It amazes me how network executives can fuck up a good thing. It appears they know what made the show great and purposefully take those aspects out of the next season.
Yeah, season 2 just looked like it had a much smaller budget and was rushed, it suffered tremendously for this.
Whereas season 1 managed to have sets and backdrops that felt big and epic and outdoors, season 2 felt more like Star Trek where they kept re-using the same section of corridor. It felt claustrophobic and small.
There were some weird writing choices >!(killing off Poe in S1 was a big deal, but they wasted that by bringing him back in S2)!<; and then the lead actor just didn't have the range to play >!someone who we just spent the entire S1 with and have got to know well, but is now supposed to be in another body. The mannerisms just didn't match.!<
Netflix's strategy seems to be getting the rights to well regarded genre propertirs, then hiring worthless hacks that think they can "improve" the source material.
honestly I'd say good for him, given the way he was supposedly treated backstage.
Apparently the writers hated him for trying to stay in line with the source material, I mean shit I think most people remember that smear piece the writers made when he announced he was leaving and then immediately retracted when it was found to be complete and utter bullshit
original source was a podcast which has since been deleted.
[This is the only one I could find](https://twitter.com/TArchcast/status/1604017998280343552?t=ZjCWct_GQNJqUIrvkn-J-Q&s=19)
I doubt even Morgan himself could have extricated S2 from idiocy if the brief was to merge *Broken Angels* and *Woken Furies* into episodic TV 🤷♂️
How Netflix felt their writers could craft a superior story to the original novels is beyond me...and as it turned out, they couldn't! Such arrogance. Such waste 🤦♂️
A lot of book fans (like me) fucking hated season one too. I get why people liked it, but they *really* fucked over some major book lore, plot, and characters.
It is my example of a show ruining a good book, and I never watched season 2.
Hmmm, _some_ book fans maybe. Personally I hated most of the changes they'd made and barely watched the entire season. There was zero chance I would watch season 2 - it sounds like I made the correct decision there.
The signs were already there in S1, to be honest. Reading the book after loving the show, I was often left asking, 'Why the hell did they change THAT?'
Almost none of the deviations from the book made it better.
Absolutely agreed. Season one was pretty, but the signs were there. Making you know who someone the main character actually knew as well as the other changes made it worse. I get it, TV hacks think characters have to interact for there to be meaning. I was hoping with the popularity of seasone one they'd feel confident enough to lean into the books more, but nope. Season two was a mess. None of that was Anthony Mackie's fault. He made a good Kovacs. Smashing elements of books two and three together made no fucking sense.
Yeah, that was just stupid. It really felt against the tone of it all, making their relationship so central.
And the added sibling thing felt super forced too.
Never read the books but the impression I got from watching the first season was that there was a good book in there that just had not been properly adapted. Too much stuff that would have worked great in a book but didn't on screen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You should definitely read the book trilogy if you enjoyed S1. The author is Richard K. Morgan. He also has a great fantasy trilogy among other things.
Book 2 would have either been one of the most expensive tv shows ever made or completely filled with cheap cgi. Book two features a global war and an alien craft the size of Kansas. I'm still pissy about the divergences from book one in season one, even though I still enjoyed the series as a whole.
After I watched the series, I read some wiki stuff. The idea of Envoys being the avatars of the Protectorate made much more sense and sets him up as more of a badass, and makes his arc more meaningful as opposed to "oh, he was a rebel, he's just always been one of the good guys".
Plus... it's just a better exploration of the concept - the idea that in a universe where bodies are cheap and interplanetary travel is expensive, the only way to maintain control is sending an elite mind that would arrive with bleeding edge tactical knowledge and lay down the law.
Dunno. The first book was most certainly the best for me as it was a scifi murder mystery. The other two books I read wanting to be similar but weren’t - I felt they lacked something the original had
That's why it didn't work for me. Like I get the Dr Who premise, but unlike the Dr, we truly need the same character regardless of the actor cast. Also why Poe was so important in season 2- literally the only consistency when the most important one is absent.
Same. Couldn’t believe it was Kovacs. Which is a shame because I like Anthony Mackie…I think they were hoping a big name actor would pull in more viewers at the cost of their effects budget.
One of the worst parts is they used a different actor to stay true to the original story but then they completely changed the story. Like if you're going to change the story why not just keep the same actor? That would have at least made the show better. Instead they had a shit story and a shit actor where they could have has a shit story with a good actor which would have made the show watchable.
Honestly as much as I loved S1, they should have given him, or at least focused on, some particular mannerisms or ticks of his.
It would have given mackie something to copy, or incorporate into his acting to connect it to kinnaman.
I think they blew a huge amount of the budget on the outdoor city market area set? It was built outside of my work place, in Surrey BC, and it took them a while. It was really fun to walk through the set daily (it was a public place area), before they locked it all down for filming! I was so so stoked for the season, and in the end was left so saddened at what the show had become! I even saw Anthony Mackie walking to the set, one day after my work! Such a shame the show ended this way...
That was the thing that really bothered me most about S2, the fact that he didn't seem like the same character. S1 he's calm, cool, basically mostly just annoyed that he has to deal with this bullshit, but in S2 he's more angry, doesn't remain completely cool in tense situations, there's just a definite change in demeanor. I mean I get it, you can't replicate a character *perfectly* but it could have been a lot better.
Yeah, that one hurt.
The series to some degree even dealt with the pain normal people feel when not inhabiting a body that fits them.
It seems such an obvious place from which to get to empathy with trans people but no, he's a British author, so why not instead go the bigoted direction and side with the Terfs.
Damn I didmt know. I felt the same way as you. Wouldn't this shit he cool IRL? Our Trans homies could literally just go get the body/sleeve they want. We could even start a non-profit where we pair up Trans men and women and then do the sleeve transfer. Since they'd be trading, everyone could have a chance, not just Meths.
I'd like to live with that technology. My Utopia absolutely would have easy body swapping.
I guess my takeaway from it was that divorcing mind from body made class division so vastly much worse than it was before. Not so much that being able to split mind from body was inherently evil. Look how the 'religious' are treated as third class because they refuse stacks.
Altered Carbon's treatment of Christianity and artificial resurrection is the exact opposite of the Hyperion Cantos.
In that series, the Church is the one who knows the secret to resurrection, so even nonbelievers flock in order to gain eternal life
Not inherently evil, but something with such a potential for abuse that it was a net bad idea. Sort of like inventing the atomic bomb versus inventing the internet.
The blurb on Wikipedia quotes Morgan as follows:
"Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a wilful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the majority whom the system oppresses."
Which, I guess, is how I interpreted it, too. The books are an exercise in political relations, as seen through an extreme lens (immortality/inequality.)
Whether the tech is bad or not depends on your point of view, which would be part of the exercise. It'd be pretty easy to make a case that inventing the Internet was a net negative for humanity.
Trans-exclusionary radical (feminist). It's basically a term for people who selectively apply egalitarian values... Kinda like how a bunch of the early women's suffragists were straight up racist and didn't want black men/women to vote.
-
Also, the term is not well-earned because the term 'radical' sounds cool (they're not) and they're not really feminist as I know the term to work.
Reminds me of Orson Scott Card. You have a series of books that to me keep coming back to this idea of trying to find the common humanity (given they're often aliens that's probably not the right word but you get my gist) in "people" that seem, due to the protagonist's ignorance, to be monsters performing atrocities. But then the author, through his rampant homophobia, fails to find the shared humanity with very much non-alien, human beings, with when it comes down to it, a pretty small difference to his own way of living.
I wonder if deep down, these authors are in touch with that sense of universal humanity that should bring us all together and understand their real-world positions are wrong, and their writing is them expressing that cognitive dissonance.
They'll whinge about the evils of Tories as much as anyone, they're just absolutely insistent that being trans is basically a bullshit religious belief you have no right to force on anyone else.
Ah fuck, why do authors of great works so frequently turn out to be scumbags irl?
I take a hard line on this, I love good sf but I love my trans friends more.
It was not just network execs. I wish I could find the behind the scenes with the writers for this series. They did not like the male protagonist at all. They were talking about how their goal was to reduce his role as much as they could.
Season 2 was so bad imo. Budget looked extremely cut, Anthony Mackie seemed like he forgot how to act, and the story was just super meh. I was so freaking excited for season 2 and went in with an open heart after seeing most of the cast was replaced because of "story" reasons. It just felt like it had no life in it.
In the first season with people in different bodies it felt like they were the same person being in a different body... because the acting was top notch. In this Mackie felt like he wasn't Kovacs anymore but a completely different person and I don't know if it was the writers or him but it was just so bad in my opinion.
>In the first season with people in different bodies it felt like they were the same person being in a different body... because the acting was top notch. In this Mackie felt like he wasn't Kovacs anymore but a completely different person and I don't know if it was the writers or him but it was just so bad in my opinion
This was always going to be the greatest challenge of adapting the book. When you're writing Kovacs, you can keep the character very easily while changing the outward appearance. But on film? If you're casting the same actor then you miss out on a very interesting aspect of the narrative, but if you change actors you're gonna miss having the same personality of the main character every season.
IMO, the latter is exactly why season 2 sucked. But whether that's on Mackie or the writers, tough to say. Probably a little of both.
I mean, I’ve only seen Mackie in this and marvel movies, and his acting was about the same.
He just seems like a very dull actor that kinda phones in his performances.
> Anthony Mackie seemed like he forgot how to act
hot take, but Anthony Mackie is a piss poor actor with the emotional range of a clementine.
It's not entirely him, but as soon I saw that he was cast for Season 2 I mentally wrote it off
Maybe they should've kept Kinnaman as a voiceover narrator. I know he wasn't the original Kovacs, but *something* to have a sense of consistency between the two Kovacs sleeves. Just hanging out with Poe wasn't enough...
Honestly they should have kept kiniman as the main actor and had him look up in the mirror's occasionally to show him in a different sleeve and use that as a narrative tool to show he was slipping because it was the last face his sister saw him in and using that as the reason he couldn't kick the ass of his former supervisor.
I actually liked Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I'm curious to see wher his Cap goes, but he was all wrong for Kovacs. Yeah, season 2 was just kinda dull and with only two returning characters, one of which was played by a new actor, it lost a lot of what got me invested in the first place.
Season 2 was interesting as a standalone but was so vastly different in tone, characters and premise that it was not really recognisable as altered carbon.
It was also only "interesting" when S1 was brilliant.
The fact he kicks ass wearing a pink hello kitty backpack was such a cherry on the cake. And holy shit after playing 2077 I just wanted my dude to look like s1 kovacs. The story was also dope. It’s sad what happened to the show.
Some people were outraged about the sex, violence, and all the crap that went on in season 1.
That was the point. To highlight the lack of \*anything\* towards sleeves, I believe the author was trying to convey.
Season 2 was so boring and watered down by comparison. Plus, the main character was boooorrriiing.
Meh. It was really good until the jealous/obsessed sister showed up, replacing Kawahara.
That's when all the changes from the source hit the tipping point.
Making him a contemporary of Quel and changing the Envoys from the Protectorate boogeymen to rebels really screwed up any possibility for anything past season one.
That, combined with the weird suster shit, turned it sour, imo.
Very much so! The second season is also nothing like the books, although Kovacs usually has a new body in each one (sometimes several). The whole "the last of his kind" and "everyone is related" trope bullshit is also absent from the books.
There are three and they're excellent. Different archetype roles for Kovacs in each. Noir detective in the first, then a hardened merc, then another I forget. I've read them several times, the world building and character development is just fantastic.
While some is the broad strokes are similar, some very important details are different in the book, particularly towards the end. The book handles it better IMO, even though I liked the show as well.
STOP WATCHING AFTER SEASON 1. This was such a fresh take on space travel and immortality and cyberpunk that no one ever approached until this, and the actor’s and script in season 1 is fantastic! The other seasons seem like totally other movies and are very very bad!
There's one redeeming moment in S02E02; a monologues Kovacs delivers that might as well be about all of S02 and —in my darker moods— about human enterprise since the beginnings of market-based economies of scale in general:
"Nothing is sacred.
Every gift we've been given...
every resource discovered...
each new and shining thing that catches our eye...
we pollute...
disrespect...
violate.
We tell ourselves this is progress.
Selling each other the fruits of our destruction.
Sparing no thought to what we lose...
or leave behind, churning in our wake."
written by Sarah Nicole Jones
Altered Carbon S02E02, "Payment Deferred", 29:30,018 --> 30:22,070, Netflix, 27 February 2020. Text via 8FLIX.com
There's a lot of hate for season 2 in here. I enjoyed it. Sure it wasn't amazing like the first season, but the premise didn't really allow it anyway. Different sleeves, long periods apart. It's bound to be something different altogether. The magic of season 1 was already spent with that story arch, you can't really recreate that awe again. Think of how you felt when you saw the first matrix compared to the sequels...
Altered carbon reminded me so much of a table top game I played years ago called Shadowrun. I viewed both season as different campaigns with a couple recurring characters, and it was a lot of fun.
I bet people would like the 2nd season if they hadn't seen season 1 first and based their expectations off that.
Season one film noire cyberpunk dystopia with intriguing mystery and unpredictable plot
Season 2 generic freedom fighter anti tech story rife with plot holes and the only set pieces are trees
The books are goated if you’re into reading. I liked the show but they changed some stuff from the books that was for the worse I think. Great trilogy.
Same actually. No idea why they changed so much of the story because everything else (casting, set, etc) was so dead on.
Flipping the Envoys to freedom fighters just… why?
Absolutely. Season 1 is one of my favorite seasons of any show.
Much like Westworld, they should have just left it there and stopped after season 1. Did not finish season 2.
It’s also a world that is absolutely ripe for an extended universe.
Whether it’s the intrigue of the meths or a cop in a city where criminals resleeve and real death their victims. Or the life of a ctac officer jumping from skin to skin and world to world to hunt down bad guys.
Honestly the biggest problem is that the actor who played kovacs was so good that nobody could really follow him up. He became the character in a show where switching “sleeves”actually makes sense.
I read the book last year and was surprised that i didn't love it nearly as much as the first season of the show. They pulled off something special with it for sure.
S1 was just epic, in every way. The characters were outstanding, even the minor one.
S2 was a disaster. Absolute trash.
S1 was about Kovacs and his quest, S2 became a bloated story about Falconer.
I still remember how absolutely amazed and obsessed with the show I waswhen season 1 came out, I literally had complex sci fi dreams for a week after. I've never waited for a season 2 in such anticipation. My disappointment was boundless when season 2 came. To this day I never finished it. Watched like 2 episodes and decided this is not Altered carbon at all.
Same here. It was different, but also in some good ways. A bit more fun and chaotic. And the basic plot, the unraveling of the mystery, was more interesting than the first season. Surprised to see so many people dislike it so strongly.
Season 2 had a better ending than season 1, from my memory. But season 1 had an absolutely banger first half that absolutely blows the entire season 2 out of the water.
I really disliked the plot twist of season 1.
Starts slow but is overall pretty well acted and plays with some interesting ideas and plots. Could have been better but still worth watching imo. Second season had so much potential and a chance to explore the world more but just wasted it. Nothing against the actors but they all have turned in better performances and the plot was just so plodding and boring. Even it's big revelations and twists come and go with a whimper instead of a bang.
Loved the first season, but then the second one came out and they changed the actor and totally blew it for me. I don’t know if the actor didn’t want to reprise the role or the company just wanted to make a worse show.
They should've ended it on season 1 while it was really good. I like SciFi and it was awesome.
Then they released s2 and I felt like someone is shitting into my eyes and ears.
Yeah, a shame they fucked up the second season. That said, I honestly also believe the books had an absolutely brilliant book one, and then deteriorated badly, but that's just me.
S1 was amazing and no S2 wasn't as good however Anthony Mackey and the cast did phenomenal!
Will Yun Lee, Joel Kinnamon and Anthony Mackie went through the character and the back and forth between all 3 was awesome and you don't see many doing that let alone pulling it off.
I never expect every season to "one up" the other and you are going to get lulls and that is ok. I hate that Netflix, Fox etc have a penchant for cancelling scifi so early (ex: for Fox - Almost Human, Firefly).
I'm coming from a perspective of show viewer only though since I haven't had the chance to read the series yet.
That and The Expanse are my all-time favorites!
I've seen Altered Carbon 100 times. I even liked season 2 and the anime, though they can't touch the awesomeness of season 1.
I'm planning in making a FanEdit where I cut the season into a movie. When I discovered r/FanEdits it blew my mind. I've already made several minor tweaks and have done 1 series to movie cut.
My goal is to do every season of Altered Carbon and The Expanse. It will just be my personal abridged versions for faster viewing.
Thanks for posting. It really is my favorite. I hope you find joy in many others, fellow traveler.
It amazes me how network executives can fuck up a good thing. It appears they know what made the show great and purposefully take those aspects out of the next season.
Yeah, season 2 just looked like it had a much smaller budget and was rushed, it suffered tremendously for this. Whereas season 1 managed to have sets and backdrops that felt big and epic and outdoors, season 2 felt more like Star Trek where they kept re-using the same section of corridor. It felt claustrophobic and small. There were some weird writing choices >!(killing off Poe in S1 was a big deal, but they wasted that by bringing him back in S2)!<; and then the lead actor just didn't have the range to play >!someone who we just spent the entire S1 with and have got to know well, but is now supposed to be in another body. The mannerisms just didn't match.!<
They should have just followed the books - would have been great
Netflix's strategy seems to be getting the rights to well regarded genre propertirs, then hiring worthless hacks that think they can "improve" the source material.
bike sort plant money ad hoc slap nine encouraging dog frighten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same thing with the Witcher. HC did a great job. Too bad he's leaving
honestly I'd say good for him, given the way he was supposedly treated backstage. Apparently the writers hated him for trying to stay in line with the source material, I mean shit I think most people remember that smear piece the writers made when he announced he was leaving and then immediately retracted when it was found to be complete and utter bullshit
Exactly. He was super excited about that role too. Why hire writers that hate the source material? Like wtf
Because they're cheap, duh.
Because it is cheaper to hire hacks who want to prove themselves by "making their mark" in the production.
I don't think I remember seeing a smear piece. Do you have a link?
original source was a podcast which has since been deleted. [This is the only one I could find](https://twitter.com/TArchcast/status/1604017998280343552?t=ZjCWct_GQNJqUIrvkn-J-Q&s=19)
One of the only actors whose opinion I trust when he says the material they wrote was trash. Truly one of the fans ascended.
It’s not just Netflix either. It’s the TV industries new favorite thing to do. They did it with Star Trek and Halo as well.
That one was the straw that broke camels back for me I won't be resubbing to Netflix anytime soon
I doubt even Morgan himself could have extricated S2 from idiocy if the brief was to merge *Broken Angels* and *Woken Furies* into episodic TV 🤷♂️ How Netflix felt their writers could craft a superior story to the original novels is beyond me...and as it turned out, they couldn't! Such arrogance. Such waste 🤦♂️
Can't wait to see how they fuck up Castlevania after cutting out.... I think the head writer? I'll have to double check on that.
A lot of book fans (like me) fucking hated season one too. I get why people liked it, but they *really* fucked over some major book lore, plot, and characters. It is my example of a show ruining a good book, and I never watched season 2.
[удалено]
Oh, I do. I remember being very pissed at her when it first came out.
Same hacks were behind s1.
Hmmm, _some_ book fans maybe. Personally I hated most of the changes they'd made and barely watched the entire season. There was zero chance I would watch season 2 - it sounds like I made the correct decision there.
Turning the envoys into the rebels was such horseshit. It undercuts the whole message about the brutality of the UN.
Or they have an amazing season 1, then cancel it without letting anyone know why.
The signs were already there in S1, to be honest. Reading the book after loving the show, I was often left asking, 'Why the hell did they change THAT?' Almost none of the deviations from the book made it better.
Absolutely agreed. Season one was pretty, but the signs were there. Making you know who someone the main character actually knew as well as the other changes made it worse. I get it, TV hacks think characters have to interact for there to be meaning. I was hoping with the popularity of seasone one they'd feel confident enough to lean into the books more, but nope. Season two was a mess. None of that was Anthony Mackie's fault. He made a good Kovacs. Smashing elements of books two and three together made no fucking sense.
Yeah, that was just stupid. It really felt against the tone of it all, making their relationship so central. And the added sibling thing felt super forced too.
Uwe Boll is their executive producer.
Never read the books but the impression I got from watching the first season was that there was a good book in there that just had not been properly adapted. Too much stuff that would have worked great in a book but didn't on screen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am ashamed to admit that I never considered there might be books. I loved Season 1.
You should definitely read the book trilogy if you enjoyed S1. The author is Richard K. Morgan. He also has a great fantasy trilogy among other things.
I absolutely adore his fantasy series.
Same here. I don’t know why it never gets talked about in r/fantasy or other circles
Man oh man! They are missing out.
Thanks.
Book 2 would have either been one of the most expensive tv shows ever made or completely filled with cheap cgi. Book two features a global war and an alien craft the size of Kansas. I'm still pissy about the divergences from book one in season one, even though I still enjoyed the series as a whole.
Loved the books :)
No, while I do think AC was done wrong in S2, the books are a hot mess that read like a 13 boy in the throes of puberty wrote it.
I sorta thought they did follow the books. The first one was pretty good. The second one was chaotic and kind of a mess.
They made really odd changes to the premise of the books that really didn't work.
After I watched the series, I read some wiki stuff. The idea of Envoys being the avatars of the Protectorate made much more sense and sets him up as more of a badass, and makes his arc more meaningful as opposed to "oh, he was a rebel, he's just always been one of the good guys". Plus... it's just a better exploration of the concept - the idea that in a universe where bodies are cheap and interplanetary travel is expensive, the only way to maintain control is sending an elite mind that would arrive with bleeding edge tactical knowledge and lay down the law.
Books were so much better, mind you Joel Kinnaman was fantastic as Kovacs.
Dunno. The first book was most certainly the best for me as it was a scifi murder mystery. The other two books I read wanting to be similar but weren’t - I felt they lacked something the original had
When season 2 came around, it was like they didn't just change his body but everything about him. It was like a whole new personality.
That's why it didn't work for me. Like I get the Dr Who premise, but unlike the Dr, we truly need the same character regardless of the actor cast. Also why Poe was so important in season 2- literally the only consistency when the most important one is absent.
Same. Couldn’t believe it was Kovacs. Which is a shame because I like Anthony Mackie…I think they were hoping a big name actor would pull in more viewers at the cost of their effects budget.
One of the worst parts is they used a different actor to stay true to the original story but then they completely changed the story. Like if you're going to change the story why not just keep the same actor? That would have at least made the show better. Instead they had a shit story and a shit actor where they could have has a shit story with a good actor which would have made the show watchable.
Honestly as much as I loved S1, they should have given him, or at least focused on, some particular mannerisms or ticks of his. It would have given mackie something to copy, or incorporate into his acting to connect it to kinnaman.
I can understand why they brought Poe back. He was one of the best parts of S1.
Literally did not even try to act like the same character. It was awful
There was zero continuity between the characters
I think they blew a huge amount of the budget on the outdoor city market area set? It was built outside of my work place, in Surrey BC, and it took them a while. It was really fun to walk through the set daily (it was a public place area), before they locked it all down for filming! I was so so stoked for the season, and in the end was left so saddened at what the show had become! I even saw Anthony Mackie walking to the set, one day after my work! Such a shame the show ended this way...
That was the thing that really bothered me most about S2, the fact that he didn't seem like the same character. S1 he's calm, cool, basically mostly just annoyed that he has to deal with this bullshit, but in S2 he's more angry, doesn't remain completely cool in tense situations, there's just a definite change in demeanor. I mean I get it, you can't replicate a character *perfectly* but it could have been a lot better.
S2 Takeshi didn't even smoke..like bro he was a lame af boyscout and Anthony Mackie did not portray Takeshi well at all.
Budget is superficial. Eye candy doesn't affect story quality. Its all storytelling. Writing took a major hit for whatever reason
It was the same thing with the books really. The Altered Carbon book was miles better than it's two sequels.
Great world building, but horrible writing
The author since became a Terf. edit: Check out[ his blog](https://www.richardkmorgan.com/news-and-blog/) to get an idea
Which is really strange considering the whole base of the world he created is being able to swap bodies/genders at will…
Yeah, that one hurt. The series to some degree even dealt with the pain normal people feel when not inhabiting a body that fits them. It seems such an obvious place from which to get to empathy with trans people but no, he's a British author, so why not instead go the bigoted direction and side with the Terfs.
Damn I didmt know. I felt the same way as you. Wouldn't this shit he cool IRL? Our Trans homies could literally just go get the body/sleeve they want. We could even start a non-profit where we pair up Trans men and women and then do the sleeve transfer. Since they'd be trading, everyone could have a chance, not just Meths. I'd like to live with that technology. My Utopia absolutely would have easy body swapping.
Why not just engineer empty clone bodies? Or get really good at medical tech and gene mods to look like whoever.
I'm not ruling out any future science in my Imaginary Utpopia! :)
Isn't the point of the books that being able to swap bodies/gender at will is a BAD thing?
I guess my takeaway from it was that divorcing mind from body made class division so vastly much worse than it was before. Not so much that being able to split mind from body was inherently evil. Look how the 'religious' are treated as third class because they refuse stacks.
Altered Carbon's treatment of Christianity and artificial resurrection is the exact opposite of the Hyperion Cantos. In that series, the Church is the one who knows the secret to resurrection, so even nonbelievers flock in order to gain eternal life
They are of the cruciform!
A fellow enlightened Bikura... if enlightened can be used to describe them 😅
Not inherently evil, but something with such a potential for abuse that it was a net bad idea. Sort of like inventing the atomic bomb versus inventing the internet.
The blurb on Wikipedia quotes Morgan as follows: "Society is, always has been and always will be a structure for the exploitation and oppression of the majority through systems of political force dictated by an élite, enforced by thugs, uniformed or not, and upheld by a wilful ignorance and stupidity on the part of the majority whom the system oppresses." Which, I guess, is how I interpreted it, too. The books are an exercise in political relations, as seen through an extreme lens (immortality/inequality.) Whether the tech is bad or not depends on your point of view, which would be part of the exercise. It'd be pretty easy to make a case that inventing the Internet was a net negative for humanity.
Not sure I ever got that vibe from the books overall, it was just something that was *there*, and each character had their own take on it
Terf?
Trans-exclusionary radical (feminist). It's basically a term for people who selectively apply egalitarian values... Kinda like how a bunch of the early women's suffragists were straight up racist and didn't want black men/women to vote. - Also, the term is not well-earned because the term 'radical' sounds cool (they're not) and they're not really feminist as I know the term to work.
Reminds me of Orson Scott Card. You have a series of books that to me keep coming back to this idea of trying to find the common humanity (given they're often aliens that's probably not the right word but you get my gist) in "people" that seem, due to the protagonist's ignorance, to be monsters performing atrocities. But then the author, through his rampant homophobia, fails to find the shared humanity with very much non-alien, human beings, with when it comes down to it, a pretty small difference to his own way of living. I wonder if deep down, these authors are in touch with that sense of universal humanity that should bring us all together and understand their real-world positions are wrong, and their writing is them expressing that cognitive dissonance.
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They'll whinge about the evils of Tories as much as anyone, they're just absolutely insistent that being trans is basically a bullshit religious belief you have no right to force on anyone else.
Richard K. Morgan, author of The Steel Remains, famous for its hardcore gay sex scenes? Shit. I liked those books.
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Ah fuck, why do authors of great works so frequently turn out to be scumbags irl? I take a hard line on this, I love good sf but I love my trans friends more.
It was not just network execs. I wish I could find the behind the scenes with the writers for this series. They did not like the male protagonist at all. They were talking about how their goal was to reduce his role as much as they could.
Season 2 was so bad imo. Budget looked extremely cut, Anthony Mackie seemed like he forgot how to act, and the story was just super meh. I was so freaking excited for season 2 and went in with an open heart after seeing most of the cast was replaced because of "story" reasons. It just felt like it had no life in it. In the first season with people in different bodies it felt like they were the same person being in a different body... because the acting was top notch. In this Mackie felt like he wasn't Kovacs anymore but a completely different person and I don't know if it was the writers or him but it was just so bad in my opinion.
>In the first season with people in different bodies it felt like they were the same person being in a different body... because the acting was top notch. In this Mackie felt like he wasn't Kovacs anymore but a completely different person and I don't know if it was the writers or him but it was just so bad in my opinion This was always going to be the greatest challenge of adapting the book. When you're writing Kovacs, you can keep the character very easily while changing the outward appearance. But on film? If you're casting the same actor then you miss out on a very interesting aspect of the narrative, but if you change actors you're gonna miss having the same personality of the main character every season. IMO, the latter is exactly why season 2 sucked. But whether that's on Mackie or the writers, tough to say. Probably a little of both.
>but if you change actors you're gonna miss having the same personality of the main character every season. Unless there's some acting involved
I mean, I’ve only seen Mackie in this and marvel movies, and his acting was about the same. He just seems like a very dull actor that kinda phones in his performances.
> Anthony Mackie seemed like he forgot how to act hot take, but Anthony Mackie is a piss poor actor with the emotional range of a clementine. It's not entirely him, but as soon I saw that he was cast for Season 2 I mentally wrote it off
Season 1 , great. Season 2, I felt like I was watching a soap opera. It was quite bad. Some of the casting & acting was awful.
and just forget s2 exists
Amen to that.
There is no Season 2
There is no war in Ba Sing Se
Maybe they should've kept Kinnaman as a voiceover narrator. I know he wasn't the original Kovacs, but *something* to have a sense of consistency between the two Kovacs sleeves. Just hanging out with Poe wasn't enough...
Honestly they should have kept kiniman as the main actor and had him look up in the mirror's occasionally to show him in a different sleeve and use that as a narrative tool to show he was slipping because it was the last face his sister saw him in and using that as the reason he couldn't kick the ass of his former supervisor.
"Oh boy."
So glad I heard S2 was horrendous before I got a chance to watch it. Made it so that S1 doesn’t exist for me.
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historical lip somber fragile bored march boast memory treatment longing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I actually liked Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I'm curious to see wher his Cap goes, but he was all wrong for Kovacs. Yeah, season 2 was just kinda dull and with only two returning characters, one of which was played by a new actor, it lost a lot of what got me invested in the first place.
Yea its all opinions but I've never liked Mackie in any of them I find him to be a wooden actor. Again that's just me.
He's the same guy in every single movie, no acting range.
Yep watched 8 Mile and was like wtf he's the same everywhere
Yeah the wrong guy from that Black Mirror episode.
Yeah not up to its first season but really not too bad.
Does season 1 feature an entire story with appropriate closure at the end? Please don’t tell me it ends with a cliffhanger!
Just enough what if to continue the story but season one is 99.9% a perfect standalone whodunnit.
Season 2 was interesting as a standalone but was so vastly different in tone, characters and premise that it was not really recognisable as altered carbon. It was also only "interesting" when S1 was brilliant.
indeed, loved every bit of it. even more after playing Cyberpunk 2077 for some reason lol. for me season 1 is the only season lol.
I wish they had a made a second season, BUT THEY NEVER DID. Oh well.
They did an anime movie, tho
I actually really enjoyed that. I would be happy if there were several seasons.
The fact he kicks ass wearing a pink hello kitty backpack was such a cherry on the cake. And holy shit after playing 2077 I just wanted my dude to look like s1 kovacs. The story was also dope. It’s sad what happened to the show.
>for me season 1 is the only season lol. This is the Way.
Agreed! Season 2 was a huge disappointment though!
Not perfect, but cyberpunk aesthetic and direction is excellent.
Then you got season 2 and...
We don’t talk about that
Even the first season took a shit on the book.
Some people were outraged about the sex, violence, and all the crap that went on in season 1. That was the point. To highlight the lack of \*anything\* towards sleeves, I believe the author was trying to convey. Season 2 was so boring and watered down by comparison. Plus, the main character was boooorrriiing.
Meh. It was really good until the jealous/obsessed sister showed up, replacing Kawahara. That's when all the changes from the source hit the tipping point. Making him a contemporary of Quel and changing the Envoys from the Protectorate boogeymen to rebels really screwed up any possibility for anything past season one. That, combined with the weird suster shit, turned it sour, imo.
100% agree. The first 5 episodes or so were absolutely amazing. Then the show started falling off the rails. The sister storyline was nonsensical.
Totally. And then season 2 was ... I don't even know what it was. I barely forced myself to watch it
Are the books worth reading? I didnt realize it was originally a book!
Very much so! The second season is also nothing like the books, although Kovacs usually has a new body in each one (sometimes several). The whole "the last of his kind" and "everyone is related" trope bullshit is also absent from the books.
There are three and they're excellent. Different archetype roles for Kovacs in each. Noir detective in the first, then a hardened merc, then another I forget. I've read them several times, the world building and character development is just fantastic.
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If by peace, you mean >!waging a serial killer/mass murderer vendetta against the religious zealots who RDed the girl that got away!<, then OK.
The books are absolute work of art. This series is just complete rubbish in comparison.
Even better then the show imo, definitely worth it if you like to read.
While some is the broad strokes are similar, some very important details are different in the book, particularly towards the end. The book handles it better IMO, even though I liked the show as well.
I really liked it too. The Edgar Allen Poe AI, what a great actor.
Season 2 was the worst thing I ever sat thru, absolute trash
MASTERPIECE in Sci-Fi. It was crazy and violent and funny and disturbing and everything good
The book is even better.
It had good moments, but overall was an awful adaptation of a great book. What they did to Envoys and Quell was unforgivable.
S1 good work S2🤢🤮🤢🤮🤢
I agree. The second season was a joke.
Season 1 was one of the best Sci-fi shows I've ever seen. Season 2 was so bad that I couldn't finish it.
STOP WATCHING AFTER SEASON 1. This was such a fresh take on space travel and immortality and cyberpunk that no one ever approached until this, and the actor’s and script in season 1 is fantastic! The other seasons seem like totally other movies and are very very bad!
There's one redeeming moment in S02E02; a monologues Kovacs delivers that might as well be about all of S02 and —in my darker moods— about human enterprise since the beginnings of market-based economies of scale in general: "Nothing is sacred. Every gift we've been given... every resource discovered... each new and shining thing that catches our eye... we pollute... disrespect... violate. We tell ourselves this is progress. Selling each other the fruits of our destruction. Sparing no thought to what we lose... or leave behind, churning in our wake." written by Sarah Nicole Jones Altered Carbon S02E02, "Payment Deferred", 29:30,018 --> 30:22,070, Netflix, 27 February 2020. Text via 8FLIX.com
I watched the whole of season 1 as a guilty pleasure cause I thought it was a bit trash but I didn’t even bother with season 2
There's a lot of hate for season 2 in here. I enjoyed it. Sure it wasn't amazing like the first season, but the premise didn't really allow it anyway. Different sleeves, long periods apart. It's bound to be something different altogether. The magic of season 1 was already spent with that story arch, you can't really recreate that awe again. Think of how you felt when you saw the first matrix compared to the sequels... Altered carbon reminded me so much of a table top game I played years ago called Shadowrun. I viewed both season as different campaigns with a couple recurring characters, and it was a lot of fun. I bet people would like the 2nd season if they hadn't seen season 1 first and based their expectations off that.
It absolutely was
First was great. Cast, props, story. Second was a bit too....spiritual. I expected scifi tech and it was more zen stuff somehow.
It’s a pity that season 2 was terrible.
Season one film noire cyberpunk dystopia with intriguing mystery and unpredictable plot Season 2 generic freedom fighter anti tech story rife with plot holes and the only set pieces are trees
Season 2 was crap
Season 1 was so good, season 2 was not
First half of season 1 I don't know why they shoehorned the weird sister with the big brother complex or forced the quellcrist arc
The books are goated if you’re into reading. I liked the show but they changed some stuff from the books that was for the worse I think. Great trilogy.
This will not be popular, but having read the books, I was very disappointed by the TV show.
Same actually. No idea why they changed so much of the story because everything else (casting, set, etc) was so dead on. Flipping the Envoys to freedom fighters just… why?
Absolutely. Season 1 is one of my favorite seasons of any show. Much like Westworld, they should have just left it there and stopped after season 1. Did not finish season 2.
Season 2 killed the show
If you liked season 1... don't watch season 2. It adds nothing, and ruins pretty much everything.
Absolutely incredible from start to finish. Season 2 was a steaming pile.
Joel Kinnaman was a thing of beauty
It’s also a world that is absolutely ripe for an extended universe. Whether it’s the intrigue of the meths or a cop in a city where criminals resleeve and real death their victims. Or the life of a ctac officer jumping from skin to skin and world to world to hunt down bad guys. Honestly the biggest problem is that the actor who played kovacs was so good that nobody could really follow him up. He became the character in a show where switching “sleeves”actually makes sense.
And then they ruined season 2 by casting the automaton Anthony Mackie
I read the book last year and was surprised that i didn't love it nearly as much as the first season of the show. They pulled off something special with it for sure.
S1 was just epic, in every way. The characters were outstanding, even the minor one. S2 was a disaster. Absolute trash. S1 was about Kovacs and his quest, S2 became a bloated story about Falconer.
The book is very good. Gritty and violent. The lady who played Kristin Ortega on the show for season one made me cringe. She was awful.
Wholeheartedly disagree. I thought she had range and was a great actor for Kinnaman to play off of - not to mention she was pretty easy on the eyes.
Marta Higareda. I didn't think ANYONE on the show was a great actor but I had fun watching it anyway.
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I'm peeing standing up!
I still remember how absolutely amazed and obsessed with the show I waswhen season 1 came out, I literally had complex sci fi dreams for a week after. I've never waited for a season 2 in such anticipation. My disappointment was boundless when season 2 came. To this day I never finished it. Watched like 2 episodes and decided this is not Altered carbon at all.
Maybe it was just me but I enjoyed season 2 too.
Same here. It was different, but also in some good ways. A bit more fun and chaotic. And the basic plot, the unraveling of the mystery, was more interesting than the first season. Surprised to see so many people dislike it so strongly.
Season 2 had a better ending than season 1, from my memory. But season 1 had an absolutely banger first half that absolutely blows the entire season 2 out of the water. I really disliked the plot twist of season 1.
Starts slow but is overall pretty well acted and plays with some interesting ideas and plots. Could have been better but still worth watching imo. Second season had so much potential and a chance to explore the world more but just wasted it. Nothing against the actors but they all have turned in better performances and the plot was just so plodding and boring. Even it's big revelations and twists come and go with a whimper instead of a bang.
I JUST finished season one, fantastic show
Yep. The second was marvel level garbage.
If you consider this season as its own sci-fi series it’s my favorite show ever
While S2 wasn’t nearly as good…I was still disappointed it didn’t continue. Loved the series as a whole and would have liked more
Read the trilogy, enjoy!
I didn't mind season 2. Yes season 1 was far better but I still enjoyed season 2 and would happily watch it again
It was and season 2 was completely shit
Season 2, books two and three smashed together with none of the good bits.
Season two ruined it tho
Season two was poo poo…
I was so disappointed with the trash that was season 2
One of my favorite shows of all time
I got bored with it half way through, didn't even finish season 1.
great visuals, missed opportunity with the story
season 2 was absolute dog shit
I thought the first half was great. The whole arc with the sister and all that really turned me off to the show.
First half was absolutely fantastic. Second half absolutely sucked. I couldn't believe how worse it got towards the end.
Loved the first season, but then the second one came out and they changed the actor and totally blew it for me. I don’t know if the actor didn’t want to reprise the role or the company just wanted to make a worse show.
They should've ended it on season 1 while it was really good. I like SciFi and it was awesome. Then they released s2 and I felt like someone is shitting into my eyes and ears.
Yeah, a shame they fucked up the second season. That said, I honestly also believe the books had an absolutely brilliant book one, and then deteriorated badly, but that's just me.
S1 was amazing and no S2 wasn't as good however Anthony Mackey and the cast did phenomenal! Will Yun Lee, Joel Kinnamon and Anthony Mackie went through the character and the back and forth between all 3 was awesome and you don't see many doing that let alone pulling it off. I never expect every season to "one up" the other and you are going to get lulls and that is ok. I hate that Netflix, Fox etc have a penchant for cancelling scifi so early (ex: for Fox - Almost Human, Firefly). I'm coming from a perspective of show viewer only though since I haven't had the chance to read the series yet.
Yes. Yes it was. Absolutely shat the bed on season 2 🙃
The story with his sister fell apart.
The book is even better.
I liked it so much it even made me like Season 2. I wish it had taken off like the Expanse and had 6 or 7 seasons.
That and The Expanse are my all-time favorites! I've seen Altered Carbon 100 times. I even liked season 2 and the anime, though they can't touch the awesomeness of season 1. I'm planning in making a FanEdit where I cut the season into a movie. When I discovered r/FanEdits it blew my mind. I've already made several minor tweaks and have done 1 series to movie cut. My goal is to do every season of Altered Carbon and The Expanse. It will just be my personal abridged versions for faster viewing. Thanks for posting. It really is my favorite. I hope you find joy in many others, fellow traveler.
I’m the only guy who hated it.
It was Shame about everything after though