Altered Carbon (Netflix)

O.k., so they are steamy. But do the viewers really need to see their naughty parts? Why must the camera show them?
 
Jeffbert said:
But do the viewers really need to see their naughty parts? Why must the camera show them?
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I don't think they need to go to Rome (series) style hanky panky in the small screen. It might have sold the series to someone, but for wrong reasons. Kovacs began his investigation with sex fuelled scene with Miriam dressed in very showing tennis costume. Later on the investigation went into the red light district and at the end to the Head in the Clouds.

The first book really is a journey into the forbidden realm, while the next two ones move away from the idea. But, still, if you read them you'll see that they have a few crucial sex scenes, which also explore Kovacs love life. A much of that is fairly removed and cut out from the televised series.

Kovacs doesn't really miss his lover at any point on TV, while in the books it's a really big thing for him.
 
I didn't realise this was based on a book. I've just got round to watching the first episode and it's quite intriguing.
 
Well, I'm two episodes in and I'm not really taken with it. The ideas are interesting and some of the secondary things are entertaining (the hotel, especially), but I don't think it does the whole futuristic-detective thing very well. The two leads aren't terribly interesting and Kovacs seems to mumble a lot. I'll stick with it but it's not gripping me all that much.
 
It has some problems but the concept was interesting. I read the book afterwards. In my opinion this is one the the rare times where the TV show is better than the book.
 
The mumbling was also a problem for me too. I find mumbling in a lot of TV programmes though. There was a mass letter writing campaign to the BBC about one programme (it may have been Poldark.)

It helped with the plot that I had read the first book, (but not so much when they began adding in parts of the second book.)
 
I remember there being a lot of complaints about SSGB being very hard to hear. I wonder if a particular style of sound mixing became briefly fashionable for tough noir stories.

On which subject, I am naturally inclined to like both cyberpunk and noir, and yet I don't warm to this one much. Neither Kovacs (is that his surname?) or Ortega seem very interesting: it's as if neither is quite awake.
 
Dave said:
The mumbling was also a problem for me too. I find mumbling in a lot of TV programmes though. There was a mass letter writing campaign to the BBC about one programme (it may have been Poldark.)

It helped with the plot that I had read the first book, (but not so much when they began adding in parts of the second book.)
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i USE CLOSED CAPTIONS BY DEFAULT. But yes, mumbling is a bit annoying.
 
Well, it's interesting, and entertaining, but it could be better. I can't quite decide what I don't like: I think it's the two leads, who seem to alternate between enraged and brooding, and not a lot else. I'm going to continue with it, though, as the good greatly outweighs the bad.

I find the secondary characters much more interesting than the primary ones: obviously Poe, but also the older cop (the Muslim guy who looks like a jazz musician), and the former army medic. Whoever plays the bearded dead body/neo-Nazi/grandmother/hitman really deserves credit too.

Am I right in thinking that the camp/sinister fight organiser used to be Max Headroom?
 
Toby Frost said:
That's very apt! For a moment I wondered if it was a crazed Bill Nighy.
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You will meet a similar character in the next season. In the first book, you get much better fight and description for Kovacs sleeve in the arena. Also you get his narrative on the arena guy and how he is connected to the whole Head-in-the-Clouds business. The basic concept however is that if you get in the wrong side and you don't end in the cloud ship, you go arena to fight against custom gladiator sleeves. Kovacs uses the Sunbeam weapon first time in there to melt bad guys stacks to slag. It's his way of solving the coming-back-in-new-sleeve problem with a permadeath.
 
I just gave the whole season a 2nd watch, as my brother came for one last visit before moving to Texas. I think I noticed a few things that may have slipped past me the first time; though I cannot say what.
 
This certainly picked up, and I'd give it a solid 7 and a half out of 10. The last episode was basically one huge fight, but pretty entertaining for it. I was sorry that my favourite character died. Overall, I thought it was at its best when it moved away from standard cyberpunk and became weirder.

I'm about 2/3 through Black Man, and I think it's very good indeed.
 
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Toby Frost said:
Overall, I thought it was at its best when it moved away from standard cyberpunk and became weirder.
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I would have never classified it as standard cyberpunk but as a science fiction with cyberpunk elements. It goes far beyond what Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Tom Dowd, Jordan K Weisman or others wrote back in the eighties, or nineties.
 
The second book, Broken Angels, was my favourite of the trilogy so fingers crossed for season 2
 
Netflix has announced that it will be producing an anime feature of its live-action sci-fi series Altered Carbon. The anime will come from animation studio Anima. Dai Soto (Cowboy Bebop) and Tsukasa Kondo will server as writers. Netflix made the announcement during an event in Singapore and also unveiled four other anime series including one for Pacific Rim.

There are no plot details available for the Altered Carbon anime yet but the Netflix release indicates that the feature will "explore new elements of the story mythology."

The presence of the anime will not have any bearing on the live-action series. Altered Carbon season 2 is still in production and on its way with Anthony Mackie in the lead.
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Altered Carbon and Pacific Rim anime picked up at Netflix
 
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