Hacker Cinema
Arcane
2021 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Christian Linke, Alex Yee
AnimationActionAdventureScience FictionFantasy
Amid the stark discord of twin cities Piltover and Zaun, two sisters fight on rival sides of a war between magic technologies and clashing convictions.
28 positive2 negative1 mixed9 neutralfrom 40 commenters
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44 comments on Hacker News
The multi-year gap kills my interest. After a huge hiatus, I have forgotten key plot points, so I have to either accept that some elements will not make sense or commit to re-consuming the original season. Both of which are deeply unappealing.
I keep meaning to watch Arcane season two, but the first one was so dense (not necessarily plot, but just so many little things) that I know I would be cheating myself to watch it after the sizeable gap. Yet rewatching S1 just to start S2 is such a time commitment.
My wife used to fall for every Firefly season 2 hoax on social media in the past because she wished it to be true. It was very funny when I could come to her to announce there will be a season 2.
Mixed feelings about it being animated. The older I become, the more I have trouble relating to painted characters, no real clue why, so I couldn't even enjoy things I should have enjoyed like Arcane.
Also, of course, no Shepherd Book :-(
Anyway, I hope I'll like it. Really loved season 1.
For the last 30 years I've decided that the best stuff (most engaging books, stories, experiences in life) require investment. It gets worse (you go through some pain while exercising) before it gets better. That's essentially a definition of a good life to me - finding the things worth sacrificing resources and getting the payoff.
So 'first make me care' to me is a manifest of Gen Z - tiktok - brainrot approach. From my perspective you miss most of the really good stuff by cultivating this approach. I.e. my favorite books - Tai Pan, Noble House; tv series - Better Call Saul! - require you to go through so much of initial boredom. It's also the same discussion as 'learn to code vs only do AI Slop' or 'learn math and algos vs only import functions from libs and never check what's inside'.
*Exceptions apply, ofc. There are things that hook you and progressively ad depth, but it's really rare. I.e. Arcane tv show is both easy to access and quite deep.
Edit: ...so I can imagine math teacher that first tell you what are some amazing uses of derivatives and integrals - PIDs, SGD, better estimation, wave functions, generalized description of problems, accessing interesting physics etc. And after that they make you grind. I think it would be quite great. But it is so rare, that you have to make a leap of faith and assume most of the good stuff is boring initially.
You mention Arcane, and that reminds me that Netflix's support of animation is really undervalued. LD&R has been mentioned, but they also helped bankroll a ton of marquee projects from Science Saru (Devilman Crybaby, DanDaDan), Orange (Beastars, Trigun Stampede), and Trigger (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Delicious in Dungeon). They picked up Pantheon and Scavenger's Reign. They've got another season of Blue Eye Samurai coming. Oh, and K-Pop Demon Hunters.
If you care about animation as either a visual or storytelling medium, Netflix has made a lot of the best movies and series of the past few years possible or accessible. (Having to pirate Pantheon S2 because it was initially only released in Australia was not fun.)
The second screen effect is largely overstated when it comes to why movies suck. While it’s true for some movies and TV shows that end up being streaming exclusives, the same problem doesn’t exist in theatrical releases or even shows for TV for streaming services like HBO.
Modern movies suck mostly because of Hollywood mostly being risk averse and prioritizing profit over everything else. This leads to IPs being sequels, prequels, remakes, “parts of the universe” or adaptations of existing successful IPs. This also leads to creative directions that are “designed to pull maximum audiences” or in other words average. Almost every single Marvel movie has the same plot with a few changes in characters. It also translates to situations where ideas that would otherwise be successful being tabled. K-POP demon hunters is a great example, an original IP, that audiences want, being sold to Netflix because the executives somewhere did a couple of focus groups and came to the conclusion that this won’t work. Another side effect is lack of innovation. Pixar animation has largely been stale for years now, meanwhile Ne Zha 2 is taking in billions worldwide, Demon Slayer is was one of the most popular movies in the US despite its limited release and Arcane is one of the best rated TV shows ever. There’s a lot more like fewer stand ins to save money that make scenes look “empty and soulless”, overuse of CGI, overuse of Pedro Pascal, etc.
All in all, it’s enshittification if movies because less profit is unacceptable.
> It's completely possible to make stunning 3d animation
I completely agree, but that wasn't my objection. My objection is that I miss 2D, which is seldom picked by major studios anymore, because I love 2D, not because I think all 3D is bad.
Arcane indeed looks wonderful. As do the latest works by Sony animation, like Spiderverse or K-Pop Demon Hunters!
> Studios switching to 3d are a symptom of not putting in enough effort, not the cause of it.
What's interesting is that, as mentioned by TFA -- based on interviews by Pixar employees, former and current -- 3D can be more expensive in terms of time and effort than 2D. This surprised me, I always thought 3D was picked because it was easier to work with, but Pixar employees argue otherwise. So I guess it's only badly done 3D that's easier? Like, my daughter was watching Disney's "The Adventures of Puss in Boots" (2015. A show, not a movie) and holy crap was it bad -- terrible models, terrible animation, terrible everything. Or something Skylander... Skylander Academy? Awful, minimum effort, cheaply done. I wonder if these things wouldn't look better in 2D. Or maybe they'd be just as crap.
Nobody Wants This; Bridgerton; Wednesday; Man on the Inside; 3 Body Problem; Emily in Paris; the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender; Love, Death, and Robots; How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast); Is It Cake?; Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney; and some others I’ve definitely had conversations about outside my own household.
Arcane was a pretty big deal and it was released on Netflix and TenCent.
They also have continued series that originated on other networks, including Unsolved Mysteries and Black Mirror.
I know several people who watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix and are excited about the upcoming CDPR and Netflix project set in the Cyberpunk universe.
I’ve had recommended to me and have recommended to others quite a few of their original movies. You might like 6 Undergound if you’re looking for an action movie.
>Netflix is what you put on while you are doing other things.
Yeah, I watch all films I consider worth seeing in the theater frankly. I rarely have nightmarishly disruptive movie going experiences. Any disruptions are minuscule compared to the infinite attention distractions at home or on any viewing portal connected to the internet.
And sometimes I go specifically for the rowdy crowd experience. For example, watching Grand Theft Hamlet with a appreciative (and somewhat drunk) rowdy crowd in the theater was fucking fantastic. Ironically, someone in Riot Games, the company that decided to stream Arcane on Netflix, also knew this very well when they rented movie theaters across the world and had screening events ahead of official Netflix release dates for episodes from the the latest Arcane season -- for an audience mostly composed of ballistic League of Legend cosplaying gen Zs and alphas.
Oh wow. There's a clear trend in that data with newer winners being cheaper and cheaper to make. The clearest proof of the democratization of animation I've seen.
And wow animated movies used to be expensive. I think Netflix's Arcane and Blue Eye Samurai are also part of a new wave of great animation for teenagers/adults that is happening because technology has made it more economical.
Holy moly. I don’t think I’ve ever read an article so angry. Every paragraph has a sensational opinion or put down posing as fact.
There’s some fascinating industry trends here but the analysis in the article is overwhelmed by the cacophony of anecdotes about b movies and bland tv shows all encouraged by the corrupt and evil parent company. Not helpful.
My take on the quality of shows— there’s a huge volume of mediocre stuff but that’s always been the case with TV. (There’s literally hundreds of forgotten sitcoms on broadcast tv from the 70s to 90s). But there have been many gems in the past decade.
A random list of fantastic or innovative shows I saw first on NetFlix. - House of Cards, season 1 and 2 - Russian Doll - Squid Game - Queens Gambit - Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Arcane - Kaos
Only the first was mentioned in the article, and with negative comment.
Overall, a poorly written article and a waste of time to read it.
Couldn't disagree more about Arcane, I thought it was the usual pedestrian writing and mish-mash of tired tropes we've come to expect from mainstream productions.
A friend was pushing me to give it a try, a friend who likes Marvel, and the Miles Morales spiderman film, who plays League, who was excited by Baldur's Gate, etc etc. I tried to say "no, there is no chance of me enjoying that, it'll be the usual drivel", but they insisted it was really good.
And I watched, against my better judgment, saying to myself: "come on now, give it a serious try, be open-minded". To no avail!
I recall the scene where they'd the punk or alternative or "underground" live music in the bar in the underworld place, in the 3rd or 4th episode, and that being the final straw for me. A viler and more disharmonious appropriation of dissident culture I've never had the displeasure of sitting through.
I think the best modern productions are now the series rather than the films as there's so much more time to tell the story and have room for characters to breathe etc.
Just look at the artistry and story-telling skill displayed in both seasons of Arcane - there's so many brilliant examples of "showing, not telling" on display there.
As a counter-example, I enjoyed watching the "Flow" film the other day - an animated film about a cat (and other animals) trying to survive a flood and there's not even a single word in the entire film.
I agree. The one shining hope I have is the incredible art and animation style of Fortiche[0]'s Arcane[1] series. Watch that, and then watch any recent (and identikit) Pixar movie, and they are just streets ahead. It's just brilliant.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortiche
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcane_(TV_series)
Arcane is excellent - animation is stellar. BUT I didn't even realize it was a video game adaptation until two episodes in.
> The defense of “you shouldn’t change anything about my beloved series” is pretty flimsy.
Nobody said that. You're building a straw man and putting words into people's mouths (or comments, rather).
Of course there's always going to be changes when adapting for different media. People dislike when important things change.
> If you don’t change anything, then what’s the point of watching/reading/playing the same thing over and over? Doesn’t any series just get incredibly boring without variation?
I've re-read lots of books, and there's many reasons I do it. Sometimes it's as stupid as missing the characters. Sometimes I'm co-reading with a friend who just recently started the series and I recommended it; so it's like a little book club. Sometimes it's nostalgia, etc.
Similarly regarding TV shows. Sometimes I just wanna share the moment with another person, see their reaction etc.
Games are a whole different situation though. Not sure why you even put that in there. Do you play games often? I feel like you either don't, or just play a genre of games I don't. It kinda baffles me why you'd even ask what the point of replaying games is...
> Great literature, TV, and films say things. Sometimes you might not agree. But at least it makes you think. Ideally, each entry in a series should say different or evolving things.
I both agree and disagree... I like the way something like BSG or Arcane (TV show, great btw) or even Buffy "says things" where they're not, ... literally spelled out in a patronising way?
> But I do think even beloved series have to have room for adaptation and experimentation. Because otherwise, they stagnate and can get to a point where they’re no longer worth watching
I kinda agree with this, though. There's some great successful examples of this (JoJo's Bizarre Adventures or Supernatural come to mind)
> Having done great work in the past is not enough to incentivize others to keep you around.
Happening to have a backup copy in your house 25 years ago doesn't justify your current role of being good at losing the company millions of dollars. Disney and Pixar have had a series of movies that in the main have had bad production and writing decisions attached to them, so even though the technical delivery (e.g. animation; music) and performances are generally very good, they are just boring. A lot of the spark seems to have gone.
If you watch the latest Disney or Pixar movies and compare it with something like the Arcane TV series, which is unbelievably beautifully animated and extremely well written, it's night and day. The talent that led Pixar has fizzled or been replaced over the years, and they can't pay people a fortune to lose them money forever.
Somewhat related, but anyone has noticed hard brigading and moderation to squash bad opinions about the show on Reddit? It sounds genius actually, if you produce content which success heavily relies on public opinion, why not hire a few PR companies to alternate the reality in reddit, youtube, etc.
Of course this is just speculation, but as a fan of the games I noticed a lot of weirdness around the reactions.
The show obv has some real budget and time constraints, which has meant so far that you don’t really see zombies (which sucks for a zombie show) and some epic scenes from the game have been either totally removed or botched.
My opinion: if they remake this show as much as the game, then it’ll eventually become great. A CGI show might make much more sense though (and seeing how good Gantz:O was, or Arcane, it’s totally doable with today’s tech). I hated the third episode because it did nothing to the story, but now I realize that the off episodes (3 and 7) are actually the best ones because at least I have no expectation.
The Umbrella Academy, Love, Death & Robots, Black Mirror (seasons 3–5) and Arcane are also relatively popular shows in the mentioned categories.
Animated movies that I often rewatch (in no particular order):
- Spirited Away
- Grave of the Fireflies
- Finding Dory
- Up
- Tokyo Godfathers
- Akira (NOT the English dub, which completely changes the story and dialogue for the worse, and for no good reason)
- Mononoke Hime
- Ghost in the Shell (the original one)
- My Neighbor Totoro
Animated series I'll rewatch:
- Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
- Castlevania
- Futurama
- Archer
- Arcane
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ergo Proxy
- The Dragon Prince
- Hakaba Kitaro
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
No need for you to bashing netflix if you don't like their content.
Its $10 per month, 2 coffees.
I also do watch a lot of tv shows and movies for the last 15/20 years (also stuff besides mainstream) and there are pretty good tv shows on netflix. Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy, Better Call Saul, Russian Doll, Love Death and Robots (the last season was weirder than usual though), Space force (super quirky, love it!), The Witcher, Arcane, Superstore, Squid Game
Netflix just has nothing interesting, and you have to sift through endless mediocre movies. Once I'm done with Arcane and then Love, Death & Robots, I'll unsubscribe. Just simply not worth it.
I can agree the elden ring isn’t narrative driven but I do think it has lots of story and lore that you have the option to dig into. One player could play it and see no story at all while another reads everything and knows the history of the land.
I suppose I did forget about arcane, although I feel like that’s an exception and an outlier.
I disagree that the movies are arguably better and have a more fleshed out story. In the case of resident evil, the story of the games is leagues ahead of the movie franchise story. I think so much so that’s it’s not actually enjoyable for fans of the video game.
The Witcher is another good example. Amazing game, fantastic story that has rich lore. The show is decent, and does do a fairly good job. It just guts the story though, and I lost interest in season 2 as it got more off track.
The author would say that the Witcher TV series is better than the games, story wise, but anyone who’s played the games always says the same thing, the shows not nearly as good.
I honestly think they are two mediums you can’t really compare. One is a passive media consumption, whilst the other is a engaging media consumption. A game puts you in the drivers seat and makes you feel like you’re in control. You may have limited control, but you can still feel like you have an outcome on the story. I think that’s a powerful tool that can’t translate to movies or tv shows. When I watch the Witcher, I’m watching Gerald fight monsters and roughly follow the same lines as the books. When I play the Witcher I am Geralt and I have control in how my Geralt comes across. You just can’t replicate that in tradition media.
Elden ring is absolutely not story or narrative driven.
There is plenty of lore in the game but the actual narrative is basically nonexistent.
> how come every time Hollywood tries to take a video game IP and make a movie it comes out terrible? Resident evil, hitman, assassins creed
There are good and bad examples here. The recent Mortal Kombat movie was well received. Arcane is fantastic.
The real answer is that people have actual standards for movie/tv show stories. The resident evil games and movies are a great example.
The movies arguably have a better and more fleshed out story than the video games but because they are being judged against other movies, they seem terrible.
Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were both good. Dark, Katla, Frontera Verde. I guess those are all non-English speaking, or in Narcos' case, mixed language. As long as you don't hate subtitles, there's been good stuff. Russian Doll, Big Mouth, and Arcane were all pretty terrific among English speaking. Brand New Cherry Flavor wasn't mind-blowing, but more than worth watching. Same with Stranger Things. That's just content from the last couple years.
Netflix honestly has plenty of good content. You just have to not use the in-app recommendation system at all and find content through traditional sources, i.e. word of mouth, professional critics, and industry publications, then search directly. As long as they allow you to find a title by name when you already know the name, they're fine.
> I’m not sure why you would think this. There is a huge segment of society that is very much against everything that could possibly be considered “woke”.
I agree. That was badly phrased. I was more talking about my experience in talking with people in my country and social circle.
But even then, shows like Arcane have very, very few people riled up about 'wokism' and whatever. I have not heard a single reviewer or commentator say anything negative about the lesbian relationship or the fact that the most powerful political operators are black women.
> you often eventually get rants about white genocide or some other conspiracies
That's like because people who have far more normal and common views don't engage in these discussion. I tend to stay out of them as well, but the economic angle of Netflix interested me and I got baited into responding to a comment.
:)
> I still don’t see how the “woke” part does the ruining
Just to be clear, I think the show is terrible in a whole number of ways. What we in general call "wokism" would not be in my top complaints about the show. Its something that I consider annoying not some great sin or something. But I do think that general approach did impact the overall approach they took to writing the show and it made the end product much worse.
> I have probably sat through over 100 full shows and movies where all of the women were defined solely by their relationship with powerful men. One more “boring” show that happens to be the opposite is not something I’d take to the internets to specifically decry, and if I did, I wouldn’t blame the boringness on the fact that this time the powerful important people were women.
As I said, nobody would decry such a show if it was not based on popular source material. And I am certainty not defending other bad media that have bad writing and those things have of course been criticized rightly. But the existent of the opposite doesn't mean we should stop criticizing it.
The reason I use it as an example is because it is source material that already has powerful amazing woman of different types in it. But the writers of the show felt the need to take this up to an almost absurd degree and did the opposite with the male characters.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about, I think you interpreted my comment very narrowly. I don't care that men have non traditional roles or are defined by their relationship to a powerful woman. Such characters are often part of stories and that is fine. I am more talking about turning characters who were more then that into that.
There are many examples we could talk about. To be clear, non of those individually are all that relevant or worth complaining about. Its only in aggregate when it gets worthy of critic.
Agelmar Jagad in the books is highly respected competent leader and general, living in a culture with very high respect for woman. His sister is competent highly respected noble woman is a trusted adviser and the second most powerful person in the city. Jagad will be a off and on relevant character for the rest of the books. Sound reasonable?
Agelmar Jagad in the show is portrayed as stereotype alpha male general with no brain. They forced a sub-plot into the show where his sister literally has to wear the ancient armor of the house (that the show made up) to lead a group of woman to fix what the men are to dumb to do. Ah and the sister who was non-magical in the book of course had to be elevated from just politically powerful to a super-powerful magic user as well. She is of course vital in winning the battle at the end, Jagad will of course be killed instantly like a total bitch, certainty nobody will miss this toxic male and he will likely not be mentioned again.
So the writers felt the need to totally rewrite that part of the source material. Why? These were pretty minor characters and the show runners already excused many of their changes on only being granted 8 episodes. Yet we had to spend major screen-time on another sub-plot where the evil alpha-male messes everything up and then the all-powerful woman to come in the save the situation.
Its a totally unnecessary plot shoehorned into the story with no relevance to the main story the show is trying to tell. The source material had brother sister team working together, but we can't miss an opportunity to rewrite it into incompetent alpha male/wonder woman narrative. That is a perfect example of force feeding 'woke-ism' into a story.
Again, this alone isn't a big deal. But this approach is pretty consistently applied.
> Agreed. But this applies to every single kind of message or moral of the story that the writer is attempting to convey. However, all I hear about here on the internet these days and from this forum is that woke-ism specifically is a poison pill.
I certainty agree that there is an over-focus on crisis of woke-ism and many-times unfairly so. For me this is not 'culture war' for civilization, rather annoying meme that makes TV show potentially worse then they could have been.
To give specific example in Wheel of Time. In the book the 'Two Rivers' is a part of Andor. Andor is basically the Britain of that universe. Given its history and isolation, 'Two Rivers' is very culturally and racially homogeneous.
In the show the 'Two Rivers' looks racially more like New York City. This certainty makes little sense from a story telling perspective. Cultures that are very isolated for 1000s of years simple are not that diverse. Now you can certainty change that from something based on white rural Britain to whatever other racial group want to insert.
You can of course explain this away in whatever way you want, its fantasy. Genetics might work different. Who cares. You don't even have to explain it at all.
One of my friends had a problem with this diversity suggesting it hurts the story and that priority should be an accurate representation of isolated cultures. He would have been fine with that being non-white of some kind.
I said, while I agree that it doesn't really serve the story, when creating a major 100+ million$ TV show with 5 lead actors all from the same village making them totally culturally and racial homogeneous isn't really all that practical. A am willing to throw overboard some story purity (or strict adherence to the source) as to give a diverse group of actors to chance to get a role in such a show.
PS: Pretty much all those actors doing a great job! That was the least of the shows problem. Fire the writers and keep the actors.
> Almost nobody is against LGBT characters or show that have woke politics in them.
I’m not sure why you would think this. There is a huge segment of society that is very much against everything that could possibly be considered “woke”. They use the term “woke” as an insult and as something that is obviously bad on its face and by definition. They have a huge amount of political power, and may soon have an iron grip on political power in the US. I grew up among these people and was one of them for a long time. They believe:
* Gay relationships are an abomination, and any media that indicates otherwise is offensive politics and should be banned from schools.
* Women have specific child rearing and housekeeping roles ordained by God, and any media that indicates otherwise is offensive politics
* Christianity (or their brand of it) is meant to be respected at all times, and should be a core value of government
* Racism has been over since [slavery ended|civil rights era] and it’s high time for those communities to get over it and stop bothering those poor brave police officers and smashing those storefront windows all the time. Any form of education on the topic should be banned from schools.
It has been my experience that the people I grew up with who I know believe all the above are constantly wrapping their views in generic complaints about “woke-ism”. It is been my experience with people online that if you dive deeper into specifics or look at comment history of posters who actively and constantly decry “woke politics”, you often eventually get rants about white genocide or some other conspiracies that tend to ship in the same container. I think it’s always important to talk specifics, because I guarantee you that when e.g. my dad tells you that a show’s “woke-ism” is ruining it (and he definitely will tell you that), it’s because he finds gay behavior to be deeply disgusting and immoral.
That being said, thank you for some of those specifics. I’d really like to be shown otherwise, even if it’s one person at a time.
So your WoT example intrigues me. That’s the only show I’ve seen among those, but I do want to see Arcane (it’s on my list). I still don’t see how the “woke” part does the ruining, and maybe it comes down to whether you ascribe the boringness of the relationships or the Aes Sedai partners to be inherently caused by the fact that the roles are non-traditional in terms of genders. Where you see forced woke-ism causing boringness, I’d probably see as just plain old boring (which, eh, it’s entertaining enough for me, but not the best; it’s been such a long time since I read those books and I’m not sure I’d be as into the original source material nowadays anyway). The fact that the roles are non-traditional is at the very least novel when compared to the massive amount of history and media that has and continues to be the exact opposite. I have probably sat through over 100 full shows and movies where all of the women were defined solely by their relationship with powerful men. One more “boring” show that happens to be the opposite is not something I’d take to the internets to specifically decry, and if I did, I wouldn’t blame the boringness on the fact that this time the powerful important people were women.
> The same in the past would apply to war propaganda movies. If its a very well done and executed it can be great content. But most that produced with that goal in mind is just lame.
Agreed. But this applies to every single kind of message or moral of the story that the writer is attempting to convey. However, all I hear about here on the internet these days and from this forum is that woke-ism specifically is a poison pill. For me, I’m all for seeing LGBT representation and awareness of the experience of minorities, etc. There is a moral aspect of that that I appreciate. I also appreciate good writing, pacing, storyline, cinematography, etc. I don’t think the former inherently poisons or guarantees the latter.
Nonsense, its simply that if writers are engaged in social signaling some of that results in much worse shows and that is seriously annoying.
Consider two shows that I watched in the same Week, Wheel of Time and Arcane. Both shows have a very clearly modern perspective, and are very much in line with what we might call 'woke' culture.
Arcane did this in a brilliant way, a great love story between female leads of the show. Genuinely showing lower class struggle, corruption and so on. Both the villains and the heroes (and in between) have a wide range perspectives, capabilities and identities. Great show, well executed.
Wheel of Time had a writer who made it a clear mission statement to transform the source material into a woke version of itself, going so far as to say 'this is how it would have been written today'. The show also has a female lead in a lesbian relationship, but one that feels forced and has little emotional core. Unlike Arcane there is a clear trend where females were powered up to a sometimes a hilarious degree, all antagonists were stereotypical boring men and all the main leading male characters were basically boring did basically nothing and their many story somehow relates to their relationship with a powerful women.
If 'Wheel of Time' was just another show, it would just be a badly written show. However that it is adoption of well known source material shows the writers bias and political message quite clearly.
Almost nobody is against LGBT characters or show that have woke politics in them. Its when it is badly done that it is annoying.
The same in the past would apply to war propaganda movies. If its a very well done and executed it can be great content. But most that produced with that goal in mind is just lame.
To suggest that the majority of people who criticizes shows for 'wokeism' are just LGBT haters is absurd. Its equally wrong as to suggest that all people who object to war propaganda movies are pacifists.
The reality is that these studies want shows with these kinds of messaging in them and that a great deal of content ponders to that political outlook. Just as in the past content providers have pondered to politics as well. It does not mean you disagree with the political outlook, it just means I don't need it to be shoved into my face at every opportunity by lazy writers.
> I suspect in the future we'll see more animated films with a 2D aesthetic but created with 3D software.
The Arcane series has that look too and it's gorgeous.
> Waiting a week for each episode was required by technological necessity in the days of broadcast TV, but on a streaming platform it just feels like the provider is giving me the finger.
Some viewers (and I suspect most creators) prefer a serialized release over season dumps, and there are definite pros to it from a social/conversational perspective.
Even Netflix is doing this to help create more interest for titles. For example, the 9 episodes of Arcane were released in three, 3-episode "acts".
On the bright side, you can still binge at season's end if you prefer that experience. You can even wait until the show has ended, since the time between season releases must seem especially cruel to you.
Maybe I'm just in some kind of weird minority (I also like modern art and brutalist architecture) but many of the TV shows I've most enjoyed watching over the last year have been Netflix originals. Arcane and Castlevania are both up there with the best western animation ever, The Witcher and Cobra Kai are great pulpy fun while still having compelling characters, and Kate is my favorite action movie.
First I’ve heard of Arcane. Is it actually good and worth watching if I have zero interest and know nothing about Lol, or is it really just rated highly because of anime/gaming fans?
Plus Arcane which is in the top 20 tv shows of all time on IMBD.
When I review the list of original series that came out in 2021[0], the only thing I was interested in watching, watched to completion, and thoroughly enjoyed in 2021 (excluding children's programming) was Arcane and Black Summer (I know the latter is controversial but I enjoy its arthouse take on the genre even when the writing/plotting has its holes). Seinfeld and Cowboy Bebop (the animé) have been nice for nostalgia but I don't pay for re-runs. I finished The Witcher but the writing took a step back from season one.
Meanwhile, HBO had multiple quality series release this season both new and old. Highly recommend Station Eleven.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Netflix_original_programming
Wall-E is by far my favorite Pixar movie, and IMO one of the best in any genre made in the last couple of decades. Really speaks to Pixar's creative genius that they can strike gold from even the most random premise. It is literally about a romantic trash compactor living in a post-apocalyptic Earth.
Fun fact - the film took so long to produce because Andrew Stanton knew Pixar couldn't realistically animate space when he conceived of the idea. Good thing they waited too, as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPW3mvAN0Rc was the final result.
I will say though that after decades of Pixar basically defining the standards of what computer generated animation should be, studios are starting to catch up to and even leapfrog their style. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Arcane are two notable examples of this.
Is still Paris a great place to develop games? I heard that the studio responsible for Netflix's 'Arcane' AKA 'League of Legends' TV series are in Paris [1]
[1] Fortiche Productions, a small Paris-based studio who specializes in creating animated projects with a unique blend of 2D and 3D art. src https://www.techradar.com/news/inside-arcane-netflixs-animated-prequel-show-that-builds-on-league-of-legends-lore
Two incredible tv series:
Arcane
Better Call Saul
I recently watched Arcane using the Netflix Win10 app. The A/V sync was off by enough to noticeably break lipsync, the episode listing was broken (only the first few were shown, but I could still watch the rest by allowing it to autoplay the next one), and the splash images shown while each steam started often served as spoilers for the episode that was about to play.
I would've had a much better experience if I'd just went to thepiratebay and sought out nine MKV files instead.
Fortiche have been working on Arcane for almost seven years now. That predates Spider-verse being publicly known.
Additionally there have been tons of very stylized content pieces before that. Look at anything by Robert Valley, Alberto Mielgo or just look further out into European or Japanese animated work.
Certainly Spider-Verse helped prove the viability of a heavily stylized film, but Arcane would have existed without it.
A lot of what they did was being done in Gobelins films before (and I suspect Fortiche employs many Gobelins students)
Lord and Miller are fantastic and certainly push style. But I think you're attributing too much to them.
This is a terribly ill informed take.
Sony Animation ( who you misattributed to marvel) were already pushing animation style heavily. Just go watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
There's also tons of animation variety from outside America. The issue is that in America, a lot of the style was defined by Pixar. Which was probably the biggest experiment of them all.
But even among the major studios, there's a lot of variety in style. Trolls is incredibly stylized and DreamWorks really pushed style far in Kung Fu Panda 2.
Even Pixar are now experimenting more with style with Luca and Turning Red.
This is also only considering feature film work. If you pay attention to shorts, there's a huge variety.
It comes down to Art Direction. Arcane and Spiderverse are expensive and require an insane amount of per shot bespoke work. A lot of people also tend to find hyper stylized content not as compelling. So there's not a great risk to reward ratio.
Just what I was looking for. IMHO Arcane marks a milestone progress in Animation technology.
Also glad that the article confirmed that they don't use MoCap. It was such a great choice. I recently watched another visually exquisite animation movie on Netflix (the one in the Bright universe). There they used completely flat shading to achieve toon look for characters and environment, but made the characters move with MoCap animations. It looked very eerie.
I think for a well-made show, batch/traditional weekly release works very well since it builds up hype and keeps people invested.
For a bad show where you want to get who you can to just binge through, the Netflix method of dumping all content and making it available works better for keeping you interested.
Arcane seems to go in the middle and each episode ends pretty well, but also the first two sets of 3 episodes do feel like mini-movies to me. Each ends at a particularly compelling point and keeps you looking ahead.
I hope Studio Fortiche and Riot Games keep it up in future stories because I have really enjoyed Arcane so far!!
I've been really impressed with Arcane. Despite the silly Imagine Dragons cameo just prior, the fight scene between Vi and Sevika in episode 5 was incredible. I had to watch it again because the movements and punches looked motion captured and very well choreographed.
Arcane is an odd case as it’s released in batches of 3 episodes instead of being full-dropped as most other Netflix originals.
TV too - I've been watching Arcane and it's amazing, but so far there's only 6 episodes which is shorter than most TV seasons.