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Barbarians (2020)
What a sad decline...
Initially my review of Barbarians was far more positive thanni had expected from watching the first trailer... but i was surprised of the good actors, solid script and relatively well done historic research and accuracy which - despite some liberties taken - told an entertaining and well written story. Sadly most of that changed with season 2, they fired all former writers and put people in charcge who obviously did not know what they were doing and ceased to care for any historic accuracy at all...
Despite good actors and solid director and camera work the show turned into a bad historical fantasy stuffed with midern tropes and cliches, illogical and repetative story and -sorry to sa this again - historic revisionism if not total forgery. It was sad to see a show which szarted so promising went down the drain and i fail to see why these bad decisions were made.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
I was really disappointed on so many levels...
I really hesitated to write any critique of Rings of power at all... is it worth the effort? First of all the show is mostly beautiful to look at, it has good actors, good props, beautiful,landscapes, a good score... but something feels strangely odd! At first it is the dialogue... a lot of what the characters are saying does not really make a lot of sense to me, or at last i can't connect... pseudo-archaisms are at odds with strengely modern figures of speech, it does feel forced. The it is storytelling... too often story elements do not fit, actions of characters in certain situations or to one another do not make sense... this is all so strange, and why? Time and geography seemingy do not exist, neither does logistics ... or logic! Worst of all i fear is characterisation... the main character is an unempathic bully who likes to boss people around and humiliate other persons, seemingly enjoying their too obvious unabilities. If you want to estrange viewers from formerly well liked book-characters that is the way to go, but is it clever? All in all at its best the first season was a very mediicre fantasy show, at its worst it was disastrous bad storytelling, bad plot, unlikeable or plainly boring characters, exaggerated and unbelievable action scenes, logic errors en masse... sadly it all keeps adding up. In the beginning i was agitated, in the end i just didn't care anymore...
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022)
Solid but mediocre
Strange new world is set out as a re-boot and modernization of classic star trek. We meet re-imagined earlier versions of popular TOS characters like Spock and Pike, and re-vamped and fleshed-out interpretations of former side or background characters like Number One, Nurse Chappel,T'pring, Admiral April and Doctor Mbenga and reinterpretations of the classic shows aliens like the Gorn ...
So far the show is okay, it has good actors, very good special effects and designs, but mostly poor to uninteresting stories to tell. What i liked most was the episode "All those who wander" which was reminiscent to Ridley scotts "Alien" though it reimagined Gorn-babies as tiny Xenomorphs, which was weird, and "Memento mori" which essentially was another submarine war movie in space, reminiscent of "wrath of Khan". I also really liked the character of Hemmer and the reimagined version of Nurse chappel, though my favourite crewmember possibly is Doctor Mbenga.
On the negative side i found "the Serene squall" a nearly unbearably bad take on the wornout mutiny trope, which storywise made zero sense, "A quality of mercy" was a bad time travel episode revisiting Kirks first romulan encounter, with an actor who in no way ANYWHERE resembled Kirk, neither in looks nor in character or mannerism... which was strange enough in its own way and "Spock amok" , which was a lie in title as the story played out to be a other take on the worn out 80ies body-switch trope. I am not completely happy with the series Spock interpretation and the Spock T'pring troubled relationship theme looks interesting at first but doesn't really pay off in any way. The most annoying and unecessary character appears to be poor Erica Ortegas with whom the writers seemingly do not really know what to do at all. Most other episodes were okay but didn't really stick to ky mind in either positive or negative way. The new interpretation of a young Uhura or the character L'aan i don't really mind either.
There you have it. It is not bad, bit it is also far from great. At it's best it is TOS coverband , as somebody took it, as its worst it is... well... uninspired and boring second-rate recycling of everything anybody has seen somewhere before already, and is was better then. The Trek with bad writing problem continues... and SNW has only improved little over Picard and Discovery in this regard to be honest.
The Sandman (2022)
This show feels strangely hollow...
I was looking forward to watching a tv adaption of the Sandman graphic novels, yet this show left me weirdly empty inside. At first i have to praise the main character's actor who gave a fittingly enigmatic performance, i also really enjoyed Desire's brief moments, Hoblrook's Corinthian, Burgess as Rodrick Hall and Kyo Ra as Rose Walker whose depictions i liked far better than in the original graphic novels. This is however not true for all of the cast, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer and the actresses who played Lucienne and Death left quite little impression on me, Johanna Constantine felt like a little satisfying replacement, Thewlis John Dee was Fargos Vargas all over again and didn't convince me either. It was like what works for Fargo or David Lynch does not necessarily work for Sandman.
Many other characters just left me not much interested either, they were often quite boring or shallow and did not make me take part much in their stories. CGI is good, music decent, overall the direction and cut is solid, but never great or epic, how i would have wished for. The transcend between the supernatural and the real world did not always work for me... either it looked too perfect or too clean, too styled or too little detailed to feel real.
I can't say i hated it, sometimes i found it quite enjoyable, but often also boring and uninspiring and little thrilling. All in all i guess i have to say it is a solid but pretty mediocre show, graphic novel adaptions are tough to do as this show once again proves as it doen't quite find the right athmosphere and tone, yet i cannot nail,it down what exactly it IS that is missing.
Pistol (2022)
This is neither good nor bad and yet both.
This tv show is weird..
First of all, the opening admits this was inspired by true events. Inspired! So yes this is not the truth, of course it is fiction. It is the story of Steve jones as he sees himself, half criminal mindex sex machine, half nostalgic romantic rocknroller. It cannot decide what it wants to be, half it is youth drama, half it is comedic elements of larger than life comical characters. It has such great scenes and such terribly bad ones they made me cover my eyes and ears. No w8nder Lydon was pissed off by the show the way he comes across at times, though the Actor Boon really does his best to give him some justice and most times even succeeds. Who should really be angry the way he is portraied is Glen Matlock! And what did they do to poor extras such as Pauline and Debbie Juvenile? The entire Bromley contingent come about as pretentious clowns who are possibly into polyamourous group sex with each other and the entire band. Lot of the things the film shows directly contradicts statements of Bandmembers... never mind the bollocks! Chrissie Hnydes affair with Jones is largely exaggerated while her friendship with Lydon is played down... theere was need to emphasize Jonesys emotiinal side, because he is also shown as am amoral predator who stalks underage fangirls. Malcolm Mclaren is a puckish villain, half loki half childish idealist, yet he probably would have even liked his portrayal. Paul cook is the down on earth best friend and only likeable character in the band. The real Cookie can't complain. Sid and Nancy are portrayed accordingly to the descriptions of the characters people gave and the actors do a great job.
In the end i found the series very watchable and interesting, despite some terribly bad scenes. Don't care about authenticity.. this is probably how Steve Jones saw things, and most of the time he didn't care all too much.