Am I Too Old for Devil May Cry?

Growing up, you'd be hard-pressed to find something I cared about more than Devil May Cry. It consumed my every waking thought and emotion, I was obsessed. The two-year gap between the original Devil May Cry 5 leak and the release of the game itself, was probably the longest time had felt to me in my teenage years. Yet every time I see a new clip from the upcoming Devil May Cry show from "Castlevania" seasons 1 and 2 producer, Adi Shankar, I keep asking myself: Do I still like this?

The latest trailer came out yesterday at the time of writing this and was set to Papa Roach's "Last Resort", which leads to a somewhat gloriously weird nostalgic, and campy tone for the trailer. The producer of the show has said that the show takes place in his memories of the time around the 2000s, both pre, and post-9/11 (utterly insane to bring up 9/11 when talking about a property as silly as Devil May Cry), and I guess the song choices we've seen are kind of in line with that mentality. The opening credits theme song was also revealed earlier this year to be "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit, again emphasizing this weirdly campy tone. I have no problem with camp or goofiness by far to be clear, some of my favorite movies are camp masterpieces. I just watched "Return of the Living Dead III" last night and very much enjoyed my experience with that movie, but this is the kind of camp that's slightly embarrassing to watch. Let me explain.

From the trailers, marketing material, and interviews given for the show right now, I keep getting reminded of Tommy Wiseau's "The Room". An unflattering comparison for any piece of art but it's genuinely what I keep coming back to every time I see Adi Shankar open his exceptionally edgy mouth and hype up the series. Every interview he gives seems to try and emphasize how "cool" Dante and, by extension, the show is supposed to be. We're supposed to be thinking how badass Dante is, how awesome it is when he yells out "Jackpot!" and shoots a demon in the face only to follow up with an underwhelming quip about Skeletor. To me, the show has reeked of having no self-awareness. I don't think Shankar and the other producers of the show realize how silly this all looks rather than the intended emotion the show is supposed to evoke. I don't think Dante is cool as he makes a dated pop culture reference relevant to the early 2000s/late 90s, I instead think about how sad it is. With how much Shankar is tying himself to this show, and telling us how much the show is his baby: it feels instead like someone trying to relive the glory days. Instead of Dante being the character from the games, it kind of feels like he's become a stand-in for Shankar himself. A sort of OC fanfiction character where Shankar can channel what he thinks is cool into a single character. It's not even necessarily the first time he's really done this in a show he's produced as "Captain Lazerhawk: A Blood Dragon Story" also carried this same sort of atmosphere and tone. Instead of being a nod to the late 90s/Early 00s, that show was very much a weird mix of 80s cyberpunk and Ubisoft game nostalgia. Its titular character in that show was even more of a stand-in for Shankar as it was a completely original character not from any of the games the show was...adapting? I'm using adapting loosely there because none of the characters in that show that borrow from existing properties felt like those characters and instead were just new inventions with the same names and sometimes iconography. We're getting off track though, let's bring this back to the original the Room comparison. The thing that makes the Room so memorable is how much the man behind it truly believed in what he was doing. Part of what makes that movie so painful to watch at moments is the lack of self-awareness it displays at every opportunity. Wiseau put a lot of himself in that movie, even making the protagonist directly analogous to himself. Johnny, the protagonist of the Room, is a stand-in for Wiseau in that film, he makes himself the greatest guy to ever exist, and it is just the world conspiring against him. Wiseau also didn't realize how silly the movie ended up being because he was just too close to it...something I'm finding increasingly familiar with Shankar here.

There are some reasons not to be too worried, after all, it doesn't look 'bad' per se. The animation looks stylish, and the voice cast assembled is full of generational talents like Devil May Cry veteran (albeit playing a different character in the show) Johnny Yong Bosch and the late great Kevin Conroy, known for his definitive performance of Batman in "Batman: The Animated Series". Shankar himself also produced the first two seasons of Castlevania, and those are still probably the best seasons of that show and its successor to date. The trailers have also not been kind of fun, it doesn't look like a flop or cheap in any way. Maybe just a little embarrassing. 

I think this show is very much going to live and die by its fan response. Netflix usually greenlights two seasons of animated shows before they premiere, so I anticipate a Devil May Cry season 2 sometime in 2026/7, but if fans of the game series don't come out in droves to watch the show, it could very well be canceled before it gets going. Netflix tries to prioritize only properties that are smash hits and doesn't seem to value anything that isn't a mega-hit, there's after all a reason we haven't seen a new "Mindhunter" season. So if Devil May Cry doesn't swing big and hit with fans, I think it's dead in the water. General audiences could get really into it, but I think if bad word of mouth gets around before your average Netflix subscriber has a chance to dive in, we're looking at a short run for the white-haired demon hunter.

I do hope the series does well and is critically well received. I would like to return to a childhood favorite and enjoy it again through a new lens. I just hope the show is maybe a little more restrained and not as cringe-inducing as the trailers thus far have led me to believe.