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


Werthead

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12 hours ago, red snow said:

That's an interesting take on the story, or at least metaphor, of the witness. I guess it is the most arty of episodes and not just in visuals.

It was also my take on it

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8 hours ago, karaddin said:

It was also my take on it

I looked around to see if Mielgo -- who wrote it as well (strangely, "Blindspot" does not have a clear 'Writer' credited, but I guess that tells us something about it...) -- commented, and this interview does seem to fall in line with that reading, too!

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Mielgo, while aware of the backlash, says the nudity and sex portrayed in his episode were there for a reason. They are part of a deeper theme, which for him is about the nature of certain relationships and his own religious upbringing as a Catholic.

“This story is very much a representation in the shape of a thriller of difficult types of relationships into which I repeatedly fall … which are not necessarily based on love but on needs, on anything that is like an obsession more than love,” he says.

“In this case, the need and obsession is sex and temptation. These kinds of relationships are usually very difficult to end. For some reason, the lovers, they come back and they come back, and they both become a victim.”

(The interview also has some cool stuff about his research in Hong Kong's Kowloon district).

 

 

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The Witness would have been almost perfect if it had started on the second cycle instead of the first - where the man is the one who wakes up and is chased. Do everything basically precisely the same. 

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14 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The Witness would have been almost perfect if it had started on the second cycle instead of the first - where the man is the one who wakes up and is chased. Do everything basically precisely the same. 

Iit would be a lot more controversial that way also. Male full frontal nudity is still a heart stopper for many people. 

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5 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Iit would be a lot more controversial that way also. Male full frontal nudity is still a heart stopper for many people. 

Nobody is shocked by a fully flaccid member, unless you were expecting something more I don’t think it’s stopping anyone’s hearts seeing a bit of male nudity.

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16 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Nobody is shocked by a fully flaccid member, unless you were expecting something more I don’t think it’s stopping anyone’s hearts seeing a bit of male nudity.

British and American audiences certainly get shocked by a flaccid penis irrespective of the attempts by HBO to normalise it. But, once that penis is erect the outcry would be much more vocal. Although I don't think they can go that far with tv anyhow (animation might provide loopholes)

I know it's a while ago now but the response to Watchmen over a blue penis was ridiculous.

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15 minutes ago, red snow said:

British and American audiences certainly get shocked by a flaccid penis irrespective of the attempts by HBO to normalise it. But, once that penis is erect the outcry would be much more vocal. Although I don't think they can go that far with tv anyhow (animation might provide loopholes)

I know it's a while ago now but the response to Watchmen over a blue penis was ridiculous.

Probably more because it was gigantic and blue! Anyone would be shocked by that.

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Earlier the question of consensus had come up for episodes that were least and most liked, and I noticed today that IMDB's ratings -- generally in the 6000-11000 total ratings per episode range -- also seemed to line up pretty well with the polls I've seen, especially in terms of least liked episodes. The episodes with the lowest results were "Sucker of Souls" (6.5), "Fish Night" (6.4), "Blindspot" (6.4), "Alternate Histories" (6.4), and "The Dump" (6.3).

Highest rated are "Sonnie's Edge" (8.3), "Three Robots" (8.1), "Beyond the Aquila Rift" (8.6), "Good Hunting" (8.1),  "Zima Blue" (8.3), and "The Secret War" (8.2) ("The Witness" is seventh at 7.8).

 

Total votes is an interesting one as well -- as is typical, they mostly fall for each successive episode (despite the multiple orders things, the vast majority got one order), but there are a couple of outliers -- the highest-rated episode, "Beyond the Aquila Rift", #7 in the normal order, has nearly 2k more votes than the episodes at either side and has the third highest vote share, and the same for the #2 episode "Zima Blue", which was 14th in normal order but had the 7th highest vote shore.  Fewest total votes belongs to "Blindspot".

 

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Not sure a gender switched Witness would be better.  It would have male nudity - less problematic. But also have a man killing a woman as the climax - more problematic.  And it seemed like the trope of a woman fleeing a violent man was part of the effect, with the twist that it’s some kind of nightmarish cycle. You switch it and the twist is more like “don’t worry it also happens the way you’re used to, where the guy kills the girl.”

On the best episodes - I quite liked Fish Night, I thought it was kind of deep, pun intended.  Aquila Rift, I thought was rubbish, with the story direction and the twist pretty obvious.  Secret War also seemed very basic, not sure why that’s rating highly, just seemed to be some guys shooting monsters (a common theme in all the eps), maybe I missed something.  I did like Sonnie’s Edge, some cool stuff, nice character interactions and a decent twist.

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18 hours ago, john said:

Not sure a gender switched Witness would be better.  It would have male nudity - less problematic. But also have a man killing a woman as the climax - more problematic.  And it seemed like the trope of a woman fleeing a violent man was part of the effect, with the twist that it’s some kind of nightmarish cycle. You switch it and the twist is more like “don’t worry it also happens the way you’re used to, where the guy kills the girl.”

Again, the nudity wasnt the problem. It was the way the show focused on the nudity that was a problem. 

It is fair to say that making the man kill the woman at the end may be bad. I hadn't thought about that, and it's a good point. I suspect that it wouldn't be as bad given that she's chasing him and stalking him after he witnesses the murder, but it is an issue. 

That said, I think it would be really interesting for the gaze to be switched. Stare at the man's body, make him dance erotically for someone else, linger longingly on his ass and cock for a while. I suspect that this would very quickly become uncomfortable for people in a way that makes a point. Especially if the person making him dance is a man. As I've said elsewhere I think a lot of homophobia for men stems from the fear of being treated by men like they treat women. 

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Highest rated are "Sonnie's Edge" (8.3), "Three Robots" (8.1), "Beyond the Aquila Rift" (8.6), "Good Hunting" (8.1),  "Zima Blue" (8.3), and "The Secret War" (8.2) ("The Witness" is seventh at 7.8).

Sonnie's EdgeThree Robots and Aquila Rift are, I believe, the three episodes they offered for review before release, and are the episodes that seem to have come up as the first three for a lot of people (in variations of the order), regardless of the "normal" order. As with a lot of Netflix shows, there's a lot of people who start watching and then drop off partway through, so it makes sense those are the three highest rated stories. The Witness usually comes up in the first ten, so that explains why it's also relatively high whilst something like Secret Histories (which normally seems to fall last, or near the end) gets a lower marking because a lot more people have checked out by then.

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I did like Sonnie’s Edge, some cool stuff, nice character interactions and a decent twist.

 

Sonnie's Edge seems to have had a very positive reception, and I think that PFH has used that to make a case for a full adaptation of the full Night's Dawn Trilogy, which would be longer and more expensive (and would also need someone like HBO behind it, but Netflix could probably make a reasonable fist of it).

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11 hours ago, john said:

Not sure a gender switched Witness would be better.

Agreed. Seems to me that if it's almost perfect one way, it's also almost perfect the other way, which I'm fine with. Though I come at this from the perspective that gendered "gaze" is absolutely normal and that individual works of art are not in and of themselves problematic in relation to a wider social issue. If society at large has a general issue with these things, fair enough, but this is a wider problem than any one work.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That said, I think it would be really interesting for the gaze to be switched. Stare at the man's body, make him dance erotically for someone else, linger longingly on his ass and cock for a while. I suspect that this would very quickly become uncomfortable for people in a way that makes a point. Especially if the person making him dance is a man. As I've said elsewhere I think a lot of homophobia for me stems from the fear of being treated by men like they treat women. 

Ok yes, that would be interesting.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Sonnie's Edge seems to have had a very positive reception, and I think that PFH has used that to make a case for a full adaptation of the full Night's Dawn Trilogy, which would be longer and more expensive (and would also need someone like HBO behind it, but Netflix could probably make a reasonable fist of it).

I’d watch.  I’m also planning to pick up some of Hamilton’s books sometime, which I didn’t have much interest in before. So it could have worked out very nicely in terms of exposure.

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I agree with john on Aquila rift in that it all seemed so very obvious. Sonnies edge covered very similar things but did manage to surprise me. I guess if people didn't see the twist throughout it may have worked better. Just felt like softcore porn with some spiders thrown in as a video game cut scene.

 

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3 hours ago, john said:

Ok yes, that would be interesting.

I’d watch.  I’m also planning to pick up some of Hamilton’s books sometime, which I didn’t have much interest in before. So it could have worked out very nicely in terms of exposure.

A Second Chance at Eden is the short story collection that starts with Sonnie's Edge, as it's the earliest story in the Night's Dawn timeline, as it takes place in 2070, whilst The Reality Dysfunction (the first novel in the trilogy) takes place in 2610. The short stories then fill in the gap in the timeline.

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