Netflix Wu-Tang Doc 'The Disciple' Reviewed: Super Fans Only — SkimNews
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- The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable is a 105-minute Netflix documentary directed by Joanna Natasegara (Oscar winner for documentary short "The White Helmets") and executive produced by RZA, now out in select US/UK cinemas and on Netflix.
- "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" was recorded in secret between 2007 and 2013 as a 31-track double album; only a single CD copy was issued under a stipulation it could not be used commercially for 88 years.
- Martin Shkreli purchased the album in 2015 for $2 million as the sole intended listener; the review notes he reportedly planned to film a video threatening Wu-Tang members with mock guns.
- PleasrDao, an NFT collective, bought the album for $4.75 million in 2021 — a price that still makes it the most expensive album ever sold.
- Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh), a Dutch-Moroccan rapper and Wu-Tang associate, narrates much of the film built around his personal archive, from camcorder footage to selfies.
- RZA appears only in archival footage or grayscale chess-board interludes, with no recent commentary on the mentor-subject relationship, while other Wu-Tang members offer only vague recollections.
- The Guardian's review judges the documentary repetitive and dead-ending for general viewers, gesturing at potential deep dives on art valuation, the artist–fan dynamic, and Shkreli's role, but staying on a glossy surface best suited to superfans.
Why it matters: For Netflix, the documentary adds a prestige doc from an Oscar-winning director to its catalog, but the review's verdict that it's strictly for superfans limits mainstream reach. The Wu-Tang album saga itself — a $2M Shkreli sale that became a $4.75M NFT collective purchase — remains more culturally resonant than any cinematic treatment of it, with Shkreli's mock-gun video plan flagged as the kind of detail the film buries.
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