For once the WTS is putting Jesus at the forefront. He has taken the back seat in the WTS teachings. I wonder if that is because so many jws have no real knowledge of what Jesus did and said.While I agree it's good that the Org is focusing more on Jesus Christ himself (and this video series is not the only example of that), and that the Greatest Man book was one of the best JW publications, I have to disagree that JWs generally do not know what Jesus said and did. In fact, in my experience they are generally very familiar with Jesus' life and the Gospels.
The fact that the GM book was published and studied so many years ago and yet is still so beloved of Witnesses in fact disproves the idea that JWs are unfamiliar with Jesus' life. Also, more recently, a new equivalent of the GM book was printed and studied, called "Jesus - The Way" (although IMO it's inferior to the GM book, for the reasons blondie laid out about the chronological study and so on), so it's not true to say there's been little focus on Jesus in recent years.
Where most JWs do get it wrong is in not recognising how, in the rest of the New/Greek Testament, there is so much emphasis on Jesus as King, exemplar and head of the congregation and much less on God himself who comes across as a more distant figure, approached and seen more through one's relationship with, and imitation of, Christ.
My concern more broadly with this whole new emphasis on 'blockbuster' videos with the JW org stems from two things:
1) Their most recent films play fast and loose with the narrative and history, sometimes inserting whole characters or scenes that are completely speculative and have nothing to do with the actual Bible narrative - for example the convention video where they 'created' a theoretical 'sister' for Jonah, with whom he had conversations. If this were just some movie entertainment company like Disney or Pixar that wouldn't matter so much - there have been plenty of alternative interpretations of Bible stories released by Hollywood. But this Org is supposed to be so serious about the Bible being the actual word of God, and believes it's representing God and Jesus on earth so doing such things is effectively "adding to" the Scriptures, something Christians are warned NOT to do.
2) There is already a problem with Witnesses believing and talking as though the pictures in WT publications - artist's impressions or staged photographs - are 'real' historic scenes. This becomes even worse with these feature-length videos, where the R&F talk about them as if they were fly-on-the-wall documentaries. I heard one in a recent WT study relate a scene from a past video as if it was an event they personally witnessed.
Encouraging this kind of belief in what are really fictionalised re-imaginings of Bible accounts is presumably motivated by a desire to embed the GB's own interpretations in the R&F minds as fact and indivisible from the Bible's own narrative.
Given we live in a very visual society and culture anyway, where the majority of people are easily influenced by movies, advertising, and now internet memes and streamed media, this is an obvious way to get under the skin and into the minds of your followers, but it's very dangerous from a spiritual perspective.
I haven't yet seen this first part of the story of Jesus, but it will inevitably have made lots of assumptions in the filming, as there are simply not enough details in the Biblical narrative to reliably make feature-film length and Hollywood-style representations of the stories.
And really, is it desirable or necessary to do so? There is a danger that fancy visuals and sweeping musical or emotional arcs overwhelm or crowd out the essential meaning behind the accounts themselves. If one believes God has provided the Bible as a guide to life, then it is complete in itself - it does not need to be reimagined in 4K high-definition in a multi-million dollar studio! Most of us have the brains and the imagination to be able to read the narrative (or at least have it read to us) and put ourselves there without needing someone else to create their own version of the visuals for us. That's how it's worked for nearly 2,000 years so far!
As for the motive of why the current GB seem to be shifting more emphasis onto Jesus recently, I agree with NotFormer that it could well be linked to their increased push to elevate themselves to parity with Christ, with constant references to how they will become kings in heaven with him very soon, and so on. Again, also putting themselves on very presumptuous and dangerous ground spiritually.