What Are You Watching?

[Turalyon]

Not sure if you were just saying this as a joke or not but, in case you weren't: First one was the bounty hunter in Altered Carbon season 2. She's in a relation with another woman and have a kid. She's supposed to be notoriously good at her job but I think I'd feel more threaten by a little kitten. She helps Kovacs throughout the season and have a lame backstory that tie-in with the main plot.

Second one was in Star Wars 9. When the crew lands near the death star's wreckage, this random girl comes out of nowhere and tries to act cool. Flinn or w/e his name is, briefly bound with her because she is also a former storm trooper(and idk if it's just me but he looks like he's flirting with her a bit? another addition to the harem with Rose and Mary Sue I guess). Then she reappears later riding a horse on a ship cause it's "cool". Then at the end of the movie she tells Lando "idk where I'm from" or something like that, to which Lando replies "lets find out". So yeah, to quote kids nowadays: "it's cringe af".

I don't feel anymore enlightened. Both Altered Carbon season 2 and SW9 were so easily forgettable to me.

Honestly, y'all are making me happier than ever that i don't own a television.

People still watch shows on an actual television?

[Turalyon]

Just finished watching Dark. Spoilers follow...

The convolutions in it's presentation of time travel are pretty good and consistent and it rivals that of the 12 Monkeys TV series. However, I think Season 3 bit off more than it could chew when it included the alternate world characters and how they overlapped with the time travel shenanigans. It never explained how this was possible (ooh, there's a magic orb that just does it but is never explained how it was developed - not even in a bootstrap paradox way which they used to explain everything else). It did spend some time to flesh that concept but it was still kinda hazy trying to piece which of the characters in the initial universe we were seeing, may or may not have been influenced by the alternate universe/Eva. Then, they slammed another piece of sci-fiction in the form of the Quantum Entanglement/Schrodinger's Cat situation with Jonas without really adequately exploring or developing it in the last few episodes. This concept would have worked better as the basis of fourth season since the lack of explanation (which, to be fair, isn't their fault since Quantum entanglement literally makes no sense yet physics says is possible) makes it feel like it was used more for the sake of convenient cop-out/a shocking plot twist to have Jonas die but not die than anything else.

The reveal of a third world/universe (which, too, could've been explored in another season really) was neat and symbolic of things being a triad and not a dyad, but it felt like another sci-fi concept piled-on with insufficient build-up to give a neat resolution to the story. That the story ends with them invoking the grandfather paradox for real (preventing their own existence) when prior to that the majority of the show systematically denies this at all levels, kind of ruins the consistent logic that they maintained up to that point. It also sort of gives off the "it was all a dream/it never really happened" vibe, which is kinda irksome after having invested in the characters and the show at large. I suppose it can be explained that the prevention of time travel in the third/origin world was due to a Quantum Entanglement/Schrodinger's Cat situation in which time travel exists (as the show depicts) and doesn't exist (due to interference of an alternate overlapping universe that also happens to not actually exist... somehow) at the same time. Bleh.

[Mislagnissa]

Watching Gundam Orphans on Netflix.

Gives me some inspiration for writing my own gritty scifi.

[sandwich_bird]

You guys watched Dune yet? I haven't but I'll know what to expect from your opinions of it

[ragnarok]

You guys watched Dune yet? I haven't but I'll know what to expect from your opinions of it

Give me another week, should have the opportunity to.

[Turalyon]

You guys watched Dune yet? I haven't but I'll know what to expect from your opinions of it

Been waiting for this for a long time. Don't know when I'll be able to go see it in a cinema (I heard it's best experienced there) due to the craziness happening where I am. They've lifted lockdowns to a degree but there's a lot of unrest at the moment with our state Goverment having been revealed to secretly push laws through that enable them to enact lockdowns (and all the other stuff that comes with that) at any time of their choosing and the marginalisation/discrimination of unvaccinated people.

It's not a book that lends itself well to being a movie since a lot of it is steeped in political intrigue and internal musings of its characters. The 1984 Lynch movie tried to ram that all in and make of it what you will with the aesthetics of the film, it did try to include a lot of the density of what was in the book. The Sci-FI miniseries was better in that it had time to space out all those machinations, but like the 1984 movie, the aesthetics were still pretty weird like the 1984 movie but in it's own way. Namely that it looked cheap - but whatever. What I didn't like about the previous depictions of Dune on an aesthetic level, was the presence of guns. In-universe, most projectile weapons are limited to "slow" firing things like darts which are still unreliable because of the ubiquity and effectiveness of shields. It's why there's such a focus on melee fighting and knife/sword-fighting - proper fighting techniques can get through shields. It's also the reason you don't see lasers (typical weapons in sci-fiction you expect to see) - they're there, but a laser connecting with a shield creates mutually assured destruction in the form of a nuclear explosion. The bland/dull aesthetic of this new movie sort of fits with the "feudalism in space" that the book seems to depict. It doesn't fully explain why all these things are the way they are in the narrative, too. It's all just taken as the norm in-universe (which is realistic), which may alienate new people to the universe.