chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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Altered Carbon
- Thread starter Kovaks
- Start date
Denamian
Night Janitor
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Only 2 episodes in and so far I like it overall, but it has issues. They seem to have changed a lot of details just for the sake of changing things or to dial it up a notch. Kovacs seems to have been made more superhuman than he is in the books.
Normally I'm not one who gets hung up on changes when a book gets made in to a TV show or movie, but for some reason some of these changes bug me.
Plus Miriam Bancroft should be younger and hotter.
Kovacs and Sarah getting busted: In the book they get pretty much steamrolled by the cops. They each take out 1 before getting taken out themselves. In the show, Kovacs is now apparently Daredevil and murders the first wave pretty much singlehandedly while Sarah hides for most of it, getting taken out once she finally fights back.
In the hotel lobby: In the book Dimi roughs up Kovacs, who then pays and Hendrix puts a couple rounds in both Dimis. In the show, it's just 1 Dimi and some goons, and it's a big firefight. So now the police won't have Dimi in storage for him to use Kovacs to escape later on, alerting Kovacs to the addition made to his sleeve.
Changing the Envoys from being part of the UN to being Quellist rebels just baffles me. I guess it makes it easier to make Kovacs the last Envoy and explains the show's apparent merging of Quellist Falconer with Virginia Vidaura.
In the hotel lobby: In the book Dimi roughs up Kovacs, who then pays and Hendrix puts a couple rounds in both Dimis. In the show, it's just 1 Dimi and some goons, and it's a big firefight. So now the police won't have Dimi in storage for him to use Kovacs to escape later on, alerting Kovacs to the addition made to his sleeve.
Changing the Envoys from being part of the UN to being Quellist rebels just baffles me. I guess it makes it easier to make Kovacs the last Envoy and explains the show's apparent merging of Quellist Falconer with Virginia Vidaura.
Normally I'm not one who gets hung up on changes when a book gets made in to a TV show or movie, but for some reason some of these changes bug me.
Plus Miriam Bancroft should be younger and hotter.
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I'm wondering if it isn't an uncanny valley where some elements of the show are so close to the book while others are so wildly different its off putting. I think that is why I was OK with Dirk Gently as it had effectively nothing beyond the name in common with the books.
At a certain point one has to wonder why they bother licensing books, change names and terms and you don't need to pay the author anything. Fans of the books largely don't like it when the show isn't true to the original so it doesn't have a built in audience, nor are books like Altered Carbon, Dirk Gently or The Expanse known names in pop culture so they don't have name awareness.
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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The thing with Takeshi's, "birth sleeve" irked me too. How the fuck could they possibly know what Takeshi even looked like and pre-slowgrow TakeshiSleeve when nobody had any idea that Takeshi would even exist until Bancroft summoned him?
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spronk
FPS noob
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Just watched the first episode and definitely recommend it to any sci fi fans. While I didn't find it as gripping as The Expanse or BSG, its definitely good and EXTREMELY Blade Runner-ish, probably the closest property besides 2049. The wide and city shots and world building are fantastic, the on-the-ground, city street stuff less so - feels a bit cheap and 2017 and I don't really buy how the streets look 600 years in the future. Really minor quibble though. I love the OG Takashi sleeve, not as much a fan of the Earth one - he looks a lot like the alien assassin from the x-files and just seems to move and talk in a weird, awkward way.
And yeah 4k plus dolby vision/ATMOS streaming is absolutely FANTASTIC, normally I download stuff so I can rewatch later without the bandwidth hit but none of the rips encode 10-bit or HDR so you gotta stream to get the full experience.
Gonna try to binge thru the rest of the 9 episodes this weekend. I did finish the book 1, I'd recommend watching the show FIRST and then reading the books (3) imo. I like the change to the hotel from whatever it was to the Edgar Allen Poe theme, that was pretty funny and cool.
And yeah 4k plus dolby vision/ATMOS streaming is absolutely FANTASTIC, normally I download stuff so I can rewatch later without the bandwidth hit but none of the rips encode 10-bit or HDR so you gotta stream to get the full experience.
Gonna try to binge thru the rest of the 9 episodes this weekend. I did finish the book 1, I'd recommend watching the show FIRST and then reading the books (3) imo. I like the change to the hotel from whatever it was to the Edgar Allen Poe theme, that was pretty funny and cool.
Denaut
Trump's Staff
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Short review since I am on my phone and haven't finished it yet. Starts off very promising, then the pointless and inferior changes start.
Stays ok for about 5 episodes and then takes a nose-dive in episode 6. Currently watching episode 7 and it is barely tolerable schlock. I am not hopeful for the rest of the series.
The stuff from the book they kept is good and the new stuff is completely hack writing. They should have just condensed the original story.
Stays ok for about 5 episodes and then takes a nose-dive in episode 6. Currently watching episode 7 and it is barely tolerable schlock. I am not hopeful for the rest of the series.
The stuff from the book they kept is good and the new stuff is completely hack writing. They should have just condensed the original story.
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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Two episodes in. I'm digging it, the girlfriend isn't. Seems like most of the people with complaints have read the book and mention changes from the original story. Crossing my fingers that since I haven't read the book I'll enjoy it more, tho it does sound like it may be legitimately bad and not just uncomfortability with the changes.
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Just finished. I agree, episode 7, they jumped the shark. Overall, the series is good, I will watch season 2.
Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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Whats really stupid is his full name is Takeshi Kovacs, cuz of his jap mom and slavic dad.
you don't go halfsies when you name a kid...
L'Shaunda Weinstein
somehow a black woman, metoo'd a jew?
not only that but from the series, it seemed like moms was a weak mom that got super abused, why would a wife beater, let the mom name both kids?
hell why did Takeshi not say to the cop,
yo, das right i killed my dad, sure i'll work for you, but i'm taking my moms name now... cuz i like murdered my dad??? call me Takeshi Hiroshima or whatever.
---
Also,
They have this hot tamale always speaking in Spanish half the time and that evil german and sand dindu partner speaking sand dindu.
why the fuck is the sister saying "big brother" and not "nee-san"???
Also, Also,
Why is this jap dindu, retarded enough to let go of his sister? She really is the only person that truly loves him and cares for him, and shes the only smart one.
when everyone is like "Yea we all can die, so this black girl Che, can feelz good", sounds smart? she realizes that this black Che is just controlling Takeshi, like the retard he is, and she turns on em, cuz she's smart enough not to drink the kool-aid.
Then when she's like a meth and mega wealthy, she's been plotting for 250years to bring him back.
Why does he betray her, to put her on ice? does it reform anyone? he's been gone for 250years, he still looks like an evil twat and still as retarded.
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Yeah this is an extremely dramatic change to the background of Takeshi from the source material. In the books he doesn't even have a sister. The Envoy's were like UN Protectorate Elite special forces that can do the stuff Black Che was talking about.
Quellcrist Falconer was someone from the distant past to Takeshi. He never knew her at all but all the people on his world kind of have their culture and philosophy built around her uprising that failed centuries before. Takeshi has his name because Harlan's World was founded by Hungarians or whatever who brought a bunch of Jap slaves with them. Why the Japs were slaves I don't even know. Reyleen in the books was someone that Takeshi had a working relationship with at some point in his long criminal career. But you never really know much about it other than he really hates her.
The book was straight up Crime Noire. Takeshi was only brought in because of his, "envoy intuition" (envoy's posses Total Recall/Perfect Memory and a variety of other things) and he was totally disposable. Since he was serving a 200 year sentence for a bunch of Real Death murders, arms dealing, etc. Basically all Envoys are criminals after they leave the military since you can't have any job at all.
This series got really convoluted.
It also wasn't clear what he was doing with the upload. So he "spiked" Rey's like, personality memory core so she can't draw from it. He then fragged her stack so she's real dead for good. This was another cool concept they glossed over as the Resistance were attacked with essentially a virulent code virus that fucks with your stack and makes you freak out. A computer malware for people with stacks.
Book version betraying Rey made since because he hated that fucking bitch anyway and they weren't related in any way.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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so book Takeshi, is a Jap Kunta Kinte?
And your saying, his loving sister w/ 100% loyalty, is just a reworked book version of an office bitch?
and in the book, Envoys were basically Seal Team 6 +Stim Packs. That makes more sense than having Black Che and this entire third faction guerllia warfare.
Cuz this series makes no sense, he shoulda been like "wow my sister who loves me 100% faithfully is like the 1%, Meth in the world" "oh and we're both the last surviving super, super soldiers like in existence, did you see her ninja an entire illegal fighting ring?"
He's been awake for 4days, and he chooses PTSD guy, hotel wierdo, and hot tamale over his only living super wealthy and loving relative, whom was the only reason he became a super soldier in the first place?
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Nah. The slavery thing was centuries in the past on Harlan's World. It did shape their culture/society though hence the name shit. Envoys were feared mainly because of their ability to needlecast into a sleeve and be GTG in like 5 minutes. They are also psycho-engineered to be detached from what they do. Hence the not caring about killing anything most of the time. The average person takes weeks/months to years to adjust to a new sleeve. Its so traumatizing to the average person that almost nobody sleeves more than once after their birth body dies. That and aging sucks when you know what's coming. Even though buying a sleeve is like say, buying a house, and generally affordable to most people. The entire problem that Black Che was trying to solve was not even a thing. Because people can also just live virtual like the Matrix in super complex simulations and not give a shit about the Real World at all. Death, why feel thy sting?
Meths are unique because their own clones of their birth bodies do prevent nearly all the trauma of re-sleeving and only they can afford it.
For some inexplicable reason they changed the focus of the story from the mystery to the character relationships themselves. Reyleen was a criminal overlord who grew up in the slums and rose to the top through sheer cunning and brutality. 300+ fucking years of it. Beyond that she didn't really need much background as uncovering the conspiracy itself was the point of the book.
PTSD Black guy wasn't really a character. Mary Lou Hench/Riker/Reyleen was the conspiracy and the whore's father was the vehicle for that part of the investigation. He did hire the hacker wife but the husband wasn't a thing. The entire thing with the daughter never happened. She was virtual because her body died and Takeshi did use some of his payment to resleeve her has some kind of good deed so he knew he did at least one good thing to feel good about after dealing with degenerate meths and scum.
The shit with the daughter was retarded. Synth sleeves are basically Real Doll levels of quality and trash tier sleeves. Nobody likes using them. But yeah, Reyleen leaves a Super Soldier sleeve in the basement. Oops. The Hotel wasn't a character either really. Although I did like Poe a lot.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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i didn't read the book, just that Takeshi makes no logical sense, his motivations, his actions, anything.
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