Beyond (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5174766/)
This show strongly reminds me of Stranger Things. 80's kid, affected by phenomena from a mysterious alternate dimension, now being hounded by shady government organization. I'm 5 episodes in so far and very much enjoying it.
Edit: Just finished episode 7. Wow. They really turned things up a notch. 3 more episodes to go...
Edit2: I finished binge-watching the first season. I got a bit worried when they started explaining all the mysteries with religious context...but thankfully that all turned out to be a false-lead, with the truth still being somewhat mysterious but clearly far more elaborate.
Wow. Much more interesting than the previous episode. Just when I thought I was finally starting to see through the facade and solve at least a few of the mysteries before the reveal, everything turned out to be something else and then the cliffhanger. Brilliant.
Son of Zorn
I'm surprised that this show turned out to be so consistently entertaining and amusing, despite the underwhelming premise. Now I feel the urge to draw a picture of Aquafina and Dasani...
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
They took some risks with the first episode of the new season, making it both a musical and racial, and also an extended dream sequence
Vikings
I had hoped Ragnar would go out in a more glorious fashion...but I suppose he was bound by preexisting lore. Still, he left quite a legacy for his sons to live up to.
Floki's story arcs are starting to feel a bit forced. I'm hard pressed to imagine his newly adopted daughter will progress into anything interesting...but maybe they'll surprise me.
It's like X-Men and Mr.Robot had a baby, and it's awesome, so far. Only one episode aired as of this posting, but I'm definitely optimistic going forward.
Basically, war between humans and mutants for the right to exist, except the whole thing is probably only happening in the mind of the protagonist.
The Expanse
Season 2 started recently. The show is basicaly 'Alien', if it were drawn out with lots of filler and just barely interesting. Still, barely interesting is enough to keep me watching, at least when I have nothing else new to watch.
The 100
Season 4 recently started. A major story arc ended with the previous season, and the new story arc they branched into with this season is decisively less interesting. Also they killed off some of the most interesting characters, so the future of this show doesn't look great.
The Path
We're a few episodes into Season 2 now, and the story seems to be quickly shifting from controversial religion to monetary and familial problems. I'm kinda 'meh' at this point.
Black Sails
Final season. So far, it's more of the same thing we've come to expect in previous seasons. Long monologues broken up by occasional acts of cruel violence.
There's a lot of world building errors as well. Like: how there's only one tear now, instead of them being all over the place. I mean... they were literally all throughout the woods.
Also they really flubbed the monster: I appreciate they were going for a more lovecraftian thing here, but like... the monster design was terrible. It was too familiar, they showed it far too much, and it just was a bit of a disconnect from the design of the demigorgon. Also it's not spooky at all.
And storytelling wise... Man: The progression starts way too slowly, but then finishes way too fast. The fact they kept going and coming from the lab was very disappointing visually too. Like, for fucks sake, show me something new. Hawkins is almost getting a little played out. There were still a lot of genius moments, but the narrative arc was very disappointing. The new characters didn't add much, and I think they really dropped the ball on how both horrible and lovable each character was from season 1.
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thefutureofeuropes/images/1/1b/Why_not_both.png/revision/latest?cb=20151127174034)
Those are ones I watched all of recently-ish.
There's a lot of world building errors as well. Like:
Ayup. If we take the first season at face value, the problem was already widespread by then. But that I imagine created locale/framing problems, so they collapsed everything down to pretty much just one site in S2.
Also they really flubbed the monster:
Agreed. Some generic long legged thing they call the Shadow Monster stinks of the basest level of idea mongering out there. When people's big bads are formless monsters, yeah your instinct is to call it Lovecraftian but these days, with the tropes so played out, it just strikes me as lazy. "Oh yay, another formless shape shifting terror." It's not like the Demogorgon from the first season was an amazing monster or anything but at least it had some character.
Basically all the monsters in Stranger Things have struck me as an adult version of a Saturday morning cartoon. That's the level of thought and execution that's gone in to them. I blame Lost, personally. Ever since the fucking Smoke Monster people think a formless, unintelligible evil jumble of shit makes for a good TV monster. It doesn't, folks.
What really clinched it for me is when they go back to the D&D manual (their token "this is a nerdy show" moment this season) and start describing a Mind Flayer. "Oh it thinks its a superior life form and wants to dominate everything." Like that's even remotely what this thing has been doing up until now. The whole ecology of the Upsidedown would have been a GREAT place to spend some of that writing effort, digging into what this stuff actually is and what it actually wants. But no. Instead the writers lazily just said "it's an intelligent chaotic evil monster. Cut. Print. Let's go have drinks."
And storytelling wise... Man:
For sure it has pacing issues. And as for characters, every new character is there to serve a specific purpose rather than being more well-rounded and interesting.
-Max fills up the female quotient both for the party and the viewing demographic. Her role is to be relatable for the audience since she's new to all this, her incredulity is supposed to be how we'd react to all this. She's also there specifically just to create conflict in the party.
-Her brother. He's there to make you sympathize with Max and grind down her edge to relatable levels. He gets a little more well-rounded as it's shown he's a product of his homelife, too. But still, he's basically there as the teen heartthrob asshole sometimes bad guy.
-Bob. Comic relief and sacrificial lamb for the plot. I was actually starting to like Bob when he began taking an active roll in things, but as soon as he was like "no, this requires computer programming skills so I guess I have to do it" I knew he was fucked.
-The Doctor. Thought he was supposed to be the main villain but it turns out that wasn't the case. Kind of a confusing character, he spends a lot of show vacilitating between being a company man and actually caring about the problem. It gets settled eventually but it made for kind of a disjointed character throughout the series. I figure they knew they needed the face of the "conspiracy" after Poppa was killed, so, they picked him. Probably 100% based on his performance from Aliens where he's essentially playing the same character.
And yeah, other than Jane, all the other existing character interactions feel flat. Will just has shit "happen to him", he's one of those characters in the series. Mike spends most of the season just being surly about everything to everyone. Dustin and Lucas' interactions don't have that childlike quality anymore, it's all a vehicle for fucking pre-teen relationship drama. (Dear writers, these kids are way too young to have you make 50% of the plot be about, essentially, sex.) Dustin in particular just gets a bunch of goofy, self-indulgent moments in the plot because I guess that was easier than writing good, effective dialog and scenes with all the characters. (Notice how the least effective parts of the show are when the party is split up each doing their own, almost unrelated thing?) Everything having to do with Max especially, due to the actress, just feels really fake and forced. And Joyce....they took the previous season's theme of the desperate mother who will do anything to save her child, who can pick meaningful patterns out of gibberish that most people ignore (someone CLEARLY had a mystic mother they're basing Joyce off of) and they just......did it all over again. Will is in trouble, again. Joyce is freaking out, again. Joyce plucks meaningful details out of the chaos of the story and connects the dots to put everyone on the right track, AGAIN. You kinda felt that with Bob around that Joyce as a character would change but....nope. Bob is literally tacked on to the existing Joyce character and themes and is shed by the end of the show.
The Jane-specific storyline kind of worked. But it also felt like a deliberate distraction from the main story. Like "oh let's leave this episode on the cliffhanger everyone has been waiting for....then cut to an entirely different city, storyline, and characters so Jane can learn a moral lesson then return to save the day." On the one hand I kind of liked the characters and the character development going on there....but on the other, it felt like someone making this went "we have an entire episode to fill still, what do we do? I know! Let's tell a morality tale about revenge and super powers. That should kill some time."
Because let's be honest: what did any of that actually accomplish, the ENTIRE Jane arc? Nothing. She meets her mom, she meets another test subject, and then she realizes she only cares about home after all and goes back to do what she was ready to 4 episodes earlier. It's an arc that has almost no point and no pay off other than seeing her with dressed in black with greased back hair, I suppose. Oh and her screaming and "using her full power." Ugh.
All in all, ST S2 feels like it could have cooked for much longer than it did. It feels like made-to-order television. And S1 didn't feel that way.
Put another way, it feels like this was a show run by producers instead of writers. All the beats that made ST S1 special are just thoughtlessly recycled. Almost like the things people thought the most about were what iconic 80s song should back up what scene. The season simultaneously takes too long with setting context and establishing characters, and not enough time on the actual action or important plot movements. (Although to be fair, Episodes 5 to 8 where people are actually doing things and figuring out solutions to problems vastly increases the show's entertainment value, compared to what you just sat through.)
I can safely say, before even watching the finale, that I don't need a Stranger Things S3. Not unless they actually do something different. There was so much missed potential in Season 2 that it's hard to not feel like it was all being phoned in.
I sort of almost expect a spin off ST series based on all the weird kids that have gotten lose in the world. But lord knows we already have enough primetime quasi-superhero shows already, I don't think it would do terribly well.
It was actually more than one tweet, but that one was the tweet that broke the camel's back.
e.g. previously she got into a thing with Chelsea Clinton by tweeting "Chelsea Soros Clinton" and when Chelsea replied she had nothing to do with the Soros' but there's nothing wrong with them, Roseane replied with a backhanded "apology" which ranted about how Soros was a Nazi "but we all make mistakes". e.g. she's been repeating some pretty hardcore right-wing conspiracy theories, about Soros as a evil puppet-master, a standard anti-semitic canard, spiced up by the "And Soros was in league with Hitler" stuff that's frankly preposterous.
Fact is, Soros was only 9 when WWII started, and he was 13 at the time of the German occupation of Hungary (April 1944), at which point a family friend hid him by pretending he was a Christian godson. That guy worked for the ministry of agriculture and was acclaimed for protecting many Jews, including his own wife, from the Germans. But that only lasted until September 1944 anyway when the Soviets invaded. So, he had that whole 5-month window of possibly being a German "collaborator" at age 13.
So, Roseanne had a thing going linking prominent Democrats and liberals to the Nazi party on top of the whole "black Democrats are terrorist apes" thing with that last tweet. It seriously was not just one tweet. Roseanne's gone off the deep end as an Alex-Jones loving Trump supporter:
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/29/17406014/roseanne-racism-abc-trump-twitter
This was not a first offense for Barr on Twitter (or in real life). Over the years, her language and ideas have weaved through all kinds of dark and bizarre territory. It’s not exactly consistent, either; it swings across the political spectrum, unified only by its extremity. She promoted Pizzagate. She believes 9/11 was an inside job. She flags vaccine conspiracy theories. She called Israel a “Nazi state” in 2009 and promoted a Holocaust-denying musician in 2013. Then she turned around and became a massive supporter of Israel (and a rabid opponent of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement).
It just goes back to that old maxim "never meet your heroes in real life". In this case, twitter is bringing our heroes to us, and we don't always like what we're seeing.
(https://i.imgur.com/jvk7a0j.png)
I personally like it, seems to be really cool as far as the batman universe goes, and it gives detailed backstories to all of the villains that are present in the DC universe and such. Hopefully it will do all of them, its very cool. It details the young bruce wayne and how he grows up to be batman.
Definitely liked the part where detective Gordon(not commisioner gordon yet, a police detective)kills Galavan. He lets penguin take the fall and penguin is taken to Arkham, a very bad place as far as treatment of people goes, its a gigantic insane asylum. The last episode detailed Dr. Freeze, who now works for the arkham asylum after trying to take his own life and ended up surviving but reliant upon the head of psychiatry at arkham. It's a very good show.
Outlander (season 1 at least)...if you can get over the male lead having the physique that he does, and being cast as a 16yo virgin. That requires some effort, since the guy is obviously around thirty
Minor spoilers...
Later on there is a time skip and he ends up being like 40, so they needed an actor who could reasonably play a range of ages.
Season 3 was good. The characters were interesting. However it fell short of S1 because, honestly, the majority of S3 was about people rather than the crime. It's more an exploration of a character through time, and how the case affected his life and his mind.
Which was good because the actors were good. But I did get the feeling, somewhere in the middle of the season, that it was kind of wasting my time and stretching things out so they could have X episodes. The big reveal felt like kind of an anti-climax:
They just walk in to the house 30 years after the crime and basically everything they needed to know was right there. It all wraps up with a nice bow....and then you have another episode after that is basically just "old man has family and friends and memory problems."
I think TD knows how to play its fans. They set up all this weird shit knowing fans will read in to it, and then at least in this season come up with a fairly normal explanation for it all.
It was effective but if they do this again for another season, I may check out. There didn't feel like much of a pay off in S3, but again, it was very much a character-focused narrative and so the character arc was way more important to the show than the nuts and bolts of the crime.
Whatever though, it was a more enjoyable watch than S2 by leaps and bounds.
I suppose I'd rank all the seasons this way: S1, S3, S2. S1 still wins because it had the right blend of: characters you find interesting and care about, a mysterious crime and a surreal edge that kept you guessing exactly what you were dealing with.
It might also be an issue than neither S2 or S3 really have an antagonist. In S1 you see some things from the perspective of the antagonist and that kept you at least somewhat rooted in the actual murder mystery. That's absent in S2 and S3, which really puts all your focus on the detectives and they have to carry water for the whole show. I know the whole gist of the series is that each season is supposed to be different from the others....but so far nothing has been as effective as their first run at it.
I'll be interested to see what they try next.
I finally got around to starting The Magicians. I know it was on right before another TV show I used to watch, so I know how the first or second season ends. To be fair, knowing there are additional seasons almost counts as a spoiler for the "twist" they tried.
Also, I'm constantly distracted that one character looks like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde.
So, I got to Season 1, Episode 9.
"That's not tonally consistent with the books" (referencing Fillory) was recent, and accurate. They're still foreshadowing way too hard, but I didn't expect prior to that episode that it was going to get that dark. So, anyway, that's where The Beast came from, I guess.
So, I got to Season 1, Episode 9."That's not tonally consistent with the books" (referencing Fillory) was recent, and accurate. They're still foreshadowing way too hard, but I didn't expect prior to that episode that it was going to get that dark. So, anyway, that's where The Beast came from, I guess.
Without spoiling too much...
The Beast was neither born nor forged in Fillory, but he was empowered there.
In other TV news, Supernatural season 14 just ended with yet another apocalyptic finale.
God creates a godkiller gun and hands it to the Winchester boys. What could possibly go wrong?
Murder-clowns, bloody mary's, wailing banshees and zombie hordes, that's what.
Although the inevitable resolution next season seems way too obvious...
Death will bring Jack back from the dark-zone and help him overthrow Chuck and become the new God.
A group of unsurprisingly misinformed geniuses decided Amazon's Good Omens (based on Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's book) is blasphemous, so they created a petition that demanded Netflix remove it from their service. That's how I found out it existed. I don't have/want/like Amazon, so now I need to find a way to watch it.
Also, The Magicians season 4 is less unpleasant to watch than the previous seasons. Mostly because this season's poorly-thought-out PSA episode was Alice faking a suicide attempt to learn enough to escape the Library's prison, not an actual suicide attempt. Much better than when they tried to reach rape victims by having a character raped, ditto child molestation, and I want to say substance abuse?
The Doctor had no character development at all - she just seemed confused, no connection, everything too haphazard. Previous Doctors seemed haphazard but really had a plan. This season was just... responding to situations, not managing them.
I miss Moffat's writing.
Also:
At least they stopped beating you over the head with social issues by about episode 8. Doctor Who always had a bit of a social element, but it was woven into the story. The first several episodes of this season felt like "here's a social issue, how can we write a Doctor Who episode around it?" rather than the previous "Here's a Doctor Who episode, what experiences will the characters have?"
This is by far the best show I've seen in a long time. It honestly feels like the next Game of Thrones, being packed with violence, sex, romance, mystery, and political intrigue. Acting, music, special effects, everything is top-notch. Really an outstanding work.
Minor spoilers for some backstory revealed early in the first episode:
Carnival Row takes place in an alternate history, in which two human factions of The Burgue and The Pact are locked in a bloody war. Recent advances in naval technology resulted in the discovery of a new continent called Tir na Nog, which is populated by various fantasy races. The humans immediately begin claiming territory and fighting over it, and they force the natives to take sides and fight with them. The Pact win, claiming Tir na Nog as their own. The creatures who had sided with The Burgue were forced to flee their homeland to Burgue controlled lands, where the humans treat them as less than equal. And this is where the story takes place, with heavy focus on racial tensions and individual rights, and people trying to get ahead in life while others struggle just to survive.
Obviously, I'm recommending this one.
Saw the first season of Carnival Row. I like it, it's decent enough, has an interesting world and some characters but it also has some major flaws, mostly in how certain things are written and certain people cast.
Girl playing Vignette is absolutely dreadful, while the actress has those large expressive eyes she simply cannoct act with her face to save her life and most of the show she's either in lifeless stare or some sort of rage modes with nothing inbetween. Similarly the Dahlia actress has the wierdest way of speaking, it might be an intentional quirk of character but to me it felt more like the actress had no idea what sort of accent she should be going for so it ends up all over the damn place.
Bloom was brilliant tho, even tho his initial gruff voice act was a bit odd.
And now some spoiler stuff that bugged me:
The whole Imogen side story felt so goddamn rushed that it kinda ruined whatever potential it had. It is a bit of a trope story but it worked fine enough to show the upper classes of the city and how they might think. But my issue is that the girl basically goes from being as racist as her brother to fucking the puck guy within a span of a few days. It could've been great if they took it a bit slower and resolved it in the second season, as is it felt rushed to fit into a single season and just another thing to fill the amount of fucking per episode quota.
Also the whole intro plot of Jack and his mad ramble towards the end, was he aware of the thing Piety was making? Did he help her? Was he reffering to the Puck cult that was growing? Was it just random mad rambling that happened to coincide with the events that came after? Does it refer to something else entirely that'll come in season two? Feels kinda too coincidental and specific without any explanation as to why IMO.
All that said, I'm interested in where they take S2 so there's that.
I recently finished the new Dark Crystal.
Story is slow at first, then eventually warms up to 'interesting' but doesn't really go any further than that. The best things I can say about this series is that it has a unique and creative aesthetic, both in terms of visuals as well as worldbuilding. Having never watched the original, everything was very much fresh and new to me and unlike anything else I've seen.
I'll be keeping my eye out for a season 2 if it happens, but I'm withholding my hype.
I think (last watched 25-30 years ago) the movie plot was "there are 2 sides fighting a war, the good guys and the bad guys. When one gets killed, one on the other side also dies. Then one of the Gelflings puts part of the crystal back and the good and bad guys recombine (into the skeksis?) like a reverse Dr. Jekyll."
Edit: it helps to remember spoiler tags. Sorry about that.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has some of the mean, but funny you're looking for. It's a bit uneven, and even the creators cringe at some of the early stuff, but the newest seasons are good.
Wait, what? The early seasons (the only ones I've had the chance to watch) are absolute gold, with the exception of a bland episode here and there.
Please, please don't tell me the more recent stuff isn't going to live up to my expectations when I am finally able to watch more of it.
Charlie Got Molested is one of the greatest accomplishments of television.
No, it mostly gets better, with the exception of one bad season. And the funny parts are usually funnier.
Also, Charlie and Mac get back at bike thieves in the best scene I can think of, even better than the leprechaun in the glue trap. Plus Fat Mac (he prefers Big Mac) and Ripped Mac.
it kind of irks me that the main character ended up hooking up with a former antagonist (whom until that point had been an utterly toxic element), breaking up with his former romantic partner, who was a victim of the former. I mean, WTF.
Give us yer Witcher reviews. You Netflixpeople, you.
It was... surprisingly good. I expected far, far worse. Note this is from a point of view who came into this with pre-existing knowledge of books, games, the original Polish TV series and even a comic or two.
The plot was... weird. In terms of Geralt, it adapts most of the short stories (which I always considered a high point in terms of Witcher) in a chronological way. It actually keeps... really accurate to source material, which was my first surprise. There are some changes, but I generally understand why they have been made and agree with them*. Then there's Yennefer, which plot I find a bit medicore, but it does give her character background that, if you were reading the books, it would probably take a while to figure out her story after reading about her for first time. Her character though really shines when with Geralt though, but more on that later. The third main plot follows Ciri, and is shoved some few hundred (Yennefer) to about fifteen years forward from the rest, which I can see being a real source of confusion for everyone, especially since the show opens with it. You have to either know what is going on beforehand or watch the entire show (or at least most of it, which is not a given for modern critics) to actually properly grasp what's going on, and I personally found her plotline to be the weakest of them all, and kinda boring really.
As far as actors go - I admit when I heard about the choices, I found them weird, and there was quite a lot of jokes about Geralt looking like a Hercules, but I must say that for what is worth, Cavill didn't lie and he really seems to know a thing or two about Witcher. I wouldn't say he nails it, but it's clear he has a grasp on what he's doing, and comes as close to nailing it as I could admit he could. He's very much the strong part of the show, and all his muscles are probably from having to carry the show on his back. Don't get me wrong, Yennefer might be compelling, but it's only with her banter with Geralt she shows a side she doesn't otherwise. She's also not how I would imagine Yennefer, but I guess she's good enough and I'm just biased due to game's portrayal that is now ingrained in my brain as "The Yennefer". Knowing that though, I can't say that I feel fine with Triss actress. She simply doesn't look compelling, and while she doesn't really get a lot of time to shine, I feel like she's a complete mistake right now. I don't even really want to blame it on casting, because I could see her being a better Triss with some cinema magic, but we'll have to see about that. Dandelion looks kinda bland for his character, but I don't really have much to say against him, mainly because he spends most of his time with Geralt, which makes his character about hundred times more entertaining than he'd be on his own. Ciri is eh. I think she is easily within "adaptation" of her character in terms of looks, but she also haven't had time to shine yet. Other characters are generally okay, and while the diversity hires did raise a brow in me, they aren't VERY in-your-eyes, but I could see people getting angry about it (especially with Istredd**). I don't mind it very much, and in two cases I think they make perfect sense*** and I applaud them for that, but they really could have used without shoving some random European-dressed peasants into the mix. I don't think it's very immersive to put, for example, black people in clothes that are culturally consistent with middle-ages white people, having that black person apparently share the culture with those white people and never acknowledge any of it. I know people will try to defend it because "it's fantasy it can be anything" but there's a reason why people of Westeros are white, while people of Summer Isles are black. I'd rather if people stopped colorizing forcefully and put thought into what they're doing - I think having some of main characters be of different race, but black statists is just to meet obvious diversity quotas. A big question to me is the skin color of elves - seeing the first two being black, I was VERY afraid they went for "the race everyone is racist towards in universe is black", but they haven't, and some elves are just black while others aren't. Right now I'm not sure anymore if that would have been a bad thing, even if it would be very obviously forced. Either way, it's more of a nitpick and addressing an issue that seems to pop up a bit, but it didn't really make my time with the series less enjoyable.
What I however consider a giant problem is some of the costumes. They are generally okay, but holy fuck shit balls are Nilfgaard absolutely horrendous. I'm not even asking for them to wear game-style late period plate armor, but the absolutely disgusting ballsack armor (it does, in fact, make them look like actual dickheads) is just so out of place, especially when compared to pretty neat armors that show up in Cintra. Not to mention that in one or two closeups you can very plainly see the thing soldiers wear under their helmets is modern-made balaclavas. I really hope they get rid of it, because it is literally my biggest gripe with the show. It's trash, it's out of place, I cannot imagine how anyone could think it's a good idea seeing it. There is also a very obvious "evil empire" trope at play with Nilfgaard, with trashy Ork-like weapons to complete the ballsack armor. Just retcon this thing out and we can all forget this was ever a thing. Out of smaller nitpicks, Vilgefortz wears an interesting (it's not really accurate, but a bit more beliveable) setup of clothes with a gorget over them, suggesting armor underneath, and a sash to create a look of XVIIth century cavalier, which he swaps out in next episode for a horrible fantasy-like coat of rusted plates that are all mis-matched and misaligned and sewn together seemingly at random. Why they did this is beyond me, but oh well.
Now, I feel it's already pretty long and doesn't cover everything, but I'd like to throw in few words about the "feel" coming from a person who literally grew up on Witcher - it's... pretty good actually. My heart did warm up seeing the scenes from books brought to life, or even some scenes that felt like they're cut-for-cut similar to the old series, but done with way bigger budget. It's kinda like seeing a childhood story you and your friends used to tell each other when you were young made into a movie. While the origins of Geralt might be disputed (there's this whole thing about Sapkowski being "inspired" by Elric of Melniboné), I feel like that Witcher was very important for fantasy not only in Poland, but Eastern Europe in general, so while the adaptation doesn't really feel like something that's made unique by it's country of origin, I can't be helped but think of it as something that's somehow part of local culture. There might be a missed opportunity in lack of Slavic folk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxVXhU-awTs) which would make the soundtrack stand out from the generic fantasy music, and while I am pretty sure no media other than games actually used this, and it only appeared in the third game (Maybe it would have made it too similar to the games, which is something that show has a weird relationship with, since they're both seemingly inspired by it, but also sometimes forcefully trying to be unique. What was wrong with the game medallion is beyond me, as the new one looks cheaper, and the game one was based on the old series one, which IIRC was personally approved by Sapkowski and was one of few things that series got spot-on. But that's just nitpicks now.), I think the choice was so well-fitting that it has became part of the Witcher brand for me. It's not a per-se negative of the show, as I cannot really judge it on not having something that doesn't have to be there, but something that I felt could have made the action scenes just that much more.
TL;DR In the end I was EXTREMELY positively surprised by the show. I was prepared for it to be a steaming pile of shit taken on something I grew up with, but... it's not that bad. It's not perfect of course, but I was prepared for the worst, and I've gotten something that's actually good. Main gripe is something I cannot vouch for myself, which is that the plot might be complete mess impossible to understand to people that aren't familiar with the setting or aren't willing to give the show benefit of the doubt and watch it whole, rather than expect to have everything explained early on. There's a lot of seemingly red herrings and the pacing isn't great, but, with the knowledge that I can lose my Polish Person Identification Card if the community as a whole disagrees, I declare that the show is worthy. Just fix the Nilfgaard armor for second season.
*Geralt doesn't tell the Djinn to "go fuck himself" (which was the reason the Djinn was so angry in first place) but to "give him some peace", which is a giant shame to me, but the setup was pretty complicated even in the books. It's Foltest rather than Vizimir that commands the combined Northern Armies, but it makes sense since we're already familiarized with Foltest. There are quite a few other changes, but nothing that made me go "BUT IT WASN'T LIKE THAT".
**He has an interracial sex scene with Yennefer while an illusory crowd watches. Memes about Yennefer are already getting out of hand.
***The two Zerrikanian guards of Borch. They're perfect for that, since they come from a desert land far away, and their culture is quite different. They make for something unusual and unique in world of Witcher, which impact I feel is lessened by that the black skin color seems so common. I'll also use this one to talk about the CGI dragon - it's way better than the Polish TV series one, believe me on that.
The first episode starts a bit awkwardly but it quickly gains pace with a strong focus on the horror / heroic aspect of the story. The second episode is more like a crime mystery, focusing on Dracula's abilities to manipulate/scheme, but it does blend decently with what was established in the first one. And then there is the final episode where they throw everything good they had made out of the window, pull some shit out of their assess and conclude that Dracula is just a misunderstood dude...what a fucking letdown ::puke::
If you still want to watch it then my advice is to stick to the first two episodes and forget about the last one. Episode 2's end is quite good anyway.
First of all, I'm disappointed that it didn't take place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Not that I particularly enjoy that setting...but the show's title set certain expectations, and then did not live up to them.
Second, I must acknowledge the noteworthy musical accompaniment which others have mentioned. It's not my particular style of music so it's effect on me was limited...but I must admit it was well composed just the same.
Beyond that, the show was just a story of stupid teenagers being stupid teenagers under mildly interesting circumstances. Watchable, but imo undeserving of much of the praise it has been given.
In other TV news, Season 5 of The Magicians just began, and it's off to a strong start!
I was worried they would have trouble keep pace after Quentin died in the last season finale, but the supporting cast has forged onward without missing a beat!
I'm slightly disappointed that it seems it will focus on a single major story arc, rather than a return to the episodic nature of the classic Treks. I had little hope of that happening, but still it would have been nice.
Other than that they've done an excellent job paying tribute to what came before, while simultaneously advancing the lore of the Trek universe in meaningful ways. I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Kinda sad though, that they killed off the cute girl in the first episode. Especially considering her tragic circumstances.
Has anyone here seen the Watchmen series and care to share opinions? Is that like a sequel or an independent retelling?
I've only seen the Snyder film, and loved it (fite me), for what it's worth.
The movie was a pretty close representation of the original comics, with one significant difference.
In the movie Ozymandias builds a series of bombs which imitate Dr Manhattan's energy signature, then detonates them, killing a lot of people and framing Dr Manhattan. The world powers who were on the brink of war immediately made peace so they could unite against the new threat of Dr Manhattan. The Watchmen found out, but agreed to keep the secret to maintain the peace. Except for Rorschach who threatened to reveal the truth, before being killed by Dr Manhattan. Manhattan then decided to leave Earth and hang out on Mars for a while.
In the comics, Ozymandias engineered a giant psychic squid and teleported it on top of New York, instantly crushing many but also creating a psychic shockwave which killed millions, and left many more with severe mental trauma. The world powers who were on the brink of war immediately made peace so they could unite against the new threat of alien invaders. The Watchmen found out, but agreed to keep the secret to maintain the peace. Except for Rorschach who threatened to reveal the truth, before being killed by Dr Manhattan. Manhattan then decided to leave Earth and hang out on Mars for a while.
The new series follows the comic book version, and is set some years in the future. It reveals some interesting history of the original masked crime fighters, and brings closure to Veidt and Manhattan, while also introducing a new generation of characters.
The series has enjoyed generally very positive critical reception. Personally I had some minor issues with the choice of storytelling mechanisms, but otherwise enjoyed the story and appreciated the general quality of the show.
I kept watching Star Wars: Rebels despite my dislike of it, because I'm a glutton for punishment. Little did I know in the last episode of S2 they would get rid of almost everything I disliked about the series, while bringing its general style and presentation more in-line with Clone Wars. It's not great, but it's okay.
Ezra's stupid lightsaber and dumb hair
Inquisitors' stupid lightsabers
Inquisitor storyline in general
Rest In Peace
S1E1-S2E22
Picard is dead. Long live Picard!
RIP Data. Again. And for extra stupid reasons this time.
7/9 has a girlfriend. Finally.
Robots are legal again, despite the fact that every one of them seems to pose an imminent threat to every organic lifeform throughout the known universe. What could possibly go wrong?
What was the point of that vulcan ninja guy? He had a big involved introduction and then just didn't really do anything for the rest of the season.
I kinda hope to see a spinoff/sequel, focused on the new captain whose name I never bothered to learn. Maybe with Deanna's daughter stowing away on his ship somehow. Vulcan ninja guy can come too, since he's got nothing to do now.
Wstching Merlin (2008) out of boredom and I have this beef. Why (I'll spoil it in case anyone cares
Why is everyone in Camelot such a frigging idiot, including the title character?
What's driving this tirade in particular is an incident during this episode: so Merlin goes to get a cure for his friend Arthur from a powerful sorceress. Before he gets it he gets warned by his mentor, by a dragon, and by the damn sorceress that the old religion works on equivalent exchange terms and he will pay a heavy price. He goes for it anyway, cures his friend, and is distrqught when his mother is afflicted by Abi Dazim's horrid wilting (I think). So he goes to bitch at the dragon because he did not warn him.
Uh, excuse me? He totally warned you. In fact everyone did. Your mentor told you the old religion worked on a life-for-a-life basis. The dragon told you the price would be heavy. And the sorceress repeated all this, and confirmed with you that you wanted to go forward. What are you on about now you little shit?
Bonus points because tvshowUther Pendragon apparently did the exact same thing a couple of decades earlier
Special mention for the character of Amanda LaRusso (Daniel's wife), which to my knowledge, is the best depiction of a wife/strong woman in modern media. She is smart, supportive, loving, successful and doesn't take nonsense from anyone (including her husband). And all that without the plague of having to scream "girl power", cause she doesn't have to prove that she is strong. She IS strong.
She is pretty damn great. I'm almost at the end of the first season.
The way she steps outside when Johnny and Daniel are about to punch on and politely verbally emasculates the both of them is goddamn amazing. You can see the looks on their faces change as they're reminded just how ridiculous they look. And then, still in their fighting stances, extending and accepting an invitation to breakfast instead.
Not pretending I'm not as invested in their little karate rivalry as anyone at this point, but I'm pretty sure I was in tears of laughter there. I can't believe how good this weird show has turned out to be. The idea of rebooting a movie from the '80s as a TV show featuring some of the original actors still seems really novel to me, but then maybe I just don't watch enough TV - or perhaps this is the first time it's been done well.
It's a shame to think the second season might not be as good, but I'll make my own judgement when I get there.
The first one has already been well worth the price of admittance.
Started watching the "The 100" on netflix.
The show starts with humanity having bombed itself to (almost) extinction and with what's left of them living in some space station orbiting Earth. The life support there is failing and they try to get back to Earth only to find that some humans have survived there and are now savages and they don't like them...yadda yadda yadda. So far the show isn't anything spectacular or mind blowing but it's decent enough to pass a couple of hours at a time.
My only gripe so far is the sub plot about the token saddist/murderer and overal jerk of a dude that just has to exist in every such show. At some point this dude is accused of killing someone and everyone in our group of heroes beats the shit out of him and then they casually hang him until the real killer finally confesses (she felt too guilty for the murder). The killer then decides to suicide and now our lovely group blames the jerk guy for the killer's suicide so they decide to expel him. Justice, real justice.
At first I didn't much care for it, like I mostly stopped caring about MCU stuff after Endgame because it felt like a bigass story was just done with all the proper sendoffs and whatnot, only for them to turn around and milk it some more, except without most of the compelling characters. Then some folks started raving about it and I had some free time so I decided to give it a shot, was only 9 episodes anyways.
And it's pretty good IMO, serves to flesh out the characters, introduces some new ones I guess, moves stuff forward. That said I have some issues with it, big and small.
First off, the mid-credit 'bonus' scenes, fuck whoever thought of using them this way. None of the early episodes don't have them, and the credits are loooong, so after the first time you sit trough it like a twat, waiting for something to happen you go 'OK, guess they're not doing that anymore'. Except they start doing it in later episodes and it the scenes contain important fucking events, so when their consequences appear afterwards you're left thinking that you missed an episode or something because who the fuck is that and how did they get there??
Additionally, I'd love to have seen more of some characters (like the black astronaut lady whose name I can't recall), since she seems to be introduced only to get powers and appear in something else later down the line, which is bloody lame when your origin story is to be a sidelined character that doesn't do much for most of it.
Now the major beef, which is introducing the fucking witch and apparently bringing back Vision for good.
The witch as a character was pretty neat, played well into the tropes of shows they were mimicking and could've just been a regular gal. But nope, despite starting to explore some rather dark and pointed shit when it comes to superheroes and their powers, how they affect those around them, especially when abused or used selfishly they just had to roll out a 'proper' bad guy with no redeeming quality so that the hero doesn't look that bad after mind controlling an entire towns worth of people for their own benefit. The fact that the ending felt forced into a big flashy showdown only furthers my annoyance with it. They couldn't have just explored Wanda and her relationship with her powers and how that affects others, how she's pretty fucking broken due to her past and her then figuring out a way to deal with that, nope, here's a proper bad guy instead so that she doesn't have to take responsibility for her actions.
Second thing that bothered me to no end is bringing back Vision, first off, how the fuck did they manage to clean him up and but him all together in the few days that passed between her seeing his corpse to the moment they revive him is never explained and is a pretty glaring issue, but whatever, we'll write that off as a nitpick.
My main issue is that the premise of the show rests on Wanda being broken with grief as the only person in the bloody world that she could still call family was taken from her (fucking twice, and she had to do it herself the first time), which then spirals into a massive case of what can only be called denial I guess, except its super-powered and reality-warping. Except they somehow manage to revive him without the stone, but he isn't Vision anymore, except the replica Vision restores his memories so for all practical considerations, he's back I guess? Except he fucks off to somewhere instead of trying to find Wanda for some reason.
More than that tho, his death in IW was a gut punch, it was a sign that they weren't fucking around, this shit was going to have consequences and not everyone would make it. Except now he's kinda back I guess, because reasons :I
I get that this is based on the comics and nobody can really die or go away for too long because comics are forever and shit, but I'd really like if they stepped away from that a bit more, make it all mutable over time, have things be permanent maybe. But I guess they gotta make those billions somehow, can't go killing off characters for silly reasons like story or emotional impact :V
Still, despite those, I'd say it was a pretty good watch, if nothing, the first half of it was a brilliant thing and is worth watching on its own.
I started watching Superstore. It's dumb but I like it. Basically a tv show about the people working in Walmart, getting up to !zany! hijinks.
Ugh, personally I hated that show. I watched an entire episode wanting to like it.
A lot of the humour was the sort of thing that's been done before more successfully, but the main thing I took objection to was the main character. Are we really supposed to be rooting for this absolute jackwagon!? Right from the start he's making an arse of himself, harassing his new coworker and taking every opportunity to skive off work. And then, towards the end of the episode, it's revealed that the reason he hasn't been seen for fricking hours while everyone else has been working their butts off is that instead of working he's been somehow climbing around the store like a fucking ninja putting those glow-in-the-dark star stickers all over the fucking ceiling without either being seen or falling to his death. Seriously, how the hell did he even do that? The show could at least have explained how he pulled such a feat off, but nope, it's all just 'oh wow look how nice and thoughtful this guy is for turning the bland department store where these other poor cunts work because they need money to live into a magical realm of adventure and happiness instead'. Not even a mention of how the lazy prick hasn't been pulling his weight. And then the object of his affections/harassment has the gall to look all shyly pleased by this behaviour at the end of the episode.
Good grief.
Uh, yeah, rant over I guess. I think on some subconscious level I've been quietly seething ever since I watched it, but haven't actually had anyone to properly discuss the show's glaring shortcomings with. ^-^
I think wheelchair dude was the show's one saving grace, 100%.
I finished binging Epix's War of the Worlds (2019) seasons one and two.
The first two episodes are about aliens wiping out all of humanity, except those who happen to be underground at the time, which is somehow a lot. Last two episodes reveal that the whole alien invasion was part of a self-fulfilling prophecy that is absolutely overflowing with plot holes. Everything in between is survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland somehow finding reasons to kill each other instead of dealing with the aliens who are constantly hunting them down.
So yeah...pretty stupid. And somehow this dreck got renewed for a third season, despite wrapping everything up at the end of the second season.
I cannot recommend this one.
Right, just finished Loki, shit was great.
Guess Kang is out of the bag now, interested in seeing how they incorporate this shit into the greater picture as he's been rumored to be the next big bad like Thanos was. Plus I wanna see what happens with our two Lokis next more than anything, because that part was easily as interesting as the freaky time fuckery.
Right, just finished Loki, shit was great.
Guess Kang is out of the bag now, interested in seeing how they incorporate this shit into the greater picture as he's been rumored to be the next big bad like Thanos was. Plus I wanna see what happens with our two Lokis next more than anything, because that part was easily as interesting as the freaky time fuckery.
I was vaguely interested in the Loki, King of Time concept. I hope we get more RELEASE THE GOATS Loki and not just Romantic Lead Loki.
Yeah I'm still wrapping my head around that last scene they had, probably going to rewatch the entire show soon.
See, I wanted them to have some sort of buddy-cop or platonic love thing going on, two Lokis against the world, didn't have to be romantic in any way, but I guess that'd be giving Marvel a bit too much credit. As great as the show was, it's still a part of the MCU and they're nothing if not predictable in terms of playing it safe.
I'm guessing she either redeems herself trough the second season or ends up dead by the end of it. Our Loki has clearly grown and learned trough this one, she appeared to have done so as well but it turned out to be a ruse I guess? Which, again, damn shame, would've loved to see the two of them (and Mobius and co) trying to unfuck what they've fucked up royally, but that'll probably be left to the movie folk if the titles are anything to go by (or they might appear in those too, both the upcoming Dr. Strange and Spider-Man movie seem likely candidates, while Kang seems to be confirmed for the next Ant-Man movie)
Anyways, despite the several issues that've popped up on further analysis I still think this is by far some of the best stuff they've done to date, partly because almost none of their previous attempts (movie or otherwise) have left me with so many questions and a pretty strong desire to figure out the answers.
Yeah I'm still wrapping my head around that last scene they had, probably going to rewatch the entire show soon.
See, I wanted them to have some sort of buddy-cop or platonic love thing going on, two Lokis against the world, didn't have to be romantic in any way, but I guess that'd be giving Marvel a bit too much credit. As great as the show was, it's still a part of the MCU and they're nothing if not predictable in terms of playing it safe.
I'm guessing she either redeems herself trough the second season or ends up dead by the end of it. Our Loki has clearly grown and learned trough this one, she appeared to have done so as well but it turned out to be a ruse I guess? Which, again, damn shame, would've loved to see the two of them (and Mobius and co) trying to unfuck what they've fucked up royally, but that'll probably be left to the movie folk if the titles are anything to go by (or they might appear in those too, both the upcoming Dr. Strange and Spider-Man movie seem likely candidates, while Kang seems to be confirmed for the next Ant-Man movie)
Anyways, despite the several issues that've popped up on further analysis I still think this is by far some of the best stuff they've done to date, partly because almost none of their previous attempts (movie or otherwise) have left me with so many questions and a pretty strong desire to figure out the answers.
Yeah, I totally agree about the platonic buddy-cop thing, that would've been great. I agree that Kang will probably get resolved through movies as a Big Big Bad, so I'm sort of wondering if they'll use Lady Loki (Sylvie) as a main antagonist while Lord Loki, uh, does timey-wimey bullshit. They've already made that reference while calling Loki a "criminal with a blue box," so basically ... Dr. Who for the MCU? Yeah, that tracks.
If Kang was being honest then after the multiverse war is resolved, someone will have to be in charge of the TVA, and it's true that Loki is a good person to do that. Plus, it's a position where he can come in occasionally à la Dr. Strange without needing to be a leading face all the time.
Thing is that they need someone for Loki to play against that isn't Thor, so while I agree that Lady Loki could easily get canned/redeemed, it would also make sense to me that they use her indefinitely as an "opposite force" to keep things lively.
Finally: I would love it if the whole Jotunn thing came up again at some point.
on one hand, I actually think Kang's introduction was pretty fire... what I hope doesn't happen is some kind of multiversal war plot though... I think that's a little boring and too pulpy for me. In the end, I suppose, Marvel just couldn't control themselves. Other Kangs invading is fine, I just don't want 10 Kangs fighting each other... eh. On the OTHER hand, I am very disappointed we are not getting more detective TVA Loki & Mobius... it was down to earth... and funny... and 'small'. Like... I'm not mad that things went where they did specifically... just that everything inevitably had to spiral into yet another existential threat. I'm so tired of them, other stories are possible... as proven by the first half of this season lol... well lost forever to the fires I suppose. So yea, ambivalence... the best work Marvel has done? I still think so. Do I like where things are heading? No. At best, I will say I'm worried, and at worst I'll say it's classic American Writers Syndrome... just gotta keep making the threats bigger, threaten existence harder, etc. It's so unnecessary.
I feel like a big part of the ire with remakes or book adaptations is that when you are watching visual adaptations of books, they are always going to be somewhat different. You have to somewhat put aside your expectations and just take the presentation as what it is. Works of art aren't just for the audience - they are also for the creator. Let the creators create!
As I said it's been a long time since I've read the books - but I haven't seen too much in avoiding "coming of age". I mean they are still trying to figure out just who they are. I don't see them being too "aged" at the moment. Unless I'm not remembering and they were much younger than 20 in the books?
The biggest character development/departure I see from the main 5 in the book I see is with Mat - if you didn't read the books I can see how the stuff he does in the show would be confusing. He also seems way too depressed; I remember him being more carefree-reckless in the books, not drowning-in-sorrows-reckless.
One thing the show seems to match from the books though is continuing the ridiculous tension building by putting the characters in peril because of characters' dumb choices; one thing that's missing is the mountains of dramatic irony where in the books the reader knows how dumb the choices are, but we don't get as much information on-screen.
Also again I can't remember, and this seems like a big alteration for no real purpose I can see other than cultural pandering: I don't remember there being a love interest between Moirane and Siuan and I don't see how it adds to the story of the politics of the Tower either. That seemed... really out of place to me.
It's what made Dune a good adaptation imo. It tasted the same as the books, and used its medium to push them forward in new ways - for instance with the sound track.
Rand's about 19 in the books, and what... 25 in the series? A big difference.
What the series did to Mat was nearly as bad as what they did to Perrin, largely because it misses the entire 'flavour' of WoT - which, as stated above, is a coming-of-age tale involving simple country boys that lacks GoT style grimdark stuff. The series is a testament to what the producers thought people wanted, not what was true to the source material.
What the series did to Mat and Perrin:
Book Perrin: gentle blacksmith's apprentice, a giant who thinks methodically and is careful with his strength.
Series Perrin: Married blacksmith. Problems with rage. Kills own wife in fight.
Book Mat: adventure-loving trickster who is not as charming as he thinks he is. Seems entirely concerned with self, but displays nobility when others are in danger. He milks cows for his dad and he loves his sisters.
Series Mat: Mother is a drug/alcohol user. Father is an adulterer. Mat is a thief who steals for gain.
I'll add the caveat that I only managed to stomach two episodes and then had to bail. So maybe it improves.
Yeah I couldn't remember enough about Perrin's backstory to remember if he had an earlier wife or not. I thought they were ~20 in the show, not 25... this is based on conversations about Nynaeve being "25 and being too old, compared to the others".
I already mentioned I totally agree about Mat - he just feels way different in the show than he felt in the book.
The rest of the show though I'd say has the same overall feel - lots of cutting between scenes, leaving each one with a mini-cliffhanger because the characters are, in fact, pretty dumb. I mean even in the books, all the way to the end, I was often like "really? You are still falling for this stuff?" (I fully realize that is part of the mythos of the wheel of time though - sometimes things work out because they have to, not because of any particular prowess of the characters.)
The world building seems close enough, though I think they foreshadow a bit more hard than the book did.
I guess I don't feel as strongly that Wheel of Time is a terrible adaptation. I do have some problems with the editing and sequencing of the story*, but it's not been enough for me to bail yet.
For example, in the most recent episode, the reveal of who in fact is the Dragon Reborn was... really awkward. I don't understand why they did it that way.
EDIT:
Ok so I don't understand, on first watching, that thing in S2:E2 with the witch in the woods. I think I have to watch it again. Mostly I feel like I missed some dialog or something.
There were several things in earlier episodes that (if you had read the books) were Rand clearly using the One Power, but the show didn't really indicate it by showing the weave.
In the episode, it showed him "re-remembering" the events, but this time with the weave, and then he just went to Moirane and said "it's me."
It was really odd, because in the books it was clear at the time that he was using the Power, where they tried in a goofy way to mask it to try and make it a "surprise reveal" in the show, and it didn't work well in my opinion.
It kind of goes with my feeling that the show is all right and entertaining enough, and more or less follows the sense I remember for the story, but has some really odd storyboarding / editing choices.
Shit, that Witcher is kinda terribad. The first season wasn't good either, but it was still bingeable as a sort of guilty pleasure. This one is just ugh. At least so far, after two episodes. Bad acting, shit direction, confused script, generic visuals.
@McTraveller
I completely forgot how the story was in the books, but I think the witch is meant to be some meddling outside power, following its own agenda for as of yet inscrutable reasons. Maybe it's that demon Vesemir mentioned the first witcher fighting, or something.
One of the big problems with the Witcher ntflix serie is that the serie change its director every 2 episodes and change the writer every episode.
Due to that there's a very noticable quality and interest difference between episode , character building, dialogues, pacing are so different that it really make it difficult to watch.
season 2 by example, the 2 first episode were frankly below mediocre, while the 2 that followed were very noticably much better and quite good, then came to be just average only in the following 2 etc...
Then there are all the changes (and not for the best unfortunately) in characterisation (what the frack have they done with Cahir that's not even the same character at all, he was one of my favorite and they completely changed who he was) and all the various plots that feel like some bad fan fiction. As someone that has read and enjoyed all the books it's sometime maddening to see nearly all those changes always be made for the worse (out of the monoliths things at least add something as the book barely mentionned one at some point but does not give it a real role in the story)
The special effects aren't always great, the cg/sfx can be quite good when it comes to spells and background environment, but when it comes to creatures both the design and the handwork (nearly laughed when i saw that guy in the 1st episode of season 2) on them look incredibly cheap in comparison to other series.
And frankly in season 1 how can you make a dragon in CG that look like cheap that, not only that's not a dragon they did but a wyvern and a cheaply designed one at that !
Why the difference is important you may ask ? because wyverns are monsters that also exist in the witcher world in the books .
Very sad , as there are some episodes that are truly great (some actors also do very good in their role, now if only they were wrote much closer to how they are in the books, still can't believe the complete Cahir rewrite), but half of the serie is ... barely reaching mediocre while it should be much better dammit.
So far, I'm on season 6, at least: John de Lancie, Renee Auberjonois, Armin Shimmerman, the guy that played the doctor on Enterprise. Some of the other "extras" on TNG showed up too, but I don't know their names off the top of my head.
Also had Dean Stockwell from Quantum Leap.
Fun!
Putting in spoilers just in case
Then there are all the changes (and not for the best unfortunately) in characterisation (what the frack have they done with Cahir that's not even the same character at all, he was one of my favorite and they completely changed who he was) and all the various plots that feel like some bad fan fiction. As someone that has read and enjoyed all the books it's sometime maddening to see nearly all those changes always be made for the worse (out of the monoliths things at least add something as the book barely mentionned one at some point but does not give it a real role in the story)
Out of curiosity, did they change Cahir from how he is in the books? If yes, how so?
About netfilx's Cahir:
In season 1 they pretty much establish that even at his best, he is a a hot headed zealot, a good fighter and maybe a successful commander but he has no actual mind for subtlety*. Meanwhile in season 2 he is constantly in situations that require some degree of political skills and he can't just brute force his way to get what he wants. In that sense, it seems quite justified that he was rather incompetent.
*I think the key scene showcasing his character, is the one where Cahir killed everyone in that tavern because "he had steel at the ready"
In the book we first discover Cahir only from Ciri's point of view, he's not yet characterised so for a long while we're lead to think there's a dark armored guy that want to catch Ciri for nefarious ends, basically it seems the character is a replay of the "black knight" from various legends.
Then we learn progressively that Ciri point of view was actually very blurry as it is linked to her memory of childhood (Ciri in the book was younger than in the serie when she had to flee Cintra) and a specific closed vision (spoiler for what the vision is as the serie hasn't yet touched it, i wonder if they also changed that part completely) and so is very far from the complete picture.
Cahir isn't the "black knight" but he is in fact a "real knight" i mean a man bound to his duty and his lord (and that's why he's after Ciri) above his own safety. But being a real knight he's also bound to honor and the knightly vow "defend the widow and orphan" .
Then after a *spoiler* event/battle (that despite all the story change from the book i think will still happen next season in the netflix serie as it's too big to not be there or changed) it definitively become clear that Cahir isn't the bad guy Ciri imagined him to be.
Later in the book he get an important role too but it's too spoiler for now, but considering who he is in the book it makes perfect sense he does that.
In fact Cahir can be considered as one of the rare "good guy" in that dark fantasy world (so of course dark fantasy means he has may flaws but still is overall good) , even when following the order of his emperor, nothing in common with the "twirling mustache"-like villain they made of him in the tv serie that is ready for atrocity, torture and entertain the idea all the time to reach his goal (the only common point between books' Cahir and netflix version is that they're trying to catch Ciri).
Additionally out of the complete change of characterisation , his role in the book also is different, Cahir does NOT command the Nilfgaard army at all, he's a lonely knight that role is an agent for his emperor on a secret mission that often put him in difficult situation.
In the book we first discover Cahir only from Ciri's point of view, he's not yet characterised so for a long while we're lead to think there's a dark armored guy that want to catch Ciri for nefarious ends, basically it seems the character is a replay of the "black knight" from various legends.
Then we learn progressively that Ciri point of view was actually very blurry as it is linked to her memory of childhood (Ciri in the book was younger than in the serie when she had to flee Cintra) and a specific closed vision (spoiler for what the vision is as the serie hasn't yet touched it, i wonder if they also changed that part completely) and so is very far from the complete picture.
Cahir isn't the "black knight" but he is in fact a "real knight" i mean a man bound to his duty and his lord (and that's why he's after Ciri) above his own safety. But being a real knight he's also bound to honor and the knightly vow "defend the widow and orphan" .
Then after a *spoiler* event/battle (that despite all the story change from the book i think will still happen next season in the netflix serie as it's too big to not be there or changed) it definitively become clear that Cahir isn't the bad guy Ciri imagined him to be.
Later in the book he get an important role too but it's too spoiler for now, but considering who he is in the book it makes perfect sense he does that.
In fact Cahir can be considered as one of the rare "good guy" in that dark fantasy world (so of course dark fantasy means he has may flaws but still is overall good) , even when following the order of his emperor, nothing in common with the "twirling mustache"-like villain they made of him in the tv serie that is ready for atrocity, torture and entertain the idea all the time to reach his goal (the only common point between books' Cahir and netflix version is that they're trying to catch Ciri).
Additionally out of the complete change of characterisation , his role in the book also is different, Cahir does NOT command the Nilfgaard army at all, he's a lonely knight that role is an agent for his emperor on a secret mission that often put him in difficult situation.
I see. Most complains that I had read before, were almost exclusively about the casting choices which, to put it politely, didn't really hold any merit. Changing the characters, that's a different story and after reading what you wrote about book Cahir, I would have liked if they had kept him that way. Thanks Robsoie
About the Castlevania show:
1. Sypha, is arguably one of the best examples for how a wizard character should fight. Highly mobile. Highly destructive. Just lovely.
2. The toilet paper scene (https://youtu.be/pFxiF-GPogE)! That timing... right in the middle of a global shortage of toilet paper :D :D :D
From a dramatic standpoint, Trevor should have died at the final fight. His "final sacrifice" was a great way to show his character growth and they just had to cheapen it with an ex machina.
Sure feels like, being here at the penultimate third-to-last episode of season 8, it was shaping up to finish at the end of this season. They are closing up all kinds of plot lines, especially with the big enemies, etc. I'm really curious to see how the series continues, storylines, etc. in the next two seasons. I hope it doesn't do like some shows where it should have finished earlier than it did (e.g., House; that last season was.... unnecessary).
I really like this show. It's more than decent.
So I know that SG-1 has 10 seasons, but
Season 8 ends in a masterwork of television writing, succinctly wrapping up (as you noticed) most of the plot points of the previous series - it was so good, in fact, the studio demanded two more seasons... Despite basically putting a button on all story-lines. You can skip the last two seasons, or, if you're a completionist, watch them, but consider the end to be season 8. The last two seasons aren't terrible, in my memory, but unnecessary and lacking some spirit because of the cap that season 8's "Threads" was.
I don't know who though replacing the intro sequence with amateur-hour CGI instead of the photos of the physical model stargate was a good idea.
I see they wasted no time bringing in the Browder-Black combo though; for some reason I thought that was in Atlantis not SG-1. If nothing else it should be fun enough due to that element alone.
(I am of course in the camp that loved Farscape.)
EDIT:
Wow the Ori are a nasty villain class. At least the goa'uld never claimed to be doing good. There's nothing worse than committing atrocities in the name of "good".
A pretty timeless concept; annoying that it's so apropos.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds just started.
Only 2 episodes in, but I really like what I'm seeing so far. Epic stakes of civilizations being wiped out and wars being started, but the crew handles it all with calm professionalism in way that reminds me of the classic Star Trek shows, and has been missing from the more recent series.
I love this new incarnation of Trek. It's very understandable (to me) that they'd whiff a little with Discovery -- it really just needed to do better than Enterprise did, and so far it's succeeding in that. There's a lot of things that I like and dislike about Disco.
BUT
I'm a 60s-Star-Trek-only kind of jerk and it's because they made episodes that spoke to real problems that people were having at the time that the show was written. Also because of the bizarre camp and costuming that pervaded the series. I was really worried that they would take Strange New Worlds and use it as an opportunity to not have queers and Black people and women on their show anymore, but that hasn't happened. They are going for broke and pushing the envelope regarding the kinds of stories they want to tell and the things they want to do, PLUS the show has humor, PLUS there's even a little camp. As a treat.
Additionally, they ended up making Una heavily trans-coded via the Illyrian story line and showed some of the emotions that go with that on the screen in a relatable way. I was so grateful and happy because they managed to talk about the problem in a way that wasn't going to net the ire and disruption of displaying an actual trans actor, but still showed they had learned a lot about writing trans people from Disco.
I thought I was gonna hate it, but man ... it's my new favorite thing and I'm willing to pay for a subscription indefinitely if they'll keep making it for me. $2.50 a week to see Cadet Uhura and friends go on adventures? Anytime! Anywhere!
I normally pay as little as possible for TV but I'm committing to stop mainlining media that teaches me to hate myself, which sometimes means you're going to have to fork over some funds. Yes. I dunno. It's a huge relief to have an hour every week that I'm excited about.
I haven't seen either Mandalorian or Obi-Wan, but while my impressions of Mandalorian is mostly good by expectations on Obi-Wan can be summed up with these two images:
(https://i.imgur.com/xgPpXqO.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/VZoEVYB.jpg)
The first one and the budget store pinhead in the second one are supposed to be the same species, as they appear in Episode III and Obi-Wan respectively.
And sure, it's ridiculous to expect blockbuster movie production values for a tv-show. But really, Disney, was all you could muster a make up job that would have looked lazy in Star Trek: TNG, let alone 40 years later?
Just started watching The Boys. Impressed so far.
Hahaha ok they put a Rick Roll in their show. Very impressed.
Black Noir's death was just sad. While he did some bad stuff, he did it after Soldier Boy had *literally* bashed his brains out. Odds are he was far away from being mentally with due to TBI. Even before Payback betrayed SB and he was beaten to near-death, SB was fucking with him. He got his TV opportunity shat on by SB and when BN dared to complain SB beat him to a pulp.
So he doesn't tell Homelander that he's SB's kid, probably because he liked HL and didn't want HL to know SB was related to him (And although HL is an absolute monster, again, BN had severe brain damage at this point and was probably a poor judge of character) and HL does his usual disproportionate retribution shtick and proceeds to disembowel him, and we get treated to BN's imaginary friends comforting him in his last moments.
So, I binged and finished off The Boys.
Black Noir's death was just sad. (...)
I've only seen a few random clips from the last couple seasons, and the general feeling I'm getting from seeing somebody die is that
no one's ever really gone.
the general feeling I'm getting from seeing somebody die is that
no one's ever really gone.
That is the general motto of pretty much any superhero story. And indeed, in The Boys all supes seem to have some degree of healing factor, and this most recent season did establish that organ transplants are a thing for supes. Still, Black Noir experienced...
massive torso impalement, likely causing critical damage to his heart, lungs, and spine. That's not easy to recover from.
Although Black Noir was shown to have survived losing some brain matter during massive head trauma in a flashback, so it's possible that his kit may include an even more advanced healing factor. And I guess time-travel shenanigans are always an option. Or Vaught could have a Supe hidden away somewhere who can heal others, which would also allow them to bring back Stormfront who 'died' offscreen.
So yeah, we may see Black Noir again. On the other hand, massive-overkill deaths and dealing with loss a also very much what The Boys is about.
I watched Resident Evil. It was shite.
Why is writing a main character that makes sensible decisions apparently so difficult? I mean, any character really, but it was most egregious with the protagonist in this.
So many inconsistencies (at the end of one episode, the sister of the protagonist brings up something she’s anxious about and is reassured by the protagonist, at the start of the next episode the protagonist is the one worried about it and being reassured by her sister) and so many utterly bizarre decisions made by so many characters that just don’t make sense. It’s hugely frustrating.
like late in the season, episode 5 and 6 I think, you discover The University that Jade has been staying with is based on a boat. She discovers a zombie that can apparently communicate and “control” other zombies, so she works with a colleague on this boat to figure out how that works. Pheromones, apparently. A green one that attracts the virus, and a red one that apparently repels it.
To test this theory, The University apparently have some zombies chained up underwater, which I assume they test things on. She decides to bring one of those back to the boat in secret (she drugs it) and test it on there instead of like… literally anywhere else that isn’t effectively impossible to escape from.
So she’s getting ready to test it in her lab when her 10 year old daughter rocks up with a coffee while she’s strapping it to a pole or something with shitty fabric straps, and elects to test this thing that she has no idea will work while her daughter is in the room.
Zombie inevitably escapes and chases her girl, who runs into the friend the main character was working with, who gets killed by the zombie just before the zombie gets killed by some sort of security guard.
The guy in charge of the boat seems to be quite unfazed by this and listens to her advice later on in regards to releasing a big beastie.
There are a handful of other either shitty decisions she makes around this, or utterly predictable things she somehow misses, all apparently in an effort to manufacture drama to pad the runtime.
Interesting. Also, it does a good job of making things just enough of a twist that I've not actually been able to guess everything yet, though I did know the one Diamonds one* and the 10 of Hearts I was able to get easily enough.
I'm actually digging all these non-English shows.
The puzzle with the light and three switches is a "classic."
And in classic anime/manga fashion, the premise is interesting, the mystery is hella engaging and some of the games and setpieces are really cool. Unfortunately it's kinda let down by the anime-as-fuck characters which are little more than single-note tropes that spout utter nonsense at times. Now, when you're reading a manga or watching an anime, that sort of stuff kinda gets a pass, you expect archetypes, easily identifiable characters, over the top emotions and reactions because subtlety and body language aren't a thing in those mediums for the most parts (plus, y'know, the target audience is generally the younger folks).
Seeing that shit in a live-action show tho just feels off. Like, uncanny valley levels of off. Like, these are people, they generally act and talk like people would, but then they do or say something that no actual person would, but is something you'd expect from an anime protag spouting about not giving up or friendship or their ideals or what have you and the suspension of disbelief kinda shatters.
But you go trough with it, because like I said before, overall, it's not a bad show, it has more good stuff than bad, and you really wanna find out just what the hell is going on here. But then you get to a particular episode and you just literally ragequit the show halfway trough it because this shit is so fucking dumb.
So after a bunch of hijinks and individual adventures the majority of the gang had, they all somehow end up in the same location, being hunted by the king of spades, the ultimate physical challenge (literally a super mercenary that has a bunch of ammo and body armor and guns down everyone in sight). The gang all have weapons of their own for the most part, one even has a home-made grenade. So instead of going, hey, we should set up an ambush and gun this fucker down because after all he's just a single dude they go for the main dudes idiotic plan of filling a random drugstore with spray can gas, luring the king in there by using the other five people in the group as bait and then using the homemade grenade to blow the whole thing up.
Cue an epic fight scene that grows more and more desperate, with folks you've been following for a better part of two seasons now sacrificing themselves to beat this fucking guy, with occasional cuts to our main guy with the plan running around a drugstore and spraying a bunch of cans empty. And as literally everyone is either killed or horribly maimed you can't help but think, man, if only they had one extra fucking person with a fucking shotgun to help out here, that would be so neat so maybe not everyone would have to die here.
Now, this alone probably wouldn't be enough to tilt me into quitting the show then and there, but this whole thing is preceded by an encounter with one of the antagonist who is literally a psychopath piece of shit, who, in the very same episode states: "I will make everyone I meet regret meeting me and when I die I will go straight to hell"
In that encounter he picks a fight with the mc and another dude we've been following and after lethally wounding the latter and getting shot by the former the dude asks them to not consider him the villain because he only seems like an evil piece of shit because he's in the minority, and if the tables were somehow turned and the world was populated with psychopathic monsters they would be the ones considered evil.
Now, I haven't read the source material in question so I can't confirm my suspicions, but there's so many scenes that feel like they've been lifted straight from a manga or anime that I can't help but think that this would've been so much better if they didn't blindly stick to the original work and instead tried to adapt it a bit more to the medium.
Willow
WTF. It's like a trainwreck I can't stop watching.
Among the most minor concerns are... what is with the modern emo music playing in a magic fantasy show, complete with lyrics?
About the only good thing about it so far is that
The characters playing Madmartigan's children actually look like they could be Madmartigan's children.
That should be indicative of the overall thing, if that is what constitutes a "good" part.
Story is ridiculous, characters are stereotypes, acting is campy... but it's not fun like the original movie.
Latest episode of TLOU was fantastic. Quite self-contained in all as well.
Bill and Frank are heavily expanded on and altered. Shows how Bill survived the outbreak (ie by being a paranoid schizophrenic), turned the town into his own place and kept the amenities on (Although the issue with the petrol's still a thing, since it'll spoil in about a year even if it's sealed), met Frank, met Tess and Joel, and ultimately how they both die in a major divergence from the plot.
Not afraid to say I welled up a bit towards the end of it.
So I quite enjoyed the live-action One Piece. Enough that I'm now watching the animated version.
Pretty... well it definitely is something. Surrealism? I don't even know what to call it.
I've just "met" Carmen. I mean, after the dude who wears a treasure chest... I just... and most of the time I'm even sober...
/Kirk voice/ What. Have they. Done. With Star. Trek.
Aside from visuals and re-using words and names from the Trek universe... it just doesn't feel like Trek. Like the lack of professionalism of the bridge crew1 is... astonishing. I mean the old Trek bridge crews knew each other, but when on the bridge, they were about their job even with some casual banter, not about "oh wow, that's cool!" or other juvenile remarks. I think it's the lack of sophistication in the banter - on TOS and TNG, the banter was more high-brow. This felt more like stuff you'd get from YouTube streamers.
No nuance at all with breaking General Order 1... just "eh, whatever, rules are meant to be broken."
The idea that a civilization at war would suddenly stop fighting instantly just because aliens showed up? Even one with obviously superior technology? Laughable.
And special mention to medical staff. Like what is up with nurse Chapel? Zero protocols for bringing aliens on board. Just... mind-boggling.
I've binged the first season of the One Piece Live action, it's... I want to say "good" for a manga/anime adaptation but I think I'll settle on "decent at best" as a show overall. I mean, it's clear that they put a LOT of effort and care in its making but it also has some serious flaws.
The good:
- The story is mostly intact. Understandably there's been some changes (some characters were cut, some were introduced earlier, a few new plot points were added) but they mostly serve to condense the story, not change it.
- Like the story, the characters are mostly true to their manga/anime counterparts, there are few visual alterations (Luffy doesn't wear chanclas, Ussop doesn't have such a long nose etc) but the mannerisms, motivations, goals, attitudes are there.
- Details! LOTS of details! From the characters in the background to the main characters' outfits (they change clothes every few episodes but they still use the outfits they would wear in later arcs). Even the figurehead of the Going Merry, they could have make it look like the original but instead they changed it to a far more expressive one that looks like it was hand carved by some really skilled craftsman.
The bad:
- There is some tonal shift between episodes, like they haven't made up their minds how they want to portray the world. Zoro is introduced cutting a person in half which isn't really in the style of the source material or the following episodes either. Similarly Buggy (a clown themed pirate) at first feels more like the Joker (from Batman) but later settles to his true, goofy persona.
- The world feels a lot more grounded to reality than in the manga/anime. By itself that's not a problem but, to me, it makes the more fantastical elements feel jarring when they come in screen.
- Most of the special effects are good but the fishmen look BAD, like something out of Hercules/Xena or even the Power Rangers.
- The biggest problem in my opinion, is that they seem to have some screenwriting or, i should say, pacing issues. While watching I felt that a lot of the emotional beats fell flat, like there wasn't enough build up, to justify and make them feel earned.
See this is weird to me, I've been regularly reading One Piece since Marineford, I watch it occasionally on adult swim, I've shown her some of it, I was giddy showing her the Gear 5 stuff, and later showing her the animated version was fun.
Nerd cred to her for going "so basically he's Popeye level broken?" because yeah, toon physics > everything else.
So she jumped in knowing the show later on, had only seen a bit of Koby and Buggy and Garp but it hooked her straight away (even though strictly speaking Garp didn't show up/grand-dad reveal til Enies Lobby/Water Seven) and I had a blast pulling up panels from the early chapters to show her that as a general rule, if you see an odd clothing pattern/style, a weird background statue, strange facial hair, odd boats, it's pulled straight from the manga.
Still, with little background in the early story it got her up to speed and invested easily, to the point she wanted to space them out a bit instead of just binge them, so we wouldn't run out too fast. The last episode has both of us psyched for more to come, Smoker and Tashigi will be great, it'll be fun seeing them reach Reverse Mountain, Little Garden, Cactus Island, set up Drum Island, Alabasta, and more.
Also, I personally love the casting they did with Koby and Garp and Garp calling him son was a nice touch.
Note that he didn't have a teddy bear hat, it was a bulldog hat.
Also: Buggy starts out seeming like a serious threat and gets the upper hand early on before the crew get serious and quickly outclass him, exactly like the live action one.
When you consider Buggy and Shanks...
...were both in Roger's crew back in the day it makes sense he should have a sense of drama at least, and...
I'm wondering if it's going to go 12 Monkeys or a different route.
EDIT:
I like the aspect of having incorrect information about the past and the conflict between being sent back to the past to change some things, but no not those things!
(https://i.imgur.com/IfKSpz8.png)
Holy smokes are there a lot of episodes!
And it keeps getting more bizarre. I'm actually surprised.
I'm now in the Golden Wind arc and these guys are doing a dance video on the deck of a sailboat, while a guy's head - he's still alive - hung on the rigging with a fish hook through his eyelid and having his eyes burned by the sun through some reading glasses, is tripping out.
I don't even know what is happening.
Also he's a pretty very good musician (and vocalist), especially towards jazz/blues and piano in general. I've not seen enough House to know if they got that skill into the character's repertoir, too.
You've got me wondering if there's anywhere I could easily get to see House, now, as I don't know what channel(s) it originally showed on, in the UK, but I never did seem to reliably follow it at the time. US show, so probably hundreds of episodes, huge plot arcs and (non-headline-)character development/turnover, and needs tlme to watch from the start again.
[1] I'd recommend Blackadder, in general, to people. Interested to know how they work outside of Britain, in fact... Might be challenging or a workable 'lowest common denominator', if not both.
Maybe (initially?) ignore the first series ("The Blackadder"), as it is a whole set of 'Early Installment Weirdness'. The second ("Blackadder The Second") hit the stride that the rest generally followed.
And no real need to watch any of them in chronological order. Or, within each series/season, except that the last of each set of six (six half-hours... wouldn't be difficult to binge-watch, not much more than a single longish movie!) tends to thoroughly end the setting, so end on that. Especially in "...Goes Forth", if you get that far.
The two main standalone 'episodes' ("... Christmas Carol" and "...Back And Forth") don't really need any particular position, except that it particularly helps to already know the Blackadder character (and others, or their transposed actors) from the second run or later, or it may seem even more random!
My main problem with the show is how it never feels like a real world in terms of locations or a sense of place. It never feels like the characters are moving from one place to another, it always feels like actors walking from one random setpiece to another. Doesn't help that they're all seemingly a random jumble of desert wasteland, city wasteland and suddenly heavily forested wasteland.
Other than that, cast was damn good, story was mostly fine, I do agree that they kinda blew their load a bit soon when it comes to the big mystery, especially coming at it from three sides, like they didn't trust the audience to figure it out if it wasn't super obvious and spelled out. Just having one or maybe two of the characters get the reveal with a third left for season two would've been enough I think.
Also agreed on the Vault 4 bit, the cult never amounted to anything and felt pretty superfluous to what I'd consider the point of the episode (all vaults are different and fucked up in their own unique ways). It happens and is never explained, or explored further. Ditto for the Moldaver lady, she's talked up but never really does anything of note? Her connection to the cult, or the origin of the name is just never mentioned, and since she apparently gets offed in the last episode it doesn't really matter anymore I guess? Also is she a ghoul or something? I guess she could've been cryoed, but that's kinda hard to think since she was so opposed to Vault-Tec. But the only logical explanation is that she's a ghoul like Cooper, except she looks nothing like them.