Waterstone Media

Stories Matter

Altered Carbon

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Violent, visually stunning, and captivating, Altered Carbon caught my imagination from the pilot episode and wouldn’t let up. It’s one of the few Netflix shows I’ve ever even attempted to binge-watch, and it rapidly became one of my new favorites.

The show isn’t for everyone, but this, in my mind, is actually a strength of this new wave of shows from Netflix, Amazon, and the rest. The show never apologizes for itself, and while the violent scenes, the physical and psychological torture, and the world itself may be off-putting to some, the shown never dulls its material to make it more palatable. This is a world where bodies have become almost meaningless, and the show reflects that. It certainly makes viewing some scenes uncomfortable at times. But I would argue the show is better because of it.

I personally liked this show for three reasons:

The first is that the characters are well developed and tie together in interesting ways. There are no angels or demons here, but a wide variety of people with a wide variety of motivations. For me, that’s a powerful sign of good storytelling, and I became involved in the story even through minor characters. Characters end up clashing against one another because of their motivations, not because of their inherent goodness or badness.

I also loved this show because of the world that it built. Perhaps more than anything, this was the quality of the show that immediately drew me in. Like a lot of my favorite science fiction, it posits a simple question: what if we could store our consciousness on a disc? What would that world end up looking like? It influences economics, space travel, daily life, religious belief, and fighting. Through examples both large and small, we get glimpses of what this world is like.

In fact, if I had a complaint about this show, I would have loved for it to have slowed down and spent more time in the world. Yes, it would have messed with the pacing, but to me this was one of the most fascinating pieces and I would have loved to spend more time on it.

Finally, I liked the ambition of the piece. This story spans worlds, lifetimes, and more. It’s not all that often we see big-budget original sci-fi, and this one went for everything. More than anything, I want this to do well simply so Netflix and the other streaming services will put more money into making more shows like this.

That, to me, would be the biggest success.

The Defenders Review

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In a last-ditch effort to consume something around the time it came out, I recently watched Marvel’s Defenders on Netflix. Like many people, I was excited to see the four heroes of New York come together.

After finishing the series last night, I have to give it a “fine” rating. I didn’t think it was bad, as some people have thought, but my overwhelming feeling after finishing it was that I wanted more.

First, to the good. I thought the show was entertaining enough. There were a few places where I even watched episodes back-to-back, which qualifies as “binging” for me. Seeing the interactions between the characters was pretty entertaining, especially as there’s a big gap in personality between heroes like Luke Cage and the Iron Fist.

But while the show was entertaining, it felt to me like it could have been so much more. I’ve written before about how the Avengers movie could never be as good as a solo hero movie. You simply can’t focus on any one character to develop them well enough.

I’m pretty certain that with a movie, that will always be true. With such a limited amount of time, it pretty much goes against physical constraints.

I’m not sure it couldn’t work with the additional time of a TV series though. Especially considering the relatively slow start of Defenders, I was excited that I might get to see four character arcs well-done. But by the end it had become your typical rumble-in-the-bronx formula. I was entertained by it well enough, but there was an opportunity to make something great, and I think Netflix missed that.

I don’t want to go into spoilers, but it seems to me that the only characters who really changed through the series are the Iron Fist and maybe Daredevil. Granted, we’re going to be seeing more of all of these characters, so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

My other great complaint was with the depiction of The Hand in the series. They’ve been built up so much over the years, and with them supposedly at their most powerful, it suddenly feels like they’ve been powered down several times over. There was an opportunity to make even better villains, and that opportunity was certainly missed.

Overall, if you’re a fan of what’s happened so far and want to keep up on the story, or you just want some fairly mindless entertainment and fight scenes, give Defenders a watch. If you’re looking for something more, I might recommend a pass.

Iron Fist, reality, and comics

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For anyone who has been following me for a while, you know that I’m far behind the curve on most movies, TV shows, and music.

This is no different.

I’m in the process of watching Iron Fist on Netflix, and I’m pretty close to the end.

Let’s start with this: I’m not going to argue that the show is good by most objective measures. I understand why people are disappointed.

But I’ll also say this: I’m really enjoying the show a lot.

I’ll grant that I’m an amazing sucker for martial arts movies and shows, and personally, I’m willing to forgive a lot if two people are fighting with swords. What can I say?

As I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve realized I like the show because to me, it really feels like they’ve brought a comic book to life. Of the Netflix marvel shows that I’ve seen, this is the first to do so, and I’m grateful for that.

It seems to me that most of our best, more critically-acclaimed comic adaptations of the past decade have done something amazing. They’ve made comics more lifelike. I think specifically of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Daredevil (the netflix series). When watching those movies you really begin to think that just maybe, these events are on the outer fringes of possibility.

This is a tremendous achievement, and I love all the examples above.

But comics are about imagination, too.

I think no one got this better than Joss Whedon when he did his Avengers movies. He understood that as much as he had to create lifelike characters, superheroes require a higher level of suspension of disbelief. Hawkeye states it bluntly to the Scarlet Witch in Avenger 2.

“The city is flying. We’re fighting a city full of robots. And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes any sense.”

This to me, is the heart of comics. They allow our imagination to roam in ways we don’t usually allow ourselves to, and why I’ve enjoyed Iron Fist. He can punch through walls and burn poison out of a body!

Cool!

It’s not to say the show couldn’t have been done better. Yes, that’s true.

But watching Iron Fist allows me to step out of reality for a while and enjoy myself, and I’m grateful for that.

Also, there’s sword fights.

ARQ and Time Travel

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I recently sat down and watched ARQ, a made-for-Netflix movie that was just released in the past few weeks. It was exciting to see Netflix expanding on their sci-fi offerings, and I was eager to watch it.
I’m not spoiling much by saying this is a movie about time travel, more specifically, the re-live a single day (think Groundhog’s Day) type of story.
Overall, it does a lot well, but it still fell short of greatness for me.
First, its strengths. One aspect that I really liked was how it handled the repeating loop it was in. It’s a hard decision to make as a filmmaker. How do you show enough of the same scenes to establish the loop, but introduce enough fresh material to keep viewers interested? ARQ handles this very well.
It also does a great job of continually ratcheting up the tension, a hard feat considering the characters are reliving the same scene over and over again. It does this through some very clever devices I won’t spoil here, but I thought it was very well done.
There were some challenges with the science that made it a little difficult for me at points, but those are relatively minor, and I’m willing to pass over those. I’m a big believer in the power of suspension of disbelief.
The problem that I had with ARQ was that it seemed to forget a fundamental truth, that it is the development of characters that matter. It felt like the screenplay was trying to develop the characters, but it was only through developing their backstory. We learn a little bit more about them on every loop.
But the problem is that characters are only interesting looking backwards to a point. What is most interesting to me is the choices they make moving forward, and it’s here that I felt like ARQ missed. It seems like the characters have changed because we are always learning more about them, but it’s false. They aren’t actually changing.
Overall, I still have to say that I enjoyed the movie. With better character development, it could have been great, but as it is, if you’re a sci-fi, time travel story fan, I would argue it’s worth the 90 minutes to watch.

Reviewing Sense8

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In this most recent installment of Ryan reviews shows and books that have been out for months/years, we have Sense-8, the sci-fi drama that was among the first of Netflix’s original shows.
I need to start the review with a bit of a disclaimer: I always want to love whatever the Wachowskis make. The Matrix might be my favorite movie of all time, and while nothing they’ve made since then has been nearly as strong, I love their ambition. They never aim small, and even though I’d argue they’ve failed quite a bit, they keep at it, and I hope one day they make a worthy successor. If nothing else, they try for big, original projects, and I’ll keep giving them a chance.

In a lot of ways, Sense8 is the best the Wachowskis have done since The Matrix. If you’re a fan, everything you like about them is present: a unique, interesting story, deep philosophical questions, and fantastic action sequences. Unfortunately, if you’re a critic, everything you dislike is also there: uneven pacing, some ridiculousness, and inconsistent tone.

Being as the show has been out for awhile, I think there’s only two pieces that I want to add to the discussion. The first is about the sexuality of the show. There’s been a lot written about this, and the show has received high praise for the portrayals of LGBT characters. And it is something I agree with – diverse characters make for more interesting shows, and the way the protagonists interact in Sense8 makes this doubly true.

But from a storytelling perspective, sometimes I struggled with the emphasis on sexuality. Of the eight main characters, two have primary conflicts stemming from their sexuality, but particularly at the beginning of the season, it felt as though sexuality was an unnecessary focus.

Here’s the storytelling problem: although sexuality is a conflict for two of the characters, it’s not their most interesting one. Nomi, who struggles with her parents, is also on the run from the police. As a viewer, that’s far more interesting to me than whether her name is Nomi or Michael. The same goes for Lito. His dilemma about being outed as gay, while serious for him, seems silly compared to the criminal activities and excitement of several of the other characters.

I will say this though – although I struggled to get past the first handful of episodes, by the end of the season I was binge-watching. The tension was ratcheted up, and there were some genuinely powerful moments in the show, which in my opinion, more than return payment for the slowness of the first episodes.

I give Sense8 a tentative recommendation. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I’m excited to see what the second season holds.

Ryan