While the praho moved away over the Indian Ocean (televisedly placed near Tropea), we understood that we will only get rid of Sandokan with the retirement of Can Yaman and Alessandro Preziosi, because the open ending, but above all the audience (which also stood at 25% share on Tuesday), preludes sequels of various inspiration, of the series, «until the praho goes let it go». Much of the success of the fiction, in fact, must be attributed to the screenwriters who created a sort of valuable map based on universal feelings revisited with contemporary taste. A spectacular mix that allowed the authors to intertwine the plot by reworking Salgari’s novels and mixing events, salient passages and character traits as they pleased.
Everything was there in this Sandokan 2025, honor and revenge, friendship without doubts and doubts about faith, the aspiration for freedom and the lust for money and power, adoption and the search for one’s roots, the perfidy of sisters-in-law and the instrumental use of madness, opium and abandonment, all revised and corrected with a sensitivity that we would define as woke in the authentic and non-derogatory sense of the term. So even the rude ones like Sandokan, Yanez and the tigers cry, Marianna is a determined and self-confident woman, the fights are halfway between Shaolin style and a video game, the scenes of the fights with the natives resemble those of Avatar (or did we get confused with the commercial that had intruded in the meantime), Sandokan poisons himself like Juliet but looks like the Count of Monte Cristo and even the wise leader of the Dayak tribe is dubbed like in a car advertisement Asian.
The fact that Can Yaman gave life to a captivating character is a merit that the Turkish actor earned episode after episode, even if, more than Kabir Bedi, he was probably inspired by Julio Iglesias and the lyrics of «I’m a pirate, I’m a gentleman». However, he is the perfect interpreter to embody a modern hero who fights for universal ideals and contrasts with an equally contemporary antihero like Brooke.
In short, Can is a good guy, suitable for the “new” Sandokan but not for James Bond and, without the comparison being belittling, he doesn’t have the imprinting of a tough guy. He lacks the look of “the man who never has to ask” and the charisma of the leader. Proof of this is the fact that his speech to incite the crew to the rescue resembled a parliamentary question more than that of Massimo Decimo Meridio.
