|
bring back old gbs posted:Just started episode 3, this show spent it's money right. It looks expensive as gently caress. I can't help but constantly think this is some far future sequel to The Following, with The Edgar Allan Poe hotel and the bad guy from the Following being a bad guy here. 
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 04:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 17:11 |
|
|
Finished it and liked it. This show continues what Westworld started: giving huge prosthetic penises to living sex dolls. Also vote to change the subtitle of this thread to "Protect ya neck"
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 04:26
|
|
|
Gaunab posted:Finished it and liked it. This show continues what Westworld started: giving huge prosthetic penises to living sex dolls. Needs a shot of Stronghold Kovacs with his neck protector. It took me a bit to realize that's what it actual is, it's just missing the front panel used for ballistic throat protection.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 06:10
|
|
|
bring back old gbs posted:Just started episode 3, this show spent it's money right. It looks expensive as gently caress. That was a change I wasn’t crazy about when I heard about it, although I understand why they had to do it, but honestly, they really sold me on it. Poe ended up being one of my favorite parts.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 06:45
|
|
|
Does the book ever touch on the dichotomy of "Artificial copy of consciousness vs. Canned soul" at all? Because the show seems a little bit confusing in that regard. The Meths can keep backups somewhere in sky servers but for example when Lizzie beams up to the sky brothel, her old stack "empties" itself; goes "dead" why would it have to when Meths can apparently just upload a copy to the cloud? Also, I presume the primary stack has to be on that specific vertebra to be close to the brain to be able to maintain an always up-to-date copy of the consciousness in real time, but could somebody who can't afford a back up satellite just keep another "non-real-time" copies in a chip lets say; embedded in their buttcheek which nobody would expect and fail to properly kill them, going only for the primary one? Are buttcheeks an adequate storage for one's soul? Also, it's illegal to double-sleeve and grounds for RD, but is it illegal for your in the cloud copy to do something in VR? What if I'm a meth and wanted it the other way and instead of syncing the cloud, kept the "persistent" consciousness in the cloud and synced the body once once upon a time?
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 10:52
|
|
|
Terra-da-loo! posted:One of my biggest criticisms with the series is that I don't care for what's being more or less presented as "Envoy superpowers," and unless I misunderstood something I read, it sounds like the it's even more over the top in text (?). It definitely isn't. In fact, everything is way over the top in the TV show and far more muted and nuanced in the book. You should totally check out the book, IMO it's quite well written, does a lot of wonderful world building and is full of really exciting and innovative ideas on what the whole "your body is consumable" idea would mean. I'm really glad my friend practically made me read it. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 11:00
|
|
|
Der Shovel posted:It definitely isn't. In fact, everything is way over the top in the TV show and far more muted and nuanced in the book. It was even more innovative when it came out, it won a lot of awards and was hugely influential. I think even some of the elements that people are less comfortable with were very much deliberate choices, it is a very thoughtful and critical work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 12:35
|
|
|
Teal posted:Yeah but I thought (I haven't read it, I'm piecing this together from posts here and summaries of the book elsewhere) that's what the Sorry I’ve never read the books nor the Wikipedia page so I have no idea about half of these terms/names and was just going by what I picked up from the show only. Not saying you’re wrong or anything, but this is what I pieced together from the show: Kovacs was one of the “good guys” being trained since he was a kid for whatever reason. I keep saying “good guys” in quotes because honestly I have no idea what that group was called, but I think it was the same group of people that killed him at the beginning of the series. The dudes in the full body armor. They seemed like they were the military/enforcement arm of the recognized world government(s), thus I call them the “good guys.” During the training scene in that forest I was under the impression that Kovacs revealed that he was one of those good guys, that opposed the group of terrorists/rebels that Kovacs ended up joining. He got lucky in that he wasn’t a VIP and didn’t get himself assassinated and sometime later he changed sides and joined in with the terrorists/rebels. I have no idea what the terrorists/rebels are all about so I have no idea if if they are suppose to be good guys, like the Rebellion in Star Wars, or if they really are just terrorists. If I’m wrong about that can someone point out where and why.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 13:41
|
|
|
The terrorists were planning to upload a virus code to ensure the maximum amount of life anyone could get was 100years as they thought it would stop people like banscroft from becoming insane godlike monsters.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 14:13
|
|
|
^^^^^^ As if that would make any difference to anything! We still have horrifying political dynasties now, because you can just pass all your money and influence to your inbred chinless offspring. Boris Galerkin posted:Sorry I’ve never read the books nor the Wikipedia page so I have no idea about half of these terms/names and was just going by what I picked up from the show only. Not saying you’re wrong or anything, but this is what I pieced together from the show: The reason you're struggling is because the show half-assed it, chopping around all the forces and idealogies in the book into a stupid mush that doesn't make any sense. Show: Kovacs joins the Protectorate's CTAC (can't remember what it stands for) who are somewhere between a marine strike team and a repressive totalitarian, getting downloaded into bodies all over the galaxy to Quell leads a bunch of anti-immortality rebels, training them as Envoys - people who can download into any body any planet and quickly start assembling terror cells and resistance movements. Despite this, her only goal with the Envoys is a single suicide mission to take out the system core that magically controls all stack transfers for some loving reason. Book: Envoys are the elite body swapping forces of the Protectorate, given elite training to let them adapt rapidly to foreign environments and changing social and tactical landscapes (c.f The Forever War for the Vietnam-scale mess you get into if you don't do this). They're conditioned to be near-sociopaths, and are legally forbidden from every holding public office. They drop into planets to crush dissent, topple governments, all sorts of dirty work. Quell leads a failed socialist/anarchist revolt, which Kovacs and his commanding officer (Virginia Ver-something) join up to after a catastrophic Envoy mission leads to their whole team getting wiped out by a viral strike. Quell is explicitly pro-Sleeving, because it ensures that the revolution can never die - the same old class conflicts will keep grinding the galaxy down, but eventually people will get resleeved and the revolution can begin again. It's part of a general trend in the show of taking all the anti-capitalist cyberpunk themes of the Books and turning it into a very on the nose conflict about whether or not its a good thing to make some people immortal. Every time the book comes up with some social or cultural explanation for a problem in the future the show just reworks it to be a fictional result of Sleeving, which completely robs the story of any meaningful subtext. Instead its all lazy "world-building" about how fictional property X of fictional technology Y leads to fictional problem Z. It's boring, its cowardly, and its not good sci-fi. Book Meths don't go crazy because they're so immortal, they're evil upper-classholes who have so much power and wealth that they're completely above the law and start growing bored with the mundane pursuits the rest of us can afford. Being resleeved a bunch doesn't cause you to go crazy because you've passed some mythical 10 sleeve limit, you're just gonna suffer the mental strain of being constantly torn away from everything you know and everyone you love. Sleeving sickness isn't a problem, the problem is being dropped into a foreign world with no cultural touchstones for you to understand, with no connections to your fellow man. Strom Cuzewon fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 14:14
|
|
|
The big fat disks as Stacks is needlessly dumb; The book version is a small featureless cylinder about the size of the tip of your pinkie-finger, and the whole point is how simple and mundane functional immortality is made by such a tiny simple thing. Injected at birth at the base of the skull, nigh-indestructible unless you point a gun right at the thing, there's your life backed up. Try not to die. Also fighting against the use and existence of Sleeving in Altered Carbon is a loving stupid angle to take. It'd be like making a show about fighting against the use and existence of smartphones.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 14:19
|
|
|
Boris Galerkin posted:Sorry I’ve never read the books nor the Wikipedia page so I have no idea about half of these terms/names and was just going by what I picked up from the show only. Not saying you’re wrong or anything, but this is what I pieced together from the show: It sounds like you haven't finished it yet? All that stuff is shown eventually.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 14:49
|
|
|
Oooh wee Time magizines reviewquote:Rather than explore the ethical implications of this technology, Altered Carbon focuses on a mystery. Someone has attempted to murder a wealthy man, Laurens Bancroft, by both destroying his sleeve and hacking the cloud system that backs up his consciousness. Bancroft wakes up the mind of an old soldier named Takeshi Kovacs to solve the crime, gifting him a new sleeve. I'm not sure she actually watched the show.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 16:39
|
|
|
zoux posted:Oooh wee Time magizines review Hang on, wait, flag on the play; quote:For viewers, the mystery may instead be why Takeshi’s sleeve takes the form of Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (House of Cards) playing an Asian man living in a white guy’s body. That’s how it’s written in the book, but onscreen it’s especially problematic She read the book, and she still didn't get the point of it. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 16:45
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:She read the book, and she still didn't get the point of it. It's a fig leaf, she didn't need to have read the book in order to suggest her argument is well founded. She just needed to wiki it. (She's obviously not interested in unpacking the implementation and implications of her argument, just in making a snap moral judgement on a faulty premise and with misapplied terminology.) Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 18:32
|
|
|
zoux posted:Oooh wee Time magizines review It doesn't even make sense the way she frames it, since whitewashing traditionally means taking a minority role from the source material and giving it to a more palatable, white actor. She's just following a knee jerk script. That's bad, but not quite as lazy as the reviewers complaining that the show exploits violence against women. I'm only 6 episodes in, but the gendered body count has got to be at least 25 to 1, and the one protracted torture scene has a male-bodied victim, in an intentional change from the book.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:07
|
|
|
The most laughable thing imo is saying they don't explore the ethical implications of stacks/re-sleeving/immortality, and is why I don't think she watched it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:21
|
|
|
Ugly In The Morning posted:They did get renewed for S2 already. Just wondering where the info is on renewal as IGN, Digital spy ect are doing if it gets renewed these are our questions for season 2 type articles?
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:38
|
|
|
zoux posted:The most laughable thing imo is saying they don't explore the ethical implications of stacks/re-sleeving/immortality, and is why I don't think she watched it. My favorite show addition along those lines is the total nonchalance of the hospital receptionist to the character with poor credit bleeding to death in front of her. The kind of thing that would come across as a trying-too-hard-for-edgy parody of modern norms in another work, but is here totally fitting and plausible when you consider the implications of stacks.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:50
|
|
|
Avasculous posted:It doesn't even make sense the way she frames it, since whitewashing traditionally means taking a minority role from the source material and giving it to a more palatable, white actor. She's just following a knee jerk script. So, what the gently caress are they gonna do if they do the Broken Angels storyline on Latimer and Tak is wearing a handsome, studly Afro-Caribbean sleeve? Accusations of black-washing? drat these people are dumb.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 19:57
|
|
|
navyjack posted:So, what the gently caress are they gonna do if they do the Broken Angels storyline on Latimer and Tak is wearing a handsome, studly Afro-Caribbean sleeve? Accusations of black-washing? drat these people are dumb. She'll find some other stupid poo poo to complain about like how the good AI was white but the bad AI who got killed first was black! Why black AI always gotta die first??
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 20:02
|
|
|
zoux posted:Oooh wee Time magizines review quote:In flashbacks, Takeshi (now played by Will Yun Lee) and his sister join a group of rebels led by Goldsberry’s Quellcrist Falconer. The doomed rebel leader dreams of a more egalitarian future. She would have been disappointed by this one. Gosh
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 20:26
|
|
|
Neddy Seagoon posted:She read the book, and she still didn't get the point of it. I love she also missed that Takeshi Kovacs wasn't fully Asian either; his Dad was Polish (at least the show mentioned it explicitly I think, in the book it might have been only implicit); Kovacs is the Polish equivalent of Smith. 
Teal fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 22:18
|
|
|
I think they did explain it, but even if not, you can figure it out when his dad is shown as not asian in the flashbacks. I didn't outright love the show but I enjoyed it. All the people commenting on it being a 90's show with modern production are absolutely right, it made me think specifically of the movie Strange Days which had not only a similar vibe, but similar themes of consciousness transfer and snuff prostitution. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Feb 5, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 22:43
|
|
|
Englishman alone posted:Just wondering where the info is on renewal as IGN, Digital spy ect are doing if it gets renewed these are our questions for season 2 type articles? Looks like the places I read about the renewal at were jumping the gun, my bad.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 22:50
|
|
|
Netflix tends to renew, I'd be real surprised if that didn't happen here.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 23:15
|
|
|
Netflix commits to 2 seasons when they fund a show, sometimes they cancel the second if it flops but only rarely.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2018 23:41
|
|
|
zoux posted:Oooh wee Time magizines review I think the way the did Kovacs' former Asian bodies was rather well-done. While Kinnaman obviously takes the most of the runtime as Kovacs, I thought Will Yun Lee was in this enough to convince me that he was also Kovacs. Neddy Seagoon posted:The big fat disks as Stacks is needlessly dumb; The book version is a small featureless cylinder about the size of the tip of your pinkie-finger, and the whole point is how simple and mundane functional immortality is made by such a tiny simple thing. Injected at birth at the base of the skull, nigh-indestructible unless you point a gun right at the thing, there's your life backed up. Try not to die. It's been awhile since I've read the book and most of it has been confused with how stuff from Eclipse Phase, but yeah, I remember stacks being a lot more resilient. My only major disappointment is that we go with snuff prostitution with added child rape just because it seems like the standard go-to for pure sexual perversion. I mean where's the Meth version of Louis C.K. or where the Meth who got the rape fantasy where he's the one getting raped?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 00:00
|
|
|
I'm avoiding reading this thread so I go in completely blind but question about episode 4: Who was the dissected woman in the room while Kovacs got tortured and what was the purpose of taking out all of her organs like that?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 01:30
|
|
|
Basticle posted:I'm avoiding reading this thread so I go in completely blind but question about episode 4: I assumed it was Alice, the prostitute that knew Lizzie
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 01:32
|
|
|
Basticle posted:I'm avoiding reading this thread so I go in completely blind but question about episode 4: she was the prostitute that he asked to ask around, who injected him with tranquilizers when he came back. Organs are a valuable commodity.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 01:34
|
|
|
That was such a weird set-up for me. The workers all acted like they had a completely normal 9-5 job (they even have sensitivity training for christs sake) but even without the weird organ harvesting, it seems what they were doing was super duper illegal
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 01:37
|
|
|
Basticle posted:That was such a weird set-up for me. The workers all acted like they had a completely normal 9-5 job (they even have sensitivity training for christs sake) but even without the weird organ harvesting, it seems what they were doing was super duper illegal My favorite part about that sequence were the fun icons they had to spawn stuff in VR 
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 01:40
|
|
|
Basticle posted:That was such a weird set-up for me. The workers all acted like they had a completely normal 9-5 job (they even have sensitivity training for christs sake) but even without the weird organ harvesting, it seems what they were doing was super duper illegal The Wei Clinic guys being all super blase about the torture and organlegging is supposed to be pretty weird, because it's that Meth attitude toward death that's rubbing off on the groundsiders. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:My favorite part about that sequence were the fun icons they had to spawn stuff in VR That's the second favorite part My favorite part is Kovacs getting up and wasting everyone after he sees the parted-out hooker.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 02:01
|
|
|
Speaking of that stupid tower, could they have gotten any less subtle about Meths "looking down on people"? In the book, it's just a private island out in the bay. You know, something sensible that still tells you how obscenely rich and cut off from the city at-large the Bancrofts are. Young Freud posted:The Wei Clinic guys being all super blase about the torture and organlegging is supposed to be pretty weird, because it's that Meth attitude toward death that's rubbing off on the groundsiders. It's actually implied as a pretty common thing for everyone iirc, unless it's specifically happening to them of course. There's a reason the violent crimes division of the police is called "Organic Damage".
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 02:06
|
|
|
Everything is ludicrously on-the-nose in this series, it's kind of great. If there's any complaints I have about it, it's that it sort of loses the plot of the Bancroft mystery, and then belatedly remembers to wrap it up. Also, jfc Kovacs' sister is just a complete irredeemable demon shitbird. Like, when we come back to Bancroft near the end, it really makes him, and even his wife seem likable and human by comparison. It was EXTREMELY on the nose to make Kovacs' sister the complete embodiment of everything Quell feared. I think it's fascinating that possibly like, at max 3 of the main cast will appear in season 2. If Kinnaman returns, it'll be as Elias Ryker, and they'll either get a new guy for Kovacs, or have him played by the same guy who played OG Kovacs. Ortega could come back, I guess. but Rei, her crazy henchman, and Poe are dead, and Elliot's plot is wrapped up, as is the Bancrofts'.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 02:54
|
|
|
Spatula City posted:Everything is ludicrously on-the-nose in this series, it's kind of great. If there's any complaints I have about it, it's that it sort of loses the plot of the Bancroft mystery, and then belatedly remembers to wrap it up. in re: Rei. NO I'm not saying (and I'm definitely hoping not) this is likely. But it's an easy/convenient mis-step the show could make.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 02:59
|
|
|
In the book do they explain how Rei got a hold of a little girl's sleeve? I'm assuming their society has similar rules w/r/t juvenile criminal law, and therefore she's not a long term prisoner. Following from that, I'm guessing it was some hosed up kidnapping/body purge operation just so she could mind gently caress Tak for a 5 minute conversation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 03:00
|
|
|
Mooktastical posted:In the book do they explain how Rei got a hold of a little girl's sleeve? I'm assuming their society has similar rules w/r/t juvenile criminal law, and therefore she's not a long term prisoner. Following from that, I'm guessing it was some hosed up kidnapping/body purge operation just so she could mind gently caress Tak for a 5 minute conversation. That part never happens in the book. Also Rei is just her own person, Tak's sister is entirely original to the show. Minor sidenote though, but prison isn't actually the only way for a little girl's sleeve to be vacant/available/however you want to phrase it. People will resleeve just for the convenience of traveling across the planet near-instantly as d.h.f. Nevermind that it's the only way to go interstellar outside of decades to centuries spent in cryo. Neddy Seagoon fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Feb 6, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 03:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 17:11 |
|
|
Mooktastical posted:In the book do they explain how Rei got a hold of a little girl's sleeve? I'm assuming their society has similar rules w/r/t juvenile criminal law, and therefore she's not a long term prisoner. Following from that, I'm guessing it was some hosed up kidnapping/body purge operation just so she could mind gently caress Tak for a 5 minute conversation. Well in the 1st episode the little girl sleeved into an old woman was on ice because of some accident. Since Rei can alter the database to make the hooker fake Neo-Catholic, I imagine it's not hard misroute a sleeve of a child, or at least get the DNA to make clones
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2018 03:06
|
|