Van Dis posted:

Woof. I was apprehensive about this going in and those concerns seem to have been well-placed. El Camino is about as utilitarian as storytelling in the BB universe gets. It's well-shot but not particularly well-crafted.

....

But the story never justifies itself. How Jesse eludes capture, finds an emergency fund, and gets to Alaska is only interesting as a process and not because it's saying anything particularly coherent or even notable about the character or the themes of BB. It's a straightforward outlaw survival story, intercut with flashbacks. For as deftly as they're cut into Jesse's ongoing narrative, the flashbacks are narratively super clunky. I can understand using them to add some context for viewers not familiar with BB, but apparently that's not at all what Gilligan was going for. Generally, the flashbacks interrupt the pacing of Jesse's story and defuse tension rather than heighten it. Their inclusion feels like a big misstep. Too much time is spent with Todd; we know he's a psychopath and we learn nothing new about his character. Worst of all, the flashback with Kandy is just about the least graceful way to turn him into the movie's final antagonist. Nothing at all would have been lost if he and Jesse had no prior connection.