The Amazon Prime Video series ‘The Terminal List’ (2022), with Chris Pratt, which came out in July to terrible reviews, has, however, proved to be a huge hit with viewers with 1.6 billion minutes seen in its first week. The series is based on a book written by former Navy SEAL Jack Carr, who is an executive producer on the series and recently told Fox News that the critics targeted his work simply because “there are no woke things”, arguing that the series is not politically driven nor does it “advance” critics’ agendas.
“They see a flag or someone skilled with weapons and it annoys them”
Carr had a particular problem with The Daily Beast critic Nick Schager, who called the series an “unhinged right-wing revenge fantasy”. Variety also criticized the series, calling it a “military vanity project for a charismatic Chris Pratt”:
“We don’t mention right, left, conservative, liberal, none of those things are mentioned. The Daily Beast, in particular, reviewed him quite vehemently. But, it is that they see an American flag and they get upset. Or they see someone who is proficient with weapons and has a certain mindset and holds those in power accountable for their actions and they just go a little crazy.”
We commented in our review that the author of the book said in his promotion that the lukewarm reception has to do with the current political climate and how it’s affecting entertainment, which somehow recognized that their product has a strong ideological charge, however much more hidden and intuitable it may be. But in any case, its load is much lighter than that of some products of the 80s of action coming out of the USA.
As Carr sees it, critics hate ‘The Final List’ because it avoids its related agenda:
“There’s nothing ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ about what’s included now, and just because there isn’t, then it’s perceived, at least by critics, as not furthering their agenda, so they’re going to hate it.” . We didn’t do it for the critics. What’s important to me and Chris Pratt was that we did something that would speak to members of the military who came down in rank over the last 20 years so they could sit down and say, ‘These guys they put in the effort and did a job that speaks to me.’”