1899

[karaddin]

On 11/25/2022 at 4:36 AM, SpaceChampion said:

A good review of the "controversy".

 

This video of Daniel's is actually half of what prompted me to watch it, I was wondering what they were going to be accused of stealing. Immediately after starting the second episode I'm assuming its the title sequence which has very similar vibes to Arcane? lol. I also saw someone else talking about Dark which made me realise it was from them, at which point I was locked in.

[Corvinus85]

5 hours ago, karaddin said:

This video of Daniel's is actually half of what prompted me to watch it, I was wondering what they were going to be accused of stealing. Immediately after starting the second episode I'm assuming its the title sequence which has very similar vibes to Arcane? lol. I also saw someone else talking about Dark which made me realise it was from them, at which point I was locked in.

I feel the same about the title sequence, but then again they would just be taking from another Netflix show.

[SpaceChampion]

6 hours ago, karaddin said:

This video of Daniel's is actually half of what prompted me to watch it, I was wondering what they were going to be accused of stealing. Immediately after starting the second episode I'm assuming its the title sequence which has very similar vibes to Arcane? lol. I also saw someone else talking about Dark which made me realise it was from them, at which point I was locked in.

 

Spoiler

It was some short run Brazillian comic book, whose creator/writer who went to a convention in Norway in 2017 and Norway is close to Germany therefore plagiarism is totally possible.  Both used imagery of pyramids (so unique right?  Daniel mentions he was going to use pyramids in the novel he's writing but changed his mind after researching how common it is) and the final shot of the season (which reminded me of scene I remember from the OA) are just identical okay? and even though it was aliens that's basically the same as a mental institution with a spaceship reveal right?  and close ups of faces is totally her thing, she owns it so she's suing.

The vlogger's point was the comic book Black Silence had way more in common with Event Horizon than 1899, and common tropes are prevalent throughout the subgenre so this is just ridiculous.   This claim is a level of cringe that is embarrassing.

 

[karaddin]

Finished now and

Spoiler

Well I completely misread the "not a simulation" part lol, I don't think this falls into the pointless like a dream part though. It makes me wonder if any of them inside actually know the real situation though, both her dad and Daniel seem like they were potentially just higher layers of simulation - she might be married to Daniel but the whole thing with Elliot was just the first layer, they developed the ship layer inside the first or even second layer.

 

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

Finished now and

Me too... and
 

Spoiler

The conclusion was another big surprise that raises more questions than it answers.  If the "programming" has been changed,  is this another simulation, with some elements of reality, in terms of place and time?  It feels something like a nesting dolls-locked room/escape room puzzle.  Symbolically the pyramid/triangle represents the conscious/subconscious mind, the tip of the iceberg, with the subconscious below the tip, now unlocked in some way.   Now we have a new operator in her mysterious brother.

I wonder if season 2 will be called 2099. 

 

[karaddin]

So the big thing for me is

Spoiler

The way Henry and Daniel spoke about Maura creating the simulation to escape her grief/pain and/or to keep Elliot alive doesn't jive with a simulation for someone in stasis on a spaceship.

The idea that works for me is that her life with them was a simulation running to keep her mind from degrading during stasis, but she winds up creating the ship simulation inside that one for the reasons stated. 

That doesn't work as well if the spaceship is also a simulation, but I'm leaning to Daniel and Elliot still not being real people, as much as that can even mean in a show exploring Plato's cave as a central theme. I think that would just push reality up another stack.

 

[DaveSumm]

Finished.

Spoiler

OK, I really want to like this. And I do like it a bit … but I dunno, I think the parameters of this series are just too wide open. I was with @karaddin in that I was relieved when there was ship metal underneath the ‘memory’ simulations, because at least we can retain some grasp of where they were. But is there really any point in theorising about a series where, from about Episode 3 onwards, possible explanations could include teleportation, future or alien technology, the whole of reality being false, and everything in between. Why ask “oh I wonder what such and such character is all about” when for all we know they don’t even exist, or is a robot or something? 

Maybe I need to think on it some more, but help me out here: does the ending render the entire season pointless? Does all the actual plot amount to nothing, it was just someone in stasis who needed to jump through some hoops that she might have created herself? 

I think I’m done if they even go anywhere near the idea that this new Prometheus might be a simulation. Because then we’re back to square one, wondering why on Earth we’re bothering to talk about a show that ultimately amounts to nothing. 

 

[karaddin]

Dave -

Spoiler

I had completely forgotten it but saw a comment in a Reddit thread last night that the end of S1 of Dark felt similarly "potentially jumped the shark" and then S2 picked that up and it didn't go anywhere near where I expected.

So I'm going to wait and see where they take this, but I'm going to proceed on the assumption that "it happened in a simulation" doesn't mean it was pointless.

If Daniel and Elliot only exist inside a layered simulation, but have fully complete (albeit ended in Elliott's case) and real lives inside the simulation, with people living alongside and loving them... Either they're real people, or we need to consider ourselves not real if we're in a simulation. That part at least is definitely one of the themes this series is interested in, so I can see it not working if that stuff doesn't resonate at all.

Dark spoilers below

Spoiler

The entire story of Dark except the back story revealed in the third season can also be described as a simulation really. My very high level conception of the story is that Tannhaus breaks reality by overwriting it with a simulation that's stuck in an extended loop, this effectively holds reality hostage until it undoes the death of his child (I think it child, loved one either way). 

All the struggling and suffering of Jonas, Martha and everyone else inside Winden only happens inside this loop which simultaneously plays out on repeat for thousands of years and happens in an instantly like a simulation running at very high speed. The show never treats it as not mattering and Jonas+Martha are to a large extent the heart of the story.

So I don't think a layered simulation will invalidate the stories of these characters in this case either.

 

[DaveSumm]

@karaddin

Spoiler

Yea I’ve been seeing the same discussion on Reddit. I think people are massively overstating how much concern there was about Dark at that point; there’s a huge leap from ‘I’m not sure about this future aesthetic’ to ‘literally nothing in that season was real, and maybe the next season to’. Nothing about that Dark S1 finale invalidated anything that came before it. And looking back, I was WAY more invested in mid-Jonas trying to end the loop in the cave than I was anything in 1899. 

I didn’t particularly like the ending to Dark for all these reasons though, to render your entire universe as ‘less real’ than this new one we learn about in the finale. But even then, Jonas and Martha were real enough that they could save the day. Which feels slightly less egregious than the complete rug pull of 1899.

I’ll grant you Maura, Daniel and potentially their son, and her father. They seem to have knowledge that will be relevant going forward. But I just can’t see what change in perspective could possibly happen in S2 for me to care about any other character; what of Jerome, Lucien and Clemence? What an awful thing Lucien did … except he didn’t, he wasn’t even in the war. What of Tove’s traumatising experience, and Krester’s? Nothing, it didn’t actually happen. Eyk’s family tragedy? Ling Yi? Angel and Ramiro? Nope, none of it happened. 

So S2 starts with the bizarre premise that everything before it didn’t happen, and very likely everything going forward isn’t happening. I just don’t see how we can get any purchase on any of this, or care about any of it.

 

[karaddin]

@DaveSumm

Spoiler

I can definitely see your concern with the way you've articulated it at the end there, the Lucien/war thing in particular really gets it across. To borrow some phrasing from Westworld I think those cornerstone memories/experiences need to be a subconscious leakage of real traumatic events filtered through essentially a dream state, otherwise you're right - those are going to be cheapened by not being real.

On the Dark S1 - I'm not claiming to have seen much of that negativity at the end of S1 but it was actually how I felt at the time. I remember feeling about as negative on it as you are on this, regardless of what the broad reaction was.

 

[Ordos]

OK, in hindsight I didn't like episode 5 because:

Spoiler

The fact that most of the passengers were quickly eliminated by going overboard was an easy escape for the script writers so that they can focus more closely on the main characters. 

Also; I'm assuming there are two tiers of inhabitants for the simulation. That is of course working under the assumption that the spaceship is real life. One is the people who are experiencing the simulation from the real world. That is those who currently have a living body. The second tier is those that are creations of the simulation or were formerly human and are now dead with their consciousness only surviving as long as there is the simulation. 

What do you think?

[DaveSumm]

@Ordos Might be worth marking as full spoilers, could be read as Ep 5 spoilers.

[Mexal]

Cancelled. Oh well.

[Iskaral Pust]

I dropped this after Ep2 and I haven’t heard much that would push me to return to it.

I loved the first two seasons of Dark but lost interest during S3.

It’s difficult to prolong stories that rely on nested loops of unreality or cross-reality.  If the narrative has been fundamentally structured as a mystery to be gradually revealed and resolved, then there has to be a satisfying revelation and resolution, which is very difficult (just look at Lost).  The best success is when the nested unreality or cross-reality is just a twisty background platform for a narrative about a character’s journey or some core conflict, e.g. Dark S1-2, Terminator.

[karaddin]

Ffs Netflix, I wonder why people aren't watching a series on your streaming platform when you're going to cancel it after a season. They're doing it so often it's a significant deterrent to getting invested in anything new they release.

[Darryk]

Started off really well with a great atmosphere, lost its way in the middle due to its characters not being particularly compelling, but ended on a strong note that left me wanting more.

edit: Just saw upthread that it was cancelled. Oh well.

[DaveSumm]

Really just don’t get Netflix’s business model at this point. Their library is mostly trash and cancelled shows, and of course, it’s a vicious cycle. Why start watching a show until a few seasons in in case it gets cancelled?

[Corvinus85]

Only watched 3 episodes. I was worried it was going in a direction I wasn't going to like based on some revelations and the characters not talking to each other was annoying. I guess I made the right decision to not continue.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

Really just don’t get Netflix’s business model at this point. Their library is mostly trash and cancelled shows, and of course, it’s a vicious cycle. Why start watching a show until a few seasons in in case it gets cancelled?

It's like they want to be similar to CW but shorter, 1-3 season pulpy shows with attractive people. Which is fine if that's what you want to be, but the CW doesn't make first seasons of shows like this and then cancel them, it just doesn't make them. The CW doesn't ask to be perceived like HBO. 

[JGP]

I think they're eyeballing the data a little too hard. I'd be interested in how many people tuned in only to tune out, how that cross sections with overall viewership in comparison to other shows, etc, benchmarks, et so on. 

Netflix Moneyball.