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Tonight is the premiere of the latest season of the HBO series True Detective This is the first season to have a subtitle, which reflects some different circumstances for this season. Creator of the first three seasons, Nick Pizzolatto, has left the series to work on a western for Prime and to write a Blade movie for Marvel and Disney, hopefully without Wesley Snipes. Instead, this season has been written by Issa Lopez, director of Tigers are not Afraid and a bunch of things I've never seen. If interviews are to believed, she was specifically approached by HBO to come up with a new season of True Detective and had coincidentally been working on a character-heavy police drama with light supernatural elements that she decided would be a good foundation for the show. Even if interviews are not to be believed, she seems to have done a good job capturing the mood of the series and of getting some good performances out of the very capable cast. Acclaim for Jodie Foster has been almost universal among advance reviews. Of course, the fans have had their own ideas about what season 4 should be:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbfLVZa5ELY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHsHzK5EWVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt6Axik-uK4 These mostly suggest that fans have terrible ideas. Of course season one was very good and season three was about that good but maybe not quite, but in any case I think it's time to let Matthew McCartney and Woody Marrelson go. Instead, we have a different fantastic cast solving a different weird mystery in a different cool location, about which I am very excited. What is True Detective? Per wiki quote:True Detective is an American anthology crime drama television series created by Nic Pizzolatto. The series, broadcast by the premium cable network HBO in the United States, premiered on January 12, 2014. Each season of the series is structured as a self-contained narrative, employing new cast ensembles, and following various sets of characters and settings. What is this season of True Detective about? Per HBO's promotions department quote:When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice. Who is in this season of True Detective? Jodie Foster as Liz Danvers:  Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro:  Fiona Shaw as Rose Aguineau  Finn Bennett as Peter Prior:  Isabella LaBlanc as Leah Danvers:  John Hawkes as Hank Prior:  Christopher Eccleston as Ted Corsaro:  Will this season be any good? Sure.
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Jan 15, 2024 04:38
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"the thing" dvd prominently displayed was so on the nose. matthew broderick / beatles connects to the wife beating crab guy and drunk driving incident leah alludes to. the spirals of course. alaska is where rust cohle lived with his dad. lots of references in this season so far.
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Jan 15, 2024 05:00
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Not great. The first few minutes gave me some The Terror vibes (and a little Resident Evil lol) but after that it was a rote introduction of too many boring characters, dull writing, mediocre performances and very little narrative momentum. I’m going to wait on the reviews for the rest of it before watching more Edit: The soundtrack was weirdly obnoxious too
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Jan 15, 2024 05:10
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First episode did not hook me as cleanly as S1's did, but I thought it was pretty good and the setting is rich and seems like it will be fertile ground for lots of weird man vs. the elements/ himself themes. I also liked the rivalry between the two leads.
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Jan 15, 2024 05:17
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Gotta 92% on rotten tomatoes
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Jan 15, 2024 05:24
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The first season generated so much goodwill that on the chance this is almost as good, I'll give it a watch. That said though I'm not feeling this first episode. They're trying way too hard to push the supernatural vibe, and we all know it won't be space aliens or ghosts, so it just feels like a waste when they could have focused on things that are actually scary in real life - the isolation, the cold, the paranoia, ... etc. Instead they're working their hardest to make me think a monster is prowling the small town. My personal theory that I hope I'm wrong about because it's so stupid, but it fits what we've been shown - some kind of virus or biological agent trapped in the soil, causes hallucinations, that the mine is inadvertantly releasing. The quip about the water going bad, the scientists writing "we are all dead" on the whiteboard, "she's awake," ...
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Jan 15, 2024 05:24
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Calling it now that the weird nature angle is related to some sort of pathogen released from polar ice by global warming which drives people and animals to suicide. The guy at the research base murdered the Inuit woman, kept her tongue as a trophy, and attributes his pathogen-caused madness to her getting revenge. Edit: LaserPrinter69 posted:My personal theory that I hope I'm wrong about because it's so stupid, but it fits what we've been shown - some kind of virus or biological agent trapped in the soil, causes hallucinations, that the mine is inadvertantly releasing. The quip about the water going bad, the scientists writing "we are all dead" on the whiteboard, "she's awake," ... God dammit just as I’m writing mine… really going to be disappointed if that’s what actually happens. beefart fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 05:31
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The “she is awake” line certainly seems to suggest a lovecraft-style ancient force that is now coming alive with the loss of daylight, but I hope this season sticks to keeping that as subtext somehow. Fiona Shaw certainly seemed like she was used to seeing an apparition of (presumably) her dead son, and Jodie Foster was not alarmed at seeing (presumably) a stuffed toy belonging to her dead son, so I’ll withhold judgment on it being an ancient madness-causing virus discovered in ice cores and released by the mine. I agree with the poster hoping for more of a focus on the natural and human elements of this wonderful setting. One thought I can’t shake is that the set design and writing seem designed the obscure the exact year in which this season takes place. All the sets are wonderfully dilapidated mid-century, the research station has a library of dvds and a dvd player, all cultural references are extremely un-timely (“milkshake,” Spongebob) and we haven’t seen a current-model cell phone, have we? Set dressings are all 60s-90s stuff, which I’d imagine helps to communicate how isolated and cut-off the town is, but I have this fear they’ve set it up that way so that “six years ago” lines up with the period when Matthew McConaughey lived in Alaska in season one so that we can have a memorable scene with either him or his dying father. I don’t want it, it won’t make sense, and it will mar what otherwise seems like an original and unique story. But that spiral has me worried. I hope it and the Lone Star beer can are the only touches to connect this season to anything. Speaking of set dressing, the design for this season seems draw from Simon Stålenhag, or they both draw from real research stations and I’m too ignorant to know:      He’s more sci-fi, but even outside the station I’m reminded of his motif of lighted windows against darkened landscapes. Then again, he is from Sweden, so not unfamiliar with the bleakness of polar landscapes and long nights. Also, it sounds like Tanya Tajaq is doing the score, or at least providing additional music. In addition to being a musician, she’s an activist for indigenous rights in Canada. She’s a very good choice for the setting and themes, and she is excellent for ramping up tension to infinity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCuayGvy3i8
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Jan 15, 2024 06:48
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The cell phones are all modern and one of the scientists was livestreaming or recording a video of him making the sandwich. They also had a PS5 at the station.
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Jan 15, 2024 06:59
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Feels like they really tried to fit a lot into that first episode, man
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Jan 15, 2024 07:53
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So was it just me or did the frozen bodies at the end look extremely goofy?
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Jan 15, 2024 08:18
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The whole thing feels pretty goofy
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Jan 15, 2024 08:59
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*watches the season premiere* What we’ve got here is a Dyatlov Pass scenario.
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Jan 15, 2024 09:13
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Gonz posted:What we’ve got here is a Dyatlov Pass scenario. yes...ha ha ha....yes! I'm in the crowd that wants maximum weirdness cranked up in my True Detective (Pizzaman robbed us of the occult history of the LA transportation system and that was everyone's loss), so I was willing to overlook a lot to get that good cosmic gumbo of existential horror, hardboiled true detectiving, and sinister conspiracy. There was in fact a lot to overlook, but I'm still game. - I massively appreciate the inciting incident being such a big outlandish swing that even a "rational", grounded explanation is going to have be completely off-the-wall. Hit me with the wackiness, please. - CGI caribou aside, the first ten minutes feel off in every way. The rest of the episode follows the series' usual habit of closely keeping to the detectives' perspective and only giving glimpses outside it, to build up the paranoia, claustrophobia and unreliability of their experience. Too much is immediately and objectively revealed at the scientists' camp (and too much of it, like the shadow-girl running across the corridor, feels generic). - The plotting around the scientists' disappearance in general feels mangled. Shouldn't everyone be urgently organising a search party rather than calmly and methodically going through old case files at this point? - Dissecting The Thing by looking at an all-male group of scientists on the outskirts of a town dominated by female authority figures (and maybe a sullen male resentment underlying it?) feels very promising indeed. Interesting to see where that goes. - Line by line, the writing just isn't as good as it should be, which is particularly odd when there's so much talent available to back Lopez up. (Barry Jenkins was a producer on this?!) S1's hardboiled alternate reality where everyone speaks in ominous portents, philosophical exchanges, pessimistic ramblings and "gently caress you"s would work perfectly for this environment, but for whatever reason we get jokes about Kelis and Spongebob instead. The exchange with Annie's husband - "We're all alone. God, too." - felt like the only scene that really hit the right note for me. - For all the excitement about Foster, Navarro gets by far the most interesting moments of characterisation in this episode; her scene with the bartender was good and memorable. Hope there's more to Danvers than dead kids and unruly living kids. - "Oh, hey, what you drawing there?" followed by the kid's ludicrously scary sketch being held up to camera got a huge and presumably unintended belly laugh from me. On the other hand, I liked the ghostly interpretive dance and the howls from the drunk woman in the cell. Both of those moments felt funny and eerie in the best Twin Peaks way. grobbo fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 16:50
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LaserPrinter69 posted:My personal theory that I hope I'm wrong about because it's so stupid, but it fits what we've been shown - some kind of virus or biological agent trapped in the soil, causes hallucinations, that the mine is inadvertantly releasing. The quip about the water going bad, the scientists writing "we are all dead" on the whiteboard, "she's awake," ... I hope that isn't it. it's kind of a boring theory op
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Jan 15, 2024 17:06
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I AM GRANDO posted:The “she is awake” line certainly seems to suggest a lovecraft-style ancient force that is now coming alive with the loss of daylight Seems to me that it's more about the murdered indigenous woman, but we'll just have to see. Overall, I agree with the other posters, the opener felt a bit weak and there were some horror cliques that I could have done without. I am also on team psychoactive gas or fungus or whatever caused by climate change/mining
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Jan 15, 2024 17:32
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There’s probably more to the post-mortem kick to the murdered woman that Kali Reis mentions, like someone thinking that she’s awake.
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Jan 15, 2024 17:38
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With regards to 'she's awake', the spooky drawing lady with a bleeding mouth, and the reference to Alaskan folklore, I'd assume we're going to get some kind of take (even if it's ultimately hallucinogenic or whatevs) on the kushtaka or another indigenous shapeshifter - taking on the form of a woman in distress to lure victims out into the snow to their deaths. Cutting out the tongue might be an attempt to remove the shapeshifter's luring voice.
grobbo fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 17:54
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I kinda liked the first episode, but the unusual locale is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me. Everyone is very sad in this town! I don’t really have an idea of what is driving this mystery, but I just want to ask why a prehistoric virus or chemical contamination that causes hallucinations would be bad or lame? I trust this show to not become some lame mystery box ordeal like every other show on television. Maybe I’ll be wrong, but True Detective is best when it’s about the journey, not the answers at the end.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:02
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The plot of the episode shows FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the deaths of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:13
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magiccarpet posted:The plot of the episode shows FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the deaths of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage. Ahh yeah. Well that would be kind of annoying to repeat the same mystery, if that is what happens.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:32
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I’m gonna be honest. I think I hated everything about that first episode. That entire opening scene at the research station I thought they were doing like a parody of bad horror movies. Like I was hoping it was going to be like the opening scene of Blow Out where after the cheesy horror movie we’re back in reality
The_Rob fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 18:35
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magiccarpet posted:The plot of the episode shows FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the deaths of an Alaskan research team. Isolated and alone, the agents and their accompanying team discover the existence of extraterrestrial parasitic organisms that drive their hosts into impulsive fits of rage. there is also an entire slightly obscure (and kinda lovely) series about a very similar premise, although i don't remember the exact northern and icy region it was located in. i think the parasitic organisms found in the ice in that one were like wasps or something. can't remember its name, saw the first season on amazon prime at one point before finding out they switched out most of the actors for season 2 and onwards. i think it was called Fortitude?
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Jan 15, 2024 19:19
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In all fairness "an arctic research team go crazy and all die under mysterious circumstances" is a pretty well worn setup, but one that can be entertaining regardless of the story device that makes it happen if it's well crafted. That's basically why I'm going to want to see how this turns out and I'm not really invested in whether it's magic or whatever. Although I don't think they're going to go in that direction. I'm betting on some pseudoscience stuff with hints of the supernatural. Shows like this are at their best when they're willing to leave some stuff unexplained.
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Jan 15, 2024 19:52
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Good: setting Bad: intro omg billie eilish cmon
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Jan 15, 2024 20:29
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oh god oh gently caress posted:Good: setting Should have gotten a Yupik artist or at least someone from Alaska
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Jan 15, 2024 23:07
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Dmitri-9 posted:Should have gotten a Yupik artist or at least someone from Alaska Tanya Tagaq is doing at least some of the score.
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Jan 15, 2024 23:17
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True Detective season 5 intro to feature particularly haunting cover of Anti Hero
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Jan 15, 2024 23:35
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If they try to shoehorn in some mundane reason for how the lady followed the ghost of her son to the exact place where the bodies were I will be very disappointed. TD S1 was great because it hinted at supernatural poo poo but never went so far into it that mundane explanations would seriously disappoint. They've painted themselves into a bit of a corner here already unfortunately.
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Jan 15, 2024 23:38
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grobbo posted:yes...ha ha ha....yes! How much of that is explained by this originally being some other completely novel script treatment they shoehorned into the True Detective brand?
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Jan 15, 2024 23:39
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:If they try to shoehorn in some mundane reason for how the lady followed the ghost of her son to the exact place where the bodies were I will be very disappointed. TD S1 was great because it hinted at supernatural poo poo but never went so far into it that mundane explanations would seriously disappoint. They've painted themselves into a bit of a corner here already unfortunately. I don't know, I think it could work if it's well crafted and they could just leave that as one of those cosmic coincidences that just sometimes happen in our world. I've talked to more than a few people who had some sort of spiritual awakening or experience that could be described as "right place, right time". You have the characters discover that everyone has been huffing psychotropic gases from the mines as a reason for why half the town has gone batshit crazy or the caribou all jump off a cliff or why eight guys ran naked into the snow and froze to death, but then have it left unexplored as to how exactly four or five different people with no connection (or a tenuous connection) have the exact same very specific hallucinatory experience about the ghost of a murdered Indigenous rights activist. The thing about S1 was that Rust Cole's attitude towards spiritual experiences as bullshit was also complimented by his regularly experiencing hallucinations. There was more freedom to tease the supernatural angle because you could never really tell how much of it was because Cole was tripping balls.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:21
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Just a good enough start to keep watching. This could get stupid fast, but it could also get cool.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:47
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Hell yea another cold police show!
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Jan 16, 2024 01:53
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it's a metaphor for the coldness of humanity also the darkness
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Jan 16, 2024 01:58
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I think other than that the arctic setting police procedural has been done to death, this season doesn't get what's good about the first season is that the murders themselves aren't particularly uncanny but the context around them is. There's probably going to be a lot of emphasis on native spiritual practices in this season but you can't portray them as hosed up like you can with evangelical white sex sickos who potentially worship a lovecraftian being from outside of space.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:03
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Ithle01 posted:they could just leave that as one of those cosmic coincidences that just sometimes happen in our world. Hard disagree. Ghosts / hallucinations don't lead people to the precise locations of missing bodies in the middle of nowhere. There are strange coincidences and then there are impossibilities. If a hallucination can lead a person to the location of murder victims, all bets are off and I'd be left asking why the hallucination couldn't just solve the whole mystery. If ghosts did it, don't take six episodes to tell me that, a few minutes will do.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:05
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Surprised at how negative the reaction I'm seeing online is (at least that's what Twitter thinks I want to see anyway). That was a really solid hour with a good hook to me.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:09
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Henchman of Santa posted:Surprised at how negative the reaction I'm seeing online is (at least that's what Twitter thinks I want to see anyway). That was a really solid hour with a good hook to me. I think it is fine but there are a lot of possibly tiresome cliches like Navarro's PTSD and hatred of violence against women. Many people have pointed out the shadowy figure crossing the foreground. A dismembered body part showing up where it shouldn't has been done to death.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:57
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I enjoyed the first episode. I spent some time in far northern Norway a few years ago, so I’m pretty keen to see that kind of endless darkness portrayed on screen, and how it interacts with the story. Plus Jodie Foster is pretty great!
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Jan 16, 2024 03:07
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Dmitri-9 posted:I think it is fine but there are a lot of possibly tiresome cliches like Navarro's PTSD and hatred of violence against women. Many people have pointed out the shadowy figure crossing the foreground. A dismembered body part showing up where it shouldn't has been done to death. The shadow figure sucked and also the guy standing g having a seizure and then turning around to say something cryptic. It’s the least True Detective thing I’ve ever seen. It felt like American Horror Story
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Jan 16, 2024 03:10
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