Hot take on new ACI (hate me for that)
Has anybody ever noticed how ACI went from literal masterpieces that can be rewatched a hundred times without getting boring or annoying to the episodes that are hard to even watch till the end.
Throughout ACI's 20+ year history the style of the episode has changed multiple times. The last "change", in my opinion, happened around S14-S15 and it completely ruined the show. The feeling of a high-quality, cinematic documentary just dissapeared. And I'm not talking just about the shortening the crash segment over and over again, I'm talking about the changing of the most important thing – the atmosphere. The current episodes are just "*5-7 minutes of pilots interacting with eachother*, *sudden crash* and 35 minutes of the boringest investigation you could imagine". To compare, we have the episodes where the long investigation segment was actually well-made and rewatchable (GOL 1907, SAA 295, AF447). Even if one of the new episode will consist of the story part only (like they did with balkan 13) ot would still absolutely suck. The whole cinematic atmosphere of the show is gone and it makes most of the new episodes COMPLETELY UNREWATCHABLE and some even UNWATCHABLE.
For example, we have an S24 episode covering Saudia flight 163. In my opinion, it's one of the most weird and interesting plane crash stories. But what did we get in the episode: 5 minutes of pilots interacting with eachother, 5 minutes of telling about the emergency landing and how the plane just completely burned. Then – just yapping about how did the fire start. Even the short crash segment felt soulless. Another example is the remake of the famous Uberlingen mid-air collision that i don't even wanna talk about because of how awful the episode was.
On the other hand we have Bristow 56C – a completely unknown to most of the humanity random helicopter crash. But ACI managed to make an episode that would actually take my breath away and literally teleport me into the situation. When i was watching it the first time i literally felt like i was with those guys surviving in the sea on a ripped raft. And the investigation segment (which was actually long enough) is also pretty good to rewatch multiple times.
And i can't talk about the soulfulness of old ACI without bringing KAL801 or S2 Uberlingen. These episodes literally made me burst into tears.
So what can I say in the conclusion? I will get downvoted heavily, but you cannot change my mind. This is the sad reality and right now we are witnessing the downfall of once the greatest National Geographic documentary of all time.
(i literally almost cried writing this because of how many great memories of mine are connected to this show and how it all is just getting ruined by the greed of those in who's hands the show is now)