Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors is a Netflix documentary about the archeological excavation of the tomb of the first emperor of China… and his army of terracotta warriors.

It’s a third of the backstory of finding the massive grave site, a third about the investigators still working the site fifty years later, and a third a re-enactment of the death of the Emperor and the conspiracy to replace him… which likely leads to the destruction they found at the site.

It turns out all the statues had been damaged and destroyed and now, fifty years later, they are still putting them together (while continuing the exploration of the massive site). I’ve always known about the terracotta warriors but didn’t know what I’ve seen has been reassembled… and that nobody knows for sure why they were destroyed.

The re-enactments of Chinese history goes a little long and sometimes felt maybe they should have just made a movie instead of a documentary.

All in all, this is a good enough documentary… though its re-enactments kind of got in the way of the archelogy (or maybe the archeology got in the way of the re-enactments, depending on how you look at it). It’s a good and informative enough doc though there’s probably a better version of it out there.

Score: 76