and add a light romantic element that accompanies twenty-somethings playing teenagers ala Riverdale.

    The supporting cast is so-so but I think some of them aren't so great. The Jack Starbright of the books is a very quirky person while the one in the show is a little too normal. We also meet Alex's best friend Tom a few books earlier. The villains are the best with Doctor Grief going from a Afrikaaner to a full-blown Nazi Mad scientist and his assistant is played by Ana Ularu, who is just ridiculously beautiful. This is notable because she's the analog for Irma Bunt since Point Blanc has a lot of homages to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

      The action in the show is surprisingly subdued for a Bond parody but this is now much closer to the Daniel Craig/Jason Bourne era in that Alex doesn't do that many death-defying stunts like he does in the books (despite being a child). Instead, it depends much more on him figuring up clever Maguyver-esque solutions. A lot of these are actually the result of using modern teenage tech-saviiness that the original books didn't have due to their time period but are commonplace today. As mentioned, he manages to track down his uncle's destroyed car due to having a "find my phone" app installed and the phone in the glove compartment.

    At eight episodes, the series is pretty short but just long enough to handle the plot in-depth. The British brevity allows us to translate a YA novel that could have easily been a movie into something much more slow paced. I solidly recommend this series and I'm glad they're making a second season. I don't think they'll be able to get even a fraction of the books done but if they just do the greatest hits then it wouldn't be a bad things. It's not like they can keep the main actor a teenager forever.

8.5/10