|
I wonder if there will be an episode that is "what if Netflix but too much"
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2017 00:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:12 |
|
|
In It For The Tank posted:I wonder if there will be an episode that is "what if Netflix but too much" There already is. If you watch Black Mirror for three episodes in a row, there's an Easter egg where Netflix says "Are you sure you want to keep watching?" and ominously gives you the option to continue or refuse. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2017 00:37
|
|
|
In It For The Tank posted:I wonder if there will be an episode that is "what if Netflix but too much" They got you covered.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2017 00:46
|
|
|
Jesus, this owns. Perfectly captures it. Love that song too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2017 01:31
|
|
|
TraderStav posted:
I imagine that it annoys some people that it's become a sort of Black Mirror theme song but I have to say: it's a great song, and it often fits the mood of the show, a kind of desperate clinging and obsessive devotion in a way that engenders both empathy and horror.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2017 01:37
|
|
|
Sup San Junipero haters http://ew.com/awards/2017/09/17/black-mirror-san-junipero-emmy/
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 06:05
|
|
|
I just watched the first episode and it was weird and kind of stupid. Like if that happened in real life, there's no way a country's population would go "yeah, our country's leader better gently caress that pig or we'll riot and maybe kill them!" I mean, honestly there probably ARE a lot of crazy people that send world leaders bizarre threats and demands.... But the difference is that these threats and demands don't get broadcast over every news network and then have the entire government/population say to the leader "um... maybe you SHOULD just give in to that crazy person's demand?" Because that idea is just loving stupid.... Just like that episode was just loving stupid. No, I don't think I will be watching anymore episodes  I'm kind of annoyed that this show was featured on my "recommended shows" list for some reason DrunkPanda fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 06:34
|
|
|
That ep isn't much like the rest fwiw, try another one or two
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 07:40
|
|
|
DrunkPanda posted:I just watched the first episode and it was weird and kind of stupid. Like if that happened in real life, there's no way a country's population would go "yeah, our country's leader better gently caress that pig or we'll riot and maybe kill them!" David Cameron once stuck his dick in a dead pig's mouth btw
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 07:59
|
|
|
Not saying that National Anthem is a bad episode at all, but I do think it's a bad episode to start watching the show with as it might be very unsettling to some people and they then might expect the rest of the series to be similar in them. Back on topic : San Junipero winning the Emmy is well deserved and a nice recognition for this anthology series.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 07:59
|
|
|
I'm not really liking the Electric Dreams show and it somehow looks even cheaper than Black Mirror despite all the Hollywood talent behind it. I think Black Mirror's prestige will remain.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 08:10
|
|
|
Not asking about favorite episodes, but if you could select three episodes to make someone, who never saw anything Black Mirror before, watch first. Which ones would you start with? I would go: - The entire history of you - Hated in the Nation - 15MM
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 08:54
|
|
|
White Christmas, San Junipero, and 15 Million Merits, I think. I wouldn't show Hated in the Nation because I would want them to actually like the show.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 08:58
|
|
|
Escobarbarian posted:White Christmas, San Junipero, and 15 Million Merits, I think. I wouldn't show Hated in the Nation because I would want them to actually like the show. Yeah these three. SJ first, then 15, then WC then White Bear.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 09:08
|
|
|
Hated in the Nation is so loving boring.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 09:12
|
|
|
DrunkPanda posted:Because that idea is just loving stupid.... Just like that episode was just loving stupid. No, I don't think I will be watching anymore episodes So do you not know what an anthology is or what
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 09:45
|
|
|
BSam posted:Yeah these three. San Junipero loses something when you haven't been conditioned to fear the worst
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 10:28
|
|
|
Yeah I'd show SJ last of the three
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 10:30
|
|
|
15MM, San Junipero and...White Christmas maybe?Mu Zeta posted:Hated in the Nation is so loving boring. And yet no other piece of fiction has dared to ask "what if a hashtag could kill...with bees."
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 10:51
|
|
|
Escobarbarian posted:Yeah I'd show SJ last of the three Agree, And I on purpose didn't include in the first three as I would want the person to experience some gems later on. Starting with the 3 best episodes would be a bad idea. For example I did not really like Nosedive so much (I felt really bad in her place....but i guess that's the whole idea).. but I do think it was a perfect season opener. I still thing the EHOY is a great first episode to watch as it embodies the "what if...but too much" really well. Also even though the episodes have no 'timeline' or order, some technologies get referenced back later on. So showing SJ before WC that introduces the cookie is not the best idea. (but no drama if you do) Showing WC too early isn't perfect either as it introduces too much new stuff, and somewhat uses EHOY technology. I'll revise my order list to 1 : EHOY, 2 : 15MM ... and then White Bear. (PS, apparently I liked Hated in the Nation more than most of you, but I do like some detective series too)
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 11:39
|
|
|
Show them Shut Up and Dance and drop the mic.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 13:58
|
|
|
Hated in the Nation has two major thing against it for me: the cliche crime drama/ police procedural element, and the needlessly long length. Also I hate when people complain about this show because "that wouldn't happen in real life." That's the whole point of the show, exaggerating the worst aspects of society and humanity so we can, you know, reflect on them. I get that that's not for everyone, but a lot of people seem to struggle with how seriously you should take the scenarios.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 14:23
|
|
|
It'd be like arguing the Twilight Zone isn't realistic. Yeah no poo poo it's not meant to be
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 14:44
|
|
|
Escobarbarian posted:White Christmas, San Junipero, and 15 Million Merits, I think. I wouldn't show Hated in the Nation because I would want them to actually like the show. SJ is one of my favorite episodes but I don't know if I'd use it to introduce someone to the show. Partly because it's not very representative of the tone of the rest of the series, and partly because that tonal difference is a big part of why it works - you sort of need to already be familiar with Black Mirror. It's still a nice enough story that someone could watch it on its own and like it, but I just feel that it works better in the context of having seen the rest of Black Mirror. White Christmas was the first one I ever saw and I'd say that's a great one to get people into the show. It's basically an anthology episode in an anthology series, so it's the perfect little microcosm of what the show is about. After that, probably 15MM just because it's a good episode and tells a small, self-contained story despite having the most dystopian/sci-fi setting of the whole series. For the third one White Bear seems an easy choice since it's probably the purest expression of the show's main themes of any episode.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 16:20
|
|
|
I was never an SJ hater, to be sure, I just think it's a little creepier than people emphasize. I wonder if this Downsizing thing will be part Black Mirror-satire. Feel like we're ripe for something like that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 17:05
|
|
|
Mu Zeta posted:somehow looks even cheaper than Black Mirror Well, this is uncalled for.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 17:29
|
|
|
San Junipero loses a lot because its ending is at such tonal odds with the established narrative arc, it really undercuts the message it is attempting to send, and feels like Brooker trying blatantly to force a happy ending in a show that established a bittersweet one as the only honest one. It is an extremely well done episode but loses a LOT in the last five minutes, and it basically all should have been cut for the episode to feel emotionally honest. Hating SJ is weird but pretending like that ending makes any sense coming on the heels of what came immediately before is also weird. Arguably weirder.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 17:41
|
|
|
I don't want to rehash but I found the ending bittersweet at first viewing, which is why it worked for me tonally. I guess a lot of people didn't get that vibe from it, & that's fine, but that whole final montage with the music playing and them being placed by robot in some random cog in a server room "forever" just creeped me out. It felt bittersweet to me. I'm not saying I wouldn't (or maybe...won't!) take that deal if I were like an 90 year old of the millennial generation, but there is still something fundamentally terrifying about it to me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 17:46
|
|
|
Having one of the main characters lay out a perfectly logical reason why she wouldn't want to go to SJ, without denying her sexuality, while also and validly calling out the other main character as being selfish and entitled, only for her to decide to go to SJ anyways without ever giving onscreen justification as to why makes everything she said either a lie or her into a coward, and either way does a whole lot of damage to her agency. It also completely undercuts the marriage scene as the logical endpoint of both characters' arcs, because its not the end, its basically an overlong aside. Its really hard to overstate how badly the credits sequence fucks up SJ, because hoo boy does it come across as Brooker either not understanding the points of view of his characters or just not caring about them. Like the point of SJ is that loss is real and permanent and healthy, and that taking refuge in a fantasy without recognizing and accepting that loss is extremely UNhealthy. That's the point. Which it then throws out the window to have the two mains hook up. NieR Occomata fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Sep 18, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 17:54
|
|
|
Lick! The! Whisk! posted:Having one of the main characters lay out a perfectly logical reason why she wouldn't want to go to SJ, without denying her sexuality, while also and validly calling out the other main character as being selfish and entitled, only for her to decide to go to SJ anyways without ever giving onscreen justification as to why makes everything she said either a lie or her into a coward, and either way does a whole lot of damage to her agency. It also completely undercuts the marriage scene as the logical endpoint of both characters' arcs, because its not the end, its basically an overlong aside. I really disagree. The reasons set up her resistance, but the entire episode seems to provide an alternative: that she enjoys her life in San Junipero enormously and is resisting going there out of misplaced loyalty for people who are no longer around to be loyal too. We've seen her wrestling with these ideas the entire episode, trapped between two worlds because she feels unable to commit to the one that will hold her. We find out the reasons she is wrestling with them, but we don't need the show to spell out the decision-making as to why she changes her mind, because it's established in the way she lives her (after)life. Her claims that Yorkie is privileged are fairly unfounded given her life. Their argument is because of a misunderstanding based on information that Yorkie doesn't have. The philosophical debate has been laid out and the uncertainty is there, we don't need a list of reasons for the decision, or really, any denouement besides the brief one we get with the dancing lights. I don't know why the marriage should or needs to be the "logical endpoint" (nor would it be if she stuck with her decision not to transfer to the afterlife; the signature is resolved whenever Yorkie gets or doesn't get what she is seeking, which in this case is more than just being euthanized). e: Lick! The! Whisk! posted:
That is very, very definitely not the point, and the episode makes the case that San Junipero is not taking refuge in a fantasy, and that people without the opportunity to experience it have missed out on something important.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 20:24
|
|
|
I showed White Christmas to my wife. After it ended, she said she felt really sad and to never try and show her something like that ever again. It's been a few months, maybe I'll throw on Shut Up and Dance this weekend and see how she reacts now.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 20:29
|
|
|
San Junipero still totally felt like a refuge in fantasy for me, I just didn't find the characters inconsistent. She just finally gives in and gets to be one of many blinking lights in a server room. Talk about completely giving up your entire humanity and putting it in the hands and whim of...some corporation? It's like the ultimate step. I'm sure I'd take it if I were old af too but it's definitely creepy and I'm not sure how you can look at it and not see escapism. They talk about how hollow the people are who've just been there forever and ever, past their physical deaths. It's a world of the most surface level nostalgia, how could it not be taking refuge in fantasy? I couldn't not see it as bittersweet, I don't think the lady who was resisting was ever "proven wrong". She had plenty of criticisms and so forth that she and others put forward about existence in San Junipero that whole episode and I don't think any of them were ever really "refuted". She just finally gave in. Which fine, I understand. I would have too. Still creepy.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 20:41
|
|
|
Like I think the reason people so readily leap to the conclusion that SJ comes off as critical of the simulated afterlife is because we're primed, not only by Black Mirror itself, but by all of science fiction to be distrustful of that, and to think of it as some kind of a half-life. Even relatively positive depictions like Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom still have to go out of their way to have characters discuss whether it's real, or whether some digital version is sauntering off with a new life while we die (and it makes us distrust the technology fairly early on by having someone experience a malfunction in their back up and lose time, suffering a depression as a result of it). That's kind of the genius of San Junipero, is that it takes all of that distrust and makes that the twist, that whatever philosophical issues there are behind the continuation of the self or how not experiencing loss changes people (sometimes for the worse), there is a benevolence to the technology that can benefit people who didn't get a real chance to be themselves, a second chance for unrealized potential. It takes the assertion that having an eternity of youth is selfish and turns that on its head by providing an example of someone who lost her youth (and the rest of her life) for all the wrong reasons. She gets a chance to avoid the bigotry that destroyed her and grow into the identity she was denied in her own time, and if a bunch of weirdos tired of the afterlife are having weird sex at a club in the meantime, who cares?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 20:43
|
|
|
i always tell people to watch shut up and dance first.Mu Zeta posted:Hated in the Nation is so loving boring. yup.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 22:42
|
|
|
I actually think The National Anthem is a good starting point as it was intended to be. It goes to horrible places as Black Mirror usually does, the whole theme is about how perception in the age of the Internet can break or ruin you, which is a reoccuring theme in the series, and it stretches your suspension of disbelief - let's be fair, to enjoy Black Mirror you KINDA need to do that sometimes. I don't know if it's the pig loving, people demanding the pig loving or just the length of the episode that puts people off. San Junipero works better after you already know what to expect. Shut Up And Dance is the one I would avoid because it's the meanest of them all, 15MM is also a good starting point if you wanna emphasize the "what if phones, but too much" aspect of it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 23:16
|
|
|
Bicyclops posted:That is very, very definitely not the point, and the episode makes the case that San Junipero is not taking refuge in a fantasy, and that people without the opportunity to experience it have missed out on something important. San Junipero in and of itself is not critical of SJ the location. It is absolutely, 100%, critical of people who ignore essential truths that define them only to playact in some magical consequence-free technopalace, which the ending of San Junipero plays into. If you live in SJ but you're honest with yourself and your truth, then you're fine. If you use SJ as a way to avoid consequence, loss, reality, then you fall into failure. That's the point of San Junipero, the episode of Black Mirror. Pretending otherwise fundamentally misunderstands the message the show is attempting to send, and it's why the credits sequence is so destructive to its ultimate messaging. A main character lays out a perfectly valid reason why she doesn't want to go (and yes, her claims that Yorkie is being selfish is 100% valid, because assuming that someone was trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience is some absolutely hosed thinking that completely denies her agency), then goes back on it for literally no reason. We are left with exactly two choices: Either she didn't actually care about her dead husband as much as she claimed, ie she was lying, or she ignored the feelings she had for her husband in favor of a woman she knew for a grand total of less than a week, ie she's a coward. Either way, either way, she ignores her essential truth to play in SJ as a way to avoid consequence, loss, and reality, which the show goes out of its way to highlight how those people who do that are fundamentally broken and monstrous people. The point of SJ is just like 90% of technological things on BM; it's not inherently good or bad, but it's prone to abuse, and abusing it is often a way to highlight moral failure. The show then presenting abusing the safety net of SJ as some extremely happy ending which is at complete and utter tonal odds with the build of the episode all to that point. If they wanted her to change her mind, they needed to show it, because cutting literally from an awesome speech that justifies not living in SJ to just deciding to do it anyways gives us the conclusion that either she was lying or she's a coward, and in either case it's not a happy ending. I mean Charlie Brooker literally said as much when talking about San Junipero, that he felt like them splitting before Yorkie entered SJ was the ending that made sense but he wrote the credits reunion because he wanted an episode of BM to have a happy ending. It absolutely, 100% feels like a forced and completely out of nowhere shoved in ending because an author fell in love with his characters, a la JK Rowling and the Harry Potter epilogue, etc. It happens, it's just in this specific case it's very destructive to the work as a whole.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 23:56
|
|
|
Lick! The! Whisk! posted:We are left with exactly two choices: Either she didn't actually care about her dead husband as much as she claimed, ie she was lying, or she ignored the feelings she had for her husband in favor of a woman she knew for a grand total of less than a week, ie she's a coward. Either way, either way, she ignores her essential truth to play in SJ as a way to avoid consequence, loss, and reality, which the show goes out of its way to highlight how those people who do that are fundamentally broken and monstrous people. I agree with you on the basis of what we're shown. Which is why I wish SJ was the 90-minute episode, and Hated in the Nation wasn't. There was clearly an extremely truncated third act to this story that may actually have provided insight or context for why Kelly changed her mind. I've been vocal in this thread about how I don't actually see the ending as unambiguously positive - this "heaven on earth" is portrayed as an Apple-esque consumer product, curated and controlled by a corporation and designed to placate the minds inside it as much as to preserve them. But that doesn't touch on your point, which is that Kelly's rationale made a lot of sense and the ending happens in spite of it. There's so much meat to the setting of this episode, it's almost a shame the show can't return to it. Though I disagree with the suggestion in this thread (not from Lick The Whisk) that SJ is inherently an avoidant fantasy vs. accepting biological death. It happens to be a shallow fantasy setting because of the choices TCKR made in its design (a perpetual summer in Santa Barbara with nothing but bars and dancing), but the general premise of a virtual environment that simulates embodiment for a population of digitized minds could be anything. If SJ was instead an internet-connected hub that living people could interact with, if people had the choice of doing actual work (research, design, art, music, whatever), I fail to see how it's that different from the "real world" in an existential or intellectual sense. People could create things, form relationships, etc. What I mean is, people who choose SJ over death aren't necessarily choosing stasis or hedonism or whatever. They're choosing to continue existence as they've known it. It's a condemnation of the company that your only option is a beach vacation where you listen to music from 50 years ago and gently caress in a dungeon.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 03:09
|
|
|
Dias posted:Shut Up And Dance is the one I would avoid because it's the meanest of them all, I think that it's impossible to top White Bear in terms of meanness.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 06:25
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:I think that it's impossible to top White Bear in terms of meanness. White Bear is meanest to its protagonist, Shut Up and Dance is meanest to the viewer
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 06:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 01:12 |
|
|
White Christmas is the worst nightmare. Just thinking about millions of years in that room fucks me up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 07:13
|
|