4 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Chronicle: Samoa Joe
1. Next-To-No Focus On Joe's Recovery
In teasers and the trailer, WWE seemed to suggest that this Chronicle would take fans inside the head of Samoa Joe as he prepared to make a grand return from injury post-WrestleMania (after sadly missing the big show) and rev up the engine in time for SummerSlam. Unfortunate news flash alert: it didn't, at all.
One scene even sees Joe rubbish the notion that anybody should feel sorry for him, and he barely even acknowledges the foot injury he suffered this past January that caused him 'Mania heartache. It's as though that didn't happen.
The film begins to lose a bit of steam towards the end when the spotlight shifts to hyping up Joe's crack at Styles in Brooklyn. In the final 15-20 minutes, which is almost half the length of the thing, Chronicle becomes less about Joe's recovery and more about how much of a bad ass he is. As a result, he's presented as two different people.
That may have been fine had the injury been discussed in-depth at the start or used as motivation for a warrior mentality. It wasn't, and that's rather baffling when personal pain was such a massive part of the synopsis going in.