Rise of Empires Ottoman Netflix Season 1

 

Episode Guide

The New Sultan

Through The Walls

Into The Golden Horn

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Ancient Prophecies

Ashes to Ashes

Few people can call themselves true world conquerors but when it comes to Mehmed II, there’s a reason this man was known as Mehmed The Conqueror. Following the conquest of the iconic city of Constantinople, Rise Of Empires combines narration and expert analysis with dramatic reenactments that’ll be instantly recognisable to anyone who watched last year’s The Last Czars. With a lot more focus on warfare and strategic battle planning, Ottoman is a fascinating and educational series, one that takes a wise approach to showcase more action alongside the narration.

Split across six episodes, the series begins with Mehmet taking the throne from his Father and desperate to prove himself and appease the people following a few rebellions in the empire. In order to do that, he sets his sights on the “Butterfly” city of Constantinople; a Roman-ruled gateway between Asia and Europe. From here, the series progresses through the build up to this battle and the ensuing issues Mehmet II had to deal with, both on the battlefield and with his personal life.

From ingenious acts of navigating spy-filled forests with ships to bombarding city walls with cannon-fire (or 8 metre long “Basilica” as they’re referred to in the first episode), there’s a solid amount of educational content here worth digesting. Much like Hannibal & The Punic Wars, Ottoman is essentially a lesson in military warfare and it showcases this perfectly across the series.

At the heart of this tale are a series of impassioned narrators that do a great job fleshing out the scenes and adding more background behind what’s happening. These are handled in much the same way as the aforementioned Last Czars, with cutaways to face to face interviews. Personally, Celal Cengal is a firm favourite here, with exaggerated mannerisms, an unwavering enthusiasm and some great colloqualistic language that really helps you understand what’s happening. That’s not to take away from the others here of course, but he’ll likely become a firm favourite over the six episodes.

There’s a good amount of animations, expository text and diagrams that help to paint a portrait too and seeing the screen filled with shades of blood red is both a cruelly ironic symbol of the bloodshed that went into the conquest of this city and also an informative guide as to how the Ottomans actually accomplished this feat. Most of the series revolves around this epic battle, although there is some history behind Mehmed’s life too.

It’s not perfect and there are a few stand-out moments that spoil the party. The very last scene at the end of the first episode feels ripped straight from Gladiator, with Mehmed II running his hands through corn, while the finale sees Mehmed look directly at the camera and smile before uttering “Now it begins,” which seems a bit of a cheesy way to end things, especially after such an epic explanation around how significant this victory actually was. The face to face narration is engaging although the questionable manner the cameraman skips the shots around three or four times to different parts of their face is a bit distracting.

Gripes aside, Rise Of Empires: Ottoman is a fascinating and educational series for a period in history I admittedly have very little knowledge on. Unlike The Last Czars, the dramatic reenactments wisely stick to the battle and action for large periods of the show. This is ultimately to Ottoman’s benefit and hopefully this is a trend Netflix can continue going forward, especially given the History Channel appear to have abandoned these sort of documentaries long ago. It’s not without its flaws but Ottoman’s battle-centric viewpoint and engaging six episodes make it a step-up from The Last Czars and a welcome addition to Netflix’s growing documentary library It's made quite well and Muhammad Al-Fatih (Mehmed The Conquerer) was depicted well in a way showing his true ingenious, kind and intelligent character. Nevertheless, there was a mistake in showing that he was motivated to take Constantinople just because he was inspired by Alexander. Matter-of-factly, his true role model and inspiration to take the city was Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and his Hadith, that he who takes Constantinople will be truly great and the army will also be truly wonderful, for it is the gateway at the center of the ancient world, and the pathway for Islam, being the final divine religion from God to humanity, to reach all of Europe. Moreover, a critical scene was not shown: when Mehmed was young, his mother took him across the walls of Constantinople and told him that one day, he would take this city. No one can deny that such motivation, alongside the prophecies and perhaps his study of Alexander's history, created this indomitable will.

And yes, as many argue, the Romans, Greek and especially Giovanni Guistiniani were filmed in more emotional scenes when the same was not done for the Ottomans, showing a bias towards creating an emotional tendency towards the defenders and that "why would it be so necessary to take this city?". The answer to this is that way before the Ottoman conquest, the Islamic empire was harrassed on multiple occasions by Roman armies sent with hundreds of thousands of men. Many battles have taken place with the Romans being the aggressors and oppressors on multiple occasions. For this reason, it was critical to take the initiative in pushing the Romans back throughout the hundreds of years that followed, until finally ending it with the conquest for Constantinople.

Finally, it is worth reminding myself and all those that are still going to watch it that historical facts can never be taken and relied on from movies, series or even documentaties I am Turkish and I see that some people of my fellow nation are offended by this series but I found it to be quite realistic. Sure, they focused on only one particular battle and that is not enough to display Mehmed the Conqueror with all his esteeming qualities, but it is just the very beginning of his ruling years and I do believe he was hot-headed and stubborn at times; in a good way.

I think it was made clear in the show that he was intelligent, well-educated, skilled at controlling people; and his genius was quite unmatched for his time. He is a hero for Turkish people, he is my favorite Ottoman emperor, but of course him conquering lands of others won't seem quite as heroic from other people's point of view. I am sure people LOVED him and trusted him with all their hearts after this conquest but before that it is quite likely some of his men questioned him at first for going after such a challenge in the first years of his rule well before he was a well-established leader.

Most things were historically accurate except for some very obvious drama factors and side characters that were added to make it a more attractive show I suppose. His very important advisor Akşemsettin is missing. He is normally in every depiction of Istanbul conquest. His mother was not unknown. I found his battle speeches too short and weak. I think some more things, like the riches he promised to his soldiers to motivate them could have been shown. The battle scenes were fun but honestly not much of the challenges right at the walls was shown; it is said that after cannons were shot Ottoman soldiers would try to climb in but Byzantines would respond by spilling boiling oil down the walls to keep them away. Most battle we saw was field battle; Byzantines watching from their walls and Ottoman also shooting from distance most of the time. I guess those parts of the battle would be harder to film so they omitted it.

I think anyone would agree Giustiniani role was overly glorified; and he was given such detail that any other character was not given. We saw his private life way more than we did of Constantine; instead of his scenes it would make much more sense to see Constantine talking to his priests or following lives and worries of regular Byzantine soldiers.

Regardless, this was just one approach on the events of that battle and it was nicely filmed and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course one should not believe it as facts 100% as history is always written quite subjectively and this was just a TV show at the end

Rise of Empires Ottoman Netflix Season 1 | Geeks (vocal.media)