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

[Ran]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Though what was the episode? Love? Death? Robots? I don’t think so. The show needs a new word in the title. 

Not every episode of the first season involved the title of the series. 

[IFR]

I found the second season to be rather underwhelming. The Drowned Giant was decently interesting, but outside of that episode the show was either predictable or derivative of other superior stories.

The animation was pretty, at least. The style was fairly generic though.

Hopefully the next season will be a return to form. If not, it won't be too great a tragedy. As far as I'm concerned, the first season alone validated the existence of the show, regardless of what follows.

[Werthead]

Yeah, the reception to Season 2 has been massively underwhelming compared to the first. It's on my list of things to watch but I'm in no particular rush to get to it.

[Ran]

Indiewire seems to prefer the 2nd season to the 1st in their review, which sort of surprised me, but then they basically seem to feel there was too much excess (sex, nudity, violence) and that is the only measure worth caring about.

The reviewer liked "The Drowned Giant" and "Life Hutch" best, which I think is fair enough, and pointed out one thing about the latter that I should have mentioned -- it's from Blur, it has that photorealistic quality, but there's a lot of physicality in it, of depicting interaction between two bodies in close quarters, that's done really well. Some of the other Blur pieces can sometimes feel slightly weightless when characters move and interact, because it's just that hard to really convey that quality in movement and action even with mocap, but this one nailed it.

[Kyoshi]

Just kind of stumbled onto this on Netflix, meaning I've just binged everything.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm being profiled because my Volume 1 Episode 1 was Three Robots, and my Volume 2 Episode 1 was Automated Customer Service. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Kyoshi said:

Anyway, I'm sure I'm being profiled because my Volume 1 Episode 1 was Three Robots, and my Volume 2 Episode 1 was Automated Customer Service. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

From the Reddit, it sounds like most people got that as standard order, but a handful of people claim they got a different order. Either they're lying/mistaken, or Netflix is still testing random ordering out but on a more limited scale than last time.

[Kyoshi]

Just checked and from what I can see on wiki, I got the standard order this time. My Volume 1 order was very crazy though, like they were just throwing everything at me randomly. Didn't even think there might be different orders until I came to this thread, then I felt like I was in one of the episodes.

[red snow]

Season 2 was a bit of an anticlimax given the wait - so much so it's taken me a week to bother commenting. It just felt a lot safer on all fronts regarding tone and animation. Season 1 maybe felt like it was aimed at young male gamers but that remit seemed to let them try more things.

What frustrated me was that out of the shortened number of episodes they had two episodes covering the same plot (drone trying to kill person in a room) and the cartoony one was much more fun making the second attempt really dull beyond the "is that the real Michael B Jordan" quality of CG. 

I didn't like the drowned giant because I couldn't buy into the blase reaction of the world to what transpired. That and the narration/landscape reminded me far too much of the dreary walking-sim "dear Esther"

I think "Ice" may have been my favourite overall as it had the most distinct animation and I felt they did a lot of world building in a short space. 

"pop squad" was probably my favourite story in terms of the implications and dark nature. Sort of "blade runner" with population control.

"snow in the desert" reminded me most of season 1 in style but it whizzed through things quite fast and felt like a pitch for a longer show.

Thinking back on it, it's interesting how my favourite episodes are thematically linked in the sense it revolves around enhanced humans and the effect it would have on society in creating huge divides.

There is a season 3 next year and I', guessing Covid screwed up the production resulting in two truncated seasons. It'll be interesting to see if the second batch are a bit more adventurous/diverse.

 

[Rippounet]

Finished it last night.

It's definitely a bit underwhelming compared to S1, but then, there are also fewer episodes so the drop in quality might not be as serious as some say.

As far as stories go, both "Ice" and "Pop Squad" stood out for me, offering deeper questions as to the future of humanity.
"Automated Customer Service" and "All Through the House" were the funny ones.
"Life Hutch" and "Life in the Desert" were the most visually remarkable for me (with "Ice" or "Tall Grass" being the more original ones).

"The Drowned Giant" was the one I ended up... not liking. It's a decent short, but there's just too much that I found annoying in it, and it somehow felt... out of place.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

I must say I and my gf really loved the Santa Claus episode. 

The rest were ok. I used to be really into Neal Asher and kinda enjoyed the episode based on his story. I gave up on him when he went crazy when he comes to climate change though and he is also a brexit loon.

[Ran]

Netflix released a couple of "Inside the Animation" videos just loosely discussing some of the episodes and what was going on with them. Listening to Tim Miller makes me understand exactly the range of stories we see, and also why he was the guy who made Deadpool. The second video is about "Life Hutch" and the fact that they mixed live-action with CGI (which I did not quite realize):

 

 

[Iskaral Pust]

So not as good as S1 but still some good animation and creative storytelling there.  I hope they continue to produce more. 

Ice, Snow In The Desert and Pop Squad were my favorites.

[john]

Continues to be worth watching just for the animation. I had a similar reaction as to the first series in that I found it somewhat hit and miss although it didn’t reach quite the heights of season 1.

Some of the episodes again seemed to be basically about fighting stuff, which I find boring. And I wasn’t totally on board with all the concepts, Snow in the Desert, although it was good, seemed to based on a weird central premise. 

Spoiler

That shared immortality makes you soulmates.

I think Ice was also my favourite, I checked out the original story after reading @Ran’s comment and it probably does have a better, certainly more sophisticated, ending. But it would have been hard to adapt that.

[Ran]

A couple more featurettes for "Snow in the Desert" and "Ice":

Also, first season alum Alberto Mielgo ("Witness") has had his new short animated film, "The Windshield Wiper", selected to appear at Cannes during the Director's Fortnight (also known by its French name, La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs). There's a trailer for it from a couple of years back, but it looks like he never released it and kept tinkering with it until now. It is decidedly NSFW:

 

[houseofthedragon]

On 6/3/2021 at 7:11 AM, Iskaral Pust said:

So not as good as S1 but still some good animation and creative storytelling there.  I hope they continue to produce more. 

Ice, Snow In The Desert and Pop Squad were my favorites.

I thought the same. I hope they bring back the daring season 1 kind of storytelling and no holds barred visuals. Grow some balls and put the "Love" back in the stories. They also toned down on the story telling and like someone else said, a lot of the episodes are pointless. Unlike season 1 where you get a sense of satisfaction at the ending with a something to say.

[Ran]

Another BTS video, this time for "The Drowned Giant":

ETA: Add they added one for "Automated Customer Service":

 

[Ran]

This is something that was released last month, but only learned of it now through Alberto Mielgo's Instagram: they released a Love, Death + Robots anthology which contains every original story (and, for those that are original animations, scripts) from the first volume of LD+R. Neat idea.

[Corvinus85]

I just got caught up, and I agree with the consensus about Vol. 2 being not quite at the level of Vol. 1 Too many of the stories had beginnings, but no real endings.

Pop Squad was my favorite. An extremely grim Bladerunner/Altered Carbon type story. Snow in the Desert was pretty good, too, and I enjoyed Automated Customer Service, as well.

Ice had a fairly good story and great world building, but I'm not a fan of the animation.

The Tall Grass was a pretty decent horror story. 

All Through the House was kinda fun, but not much there. It's animation was not bad, though it's not the style I prefer to watch.

Life Hutch and The Drowned Giant had the best animation, but neither story was very good. Life Hutch, in particular was about nothing in the end, despite having the biggest guest star. The Drowned Giant had great environment animation, and the inanimate objects were well done. I initially thought it was a live action short until the characters arrived at the beach.

[Ran]

On 6/12/2021 at 2:58 PM, Ran said:

Also, first season alum Alberto Mielgo ("Witness") has had his new short animated film, "The Windshield Wiper", selected to appear at Cannes during the Director's Fortnight (also known by its French name, La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs). There's a trailer for it from a couple of years back, but it looks like he never released it and kept tinkering with it until now. It is decidedly NSFW

And now "The Windshield Wiper" is an Academy Award nominee, in the Best Animated Short category. Crazy. Mielgo's rather set the animation world on fire these last couple of years. Wonder how his deal to develop an original animated film is going...

When they were on the short list, they released it to Youtube, BTW. Age-restricted.

 

[Ran]

The next (shortened) season is coming out May 20, per this teaser. No new footage except right at the very end, I think.