A little janky to start, but otherwise a solid little sci-fi adventure.
Four girls on their paper route in 1988 end up thrown across time, on the run, in search of their future selves.
It’s a neat little exploration of expectations vs reality, and the possibilty of changing fate.
Already seems to have deviated somewhat from the comic series it’s based on, but I’m interested to see where it goes. The cast is solid, and the concept has enough of a spin on the usual time-travel tropes to make it feel fresh.
The writing is terrible, the direction is terrible, the characters are terrible, the vfx are terrible, the acting is terrible, the adaptation is TERRIBLE.
And worst of all, it doesn’t even have the decency to be fun. Just excruciatingly boring from start to finish, with the worst creative decisions made at every conceivable turn.
I couldn’t even be bothered painting anything for the review, so enjoy my warning scrawled with my left hand.
Creature design is fantastic, VFX are A-grade, story is intriguing enough in principle:
A war in the future recruits people from the present to battle an unstoppable alien force. Hijinx ensue.
However, so much of the overlong runtime boils down to characters moving towards an objective while shooting in flat, uninteresting sequences.
Maybe I’ve just crossed my threshold of interest in seeing Chris Pratt as a generic soldier hero bro.
There’s some clever ideas and some great shots mixed in, but overall it doesn’t really cohere to capitalise on an interesting idea and ends up being merely competent.
It’s not bad, it’s just not great.
Probably just watch Edge of Tomorrow again instead, it’s more fun.
It’s tough to really discuss what sets this apart from any other coming-of-age superpowered story without utterly spoiling the thing that sets it apart.
So more generally I can say that it has fun takes on a lot of well-worn tropes and has a couple of refreshing things to say on the way these sorts of stories play out.
The voice cast is incredible and the action is visceral, even if the animation outside of the grand set pieces can tend to sway on the cheaper side. Still, it didn’t detract.
You’ll know if you’re on board by the time the credits on the first episode finish rolling.
Just as bloody, cruel and pointed as season one, but a bigger shift to the humanity of all the characters makes it feel much less nihilistic, and as such it’s more engaging.
I liked the first season plenty, but was curious to see if they slid towards the kinda offputting edgy-for-edgy’s-sake takes on superpowers that the comic does. Glad to say it swings hard in the other direction and improves on its source material in every way.
The whole cast are great, though special credit has to go to Antony Starr’s Homelander — an absolutely terrifying narcissist power-mad Superman analogue, a psychological trainwreck and an absolute monster. There’s good reason why everyone is scared of him.
Otherwise, all the usual crass humour, crude gore and body horror is still present and accounted for, only it’s using also its social satire to actually make points and draw parallels to current headlines.
There is also an extentable, prehensile penis and a whale explosion.
If you’re looking for something light and breezy filled with likeable characters who make good decisions and get happy endings… well… I’m sure you worked out in the first 20min season one that this wasn’t for you.
A nice, simple little scifi thriller with the look and feel of an early Cold War-set episode of STRANGE TALES or THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
Does a great deal with very little, and has some really creative camera work that beautifully describes the distances around a small town somewhere in 1950s America.
Some incredibly long and seamless shots and two extremely charismatic lead performances, but to say anything of the plot would be to ruin the tone and the expectation it so wonderfully builds with steady, thoughtful pace. Could have perhaps gone a little further with some of its more creative reaches to really elevate itself it greatness, but I’m not going to hold that against it since restraint stops it tipping over into gimmicky and helps it feel authentic.
While the main thrust of the plot may be about a mixup of the Antichrist at birth and his coming into his power at the cusp of the apocalypse, the real shining heart is the friendship between an angel and a devil who are both terrible at their jobs.
Seldom is casting so fantastically on point as Michael Sheen and David Tennant, so much so that I almost neglected to shoutout the rest of the cast performances. It’s hard not to think of these two as Aziraphale and Crowley, harder still not to believe that they’ve been friends for centuries.
I’ve not read the book but the adaptation has all the hallmarks of a Gaiman/Pratchett collaboration: smartly funny absurdist wit, good pacing and a soundtrack by Queen. So, a quintessential British comedy miniseries.
NERVE.SQUID.PILOT 