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Altered Carbon
2018 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Laeta Kalogridis
After 250 years on ice, a prisoner returns to life in a new body with one chance to win his freedom: by solving a mind-bending murder.
33 positive18 negative15 mixed27 neutralfrom 93 commenters
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99 comments on Hacker News
Having not watched Foundation, what was the issue there?
I loved Altered Carbon Season 1, but couldn't get into Season 2 and never finished it. I never read the book(s?), so the storyline was standalone for me.
I liked Altered Carbon, at least season 1.
What I fear is another Foundation.
I'm sure it will be a huge success.
I like reading books. So I prefer to see movies close to my mental representation of the book .. which almost newer works.
Altered Carbon was such a huge disappointment that I'm going to skip this one.
The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons is great. It may also be nice to recommend books that have movie or streaming series to them. Books are most of the time better than the movie as your own fantasy and imagination just makes it so. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is a good example.
Will we discover life extension technology before we stop having children and humanity simply dies off? Between Altered Carbon and Children of Men, I feel like that's a book and a blockbuster movie waiting to be written.
> I struggle to remember hardly anything memorable from Netflix, especially their movies
For me there have been a few movies, off the top of my head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_the_Dark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irishman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraction_(2020_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Thinking_of_Ending_Things
In addition the first seasons of The Witcher and Altered Carbon, and the show Dark.
I canceled my subscription around 2020 though, got so fed up by the UX, so haven't watched much since.
An interesting fictional book that has this idea as part of the story is Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. Imagine if Elon musk and the other ultra-wealthy could live forever and they become even more out-of-touch with reality as the centuries roll on...
In the book almost anyone that has lived could live forever but that could never happen with limited resources/space so only the ultra-wealthy are able to.
I'd skip the tv show. Also, the books (it's a series) seem to be unfinished? I could be wrong, it's been so long since I read it but it seems like some sub-story about extinct aliens wasn't finished.
Hm altered carbon season 1 was pretty good?
the books are still on my to read list.
+1000 - altered carbon season 1 is amazing. IMHO commit to watching it 3x to get everything going on - after the first watching, everyone's like "that was amazing but I'm not sure what I just watched." It's just so rich - if The Matrix is 136 mins vs 570 mins with that much more depth.
...and Altered Carbon (primarily the book but also the TV series), which does things a lot better than "In Time".
I couldn't get past the awful sex scenes of "Altered Carbon". OK, after having watched the TV series I should have known, but reading it is completely different. Also, the main character is so dislikeable.
It has been a while since my last Heinlein, you reminded me I should read more.
> supporting the film industry
I'm not sure about that: The Expanse got killed because of not good enough ratings, Altered Carbon got killed because of not good enough ratings and even then the last seasons before the axe are typically rushed and pushed out the door. Some of the incentives to me seem quite disgusting when compared with letting the creatives tell a story and producing art, even if sometimes the earnings are less than some greedy arbitrary metric.
- An entirely self contained DNA analyzer that has no ability to communicate with anything except for a USB thumb drive that it writes plain text files to. It must have more self contained knowledge than all the commercial test sites combined. Bonus if it understands all known human genetic defects. Extra bonus if it also understands all the minerals, vitamins, enzymes, hormones and how those effect the epigenome. Extra Extra bonus if it has a camera that can "see" all the electro-chemical bonds in tissues to detect cellular errors before they are otherwise detectable. Yes, a tri-corder except better than the fictional tri-corder.
- A bog-standard ARM or x86_64 cell phone that loads all its kernel modules from a bog standard Linux installation any distro, standard LTS kernel and every module including that which drives the modem has been reviewed and approved by Linus without ever once tempting him to raise the middle finger or start writing an email. Bonus if the modules are all written in Rust and written good enough to impress all the developers. Extra bonus if the powered on standby time is 3 months. Extra extra bonus if most of the parts are user serviceable, especially the battery and modem so that phone can evolve with the LTE and Wifi standards.
- An electric car that has 100% user serviceable parts, no dial home upgrades done via USB and prompted by owner, no surprises. It must not be much more complicated than a golf cart and yet passes all regulations. 20 year bumper to bumper guarantee backed by the local government in case the business goes under. 2000 mile range 3D printed solid state battery with battery swap stores all over every country. Call it the Ford Model E=mc^2.
- User programmable nannites that can be swallowed without stomach acid harming them and they repair all forms of damage known to science, continuously for 1000 years. Programmable function include the ability to remove genetic defects and add new genetic traits. Easter egg functions include forcing the user to pass gnarly gas when they are around someone they dislike.
- A "sleeve" that can back up a human similar to the movie Altered Carbon and restore them to a new body when their body takes too much damage. If the person has a trait that conflicts with societal laws, they can choose to have that trait stripped from the backup at a super-genius store. Traits and knowledge can also be added for a cost, of course.
Seriously?
The Crown, Stranger Things, Unbelievable, Russian Doll (wow, just wow), Orange Is The New Black, Narcos, Narcos: Mexico, GLOW, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Ozark, Nobody Wants This, Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently, Mindhunters, The Queen's Gambit, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head. And that's my taste, there's more not to my taste like Squid Game, Wednesday, Bridgerton, etc. And not including the films, documentaries, shorts, etc. they done like Love, Death and Robots.
I think they meant eternal life much more in the “I have no mouth, and I must scream” sense.
Much has been said and written about the cruelty of immortality, since the myth of Sisyphus and probably before.
“The Mortal Immortal” is a story about prolonging lifespan but not healthspan, and also not emotional fulfilment in life — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mortal_Immortal. There are also TV shows (“Altered Carbon”, “Black Mirror” USS Callister and other episodes, “Twilight Zone”) and video games (“Nobody Wants to Die”) about it.
What your parent comment speaks about (the vanity of endless life) is particularly explored in Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Affair”. Endless life could mean no regard for quality of life and endless trivial pursuits.
What's interesting is that Poe is not in the Altered Carbon book. The hotel was called the Hendrix and its avatar was Jimi the guitarist. They couldn't get image rights for the film, so had to change it. But i agree that atmospherically and thematically Poe is a better fit.
There is a Sci-Fi Noir TV show "Altered Carbon" (based on a book) featuring an AI using Edgar Allan Poe as their persona.
That Edgar Allan Poe is seminal in both genres makes me appreciate an already amazing character that much more! I would 10/10 recommend anyone watch season one of the series.
This thread now has me tempted to finally get into reading Poe himself, (among Lovecraft and the Altered Carbon books for more Poe influenced writing).
> I recently enjoyed a lot Altered Carbon
I really recommend you give the trilogy of books in which that story happens a try. They go into a lot more detail about how the Protectorate (all the worlds colonized by Earth's UN government) is and delve a lot into the practical economic details of different characters lives. This includes minor characters. I'm not sure how badly the TV series mangled the essential backstory and plot of the books, since I disliked it nearly from the start, but in the books, nobody is opposed to immortality for the masses and though there are a lot of grim details about life in that future, for most people it's described as being more or less decent. The governments of the different worlds offer social welfare, economic freedom, religious freedom and so forth. There are economic booms and busts but overall life isn't absolutely shitty. People also generally get sleeve insurance (something like health insurance but for having a new body on standby), nanotechnology to conserve health from birth in babies and so forth.
In many ways it's like a futuristic version of life for many in the developed world today, except that governments in the books tend to be self serving, often corrupt oligarchies and the justice systems are often draconian and corrupt too... Oh wait.
Graham Roland: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm3169366/
Enjoyed LOST and Fringe.
Jack Ryan seasons tended to start off strong, but then lose my interest as they got to the end. To be fair, that's also true of their source: the beginnings of Tom Clancy books are more interesting than their resolution.
We'll see.
Hopefully this doesn't go Altered Carbon and decide "This bit is too complicated for the audience, so we'll rewrite it." (Envoys were UN black ops used for civilian unrest suppression, some of whom defected, which was way more interesting than TV's "they're rebels")
Edit: What happened to Gibson being historically unwilling to sell media rights, after dissatisfaction with previous attempts?
And also, reference to the New Rose Hotel movie that was supposedly Gibson's fave: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0133122/
You probably don't want to read his post-Sprawl/Bridge books, then. ;)
In response to the fan complaining, he said something to the effect of 'I wrote Necromancer when I was a young man, and that sort of thing doesn't interest me anymore.'
His later work is far more subtle, sort of about the pervasiveness of dystopian corporate cyberpunk themes underneath modern culture and style?
If you do want more Neuromancer, I'd recommend Richard K. Morgan's trilogy [0] (for god's sake, the books, not the TV series), Ian M. Banks' Culture books [1] (although maybe start with Excession, and read the others if you like it), or go retro for the original cyberpunk short story collections [2].
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrorshades
Do you have a link to where I can find your work?
I confess I had forgotten the very end, where they are trying to rebuild the human race with a limited pool of people. It definitely did not need to be that graphic, although it is somewhat in keeping with the generally disturbing themes throughout.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed it as something very different to the usual sci fi fare.
I also liked Altered Carbon, although I found it read more like a hyper violent blockbuster action movie than a novel. Other than they both use ressurection as a plot device, they are very different stories. The violence in it I actually find more gratuitous than in Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.
I also get the vibe that digital cloning will be popular. Maybe some extremists will think its unholy and some addicts will lose sense of reality, but for the vast majority of people, I think it's just a user interface - maybe to some particular piece of information in the chatbot-as-librarian role, or puzzle boxes that eventually reveal information once you ask the right question, like Will Smith in I Robot.
What I don't like is that the better it gets the more a radical contigent will start to believe that you're performing brain uploading, and people will want to protect these simulations as people with rights, or ban it to prevent conscious mini-mes from being booted into a simulation and psychologically tortured like the guy in Altered Carbon. Then of course theere's the suicide cults like in the Cowboy Bebop episode "Brain Scratch" - leave your aches and pains behind !
I pray it doesn't get that weird! But if I had kids I wouldn't be raising them to talk to ghosts!
In the Altered Carbon books/TV series, people can transfer their consciousness into new bodies to cheat death. That makes the issue of who is the same person more complicated than simple biological cloning.
check out season one of "Altered Carbon" for an imaginative take on life extension. The rich are immortal, and keeping you alive can be used against you, resuscitating you against your will.
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
Expanding the logical progression of capitalism, we get the future presented in Continuum (imdb.com/title/tt1954347/) as well as other shows like Altered Carbon, etc.
See I somewhat agree with you, but you have a limited perspective in a way, that maybe as a gay man I can help expand on without being shouted at for being MRA trash just because I notice things.
You say "video games allow you to shoot and stab thousands of virtual people", this isn't true. In actuality, video games allow you to shoot & stab thousands of virtual _men_. Replace the baddies in a game with women and or children and people will go mental.
Same thing with media; Television/movies - plenty of men are brutally gored on screen with no one batting an eye, but generally the camera will cut away if there's violence against women &| children. The only time you do see it is when they want to make a very strong impact ie "this guy killing this woman is a V E R Y bad guy, and you know that because it's not just some anonymous dude he's goring".
There's plenty of hypocrisy in it; Game of Thrones people famously complained about the Cersei rape scene (also in the books, although more ambiguous) meanwhile the average episode spends a good portion of the time showing us the insides of three dozen guys' ribcages.
Or Altered Carbon where in the book series where Takeshi is forced into a simulation as a woman, where he is tortured; media at the time said they were glad that it didn't make it into the show because it would be "mysogynistic torture porn" - apparently none of the gratuitous violence against male characters was considered to be bad.
And _that's_ why it's different. Because certain types of porn could be generated that infringe in the protected classes that society creates.
Or even more banally, after Netflix's Altered Carbon, which I've only seen an episode or two of, yet it so easily encapsulates the platonic ideal of what a gritty cyberpunk show should look and feel like, to the point of banality? I'm not even picking on that specific series, it's probably not even the only example of that type of show that's been created in the last decade.
In short, how do you elevate it to more than a second-rate, middling, competent and utterly forgettable adaptation lost among the streams and appealing only to fans of the original work.
Netflix has a pattern. They have stats from a lot of multi-season shows and know that there's a sharp drop off in viewers the more seasons a show runs for, even if they're all excellent. This makes the first season a great investment, but remaining seasons are subject to rapidly diminishing returns.
So, their solution is to put a lot of effort into season 1 and, if it does really well, put vastly diminished resources into season 2. If season 1 doesn't blow their metrics out the window, they just cancel it. Since season 2's produced under this approach are usually pretty rough (e.g. Altered Carbon), there are almost never season 3's. There are exceptions (e.g. Stranger Things), but there are an awful lot of Netflix shows that never get a second season despite a very respectable first season (e.g. Marco Polo).
The anime version of Cowboy Bebop is a classic. In general, it's hard to remake a classic and leave fans of the classic happy. When the first shots of the costumes and cast came out I almost completely dismissed the Netfix series. Harold from Harold&Kumar is Spike? Jet looked like a janitor. The hype wasn't there for me.
So, I delayed watching the series, heard the grumblings, and went in with low expectations.
This is not Netflix's A-game. They did a great job in some respects, but really cheaped out in others.
The casting is a mixed bag, but mostly good. John Cho is actually pretty good as spike and Mustafa Shakir is brilliant as Jet. Pineda's Faye Valentine was less good. While Spike and Jet still felt at least somewhat like the anime characters, Valentine in the Netflix series was just off, and far too comical. Ed shows up only in the last episode and, well... Yeah. Let's face it, Ed is a difficult role and has to be played by someone fairly young. If I were directing a series like this I'd definitely want to shoot several episodes from later in the series with Ed before shooting the introduction precisely because of how hard it is to jump into the roll. The actor who played Ed was set up to fail.
The effects are good and the Bebop plus Swordfish are very well realized. The action is fairly well choreographed. The sets outside the ship are where Netflix got cheap. The rewrote things to reuse several locations a lot, such as the bar. The same junkyard set stands in for an assortment of locations and seems to pop up every episode, minimally redressed and shot from different angles.
The writing is where Netflix deviated from the anime most substantially. The plots of some episodes are almost totally unrecognizable, and generally do not compare well to the anime. The writers chose to flesh out and make explicit more of the syndicate backstory, with far more of Spike, Viscious, and Julia's past shown. The show becomes more interesting because of this. If they'd done a more faithful remake there'd have been less reason to watch the show. I'd have preferred that Ein's treatment was just a little more faithful though. Poor dog got screwed.
If you're a fan of the anime, lower your expectations, expect something a little different, and you may enjoy the Netflix series. I'd watch Season 2 even knowing it would be one of Netflix's usual half-efforts with a greatly reduced budget. It's not the anime but, if you like the genre, it's worth watching.
That was designed as a fundamentally subversive set of lessons. I doubt we even have the will to make an accurately subversive movie version of Diamond Age (look at what happened to Altered Carbon), much less create that sort of "book".
> Netflix just streams videos?
Netflix funds content. Netflix licenses content and has a say on how future content from that IP is produced. They are not just a streaming platform. When you look at every new show as of late you see themes commonly associated with wokeness. Replacing characters with "BIPOC" (I hate this term) when adapting from source material when it clearly seems out of place. Mixing in subtle commentary about immigration, healthcare, "hate" speech, etc. Women are always the strong saviors, men are always the aggressive out of control beasts or they're docile homemakers.
You can see it in pretty much every show. Witcher Season 1/2 (immigration, replacing characters, men/women tropes), House of Cards Season 6 (all of the above), Altered Carbon, etc.
> For TV shows, when they do produce something of quality they often dump it if it doesn't find an audience immediately or it doesn't drive "new subscribers".
Or they make a second season so atrocious that they lose the entire audience. For example, the first season of Altered Carbon is one of the best "hard" sci-fi I've ever seen in a TV show. The second season was supposed to have a much bigger budget and had an A-list lead. But it was so horrible that I couldn't even finish watching it.
Re: Altered Carbon. How come the first season was awesome and got me to read the books. The second season was so bad I stopped watching it after a few episodes.
And yes, I just checked and I had the Premium plan. Just downgraded to standard.
Indeed, well done netflix.
Can you give some examples of what type of movies to produce?
And what’s wrong with Ozark? I thought it’s one of the better shows on Netflix.
In my view they need more creative risky shows like the OA, Altered Carbon, Love, Death & Robots, Dark Mirror and more old HBO style content… quality and like you said not this mass produced stuff trying to satisfy the lowest common denominator, because then you will satisfy no one.
Maybe they have good shows I just don't know about. Their recommendation system seems to be crap. I browse for 20 minutes and then give up frustrated, because I can't find anything interesting.
I was just looking to downgrade my plan. Basic only gives you SD quality, which I'm OK with but only allowing one device at a time is taking the p!ss.
There's Dark and Altered Carbon Season 1. Everything Everywhere All At Once just came out in theatres and that's supposed to be crazy Sci Fi (not supposed to go in knowing much about it)
The Altered Carbon ordeal is interesting. Like you mentioned, everyone I know who watched it loved the first season and hated the second season. I thought second season was ok. Ok, then it's immediately cancelled, I'm guessing for lack of viewership after the first season (and man, if they maintained the first season it could've been such an epic 6 season show. There was a lot of story left to tell).
But what's really interesting, maybe related to "the message" you mention, is that critics were the complete opposite of the audience and liked the second season even more! There was an article on HN recently about how critics seem out-of-touch with the audience. This was quite the glaring example.
Season 1: 70% critics, 90% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s01
Season 2: 81% critics, 37% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s02
I found Altered Carbon significantly different from and more thoughtful than the TV adaptation, as I commented here a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16348681
Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon books (as well as his Black Man, published as Thirteen in North America) are very angry and bleak in tone, from what I recall. (But they were not angry at technology itself, the way the characters of the Altered Carbon TV series were; in-universe characters weren't trying to eliminate the cortical stack in the books.) They also have some spectacular action sequences, which is probably why they were picked up for TV. They have some horrific tortures (both in VR and out of it), much worse than shown in the TV adaptation, which is why I haven't re-read them like I did Neuromancer.
> "It was a fantastic game that spent a lot of time ruminating on topics like transhumanism, sex, and corporate power"
I can't say anything about C2077 because I haven't played it, I can just repeat what Gibson said about it. And he didn't play it either, he was just judging the trailer.
What I can say is to note the three things you mentioned, "transhumanism, sex and corporate power" are also explored in other highly derivative and uninspired works of cyberpunk-influenced fiction, like Altered Carbon. Boy, was I disappointed by that show [1]! It's completely shallow, uninterested in exploring the philosophical ramifications of the technology it introduces, and instead goes for flashy visuals, endless action and explosive gore. I watched season 1 because I wanted to know whodunnit -- it was disappointing -- and season 2 was unbearable.
Whether you agree with me or not that Altered Carbon on Netflix was garbage, at least you must concede using those cyberpunk tropes you mentioned is not enough to determine quality or complexity of the plot and/or message. They are just tools in a toolbox, and can be used to build something interesting or something utterly uninspired, just another "gritty" cyberpunk copycat.
---
[1] and from what my friends tell me, the book series is not fundamentally different. Only the details vary.
I'm not entirely convinced of that attitude; plenty of science fiction in a cyberpunk setting have strong underlying messages, of e.g. personal identity, capitalism, privacy, overpopulation, sex work, drugs, classism, AI, environment / global warming, etc; some of the big names there would be (imo, I'm no expert and I can't think of much) Ghost in the Shell, Altered Carbon, The Matrix, some episodes of Love Death & Robots and even Black Mirror, to name a few.
I think parent comment is going along the lines "Altered Carbon" tv series ( and novels ) thread.
For instance, if eternal life could be bought, the first one to buy it could be the richest man in the world. Parent is not happy with the idea of an inmortal ruler.
In the mean time, I would like to stay younger for longer. And older people are still afraid of death, even if they are not healthy.
My other Four:
o Firefly - no brainer. Brilliant. o Battlestar Galactica - Has some issues mid-late course, but still pretty end-end enthralling. o Dark (I keep re-watching this over and over every few months. I have many notebook pages full of analysis. Seriously good SciFi for the most part.) o Altered Carbon (mostly Season 1 - but Season 2 was okay)
Big Recommendation:
Not really science fiction (even bigger themes explored) but far superior in terms of overall quality of work/screen writing, and has a similar "concept" that a lot of supposed science fiction shows have - "The Leftovers" - Which I put on my list of the 5 most brilliant things on Television (Sopranos/The Wire/Deadwood/Breaking Bad being the other 4).
I'll give a honorable mention to stuff I loved but I can't totally recommends:
o Travelers - I'm a sucker for a good Time Travel Show. o Foundation - Pretty - I watch it, but I totally would never recommend it. o Fringe - Wow - was totally into this. Definitely an acquired taste though. o Raised By Wolves - Interested in where it's going. Could entirely suck eventually I guess. o Black Mirror - Hit and miss, though hits often enough that I keep coming back to it. o WestWorld - I mean, we all watched it. Season 1 was *awesome* if you watched it in realtime and didn't read all the internet commentary when the aha moment hit you. Season 2 was pretty good as well IMHO. Season 3 was just dreck where the screen writing tanked *but* it paid an *awesome* homage to the very last of the Foundation Novels to bring it all home.
So why is that surprising? There are few or no quality scifi/fantasy movies if you actually read scifi/fantasy books.
Villeneuve did something competent-ish with Dune. Altered Carbon season one was decent. I couldn't watch the second season because they really went off the rails with it. That's about all lately.
Funny enough, I think the best sf movies are the one that ignore the source material and do ... something else. Blade Runner for example. Or Tarkovski's Stalker. Note that they aren't named as the books that inspired them.
As for Foundation, I haven't seen it and don't intend to. But judging by people's opinions it looks to me that not only it has no connection with the book. It's also a bad movie taken as a standalone movie?
Books tap directly into the imagination in a way that films (very) rarely do.
The most amazing special effects in the world can't match my imagination for fidelity and if they did, they'd still not be mine.
I've noticed that the book to TV/movies I like aren't because they are good adaptations so much as they are close to what I imagined.
It's rare that happens but when it does it makes the TV show a deeply enjoyable, Season 1 of Altered Carbon and all the seasons of The Expanse did/do it but not much else in the last 5 years has.
I would kind of consider the stand alone books Black Man/Thirteen, Thin Air (two books, same universe) and the Altered Carbon trilogy by Richard Morgan "hard" sci-fi to an extent - and be aware that the TV series, while entertaining, butchered much of the political content in the books.
I'm always amazed at how many people watch movies/TV like Blade Runner, Black Mirror, Terminator, Altered Carbon, Her, Ex Machina, Firefly, Cowbow Bebop, etc and think "Yeah, that looks like a future I want." Dystopian Sci-Fi is a warning, not a blueprint. Even the utopian Sci-Fis often reference a struggled past in transitioning to their societies. And a lot of these problems have to deal with surveillance or an adjacent technology (like Minority Report or the more realistic Psycho-Pass).
for whatever reason, I thought it was from Altered Carbon..not Westworld. glad i googled to check.
the piece reminded me of altered carbon, season 1.
I'm a HUGE fan of Gibson's books, but let's be honest: he's 72 years old, and might not be the best judge of modern video games. He was also involved in (and wrote the screenplay for) the Johnny Mnemonic movie, which was one of the blandest attempts at mainstreaming cyberpunk ever.
The Japanese stereotypes and Haitian gangs are lifted straight off the pages of Neuromancer and Count Zero. I dig the retrofuturist 80s vibe, but then I love retrofuturism in general so that's not surprising.
In the end, CP2077 is a AAA video game. It has to appeal to the general population, so yeah, it's probably not going to be the most experimental take on the genre. As mainstream cyberpunk attempts go, can we at least agree it's heads-and-shoulders better than Netflix's Altered Carbon? :)
The Altered Carbon books / TV show explore this, both with reusing bodies and growing augmented clones.
Look up Altered Carbon, a scifi novel from which two high-quality TV mini-series were recently produced. It's the whole premise. Bodies become disposable "sleeves".
> Would people like it if it didn't have the star wars backdrop? Does the star wars backdrop even make that much sense?
The bulk of the plot would work fine if it were space-bounty-hunter-with-angry-people-after-him, plus friends and a macguffin. Star Wars flavoring seems like the main way that this differentiates it from Cowboy Bebop (space bounty hunter in the solar system, hops between planets...).
A big part of why the show is good is the mysterious "what's under the mask" aspect. We've had Boba/Jango Fett for decades, but it's really neat to see the expansion of this lore about the mandalorian culture -- why they always stay masked, etc. SW nerds like me often find lore tidbits delicious.
The Mandalorian also happens to have ridiculously good production values compared to most shows -- I'm watching a movie in serial form. (See also Altered Carbon.) It also has interesting characters that I am curious about (both heroes and villains), with backstories I'd like to hear more about. THAT part doesn't need to be Star Wars. It could be samurai, or space privateers, or drama on a space station (DS9), and as long as it's done well, I'll want to watch it.
Change my mind altered carbon failed because all they did season 2 was virtue signal liberal BS I made it through three episodes I'm a former Democrat just couldn't take it virtue signaling was retarded
Netflix has done similar stuff with Ascension, The Witcher, Altered Carbon and others.
I do prefer quality over quantity, and more episodes per season isn't IMO a good thing. Having tight focus, telling a complete story from beginning to end, is more important than adding a lot of unnecessary filler.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Altered Carbon, but thought Ascension was exemplary. While it finished with an ending that could have set it up for a second series, the story it told was complete, and leaving some mystery is no bad thing. I'm currently reading the Witcher books, and the series was a reasonable adaption of the content of the first two books of short stories. There's plenty more material for the future, but what was done in eight episodes was decent and self-contained. Way better value than a movie ticket.
What I like about these short series is that they are free to take risks and make niche stuff that doesn't cater to the lowest common denominator. There's plenty of stuff on Netflix that doesn't appeal to me, and that's OK. There's also stuff that would appeal were it not poorly-written and produced dross. I would really prefer their "data driven" decision making to bear in mind the lasting appeal of these productions within their niche interest, rather than only using the initial response as an indicator of long-term success. Some of the best productions took years to develop a good following, and yet were successful beyond expectations.
Altered Carbon, especially season 1 was pretty good imo
I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.
What do you recommend watching next?
Late comment. There is an audio book of Snow Crash that strikes the right tone (a bit flat?) and the humor of the work is not lost. Makes for the right amount of background noise for some coding activities if you've already read the book.
I am not looking forward to the TV show because it will be a different experience. (I watch very little TV these days anyway.) I will probably just avoid it. Altered Carbon had some success but I believe the second season is terrible despite it being my favorite book.
> Altered Carbon actually disappoints me, a bit. I loved cyberpunk back in the '90s, but watching something like that now feels almost... dated?
Agreed with the thoughts on Altered Carbon. Worth noting that the books are fairly different from the TV show.
Does anyone have an example of a book they love that was turned into a movie or TV series that they also loved? I find it is generally not the case.
A Clockwork Orange... the movie was OK, but the book was much much more enjoyable IMHO.
Lord of the Rings... I would say I enjoyed the movies a lot.
Altered Carbon... I liked the book a bit better, although the writing wasn't the greatest.
Watchmen... the graphic novel was much better and enjoyable than the movie.
Altered Carbon was disappointing trash. In the end, it was just a sitcom with a cyberpunk backdrop.
In these times with the popularity of Westworld, Altered Carbon and the imminent release of the Cyberpunk 2077 game, we live in a golden era of cyberpunk-themed near future scifi. I hope that if they ever adapt the Gibson sprawl trilogy of books to a TV series, they don't ruin it.
There's a whole zoo of 3D styles. From the semi-realistic look complete with SSS-shaders for skin that more resembles videogame cutscenes than your average anime (kingsglaive movie[0]) over the plasticy half-way look that has realistic lighting on flat-colored materials and outlines (e.g. altered carbon or the blame movie[1]) to productions that more closely emulate the common manga/anime style, sometimes even mixing 2D and 3D the same scene[2]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblcNFVVHT8 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy806RC2-Q [2] https://youtu.be/N-VNG8vW5RA?t=116
I think it’s the same as the effect of a really good book and a really good tv film adaptation.
I can count on one hand where the TV/Film adaptation lived to my imagination - most recently been the expanse and altered carbon both of which absolutely nailed the source material.
We should go out and (re) read the books. They are fantastic, some of my favourites of all time since they were published. They are similar but are also importantly different, especially season two. The books are more focused on character and setting development and less on grand interconnected plots and action (season two is loosely based on book 3, with parts of book 2 remixed and reinterpreted into it. The book revolves around Kovachs mental health instead of what happened in the show)
(Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies)
I guess it's a good moment to recommend Altered Carbon on Netflix to everyone. I love cyberpunk genre, played through every single Deus Ex game multiple times, watched most of the relevant movies, etc.
What I loved about AC is that it adds a few concepts I hadn't seen before: separation of body and mind, virtualization of the mind and perception of time in those simulations. If the brutality of the series doesn't put you off, I think there's a chance you'll agree that many of the ideas are pretty thought over in general.
I didn't like the books though - while the first one was OK, the second just didn't engage me enough and I was glad that the TV series greatly deviated from it.
Is there a TV show?! I loved that book! Please don't be like Altered Carbon.
I've a small bag of thoughts on this:
- Whether it's books, videos, short-form articles, long-form articles, academic papers or podcasts, it's about searching for good information and positive stimulation. Both of these criteria are subjective.
- How you search and filter is also highly personal. It might be that your needs are such that the content you find in those mediums you listed are ideal for you.
- For me, people who write books and people who do videos/articles/podcasts are often not the same people, and I tend to be more interested in what the book writing people have to say.
- Videos/articles/podcasts present first-hand ideas far less often. The opposite is true: authors of interesting and original ideas often elect to convey them through books. Again, subjective.
- If an idea is novel enough, short-form mediums like those you listed are not enough to convey it. A book (or rather its length compared to e.g. article) allows the author to explore and swim around in his ideas. You need that for innovative ideas. Noam Chomsky said that at the time (1960s or 70s) how much time you got to present your idea on TV -- 5 minutes -- was not enough to change a person's opinion, so the medium itself framed the discourse. Same applies to all mediums. It pays to be mindful of that.
- A good book is much better than a good series or film. HBO's Game of Thrones versus GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose versus the recent series. Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series versus Netflix's Altered Carbon. Same goes for non-fiction.
- I'm a lover of film, but I turned to books because there's only so many good movies, but there's orders of magnitude more good books. Same goes for fiction and non-fiction.
- If you're looking for stimulation, rather than technical information, a book lasts much longer. I've stretched out reading some book series for years and it was awesome.
- If you don't enjoy a book, don't read it. Don't hope that it will get better or that it will have been worth it. Odds are stacked against it. I regret that when I started getting into books way back when I forced myself to read even those I didn't immediately like; I now know to give a book a serious 30-60 minutes and if my gut says no that's that. Reading takes time so spend it enjoying yourself. This applies to technical reading too.
Netflix has a wonderful show with this concept, Altered Carbon. Season 2 coming soon!
Its interesting when you read any science fiction or watch movies and TV e.g. Firefly, Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, Fifth Element etc.
In all of those there is this common theme of a major melding of Western and Chinese culture.
Will life imitate art in this case?
Friends is my most watched show on Netflix, but that's because there are 10 seasons with 24 episodes each (i.e. a lot of content) and it's just something that plays in the background while I do other stuff. I wouldn't care too much if it was removed, but I would if they took away Stranger Things, Ozark, Our Earth, The Crown, Altered Carbon, Narcos, Santa Clarita Diet, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye, all the comedy specials and lots more.
HBO has some big-ticket items, but Netflix is more consistent in dropping new series for me to try. It's still my go-to place for content since there's more than I have time to watch. I just looked up their list of original content[1] for refresh my mind, and quite a few were extremely good in my opinion.
- House of Cards: I only got a little into the second season before I got busy, but what I saw was high quality and interesting.
- Orange is the new Black: My wife still loves this series
- Stranger Things: An honest to god phenomenon. The second season was weaker IMO, but I'm not sure how it could be as good as the first. That's a high bar to hit.
- The Crown: I caught a lot of it as my wife watched. Pretty good, even if a blond Doctor Who was somewhat distracting.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: The kids liked this, as some of them are going through the books.
- Altered Carbon: Refreshingly good science fiction. Main character casting a little odd, since it's more obvious now than it was when I was younger how odd and slightly off-putting it is to cast someone with the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a science fiction lead. At the same time, it's now fitting (or a trope) because of all the science fiction he helmed in the 1990's.
- Lost in Space: Interesting, but ultimately spoiled slightly by the contrived plot. Better writing and this would have been extremely good rather than worth watching, but slightly disappointing.
- The Haunting: A nice interweaving of stories, and creepy series. I liked the ending. I have friends who didn't.
That's just from the drama section of the list. There's plenty in the other sections too, such as Maniac and Russian Dolls which I watched recently that were good, and documentary section has a bunch of good things I've seen as well. Some of he Marvel series' were pretty good too (season one of Jessica Jones was excellent on so many levels).
That's a small fraction of what they released. Looking at the list now, there's no way I would cancel Netflix before Hulu, and probably HBO also. There's things I want to watch on those (for different reasons), but now that I examine it, it's clear that I use and value what Netflix is giving me way more than the other two.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix
> A lot of cyberpunk and space opera is like that, I think, particularly in art.
This is a really interesting observation, thank you.
If we use Neuromancer a rough start date for cyberpunk, there was nothing 'alternate' about the whole "future of neon and kanji" style. And Snow Crash made an effort to change with the times; the Japanese stylings get justified as a character thing instead of a cultural one and the psychedelic hacking gets replaced with a decent anticipation of Second Life. The Diamond Age sticks with the Japanese emphasis, but brings in China and India as major powers, and updates the sci-fi focus to nanotech.
But somewhere along the line the strength of the aesthetic sort of overwhelms the attempt at futurism. Gibson came back to the near future and present, Stephenson went to the past, present, and then the far future. The last really future-facing cyberpunk novel I can remember reading was Infoquake, and reviewers kept saying that was "practically cyberpunk" or "had elements of cyberpunk".
And then at the other end of things, Altered Carbon has humans as an interstellar species, but still gives us a half-white, half-Japanese protagonist getting pushed around San Francisco by rich people. Shadowrun goes all the way to magic spells and centaurs, but the videogames retain the rainy East Asian atmosphere. And Big Hero 6 proves it's an aesthetic you can export completely; it might be a PG superhero movie, but it's about a half-Japanese kid named Hiro having illegal robot fights in a neon-drenched "San Fransokyo".
I don't know enough to do the whole rundown, but I suspect you're right about space opera too: Star Trek and 2001 start off as a modern/futuristic vision, but endure as this weird near-googie style we recognize as its own entity.
I suppose some aesthetics are way more fun to look at than to actually live in - we keep them around for art's sake long after they fail to take root.
For me, it was the time to ask myself seriously if I should cancel the subscription. The "decent new content" is subjectively mediocre and most of what I see in the catalog is mediocre or worse. I have just 3 TV series I enjoyed in the past year, 2 are British weird stuff and one is Altered Carbon, all were ok, nothing great.
Yep. I was actually thinking several times over the last month that I should discontinue Netflix as I don't use it as often as I wish due to the user experience.
I think about putting on a film but then I think about the constant barrage of trailers and the difficulty of finding something good (recommendations are useless), so usually I end up dropping the idea.
Just need to finish Altered Carbon and I'll be dropping it.
I've watched and enjoyed pretty much every episode of: House of Cards, Stranger things, Altered Carbon, Orange Is the New Black. What have you watched that you didn't get into?
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
We recently binge watched both seasons of Stranger Things. Stranger Things and Altered Carbon on Netflix and The Marvelous Mrs Maisal and The Expanse on Amazon have been my most enjoyed shows this year.
of
- Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
I've seen all of Altered Carbon, some of Ozark, some of Narcos, and 2 seasons of Marvel (Daredevil season 1 and 2).
None of them were particularly amazing.
Someone recently commented elsewhere that they were tired of paying for streaming access to a bunch of shows nobody wants to watch, and they wanted access to the most popular movies/network shows/whatever.
I didn't comment then, but FWIW: some of the best shows available are now streaming originals from Netflix, Prime, etc. If you haven't checked out specifically any of the Netflix originals, you're missing out. It's a complete replacement for the non-sports watcher.
As posted in response elsewhere below, here's a list of Netflix's best work:
- Stranger Things - Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
Also good:
- Atypical - Love - Flaked - Maniac - Master of None - Chef's Table - Making a Murderer
This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix
I tried to skim through it and provide my own short list of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.
I'm just amazed somebody can come to this conclusion.
20 years ago you had to go to the shop, buy ONE film for $15 from a limited shelve, bring it back home, put it in a device you bought specifically for that film format and that does only that, navigate through a dubious UI, be forced to watch ads, then eventually get to the film. If you didn't like it... too bad.
Now for the same price, you have access to thousand of movies __and__ TV shows. No ads. Instant watching. Most of them were release on TV or on theater so basically same quality than other channels.
And people complain ?
I mean I do think the general level of quality of movies and TV shows is going down, but it has nothing to do with netflix. The good/sucks ratio is plummeting much the same on every medium (and I think it's because of us voting for crap with our money, like for most things in our society).
Well, I guess it's beautiful some people arrived at such a level of comfort in their life that they consider that amazing commercial offer to be not up to their standard.
> PC propaganda
While their original content do try to target specific niches including PC and SJW trends (it makes sense IMO), there are plenty of excellent content on netflix that don't follow this trend. Just opening my front page: Ajin, Rick and Morty, black mirror, battle royal, altered carbon, lastman, dirk gently, breaking bad, american beauty, pulp fiction, drive, trainspotting, house of cards, david chapelle, mad max furry road...
Yes, things like Sabrina, disenchantmenent, etc are pandering to a certain crowd. So what ? You can just click on something else. There is a lot of something else.
> for every Altered Carbon you have a half dozen utterly forgettable shows
That's no different from regular TV. We were spoiled in the early years of Netflix streaming because they could cherry-pick license all the good stuff from earlier for cheap. Now they have to go on the same "fund a bunch of stuff, discover some hits" journey that all the other content producers have gone through.
On the plus side you can watch anything you want on demand, there are no ads, and the website and apps are fast. And you don't have to pay $100/month for a cable bundle with shitty customer service.
If there's some show or movie I'm really missing, my local public library does a great job of filling that need.
By contrast, Netflix’s 4K HDR of Altered Carbon (on TV with full array local dimming) was the highest quality stream I’ve seen. Some of Amazon’s Electric Dreams episodes come close. When I compare the same 4K Dolby Vision or HDR show between Amazon and Netflix played on the TV itself, I’d argue Netflix often has the edge.
But the show being in HDR or DV, using extra bits for shadows, and kicking in the TV’s HDR blacks, makes more difference to banding than the distribution.
Not coincidentally, anticipating Altered Carbon and this winter’s updates for Dolby Vision across the industry prompted my TV upgrade. Having been in the streaming video business from 1998, it felt like a milestone to have a TV quality purchase driven by an online show.
I wonder how much Amazon made on season 3 sales already? Is SyFy going to even survive? A lot of great science fiction shows come to mind; none of them on SyFy..
I'm sorta happy they picked it up and not Netflix; I find the quality of Amazon's streams to be higher on average. Netflix squeezes the bitrate too much even on their flagship titles like Altered Carbon resulting in banding an artifacting in dark scenes. Space is pretty dark.
Hopefully Netflix picks this up - especially when the new series of Lost in Space is just full of idiotic decisions to line up the next absurd episode, and Altered Carbon plods along at a snails pace and uses nudity to gloss over the dull bits.
The Expanse is the best sci-fi series on TV by far at the moment, especially due to it having a good plot, a sweary UN woman, and mostly obeys the laws of physics.
The Siffy channel is rubbish anyway. Netfix has more sci-fi to watch.
I hate watching movies on the plane. They are edited to remove all violence and nudity. The Shape of Water was missing huge chunks when I peered at my wife’s scree.
I prefer to watch Netflix offline. Although Altered Carbon had me cradling my iPad mini so my fellow passenger couldn’t see all of the erotic scenes.
I’m wondering what the legality of the situation above is.
I don't even know how an article managed to mention dystopias and blade runner, in 2018, without even a mention of "Altered Carbon". That, and it ignores that "The Expanse" was a series of novels (I think there's like... eight books now?) a long time before it was a TV series. The novels go into a great deal more detail on the lives of the Belters and how the political situation depicted came about.
I’m just not comfortable with this. Maybe I’m just getting old and maybe I have seen too many movies but I feel uneasy about our children and maybe us having another “grade” put on them.
I’d like to think this would be good so maybe some one will comment how this won’t eventually go too far.
If altering starts happening which I would imagine it will at one point will be no longer human (and maybe that is a good thing).
Maybe at some point like in the Altered Carbon series it won’t even matter and it will just go back to money (or maybe it will always be the case as the ultimate grade).
What happens when you have a 'being', made of silicon and algorithms, but takes the form of a human? Or, for a better case, what happens when our own brains are 'part algorithm'? In that case I think this sort of case wouldn't be so cut and dry. I'm thinking of some recent films and TV shows that really explored these issues; Humans, Ex Machina, Westworld, and Altered Carbon.
Some episodes are much stronger than others. I think the eye camera episode was good, because it humanizes the dystopia: it moves past abstract moralizing and unrealistic "how things could be" like in e.g. Brave New World and gives you a real human story. It feels more real than reading stories about orgy-porgies, etc. And the technology for it is basically already here.
I think Altered Carbon is a better dystopian tech story though. The actual plot is not even really the point. The setting, backdrop and society that it envisions feels more plausible than any episode of Black Mirror.
The best sci fi dystopian stories imprint our current economic and social structures onto a new future with technology: the world of Altered Carbon asks what if we had our current economic system, which creates a class of impossibly powerful oligarchs who hoard all of the world's wealth and act with impunity while the poor suffer and die, but now these technologies allow their power to extend and expand indefinitely, past death?
The crux of every tech sci fi dystopian story is the question: What if we progress technologically but refuse to progress economically or socially? What if we encourage people to study STEM and sneer at the humanities forever? What if economics is always taught as an exercise in cheerleading for our current system?
Media like this makes us think about the changes that need to be made as technology more and more amplifies the (potentially bad) choices we make about the world we want to live in.
It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of "technology good, disruption good, gadgets fun" especially living in the tech world so I think it's great stories like these make us take a step back.
Nothing very specific in mind, probably www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/ which I believe is a remake, or was remade, and is also an adaptation.
I can’t remember if Orphan Black is about that.
More recently, Altered Carbon or shorter format I saw on Dust toyed with similar ideas.
"Altered Carbon" is a great book and a mediocre TV show, precisely because the book explores the effect of its fictional technology on society, whereas the TV show mostly focuses on shiny visuals. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in exploring what our society might look like if we were to achieve our dreams of immortality.
Some recent TechnoScifi has done a really interesting job getting this sort of stuff into the general public. Black Mirror, Altered Carbon are both terrific and dive into tech ethics to different extents, and the outreach there is many millions of viewers.
That's sort of an interesting potential take on this - how do you take ethical questions and get drastically wider outreach for them (vs a static class). Revisionist history has a recent podcast along how satire sort of lives in an interesting realm here (and how modern, western satire seems to miss the mark).
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/10-the-satire-paradox
I am a paying customer for Netflix and Primevideo and I just had to pirate the Altered Carbon tv series because I play it on a ultrawidescreen monitor (21:9, 3440x1440) and the Netflix web player is putting black bars all around the videos (horizontal and vertical black bars). This is because the video is supposed to be played on 16:9 with horizontal black bars only. With the pirated version I can just tell MPV to apply an autocrop script and use much more space on my monitor.
I agree with the sentiment that any kind of SciFi is irresistible on Netflix. There has been a great void when it comes to futuristic shows or movies. I even enjoyed bright, despite its numerous flaws.
However, altered carbon's visual brilliance is marred by two things:
1. Many actors are simply not up to the mark. The two leading ladies quell and Rei both feel incredibly wooden and cheesy. Really takes away from the show.
2. The world is not futuristic enough for being set 300+ years in the future. I feel that this 2ould have worked better if Kovacs would have been asleep for 30-40 years, not 250.
One awesome character was Edgar Allan Poe, who is a hotel. He was fun, and well played by the actor.
You should try the Takeshi Covacs books by Richard Morgan. There is a TV show coming out in two days (good timing here) based on the first book (Altered Carbon). It'll probably be a mess since the book has quite some violence. But the thoughts above are played out in a interesting and entertaining way. All three books play in the same universe with the "same" main character but are not a trilogy.
"The show itself, Altered Carbon, is set three hundred years into the future, at a time where human bodies are now interchangeable: Death just isn't a thing."
EDIT: Spoilers, indeed. Sorry!
Just finished the last episode of Season 4 Black Mirror called Black Museum [1] and it covers this subject as well. You can say the same about the infamous San Junipero [2].
You could even argue the manga/anime Ghost In The Shell is also about that [3].
Can recommend all of the above. Thought provoking, suspenseful, and emotionally touching.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Museum_(Black_Mirror)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell
I had missed that an Altered Carbon tv series was going to be a thing. The books are excellent, hopefully they nail it.
I'm so glad to see this as the top comment. In particular, his "Fallen Dragon" really resonated with me.
If I may, I'd also like to suggest Richard K. Morgan for his Takeshi Kovacs trilogy, which is currently being turned into a TV series named after the first book, "Altered Carbon".
It is premised on backing up human consciousness to a "cortical stack" that can be recovered when a person is killed or dies, and downloading them into a new body, or "sleeve". It covers the rich overclass that effectively lives forever with a clone bank, criminal punishment being "put on ice" while someone else uses your body, and crack soldiers being deployed across planets digitally by being downloaded into new bodies. The whole series is a must read if you are contemplating the ethics and implications of immortality via digital backup.
I was in two minds reading Altered Carbon. I really liked the setting, the world building was great and the story worked well but the lead character just came across as too powerful for my liking. He was constantly getting threatened or beaten but would always make it out of impossible situations. That felt a little tedious after a while. However, I think it would make an excellent TV series and I would love to see it.
Altered Carbon has gotta be the best cyberpunk novel in a long time. Gritty, not too fantastical - it just nailed the genre perfectly.
I'm also enamored with The Culture. Not any particular story, really. Just the setting of post-scarcity + friendly AI. It's like an inverted Star Trek. Everyone is having a blast, and interference is pretty much a moral requirement. Apart from a sitcom set on some GSV, Special Circumstances provides all the setting necessary for tons of fun.
Both worlds would have ample opportunity for sex, drugs, nudity and violence. (Which is the only reason I bother watching Game if Thrones these days.)
Asimov's Robot books may also be prefect for HBO. Sorta like a hardboiled detective, except robot minds. (I enjoyed those a lot more than Foundation. While fun rides, the basic premise of predicting everything via psychology is just... eh, unrealistic.)
It's a pity that his most popular book (Altered Carbon) hasn't been made into a movie. Now that one's a clear winner (sex, drugs, lots of bullets).