Pyrian on 10/11/2019 at 05:42
Edge of Tomorrow was really good. Tom Cruise did a good job in it. I feel like a lot of the movies he's in these days underutilize his acting abilities.
SubJeff on 10/11/2019 at 08:09
I think he's a solid actor and I disagree with Gray. We need more Tom, not less. His filmography is full of gems and the reason I say we need more sci-fi is Minority Report, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you don't like them, and Oblivion's sci-fi chops are a little weaker, you cannot deny that they are well made and Tom does a great job in them.
I do like the Expanse, but for the plot, setting and sci-fi-ness. Imagine it with Edge of Tomorrow or Oblivion production values...
Sulphur on 10/11/2019 at 12:22
So I watched Dark. Both seasons. Never have I seen something so relentlessly focused on the least interesting parts of people and science fiction.
But let's back up. What's it good at? Portent. The red thread running through it (they make heavy use of a play starring Ariadne in it, you bet I was going to make this analogy) is setting up people and events in motion for improbable tragedy later on. In that regard, it's sort of like Babylon 5 in that events right from the beginning are part of an intricate web that keeps realigning in your head with each new development, but it was all set up right from the start. Or, at least, it's good at making it seem that way. What else is it good at? The actors do a decent job with what they're given (though in some cases they're not given much; can we get a supercut of Bartosz only saying 'fuck' and 'scheíße'?), and bring the drama. Which is also, I guess, where its focus lies: there's a lot of small-town domestic soap opera, and to be fair it's got a decent handle on the love, lies, and betrayal thing.
It's not science fiction, though. Sure, it's interested in the idea of sci-fi: i.e., the nature of paradoxes and loops, but it's not interested in unravelling them, studying them, or having a go at explaining them. I wasn't amused with the references to the Higgs Boson, the Higgs Field, and the 'god particle'. These are, narratively, MacGuffins, which means they're just namedropped for some mysterious science flavour. Also, the plot depends upon a machine creating localised black holes that warp space-time. Oh my. Nevermind required mass densities, gravitational fields, or Hawking radiation that means this is all as impossible as physics gets shy of somehow creating primordial black holes that still cause the same problems as normal ones. The show is actually, in fact, enamoured with the idea that things come into being through loops without having a defined cause->effect relationship, and for all its goings on about beginnings and endings being closed loops, it's actually not closed a large bunch of them yet. All of the loops, as far as I cared to poke into them, have interfering actions or antagonists that nest them further.
And so it becomes evident that the actual inspiration of the show isn't sci-fi or 80s nostalgia or whatever. It's goddamn Back to the Future*.
Here is the elevator pitch for the show: what if Marty McFly got stuck in 50s Hill Valley and let his mother make out with him? Also, remove much of the humour and a sense of internal coherency. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the level of drama they squeeze out of paradoxing the fuck out of the act of conception is on a level so ridiculous I can't help but laugh, yet the show treats all of it with deadly seriousness. (They also apply that circular origination point idea not just to people, but also plot items.)
While I admire the ambition and silliness of the concept, what I can't admire is how there's not a single likeable character in the story, or the writing's tendency to fall back on pithy philosophising (often in voiceover narration) in an effort to seem deep. About 90% of these people are injurious to your health, and exactly none of them is a ray of sunshine. Maybe that's where the show's title comes from.
To be clear, this is a show that's heavily plot-based despite the drama. The characters are all prisoners to the plot and function as means to an end despite how well (or not) the writers pull their strings: this is both the overarching concept's blessing and its curse.
Also, S2's ending made me facepalm. Not happy with just the ol' time travel bag of tricks, they're also pulling scheíße out from the grab-bag that is multiverse theory. If S3 is the end, then I hope they start resolving stuff by tying these elements together instead of merely adding more to the spaghetti mess it currently is.
Rating: 3.142 Klein bottles out of infinite ouroboroses.
*there's even a cute reference to this with Egon in S2. At least they're honest about it.
Gryzemuis on 10/11/2019 at 16:11
You did watch all 20 episodes, though. :)
I do agree on some (many) points with you. But despite all that I did like the series very much. It seems that most posters here put the plot on #1. And on #2 and #3 as well. To me there is more about a film or book than just the plot. E.g. I liked the setting (the village, the woods), I liked the music, etc. Maybe it was just the fact that this was a German show. And that Germany on the show looks very much what I see when I look out of the window. While shows like Breaking Bad look like they are in a different universe. (Driving through the desert ? The nearest desert is 10K kilometers away. Cadillac ? Nobody drives a Cadillac, that's something out of the movies. Etc, etc).
I wasn't happy about the end of S02E10 either. Generally I don't like stories with time-travel in it. But Dark did a decent job selling enough of it to me that suspension-of-disbelief kicked in. However, now that we've gone to the next stage (multi-verse), there is a good chance that it'll ruin the show. I fully agree with you there. However, after seeing the end of S01E10, I also thought that the story might be ruined in S02. But I was wrong there. So now I'm looking forward to S03, even though I am aware everything might go to shambles.
So if you consider Dark to be no real sci-fi, what do you consider sci-fi ? Star Wars ? Transformers ? Do you think that e.g. Intersteller does a better job of handling a sci-fi theme ? (I mention Interstellar because it got a lot of praise of being a good and serious sci-fi movie. I thought it was utter crap). Yeah, Blade Runner was a good sci-fi movie. I used to read a lot of "old" scifi when I was a teenager (Asimov, Clark, Dick and all those). I loved those books (especially the short stories). But outside of Blade Runner I don't think there is a single scifi movie that is in my top-100 list of movies I like. I think Dark does a decent job of making a TV series with sci-fi elements, without falling into all the traps most other sci-fi movies and shows have fallen in.
Sulphur on 10/11/2019 at 18:05
Oh, I think it's interesting enough to keep watching how things develop. Like I said, there are things it does well, it's just not a show I'd wholeheartedly recommend as there are
large caveats. I think the musical choices are fun, too - it did clue me in on a great Dan Deacon song I'd somehow missed (When I Was Done Dying - it's got a fantastic (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuJqUvBj4rE) lysergic trip of a video too).
RE: sci-fi, I tend to be more anal than a lot of people about it, but that is because I also read a lot of golden age sci-fi as a kid, and continue to - yeah, all the writers you mention, and a bunch more. Proper sci-fi tends to observe how people behave given an at least somewhat plausibly explained and consistent scientific premise -
Dark's black hole time machine isn't even remotely plausible on Earth by virtue of what a black hole is and does, no matter how many times they namecheck Higgs bosons. Its casual violations of causality without a coherent set of laws explaining how they go around it also transport the story to the realm of fantasy (retrocausality is still very much a matter of debate in the world of quantum mechanics).
I thought Interstellar was a good attempt at homaging 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it ultimately disappeared up its own arse. It's science fiction by virtue of its modelling of the concepts and how people use them, but it's not very sound logically (also, stop sending people into black holes, Hollywood - do you really like exposing them to fatal radiation before (
https://www.space.com/33598-black-hole-flicker-mystery-solved.html) turning them into taffy that much)*.
The sci-fi benchmark as of right now is The Expanse; but in the past we've had Contact and Gattaca that explored the human side of science in far more interesting ways, and sure, there's the classics like 2001 and Solaris - though Solaris is more of a psychological head trip than straight sci-fi. And then there's the various genre tangents - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's drama-comedy-romance exists because of a medical procedure that doesn't exist (and does a line on the bleak purgatory of loops better than Dark does); The Thing and Alien are sci-fi horror, Brazil is a sci-fi flecked bureaucratic dystopia, and so on.
Since we're also in the hangover of a Tom Cruise conversation, Minority Report's a great action vehicle for an interesting Phil K. Dick story, and A Scanner Darkly was a decent adaptation of the same short story. There's also Primer, I suppose, but I've yet to actually watch it properly.
Outside of that, there's anime. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex's first season does some very interesting observations on society and technology if you're able to suspend disbelief about consciousness transfers (I thought the GitS movie was beautifully animated and as dull as dishwater). There's lots of good, thought-provoking stuff out there.
*Two stories I've read that do use black holes properly have never been adapted - and that's a shame. Gateway, by Frederik Pohl, and Approaching Perimelasma by Geoffrey Landis, which is a (
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/perimelasma.htm) nice, short read.
Gryzemuis on 11/11/2019 at 00:34
Good to hear you enjoyed it a bit at least.
Most sci-fi movies are bullshit, when you look at how realistic they are. It comes with the territory. You need to apply some suspension of disbelieve. For Dark, I don't even want to know the technical aspects of time-travel. Because it's bullshit anyway. I just chose to believe that aspect, and the rest of the story and the plot follows. When you are able to do that with Dark, I think the story is pretty entertaining. If you can't do it, you'll probably never enjoy it. You'll start asking yourself questions like: at first they could travel only at certain times (once every 7 years) and certain locations (inside the cave). But later those restrictions go away. I understand there is a black hole to travel through. And I understand they made a portable time-machine. But they are now also traveling through the door in the cave whenever they want. That door did have a limitation of opening once every 7 years. But suddenly not anymore. Wtf ? Things like that would normally irritate me, but not this time.
Agreed on Solaris (the Russian one). I did think to mention it. But indeed it's not an example of a real sci-fi movie. Otherwise you might also mention Stalker (same director). Stalker is in my top-3 of movies I like. (I hadn't seen it in 10 years. I watched it twice this month (on my new tv (did I mention I got a new TV ? :) Did I ?) Stalker is still awesome).
I also wouldn't consider Eternal Sunshine a sci-fi movie. Maybe it is. But it's funny you mention it. Because it is actually in my top 20 of favorite movies. Even though I really dislike watching Jim Carrey. Eternal Sunshine is so good, it doesn't matter than Carrey is in it.
A colleague pointed me toward The Expanse, a few years ago. I watched 1.5 episodes, but didn't feel the vibe. So I stopped watching. Maybe I should try again.
Gattaca was ok. I watched it too long ago to remember much of it, except that it was ok. Contact was so forgettable that I really forgot I saw it. Looper is a typical "pure" sci-fi movie where the nerds can go crazy that it is "correct sci-fi". But at the same time the movie itself was bland and boring and stereotypical. Oh wait, that wasn't Looper, that was Primer. :) I haven't seen Looper yet. Anyway, my point is: if a sci-fi movie tries to be "correct", that is no guarantee that the movie is gonna be any good.
The only thing I can say about sci-fi movies, is that I rather see a sci-fi movie that tries to be "correct", than see a sci-fi movie that tries to be entertaining in the way non-scifi movies are. Cars -> spaceships, guns -> laserguns, and of course there must be a car chase in it (sorry, spaceship chase), a love story, and some lasergun shootings. I hate those movies.
Anime is not my thing. I don't have enough suspension of disbelief to watch those. I don't have enough attention-span either.
Most Dick adaptations seem to be movies where I like the original idea(s) behind the story. But the movie itself is at most average. Because often the film-companies still wants car-chases and shootouts and love-stories in them. This applies to Minority Report and Scanner. And even more to Payday. Ah, Total Recall is maybe a classic. But even then, it's certainly not in my personal top 100.
Have you seen Mr Robot. ? It's not sci-fi, but it does have a lot of (computer-) tech in it. I know a bit about computers (and networking in particular). And so far the tech seems realistic. But of course there are some little details that are wrong. In some movies/shows those mistakes can ruin everything. ("Watch this surveillance footage that was shot in 720x560. Now "computer enhance". More enhance. Ah, look, you can see the reflection of the killer in the eyeballs of the victim !").
But in Mr Robot small errors are not gonna keep me from enjoying the show.
I just re-watched season 3 of Mr Robot this week. I though that today the last episode of the last season (season 4) was gonna be broadcast. But I was wrong. It turns out there will be 13 episodes total in the last season. The last episode will be broadcast somewhere in December. I'm not sure I will watch S04 during the next weeks, as the episodes are released. Rr whether I should wait till December and watch them back-to-back. Anyway, you might wanna check out one or two episodes of Mr Robot to see if you like it.
Gray on 11/11/2019 at 01:30
Quote Posted by SubJeff
I think he's a solid actor and I disagree with Gray. We need more Tom, not less.
I can't argue with that. I don't share your opinion, but objectively, he's probably a pretty decent actor by now. I just don't like him. So, I'm wrong, and you're right. It's a matter of taste.
Gray on 11/11/2019 at 01:41
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Solaris; Stalker
Yes! Tarkovskij! It makes me so happy when other people have actually heard of him, or other weird fringe crap I like. Thank you.
While I'm on my high uppity horse, I'll pimp some Jeunet-Caro: Delicatessen and City of Lost Children. Both awesome, and a LOT weirder than their later, much more popular film Amelie of Montmartre. Don't get me wrong, I love Amelie, but Delicatessen is SOOOOOO much better. And weirder. Dystopian post-apocalyptic comedy about cannibalism. Most of those words you'll never hear in the same sentence. Trust me, it's hilarious.
Sulphur on 11/11/2019 at 04:49
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
Good to hear you enjoyed it a bit at least.
Most sci-fi movies are bullshit, when you look at how realistic they are. It comes with the territory. You need to apply some suspension of disbelieve. For Dark, I don't even want to know the technical aspects of
time-travel. Because it's bullshit anyway. I just chose to believe that aspect, and the rest of the story and the plot follows. When you are able to do that with Dark, I think the story is pretty entertaining. If you can't do it, you'll probably never enjoy it. You'll start asking yourself questions like:
at first they could travel only at certain times (once every 7 years) and certain locations (inside the cave). But later those restrictions go away. I understand there is a black hole to travel through. And I understand they made a portable time-machine. But they are now also traveling through the door in the cave whenever they want. That door did have a limitation of opening once every 7 years. But suddenly not anymore. Wtf ? Things like that would normally irritate me, but not this time.
My criteria remain easy to satisfy: introduce internally consistent laws, even if physically/realistically improbable, and work within that framework. Some of the best, most surprising things in good sci-fi stories come from following the rules. Dark doesn't seem to care about that so much, so again, it's really a drama with sci-fi trappings. That's not a good or a bad thing, and certainly doesn't inhibit my ability to enjoy a story; if the writing is good, I wouldn't care too much about the lack of science bit - see War for the Planet of the Apes for something recent, almost Shakespearean in its tragedy, but also not interested in sci-fi despite appearing to be. But with a series like Dark, if it hinges on 'science' too hard, it does break down the narrative instead of serving it.
Quote:
Agreed on Solaris (the Russian one). I did think to mention it. But indeed it's not an example of a real sci-fi movie. Otherwise you might also mention Stalker (same director). Stalker is in my top-3 of movies I like. (I hadn't seen it in 10 years. I watched it twice this month (on my new tv (did I mention I got a new TV ? :) Did I ?) Stalker is still awesome).
Stalker is brilliant as a movie, but as sci-fi I'd consider Roadside Picnic the better story.
Quote:
A colleague pointed me toward The Expanse, a few years ago. I watched 1.5 episodes, but didn't feel the vibe. So I stopped watching. Maybe I should try again.
The first season is somewhat painful to get through, because it's mostly setup for the politics of the solar system and the 'getting to know you' phase for the characters. It only really takes off from S2 onwards, where it rips through politics, plot, and characters with equal abandon.
Quote:
Gattaca was ok. I watched it too long ago to remember much of it, except that it was ok. Concact was so forgettable that I really forgot I saw it.
They're not action films, but are concerned with the idea of where we're headed, and what we'll do when we get there. In that aspect they may be boring, but they're also exploring fundamental truths about society and religion. That's never uninteresting to me, not if it's done well, and both of these movies do their respective topics very well.
Quote:
Looper is a typical "pure" sci-fi movie where the nerds can go crazy that it is "correct sci-fi". But at the same time the movie itself was bland and boring and stereotypical. Oh wait, that wasn't Looper, that was Primer. :) I haven't seen Looper yet. Anyway, my point is: if a sci-fi movie tries to be "correct", that is no guarantee that the movie is gonna be any good.
As I said, haven't really taken a peek at Primer yet. Looper is a fun ride, though. Inessential, but fun.
Quote:
Have you seen Mr Robot. ? It's not sci-fi, but it does have a lot of (computer-) tech in it. I know a bit about computers (and networking in particular). And so far the tech seems realistic. But of course there are some little details that are wrong. In some movies/shows those mistakes can ruin everything. ("Watch this surveillance footage that was shot in 720x560. Now "computer enhance". More enhance. Ah, look, you can see the reflection of the killer in the eyeballs of the victim !").
But in Mr Robot small errors are not gonna keep me from enjoying the show.
Yeah. It suffers from the same problem as Dark in that it's mostly joyless meandering; I dropped it somewhere around S2 when Rami Malek was being smacked around so hard, he hallucinated himself into another life with interludes from reality. I hear it gets better, so I plan to get back to it at some point. I have to give props to the technical accuracy though - while I haven't really hacked my way around systems, the attention to detail on the current-day tech side immediately grounds everything with a confidence that's earned.
Oh yeah - for the Tom Cruise conventioneers: Vanilla Sky was also okay! But it's arguably better without Cruise (but not without Cruz, who's inarguably the best part)- Abre los Ojos, the movie it's a remake of, is probably the better of the two.
Pyrian on 11/11/2019 at 05:43
I would classify Looper as a fun, well-made movie that doesn't really setup a coherent ruleset for its time travel shenanigans. In some sense, by not defining it while making it decidedly different from the usual tropes, it is fun to think about, so in that sense it succeeds as sci-fi.