Altered Carbon

Steampunk · 12 Feb 2018 at 10:07

In the book, Miriam is about 25 (or her sleeves are). It's meant to be confusing, as she's a devious, manipulative three hundred year old meth, but she comes packaged in this "made for sex" young, custom "trophy wife" sleeve, and she's not above using it to get what she wants. Making her a cougar in the show just takes another element of the book's subtlety and tosses it out to make it simpler for the audience.

IvanDobskey · 12 Feb 2018 at 10:08

Watched the first 6 episodes so far.

Whilst it blatantly rips off so many other sci-fi greats, it does it pretty well and is a good story and mostly decent acting. I think the Ortega actress is pretty poor though.

Really enjoying it so far and only seems to be improving with each episode.

Squid Vicious · 12 Feb 2018 at 10:43

Couple of episodes in now and I'm enjoying it.

Even the missus is liking it and she's hardly a scifi fan.

TonyM19 · 12 Feb 2018 at 11:12

First episode down. Looks OK. Reminds me a bit of Westworld - probably not something we'll still be talking about in 10 years, but I fully intend to watch the series.

Rroff · 12 Feb 2018 at 11:22

TonyM19 said:
First episode down. Looks OK. Reminds me a bit of Westworld - probably not something we'll still be talking about in 10 years, but I fully intend to watch the series.

There is quite a strong feel of Westworld meets Bladerunner to the series as a whole. I can't see it being talked about down the line either- it had an interesting premise but just turns into a pretty run of the mill story with an interesting backdrop that never really goes anywhere.

nicktay2605 · 12 Feb 2018 at 11:43

Does anyone else struggle at times to understand what Ortega is saying? The actress who plays her has a pretty strong accent and I found I was missing things she was saying occasionally.

signs · 12 Feb 2018 at 13:00

nicktay2605 said:
Does anyone else struggle at times to understand what Ortega is saying? The actress who plays her has a pretty strong accent and I found I was missing things she was saying occasionally.

Yeah, said the same thing to the mrs

smokedog · 12 Feb 2018 at 15:54

nicktay2605 said:
Does anyone else struggle at times to understand what Ortega is saying? The actress who plays her has a pretty strong accent and I found I was missing things she was saying occasionally.

Yes and doesn't help that her acting is so wooden.

Glanza · 12 Feb 2018 at 16:26

I think some of that is down to the writing, In one of the last episodes where she 'isn't herself' that acting for those few minutes is miles ahead anything else in the show when she's playing 'badass cop'

Cooper · 12 Feb 2018 at 16:29

smokedog said:
Yes and doesn't help that her acting is so wooden.

..amazing figure though

Rroff · 12 Feb 2018 at 16:35

Steampunk said:
In the book, Miriam is about 25 (or her sleeves are). It's meant to be confusing, as she's a devious, manipulative three hundred year old meth, but she comes packaged in this "made for sex" young, custom "trophy wife" sleeve, and she's not above using it to get what she wants. Making her a cougar in the show just takes another element of the book's subtlety and tosses it out to make it simpler for the audience.

There is a lot more missing than that though (not just missing from the books) - the whole first episode and a lot of the promotional stuff plays a lot on the "everything not as it seems", etc. angles, hints at layers of deception, ulterior motives and lots of symbology some subtle some thrown at the screen like Smarties with some nice little touches like the Ouroboros infinity symbol but 80% of the series is a pretty pedestrian story with little real complexity other than some manufactured slight twists that are basically pulled out of a hat when needed and discarded.

Ultimately as far as it goes not a bad series but falls far short of what it tries to portray itself as.

garak112 · 12 Feb 2018 at 22:52

Finished watching this earlier and thought it had a lot of promise but ultimately failed to deliver.

I thought it was going to explore a bit more of what it means to be human, but the sleeve element just ended up being a thin plot device.

At times I was a little confused with what was going on.

For instance Lizzie seeing the future

The lack of different outside sets was a little odd. As mentioned already the chase scenes are obviously just running one end to the other and back again.

Like others I struggle to understand the motivation of people to have copies of themselves living on after death. I wondered if this was just poorly explained and it was the same person when spun back up.

but at the end Bancroft describes himself as having killed the person who murdered the prostitute. He was also just a facsimile since he was a digital backup

IvanDobskey · 13 Feb 2018 at 11:00

Cooper said:
..amazing figure though

She's definitely a fitty

Shame about her acting.....

EvilDreams · 13 Feb 2018 at 17:10

I thought this was awesome. While not exactly high art it was unpretentious, pretty, fun, slick, ultra-gory...it reminded me of Judge Dredd a bit in places.

What BR2049 might have been if it hadn't been a flavourless 3-hour failed attempt at saying something clever.

EvilDreams · 13 Feb 2018 at 17:13

garak112 said:
I thought it was going to explore a bit more of what it means to be human

You can stare expressionless at BR2049 for 3 hours if you want that.

R3X · 15 Feb 2018 at 14:26

Glad to hear others were confused with this tv series, and I love syfy but lately these tv shows are going so overboard with multi characters and story arcs when really keeping it simple just works but maybe am just getting old !

Blade runner meets westworld it is, so to me its not quite as original or fresh. It could have been called blade runner tv series with sleeves being replicants ?

Anyhow its still a nice tv series but if its confusing the average syfy fan which it appears, I doubt it gets renewed but the creators of the series say they have 5 seasons already planned.

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/altered-carbon/news/a849888/altered-carbon-netflix-five-season-plan/

On budgets of 70 mill+ I think they would be better with bright and will smith and orc police officers or something easier so people can enjoy it.

Steampunk · 15 Feb 2018 at 14:40

Netflix have the opportunity to do more intelligent stuff that the mainstream channels won't touch (as the likes of Showtime did HBO did before them), but they have to trust their audiences can come along with them. They've obviously got the Takeshi Kovacs books (which are very dense and full of info, style and background), but somewhere in the translation they've lost some of it by simplifying. Whether this was down to cost, the number of episodes they had to play with, or not trusting their audience to follow what was going on I'm not sure. Reading the books I never once thought "Blade Runner meets Westworld", so something has not translated from the books as well as it should have.

Rroff · 20 Feb 2018 at 00:50

Some great scenes in this show actually when you watch them in isolation and forget about what the show tries to be such as the "a wicked tongue" scene.

MikeTheNative · 21 Feb 2018 at 12:18

Finally finished it and I quite enjoyed it overall, would definitely check another season out if they made one. One thing that had me confused though. People are still born naturally but if you were religious and didn't want to be re-sleeved then why would you even bother inserting a stack in the first place? I thought it glossed over how and when it's put into 'natural' humans or i missed it.

IvanDobskey · 21 Feb 2018 at 13:12

Finished this now. Overall very good I thought.

Was a little confusing in patches, partially due to actors mumbling their lines and the acting itself leaving a little to be desired.

But it was a decent story with an intriguing premise and great visuals.

I'd watch a second season if it happened.