Brief thoughts about Bandersnatch & Black Mirror

A few weeks ago during the Christmas days, Black Mirror released a special episode with the difference that it was created as an interactive experience for the viewer, instead of just a regular episode/movie where the story is always the same.

For those of you that don’t know what is Black Mirror, it is, first of all, an anthology series, which means every episode is 100% independent although there might be “Easter Eggs”, the plot always revolves about some future technology and how it could have an impact on people’s lives, however, there is always an element of drama that can make things turn a little bit dark.

The quality of production is absolutely top-notch, and me being a big fan and avid consumer of series and movies, I think Black Mirror can easily be placed on the same level as GOT and Breaking Bad, among other huge names.

The last season was released more than a year ago so I was hoping to receive news related to new Black Mirror releases, so I was happy when I saw this trailer published:

Now, I was actually hoping for season 5, which would normally mean 6 new episodes, but a special interactive episode was also a nice surprise.

Then, in the day of release, I spent an entire afternoon enjoying the Bandersnatch’s story with some family members.

The way its interactivity works is very simply and it will be easy to understand for those that normally play video games where your decisions unlock different story paths, in the case of Bandersnatch when watching the episode you will often have 2 or more choices on the screen, and using the computer mouse/trackpad you need to choose one of them, these accumulative choices will, later on, unlock story paths that can be completely different between each other. I mean, this is not 1 single story playing on with different POVs as paths, no, in Bandersnatch there are completely different stories/realities and through the viewer choices, these stories/realities are displayed on the screen.

When it comes to Bandersnatch story/stories, some of its ending and scenes were very cool, but for me, the truth is that making the episode interactive can make things more complicated than necessary. We can see Bandersnatch design path as something with multiple branches, and when the viewer eventually arrives at a dead end, then Netflix will automatically rewind the episode showing you a glimpse of your previous decisions that affected the story and leaving you at some point were you can take a different decision and continue with the episode, eventually the deeper you are on the episode the harder it gets to remember all of your previous decisions and some people can feel a little bit lost.

However, the fact they decided to took the extra work in creating something different should be appreciated, especially because it allows for some curious scenes to take place, like the ones we can see in the first minute of this video, which is, by the way, full of SPOILERS:

To sum it up, Bandersnatch is a cool and different “movie” that will certainly bring entertainment to a lot of people, I would have preferred to have season 5 with the corresponding 6 different episodes, but as long as season 5 is not delayed too much due to Bandersnatch I would be happy.

Nevertheless, I don’t think Bandersnatch is the best Black Mirror episode, it is clearly the most ambitious one and the most complex one due to its alternative realities, but there were others I enjoyed more.

I wonder what do you guys think about Black Mirror?