Entertainment
Mainstream Critics Have Finally Launched Their Biased Attacks On The Pendragon Cycle
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
Now that Daily Wire’s The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin has been fully released, finally, someone besides me and a few other small outlets has paid attention to it. At least, a little. The men’s magazine Esquire decided to run a piece about the show, and they had nothing nice to say.
Its title, “There’s a Right-Wing Game of Thrones and It’s as Terrible as You’d Think,” already displays the bias the writer, Josh Rosenberg, took into this “review” with him. By putting “right-ring” in the title, he’s telling you he’s not happy it’s produced by Daily Wire.
Josh Rosenberg Hasn’t Watched A Lot Of The Show He’s Reviewing
Things get worse from there. In his review, Rosenberg judges the streaming service’s content based on its news branch and on a single movie, Ladyballers, a controversial comedy about gender-ideology abuse in sports. Never mind that the streamer has other movies, some of which I’ve reviewed for this site, including Run Hide Fight, starring Isabel May of Scream 7.
Guilt by Association (noun): A rhetorical tactic that attempts to discredit a person, work, or idea by linking it to another person, work, or group viewed negatively, using the connection itself as implied evidence of similar faults.
However, when Rosenberg turns his attention to the show itself, it’s pretty clear he hasn’t seen beyond an episode or two. Everything he singles out for critique is largely from Episode 1: Charis’s bull-leaping and Taliesin’s “come-to-Jesus” moment are mentioned, but nothing of the fantastic battles from episodes 3 or 4, nothing of the high drama of episode 5, or the tragic love story of episode 6. He criticizes the budget without even mentioning the large-scale warfare of episode 7 and its cast of apparent thousands. It seems likely that, as modern critics often don’t, Rosenberg didn’t actually watch the entire show he was “reviewing.”
Misrepresenting The Role Of Christianity In The Pendragon Cycle
He also attacks The Pendragon Cycle for its religious themes. One of the things I have praised about the show is that, while the first two episodes are a little preachy, the show overall has been extremely fair to other religions despite the theme surrounding “Yesu” being “the One True God.” It never openly disparages the other gods that appear in the show. It never presents Christianity as something you should believe in, and it is even sparing in portraying the faith of characters who do believe in it: a prayer here, a priest there.
Straw Man (noun): A persuasion tactic in which someone misrepresents or distorts the content of an argument, idea, or work so that the altered version is easier to attack or discredit than the original.
Jeremy Boreing did claim at first that The Pendragon Cycle was “probably the most Christian piece of entertainment since Braveheart,” and quite frankly, it’s about even between the two, so that’s a fair comparison. To imply it is “Christian” on the same level as, say, Left Behind, is a gross misrepresentation of the King Arthur epic.
Just Follow The Crowd
His next mode of attack is to compare the show to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the HBO Game of Thrones spinoff that has been a media darling since it was released. This mode of attack criticizes the number of viewers the show might have had, compared to the HBO series’ 13 million viewers.
Bandwagon Appeal (noun): A persuasion tactic in which a claim is presented as true, superior, or justified primarily because it is widely believed, supported, or followed by a large number of people.
It’s true The Pendragon Cycle probably had a smaller audience, an issue I have discussed myself, but the limited audience is not proof that the show is “bad,” it just means it isn’t accessible to a lot of people. I’ve said before that more exposure would open the show to a wider audience who would probably enjoy it.
Everything I Haven’t Tried Is Terrible
His final criticism is the most disingenuous sideswipe: that no reviewers have even glanced at the show, so it has no score on Rotten Tomatoes. This is especially underhanded in the wake of the Scream 7 review-bombing fest that critics have had about the slasher film; angry about Melissa Barrera’s firing, they panned the movie out of hand, even though audiences loved it and it broke franchise box office records.
Appeal to Ignorance (noun): A persuasive claim that treats the absence of evidence, information, or evaluation as proof of a conclusion. Instead of demonstrating that something is false, bad, or ineffective, the argument relies on the fact that it has not been proven otherwise or has not yet been examined.
The Pendragon Cycle has been suffering from the same treatment but is easier to ignore than Scream 7 or even the First Lady biopic Melania due to its lack of visibility. But, once again, a lack of reviews isn’t the same thing as being a bad show, and if Esquire and the Scream 7 kerfuffle are any indication, mainstream reviewers would probably pan it anyway just because it’s Daily Wire.
I Was Wary, But I Actually Watched The Entire Show
The Pendragon Cycle is a really good show being maligned by Esquire and ignored by everyone else for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality or its content. I can say this without bias, because all the same objections raised by the men’s magazine are the reasons I was wary of the show, but I like King Arthur content enough to have set aside those prejudices and watched every episode.
Whatever it is that mainstream critics think The Pendragon Cycle is, they’re sorely mistaken and drunk on their own biases. To top it off, they’re trying to tell us that it’s so bad, we shouldn’t watch it. This is not criticism; it is social engineering by suppression. Maybe we need new critics.
The Pendragin Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is streaming in its entirety on Daily Wire+.