As to any questions the audience might have about what Ethereum is, this is where the film sadly comes up short. It is approached in too leisurely a fashion, so much so that the first attempt at summarizing blockchains comes at the sixteen-minute mark, presumably long after many viewers throw in the towel on understanding or caring about Buterin’s work. Also, a great deal of the talk about Ethereum within this film is nebulous and tired. This is at its worst during the CGI sections used to describe the tech. The swirling, Tron-style graphics suggest a chaotic nature to blockchain technology that really doesn’t match its import.
When the film does get to a section on how a monumental upgrade to Ethereum fixed its onerous power requirements, this is a good choice for more focus or drama, but it passes quickly and without much spark and fails to express what was achieved (the upgrade has been likened in computing circles to changing the engine on a race car while it’s driving).
“coverage of Buterin at home and abroad is vivid”
Further, the largely chronological take means that we are hostage to events that unfolded during the production. This lessens the drama as sections deal with COVID-19 and then the Ukraine war, with neither of them reflecting much meaning back on Buterin or his tech. Rather, one feels the chronology as a biographical crutch, employed where the audience would have benefited more from a more serious and committed meditation on the tech in play or a more sensational approach to its subject.
The music by Dan Deacon is very good, taking a driving NiN-style score that layers a sense of paranoid menace over the roster of international locations Buterin trails through while we are with him.
But, the film doesn’t quite make it as required viewing. What this needed was an engine, whether the stories about the network upgrade and early schisms with the project’s governance, or with some other crisis within Buterin’s life. Without that, it all starts to feel eerily adrift and disingenuous, rather like a sales pitch for crypto. It adds some good insight to an important figure, but it is not the film Buterin really deserved.
"…It adds some good insight to an important figure, but it is not the film Buterin really deserved"
