The Many Saints of Newark Is Trash – Throw It Down the Memory Hole

 

Look, I’m going to say what a lot of Sopranos fans have been thinking for years: The Many Saints of Newark is straight-up garbage and it should be erased from existence. It doesn’t deserve to be called a prequel. It doesn’t deserve to be considered canon. It’s nothing more than bad fan fiction with a big budget and the Sopranos name slapped on it to trick people into watching.

David Chase returning to the world he created should have been an event. Instead, it felt like he showed up to the set half-interested and decided to phone it in. The result? A messy, forgettable mob movie that has almost none of the magic, depth, or sharp writing that made The Sopranos one of the greatest television shows ever made.The dialogue is terrible. Painfully bad. The characters talk like they’re reading lines from a rejected Goodfellas script that got rejected for being too cliché. Gone is the natural, rhythmic, brutally funny Sopranos banter. In its place we get stiff, on-the-nose exchanges that make you cringe. You can feel the writers trying way too hard and still missing the mark by a mile.And the acting… oh boy. Most of the cast is serviceable at best, but the younger version of Silvio Dante (played by John Magaro) is an absolute catastrophe. That performance is pathetic — wooden, over-the-top, and completely unconvincing. It takes you right out of the movie every single time he’s on screen. The guy never had the makings of a great actor, and it shows. He deserves a Razzie for that embarrassing impression.Even Ray Liotta, who usually brings heat, phoned in a lazy dual-role performance that felt like pure soap opera. Playing both Hollywood Dick and his twin brother? Come on — that tired “soap opera twin trope” was lazy writing and even lazier execution. Liotta should’ve gotten a Razzie nomination just for sleepwalking through those scenes. It was embarrassing.Let’s be real: David Chase never had the makings of a big Hollywood director. He’s a television genius, and that’s where he should have stayed. Trying to stretch into feature films exposed his limitations. Compare this mess to anything Scorsese has done and the difference is night and day. Scorsese knows how to shoot mob life with energy, style, and authenticity. Chase just gave us a dull, meandering story with none of the tension or cinematic flair.Even worse? James Gandolfini’s son playing a young Tony Soprano. Nepotism casting at its most obvious. The kid never had the makings of a great actor, and it shows. He doesn’t capture any of the complexity, charisma, or menace that made his father’s Tony legendary. Watching him try (and fail) to fill those shoes is honestly painful. It feels disrespectful to the original character.The numbers don’t lie either. The movie was a massive box office flop. It opened to just $4.65 million in its first weekend across over 3,000 theaters and ended up with a pathetic domestic total of around $8.2 million. For a big-name Sopranos prequel with serious marketing muscle behind it, that’s a disaster. Audiences rejected it hard.Bottom line: The Many Saints of Newark is not part of the Sopranos universe. It’s fan fiction with better lighting. It adds nothing meaningful to the lore and actually cheapens the legacy of the show. The best thing fans can do is pretend it never happened and throw it straight down the memory hole, right next to all the other failed mob-movie cash grabs.If you want real Sopranos content, rewatch the original series. That’s the only canon that matters. Everything else is just noise.What do you think, Sopranos fans? Did you suffer through The Many Saints of Newark or did you wisely skip it? Drop your thoughts in the comments (and feel free to roast it harder than I did). If you want more no-BS takes on mob movies, TV, and why most “prequels” suck, hit that subscribe button.The life may be short, but bad Sopranos content doesn’t have to live forever.