Revolution...a review, well sort of.
Sep. 18th, 2012 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSo did anyone else watch Revolution? Not seeing any reviews on the old flist, so assuming not?
It's rather silly. And, sigh, been done elsewhere, better. Lost, this ain't.
Feels very..I want to say, comic-bookish?
Here's the set-up:
Charlie's father downloads something from the computer onto a special disc or flashdrive which he wears on a chain around his neck. After he downloads it, he tells his wife to fill all the bath-tubs with water, and pack everything. They are leaving town. The power is about to go off and it will never come back on. He calls his brother who is on the road with a friend, to get read, it's about to happen. The power will turn off and not come on again. The phone cuts off before, his brother Miles can ask why.
Skip ahead 15 years.
The family is living a small surburban cul-de-sac turned rural enclave. One guy is teaching school, this is the father's best friend, who it turns out was a former big-honcho employee with Google. This guy tells the kids that physics went haywire and there's no explanation for why the power went out and it should bug them. The kids don't care.
Charlie and Danny are out exploring. They stumble upon an old bus and reminisce. Danny has an asthma attack, they race back and the lovely blond British doctor puts together a medicine that helps him. Charlie gets in a fight with her father and the doctor, who apparently has moved in with them and is sleeping with Dad. Mom left and is considered dead. We aren't told how she died. Just that she left and is presumed dead.(Which means she'll most likely show up again, particularly since they went to all the trouble of recasting the role with Elizabeth Mitchell after filming the pilot. If she wasn't a major character, why bother? Unless she's only relegated to flashbacks, which is possible.)
The narrative style is similar to Fringe, Lost and Once Upon a Time - with the flashbacks.
Of the three, I still think Once Upon a Time works the best and is the most interesting.
But that may be because it doesn't rely on Hollywood pseudo-science.
At any rate, Charlie in pique runs off. She unearths her old Star WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI LUNCH BOX where she keeps a variety of postcards and keepsakes. (This doesn't work for me.
Charlie wouldn't have a lunch box like that. She's from the 21st Century, I haven't seen a lunch box like that since the 1980s...a vintage 1980s lunch box in the 21st Century? On a movie she's probably never seen and certainly wasn't old enough to see when the power went out? Maybe she found it? But still...it's vintage.)
Anyhoo..while she's doing this,Gus (he doesn't have a name in this so, I'm calling him "Gus" because its the same actor from Breaking Bad and I think Once Upon a Time, the man gets around and tends to play the same types of characters...) comes by with the militia. They want to take her Dad away and they are looking for her Uncle. Her brother tries to stop them with a cross-bow (idiot, why he thinks he can take on a whole militia, a heavily armed one at that, with nothing more than a cross-bow is beyond me). The father tries to stop his son. Someone in the militia panics and shoots the father. They kidnap the son in the hopes of trapping the Uncle. The father, considerate soul that he is (remember he was willing to go with them), tells his daughter to find his brother, Miles, in Chicago, and go hunt for Danny. Which seems a bit contradictory, considering earlier he told his girlfriend to take care of his kids, and his best friend to take care of his medallion and let no one get it, and willingly was going to wander off with them. You'd think he'd tell his daughter to forget her brother and stay safe - then hunt down his brother and fall into their trap. But the theme of this is family above all things, well except for the "evil" power grid which must stay off for some reason.
Charlie, who is a taller less attractive and far less interesting version of Katniss Everdeen, goes off to find her brother. (This a big kink for me, so I tuned in for that bit alone - the female heroine/older sister going off to save her bratty brother bit). Her brother's not a complete idiot. He does manage to escape and does find help. Unfortunately the head of the militia used to be an insurance appraiser and can tell that the woman who helped him is lying. She caves (because she's hiding a bigger secret)and lets them find the boy. (The acting saves the dialogue in this show at times.)
Meanwhile Charlie has left her home, with her stepmother, and her father's geeky best bud in tow. Against her will. They invited themselves. I don't know why she didn't just sneak off without them. Probably decided there was no time. But hey, a resourceful doctor and a geeky ex-Google exec. could come in handy. Well, at least the doctor will, not sure about the Google exec - I think he's around for comic relief and the fact that these shows always require an ex-computer/techie geek. (Hunter, Doctor, Tech Geek - all we are missing is damsel/nurturer, reluctant guide/trained fighter/expert, and spy). On the road, she runs into Nate, who later turns out to be militia (spy). Both are hunting her uncle, who her father told her used to kill people for a living (expert). The Uncle, Miles, is living in a hotel, running a saloon out of it, and keeping a low-profile. Until the militia shows up and they fight them off with swords and cross-bows, even though the militia has guns. I kept wondering why the militia didn't shoot first and ask questions later.
Turns out General Monroe, the leader of the militia, is Miles friend from the road (seen in flashbacks) and they used to both be in the Army. Miles tells Nate he has no intention of going back there. And he tells Charlie that Monroe wants to know how to turn the power back on - knowledge he believes Miles and Charlie's father had in their possession. So that they can turn on the tanks and planes again and do away with the other Republics.
ie. Be the one's in power. Aren't they already sort of in power? How would reestablishing the status quuo make life better for them? Granted they'd get power, but so would everyone else? Unless they only turned it on for themselves? Or they could take the credit for it... You'd think they'd prefer to keep it off - since they have more power that way? I mean, it's easier to be a dictator if there's no techonology and not electricity.
Every follower of Monroe, has a big M carved into their arm echoing Monroe's ink tattoo. Apparently it was too hard to do ink tattoos, so Monroe just branded his followers??
Of course Miles joins the rag-tag gang, after they help save him from the Militia, and Nate (the militia spy) saves Charlie twice, so he sort of joins them but no one trusts him.
Meanwhile...Danny's savior communicates via her weird amulet, which is the same as Charlie's Dad's amulet which he gave to the Google guy for safe-keeping (without telling anyone and swearing Google guy to secrecy), on an old 1980s IBM computer with MS DOS.
(Obviously JJ Abhrams has a thing for MS Dos - this was also used in Lost and I'm guessing it is the same computer, or at least it looks like it.) She logs in and tells whomever is on the other end that militia visited, that they didn't get it.
See? Silly. And a bit repetitive of other tv shows that I've seen.
TV really doesn't tend to do sci-fi all that well, generally speaking, does it? Makes sense why people make fun of this genre. Was thinking much the same thing while flipping through recent sci-fi/fantasy flicks on netflix. They are all cheesy horror flicks.
Mainly because television writers don't tend to have science backgrounds (they skipped science in school - it's not a subject you have to take if you are film, business or theater major or English Lit major for that matter) and therefore skimp on the details. It's sort of like watching sci-fi by way of Stephen King or worse, Marvel comics. There are exceptions of course.
Revolution, alas, feels more like Lost in Space by way of Terra Nova, than Lost, Caprica or BSG. Or even Dollhouse or Walking Dead for that matter.
And it has some of the same problems as Lost and Alias, which is the premise doesn't make any sense. So you have to suspend your disbelief in a major league way from the start.
I normally, as you know, don't have that much difficulty with this sort of thing. But,
the dialogue is not exactly stellar here. The best line to date, was, I'd give 80 million dollars in the bank for a roll of charmin, which is only a good line if you don't ask yourself in the next breath - "wait, why isn't there any charmin or toilet paper, when you have shampoo?"
It's also a bit on the predictable side. With a lot of cliche set-ups. The star-crossed romance, the reluctant hero (who was a bad guy once upon a time), the distrusting step-mom,
the missing/allegedly dead Mom...enough for me to realize this particular trope has reached its saturation point and been done to death. Yes, I have a weakness for it. But no one can do it well, damn it. This is not Issac Asimov folks, or even Stephen King for that matter.
I may try a few more episodes to see if it gets better, there's a few interesting characters in there and I like the female heroines, but overall, it doesn't appear to be much of a keeper.
D+
It's rather silly. And, sigh, been done elsewhere, better. Lost, this ain't.
Feels very..I want to say, comic-bookish?
Here's the set-up:
Charlie's father downloads something from the computer onto a special disc or flashdrive which he wears on a chain around his neck. After he downloads it, he tells his wife to fill all the bath-tubs with water, and pack everything. They are leaving town. The power is about to go off and it will never come back on. He calls his brother who is on the road with a friend, to get read, it's about to happen. The power will turn off and not come on again. The phone cuts off before, his brother Miles can ask why.
Skip ahead 15 years.
The family is living a small surburban cul-de-sac turned rural enclave. One guy is teaching school, this is the father's best friend, who it turns out was a former big-honcho employee with Google. This guy tells the kids that physics went haywire and there's no explanation for why the power went out and it should bug them. The kids don't care.
Charlie and Danny are out exploring. They stumble upon an old bus and reminisce. Danny has an asthma attack, they race back and the lovely blond British doctor puts together a medicine that helps him. Charlie gets in a fight with her father and the doctor, who apparently has moved in with them and is sleeping with Dad. Mom left and is considered dead. We aren't told how she died. Just that she left and is presumed dead.(Which means she'll most likely show up again, particularly since they went to all the trouble of recasting the role with Elizabeth Mitchell after filming the pilot. If she wasn't a major character, why bother? Unless she's only relegated to flashbacks, which is possible.)
The narrative style is similar to Fringe, Lost and Once Upon a Time - with the flashbacks.
Of the three, I still think Once Upon a Time works the best and is the most interesting.
But that may be because it doesn't rely on Hollywood pseudo-science.
At any rate, Charlie in pique runs off. She unearths her old Star WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI LUNCH BOX where she keeps a variety of postcards and keepsakes. (This doesn't work for me.
Charlie wouldn't have a lunch box like that. She's from the 21st Century, I haven't seen a lunch box like that since the 1980s...a vintage 1980s lunch box in the 21st Century? On a movie she's probably never seen and certainly wasn't old enough to see when the power went out? Maybe she found it? But still...it's vintage.)
Anyhoo..while she's doing this,
Charlie, who is a taller less attractive and far less interesting version of Katniss Everdeen, goes off to find her brother. (This a big kink for me, so I tuned in for that bit alone - the female heroine/older sister going off to save her bratty brother bit). Her brother's not a complete idiot. He does manage to escape and does find help. Unfortunately the head of the militia used to be an insurance appraiser and can tell that the woman who helped him is lying. She caves (because she's hiding a bigger secret)and lets them find the boy. (The acting saves the dialogue in this show at times.)
Meanwhile Charlie has left her home, with her stepmother, and her father's geeky best bud in tow. Against her will. They invited themselves. I don't know why she didn't just sneak off without them. Probably decided there was no time. But hey, a resourceful doctor and a geeky ex-Google exec. could come in handy. Well, at least the doctor will, not sure about the Google exec - I think he's around for comic relief and the fact that these shows always require an ex-computer/techie geek. (Hunter, Doctor, Tech Geek - all we are missing is damsel/nurturer, reluctant guide/trained fighter/expert, and spy). On the road, she runs into Nate, who later turns out to be militia (spy). Both are hunting her uncle, who her father told her used to kill people for a living (expert). The Uncle, Miles, is living in a hotel, running a saloon out of it, and keeping a low-profile. Until the militia shows up and they fight them off with swords and cross-bows, even though the militia has guns. I kept wondering why the militia didn't shoot first and ask questions later.
Turns out General Monroe, the leader of the militia, is Miles friend from the road (seen in flashbacks) and they used to both be in the Army. Miles tells Nate he has no intention of going back there. And he tells Charlie that Monroe wants to know how to turn the power back on - knowledge he believes Miles and Charlie's father had in their possession. So that they can turn on the tanks and planes again and do away with the other Republics.
ie. Be the one's in power. Aren't they already sort of in power? How would reestablishing the status quuo make life better for them? Granted they'd get power, but so would everyone else? Unless they only turned it on for themselves? Or they could take the credit for it... You'd think they'd prefer to keep it off - since they have more power that way? I mean, it's easier to be a dictator if there's no techonology and not electricity.
Every follower of Monroe, has a big M carved into their arm echoing Monroe's ink tattoo. Apparently it was too hard to do ink tattoos, so Monroe just branded his followers??
Of course Miles joins the rag-tag gang, after they help save him from the Militia, and Nate (the militia spy) saves Charlie twice, so he sort of joins them but no one trusts him.
Meanwhile...Danny's savior communicates via her weird amulet, which is the same as Charlie's Dad's amulet which he gave to the Google guy for safe-keeping (without telling anyone and swearing Google guy to secrecy), on an old 1980s IBM computer with MS DOS.
(Obviously JJ Abhrams has a thing for MS Dos - this was also used in Lost and I'm guessing it is the same computer, or at least it looks like it.) She logs in and tells whomever is on the other end that militia visited, that they didn't get it.
See? Silly. And a bit repetitive of other tv shows that I've seen.
TV really doesn't tend to do sci-fi all that well, generally speaking, does it? Makes sense why people make fun of this genre. Was thinking much the same thing while flipping through recent sci-fi/fantasy flicks on netflix. They are all cheesy horror flicks.
Mainly because television writers don't tend to have science backgrounds (they skipped science in school - it's not a subject you have to take if you are film, business or theater major or English Lit major for that matter) and therefore skimp on the details. It's sort of like watching sci-fi by way of Stephen King or worse, Marvel comics. There are exceptions of course.
Revolution, alas, feels more like Lost in Space by way of Terra Nova, than Lost, Caprica or BSG. Or even Dollhouse or Walking Dead for that matter.
And it has some of the same problems as Lost and Alias, which is the premise doesn't make any sense. So you have to suspend your disbelief in a major league way from the start.
I normally, as you know, don't have that much difficulty with this sort of thing. But,
the dialogue is not exactly stellar here. The best line to date, was, I'd give 80 million dollars in the bank for a roll of charmin, which is only a good line if you don't ask yourself in the next breath - "wait, why isn't there any charmin or toilet paper, when you have shampoo?"
It's also a bit on the predictable side. With a lot of cliche set-ups. The star-crossed romance, the reluctant hero (who was a bad guy once upon a time), the distrusting step-mom,
the missing/allegedly dead Mom...enough for me to realize this particular trope has reached its saturation point and been done to death. Yes, I have a weakness for it. But no one can do it well, damn it. This is not Issac Asimov folks, or even Stephen King for that matter.
I may try a few more episodes to see if it gets better, there's a few interesting characters in there and I like the female heroines, but overall, it doesn't appear to be much of a keeper.
D+
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 02:45 am (UTC)It has some of my story kinks to...which is why I watched it. But I don't know if I can handle the cheesy plotting and bad premise.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 03:08 am (UTC)