Love, Death & Robots: major SF authors in a new anthology Netflix series

[Jaxom 1974]

Finished watching all of them today.  Not certain I loved any of them explicitly. Some felt like sizzle reals in search of funding for a larger scale project. Some if the animation was unreal. 

Zima Blue was excellent. Secret War was good. Lucky 13 was good. Beyond the Aqualina Rift I thought was disturbing, predictable, and just not good. Three Robots was fun. Sonnie's Edge was pretty darn good. The Yogurt one was just strange. I wanted to like Alternate Histories more, The Witness was all about the animation, not necessarily the story... there was a lot if forgettable stuff too. 

[karaddin]

If you were profiling me based on being a gay woman, Sonnie's Edge was absolute the right choice to get me to watch more. I'd have preferred some small changes to the way it ended, but Sonnie was a great character to grab my attention.

[Ran]

Per Reynolds, they approached him about rights to the two stories, and then took a third as well (titled "The Real Story"), but only because it features the same journalist as from "Zima Blue" so he doesn't think they intended to use it for an adaptation. But that said, since they now have rights to it, "The Real Story" might see the light of day if there's a second season of LDR.

[red snow]

On 3/20/2019 at 10:53 PM, karaddin said:

Yeah I was intending to go back and watch certain episodes that were confirmed to be good. I haven't seen Zima Blue yet for example.

I think my order was Sonnies Edge->Three Robots->The Witness->Suits->Sucker of Souls->When the Yogurt Took Over->Beyond the Aquila Ridge->Good Hunting. So it was only 3 with the sexualized violence plus the porny feel of the sex in BtAR wasn't really what I wanted in that story alongside the other stuff. GH was the one that really pushed me way past what I enjoy.

Interestingly that's the order I get when I look at the episode list on Google, I wonder if it's the "main" order or there's some back ground creeping.

It wasn't problematic but I also really didn't enjoy Sucker of Souls on any level, complete miss for me.

Same order here. Maybe they are profiling us based on commenting here? That or i don't realise I'm gay and a woman and this thread ends in some weird meta version of "the witness" and our roles reverse.

I do have quite a lot of anime in my watch list plus dragon prince, final space, big mouth etc so it's possible Netflix has me in a "likes animation" category but not sure the episode order particularly reflects that.

I'm guessing it's merely down to viewing habits on Netflix rather than actual knowledge gender etc. Although I'm sure they can make estimates based on viewing habits. Not sure it's a wise move on Netflix's part as all the assumptions going around clearly show it's bordering on a violation of privacy as people have been commenting on their viewing order not realising it may be revealing things thry wish to keep private. The wild speculation doesn't help.

Plus it makes it confusing when i say things like "try the second episode" to people and they see a different episode to me.

 

[Ran]

It seems like there was one main order that most people got, but some people randomly got one of three other orders. 

[karaddin]

48 minutes ago, red snow said:

Same order here. Maybe they are profiling us based on commenting here? That or i don't realise I'm gay and a woman and this thread ends in some weird meta version of "the witness" and our roles reverse.

I do have quite a lot of anime in my watch list plus dragon prince, final space, big mouth etc so it's possible Netflix has me in a "likes animation" category but not sure the episode order particularly reflects that.

Bolded - That would be true of me as well and its more data that Netflix openly has access to (I'm sure they could buy the other info from facebook or google if they wanted it), so perhaps thats part of it. Non bolded...it took me a long time to realise it  

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

It seems like there was one main order that most people got, but some people randomly got one of three other orders. 

What order do you see if you look it up on google? Is it the one I described?

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, karaddin said:

What order do you see if you look it up on google? Is it the one I described?

Yep, that's the order I got as well, and I think it is what majority of users saw. I know of at least one person who saw a different order, though.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yep, that's the order I got as well, and I think it is what majority of users saw. I know of at least one person who saw a different order, though.

Oh I was thinking you saw a different order

[Ran]

16 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Oh I was thinking you saw a different order

Actually, I think it was @Werthead who got a different order than most. He said his first was "Sonnie's Edge" but the second was "Beyond the Aquila Rift" (7th for most people) and then the third was "Three Robots" (second for most people). I don't know what the rest of his order was, and I haven't seen anyone share their orders. Would be curious to see what the non-standard orders were.

Here's another fact I picked up, re: "Sonnie's Edge": apparently, in the original story, Sonnie initially claims her injuries were due to her assault by an estate gang... but later it's revealed that it's a lie, that in fact she just got too drunk after a victory and totalled the vehicle she was driving (and herself). Someone who worked on the pre-visualization of the story from the original script said that that was originally going to be in the animated short but obviously they decided the story was stronger without that.

[red snow]

38 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Bolded - That would be true of me as well and its more data that Netflix openly has access to (I'm sure they could buy the other info from facebook or google if they wanted it), so perhaps thats part of it. Non bolded...it took me a long time to realise it  

 

This could be the weirdest epiphany I've ever had

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yep, that's the order I got as well, and I think it is what majority of users saw. I know of at least one person who saw a different order, though.

And here was me thinking I was special! Curse you, Werthhead !!!

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Here's another fact I picked up, re: "Sonnie's Edge": apparently, in the original story, Sonnie initially claims her injuries were due to her assault by an estate gang... but later it's revealed that it's a lie, that in fact she just got too drunk after a victory and totalled the vehicle she was driving (and herself). Someone who worked on the pre-visualization of the story from the original script said that that was originally going to be in the animated short but obviously they decided the story was stronger without that.

There's actually two versions of the short story, the original 1991 version published in New Moon and the 1998 version published in A Second Chance at Eden, which was revised to fit better into the Night's Dawn universe (which "Edge" did sort of introduce with the affinity technology, but by the time he got to Eden the universe had changed a bit and he had to adjust some of the worldbuilding details). The Eden version does have that change (she crashed her van) and she admits she made up the assault story. Not sure about the original. One of the other big changes, from a generic future London to a London being encased in an arcology dome, also didn't make it into the animated version so maybe they went with the original version.

[Ran]

Learned a bit more about orders people saw, via Reddit.

One order mentioned started with "Alternate Histories", "The Dump", and "Witness". 

Another indicated that their first episodes were "When the Yogurt Took Over", "Ice Age", "Three Robots", and "Fish Night". This one looks like a humor-oriented front-loading.

Seen another person who had the order Wert had, "Sonnie's Edge" followed by "Beyond the Aquila Rift" and then "Three Robots".

 

 

[karaddin]

So Werts order would perhaps correlate with high sci-fi viewership but lacking anime while red snow and myself got the "sci-fi with anime" version. Does that fit your viewing habits Wert?

[drawkcabi]

Just finished this morning. This is definitely a whole being greater than the sum of all parts for me. In that context I loved it, 5 stars! I just couldn't stop watching one after another. I didn't dislike any of them though some fell into the "just ok" range while others I thought were amazing.

I guess my favorites in order would be:

Lucky 13

Sonnie's Edge

Zima Blue

Beyond the Acquila Rift (This one I'm still not sure about. What exactly happened? Was it trying to be an homage to Event Horizon? Either way it lingered with me and that is a main reason its high up on my list).

Three Robots

Ice Age

Suits

Good Hunting

Blind Spot

The Witness

When the Yogurt Took Over

The Secret War

Alternate Histories

Sucker of Souls

Helping Hand (Gravity homage?)

Shape-Shifters

The Dump

Fish Night

 

On 3/20/2019 at 11:04 PM, Jaxom 1974 said:

I wanted to like Alternate Histories more. 

[red snow]

I've been seeing a few favorite lists online and I'm wondering whether the order they are shown has an affect? Because the top ones seem to correlate with the first 4 of the given viewing orders. Eg i really wasn't that impressed by the aquila rift one but it was the 6th or 7th in my viewing order. Maybe the novelty of the animation and approach wears off midway through.

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, red snow said:

I've been seeing a few favorite lists online and I'm wondering whether the order they are shown has an affect? Because the top ones seem to correlate with the first 4 of the given viewing orders. Eg i really wasn't that impressed by the aquila rift one but it was the 6th or 7th in my viewing order. Maybe the novelty of the animation and approach wears off midway through.

Interesting. Aquila Rift was first in my queue and on further reflection, I really don't think, as a story, it was very good.  It wouldn't be in my top 5...maybe not even top 10...but that might be hyperbolic on my part.

[red snow]

30 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Interesting. Aquila Rift was first in my queue and on further reflection, I really don't think, as a story, it was very good.  It wouldn't be in my top 5...maybe not even top 10...but that might be hyperbolic on my part.

I wasn't that impressed with it but that's maybe because i saw sonnie's edge first which also has similar animation and graphic violence and nudity. Plus rift just seemed so predictable in an event horizon type way of knowing instantly the winan wasn't who she claimed. And whether you see that twist or not is probably a big part of whether you enjoy it.

I still like suits although no one else seems to. I liked the redneck mundanity of mech warrior fighting mostly. I know some don't like it because the humans turn out to be aggressors  but that made me like it as chances were those "monsters" were in their right to attack 

[Astromech]

Lucky 13 was a great story. I dug The Secret War as well. Fish Night was a cool concept, Helping Hand a bit boring. I enjoyed about 2/3 of the episodes and zoned out for the other 1/3 from boredom.

[drawkcabi]

2 hours ago, red snow said:

I still like suits although no one else seems to. I liked the redneck mundanity of mech warrior fighting mostly. I know some don't like it because the humans turn out to be aggressors  but that made me like it as chances were those "monsters" were in their right to attack 

I really liked Suits a whole lot. It's still in the top half of my rankings, it's just there were others I liked a bit more. But I really did like every episode even if some I thought were just "ok" and I rank Suits a bit higher than those.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, red snow said:

I still like suits although no one else seems to. I liked the redneck mundanity of mech warrior fighting mostly. I know some don't like it because the humans turn out to be aggressors  but that made me like it as chances were those "monsters" were in their right to attack 

You're not the only one. Mech stuff is usually entertaining, and it was fun to see the farmer with the mech, but still with mug holder in the cabin. haha Also, like I said in a previous post, it made me think of Starcraft.