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Amph Altered Carbon

Discussion in 'Community' started by Ender Sai, Feb 5, 2018.

  1. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Anyone been watching this show?

    1. Should have been called "Altered Cabron".
    2. The visuals are stunning, really Blade Runner esque. Acting can be, and violence against women in particular is, a lowpoint but the investigation is all good fun.
    3. The bullet hole type effects like the impacts from weapons in Mass Effect.
    4. Wocky would hate this:

    * Rich Wife is a sex person with many people who aren't her husband, in the real
    * Rich Husband is a virtual sex person
    * Joel Kinnaman is without honour by having carnal relations with the women he does

    I like the ideas thrown up, about the power of the wealthy; about the notion of the body and mind as separate, and the way the virtual world plays the role of a shadowy underbelly. As at episode 8, I'm a big fan and will grab the books.
     
  2. DebonaireNerd

    DebonaireNerd Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 9, 2012
    If I enjoy The Expanse, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner (which you've pretty much answered) and noir as a genre, is this show for me?
     
  3. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    We've seen this lots of times before. Like when Zoe, Mother of Cylons, smote the pagans for their wickedness.
     
  4. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Yes

    I'm not sure that's the same as "I like to choke and murder working sex people, so I'll do it virtually so as to avoid prosecution."

    Unless we define the verb to smite differently...
     
  5. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    In the first episode they ritually human sacrificed someone.
     
  6. DarthIntegral

    DarthIntegral JCC Baseball Draft/SWC Draft Commish star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2005
    On my list, and sounds like it should rapidly move to the top of my list
     
  7. soitscometothis

    soitscometothis Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2003
    Punk and I were talking about it in the TV thread. We both got to episode 3 before our enthusiasm ran out of juice.

    I've read the book. It's good, though it wasn't quite what I'd been led to believe - I'd heard it was kind of a cyberpunk Bourne thriller, when in fact it owes much to Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. The prose isn't nearly as witty and accomplished as Chandler's, but then that is a very high bar.

    The show dumbs-down a lot of the character building, though the plot so far looks the same. For an example of the type of changes they've gone for, take Ortega: in the show she's a super-hot 20-something cop who's incredibly ballsy and competent - the kind of sexy cop you see in American police procedurals aimed at general audiences that don't want to think too hard after a day's work. In the book she's in her thirties, does not have conventional model looks, and has some obvious flaws, the chief one being that she's hung up on a crooked cop who's been put on ice and whose body Kovacs is wearing. She's kind of angry at Kovacs because he's wearing the body of her lover, but she's shallow enough to want to protect him in order to protect the body; and that's another thing - she has to come to terms with the fact that part of what attracts her to the man she loves is physical, and with Kovacs wearing his body...

    Maybe the show deals with this stuff after ep3, but so far it hasn't. There are similar problems with the AI hotel, which in the show has a holographic avatar and looks too glamourous. Like in the Chandler books there should be a marked difference between the glamour of the upper-classes that Marlowe sometimes has to deal with, and the seedier side of the town where the ordinary people live and work - in the show everything looks to clean and pretty, even the low-rent stuff. It's not awful, but I think it misses the point.

    Anyway, I will watch the rest of the episodes just to see how it plays out on screen, but I've dropped my expectations a few notches.
     
    Ender Sai likes this.
  8. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Yeah the stuff about Ryker comes out later than Episode 3. In terms of the sleeve, how he got on ice, etc.
     
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  9. epic

    epic Ex Mod star 8 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 4, 1999
    take it to the lists thread
     
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  10. AplagueOnTheWise

    AplagueOnTheWise Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Oct 27, 2013
    Finished it yesterday. I enjoyed it, for what it was. The premise is great and I feel they can build on it. I will rewatch it here shortly to fully grasp the entire show.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
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  11. tom

    tom Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 14, 2004
    i got six episodes into this show over the weekend. it is extremely cheesy at times, but overall i am enjoying it.
     
  12. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Yes there are moments where cliches abound, but visually it's so evocative of Neuromancer and Blade Runner and that really early stage cyberpunk that I can forgive the cheese and the wooden acting.

    @Lord Vivec - I tried to respond to your steam message but it caused steam to poo its trousers and crash PUBG, yay. Yes, agreed. But in reading Neuromancer again - the show made me pick it up and dust it off - it's visually so tied to the Sprawl trilogy William Gibson wrote. Bancroft is basically filling the role of Armitage, with Kovacs being a kind of street samurai like Molly and Case rolled into one.

    Also I like that, after mispronouncing a similar name through GTA IV (Niko Bellic as "Bellick" not "Bellich"), Kovacs is pronounced properly as Kovachs, not Kovacks. It's a small thing but combined with the multilinguistic talents of the ordinary citizens it adds to this notion of a globalised world.

    ...

    Now I think about it, it's the world building that stands out most. The sleeves. The Meths. The use of virtual. The whole realms real, virtual, suborbital, of sex people.
     
    Lord Vivec and tom like this.
  13. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    It is interesting watching the entirety of the SF Bay Area (where I live) be one whole city, which isn't unexpected considering we're one metro. I do like seeing more things take place here than just a monster destroying the golden gate.
     
  14. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    I noticed the Golden Gate, and if I'm correct the Oakland-SF bridge, covered in dwellings like the William Gibson Bridge trilolgy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties). Really neat touch.
     
  15. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Also, good interview with the showrunner on the violence and sex persons in the show:

    https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-theres-so-much-nudity-and-violence-in-netflixs/1100-6456578/

    In the world of Altered Carbon, human consciousness has been digitized, each person's mind and memories residing on a "cortical stack" located at the base of their skull. Bodies, called "sleeves," are replaceable. Even if your sleeve dies, your stack can be inserted into a new one--as long as the stack itself remains intact. The show raises a lot of questions about how that would affect the gap between the rich and the poor.


    "Our worst instincts as human beings have to do with our carelessness with natural resources, and when the body itself becomes just one more of those resources, how will we treat it? Will we treat it with such indifference and with such depersonalization that it becomes more like a very fancy car than a repository of the self?" Kalogridis continued. "And that, I think, is one reason that the nudity itself is not gratuitous; it's meant to reinforce to you, as a viewer, that the advent of this technology fundamentally and substantially changes people's relationships with their idea of their own body."

    I think I need to get the books here, because I want to see if there's deeper exploration of the socio-economics of this dynamic. And if there are more, or less, sex people in the book.
     
  16. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    I've picked up the book and it's pretty good so far. The first person narrative gives it that Chandler-esque noir feel.

    I also read a review, which I'll try and dig up, that complained about the caucasian sleeve Kovacs wears not being a significant point in the show. Of course, the author was "woke" and American, and therefore had to make a thing out of a not-thing, given the whole point of sleeving was the disconnection between identity and physical self. Envoys literally resleeve all the time and the point's made early in the show that only the rich can maintain backup clones of their bodies. The show starts with a young girl being sleeved into an old lady, so I mean, at what point do you stop trying to earn credibility points with your audience for being Near Outraged on a Topical Issue and go "this introduces some interesting ideas" - like spinning up an elderly hispanic lady in the body of a white supremacist.

    Eejits.
     
  17. Yoda's_Roomate

    Yoda's_Roomate Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 8, 2000
    Managed to watch 2 episodes and dropped it. Just didn't find it exciting enough. The story is fine, but I just don't care about the characters.
     
  18. soitscometothis

    soitscometothis Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 11, 2003
    Watching season 2 at the moment. The writing is so cheesy, the original author must be wondering if the money from this adaptation was worth it. The two books I've read in this series were so much better than this.

    At least I like Anthony Mackie, nice to see him in a lead role.
     
  19. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    Well, not as good as season 1, but season 2 is decent enough. And Poe rules. I want a Poe show.
     
    Last edited: Feb 29, 2020
  20. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    Edit: it just occurred to me, Poe was using POE-stits. [face_laugh]