For pretty much the entirety of his filmmaking career stretching back a quarter of a century, Shawn Levy hasn’t even so much aimed a glance in the direction of drama, but that’s all set to change on Nov. 2 when literary adaptation All the Light We Cannot See premieres on Netflix.
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the Free Guy and The Adam Project director helmed the whole limited series from beginning to end, with the story following a blind French girl and her father as they flee from Nazi-occupied Paris with a rare diamond in their possession in an attempt to keep it out of enemy hands.
Pursued by a Gestapo officer desperate for the stone, the pair hole up in the town of St. Malo, where they find refuge with a resistance movement. On paper, it has the potential to be a riveting and widely-acclaimed wartime drama with serious awards season credentials, but the early reviews are spinning a different yarn.
All the Light We Cannot See isn’t being panned, but it looks as though it won’t be living up to its undoubted promise, either. Credit where credit is due to Levy for shaking up the habit of a lifetime and sinking his teeth into meatier material, but you can already hear the vocal minority of worn-down Multiverse Saga fanatics sounding the death-knell for Deadpool 3 because a project from the same director that couldn’t be more different on every level has failed to catch fire with critics.
Levy’s collaborations with Reynolds so far have been gold – while his sole film with Jackman was the undervalued cult classic Real Steel – so it’s not as if a Netflix series failing to live up to expectations will have any bearing on what has to rank as the single most-anticipated MCU blockbuster coming down the pipeline. Try telling that to the internet, though.