hey, yo, eyy....... whazzap?
I SAID, WHAZZAP?!
long time no see! i'm tehbolly, thanks for joining. please, make yourself comfortable, cause we've got a special edition coming up. owing to my existential meandering and lack of ability to concentrate on anything at all lately, i've been mainly watching shows rather than movies.
can we talk about the latest (american) season of Black Mirror?
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verdict first: generally disappointing.
as i was pretty much expecting, americans kinda dumbed it down, and made it far more sensational than it was in its british incarnation. from what i understand, Charlie Brooker writes the general story, and then the showrunners adapt that into a full manuscript. you can tell some honestly brilliant ideas are still there - the man really is a genius - but most of the time, something about the adaptation just felt like it wasn't working.
even though the show continued to have fairly high, or at least decent production values, i thought the american run looked and sounded too glossy and slick. yes i know that sounds dumb, but it just didn't feel right. it doesn't serve the stories. it was never about impressive technical feats - it was about writing and performances. it's all subtle, but it's there -
the actors were usually too pretty for things to be remain credible, the cinematography was too inclined to impress, and even the sound work consistently bothered me, as it made everything sound 'futuristic' and bloopy every time a character interacted with anything technology related - a cell phone, a door, a 'like' button on social media, etc.
all those little choices really damaged the immersion i used to get from black mirror, and made it feel more synthetic, rather than as a lightly warped depiction of the world we live in.
but anyway, those are merely the superficialities.
what really bothered me, (
tldr people - read from here!) was how focused on 'horror' the american run was. it used to be a show that wrenched you, the viewer, to examine the world we live in and contemplate just how far removed from us those warped scenarios are. THAT'S what made it scary. it had a certain delicacy that made it plausible, even when it went to extremes.
the american version, on the other hand, nearly always felt sensationalist, flamboyant, overblown, overly dramatized, and worst of all - much like 'horror torture porn'. it's like showrunners got the idea that people watch black mirror to "
get scared" and horrified, so they just pushed everything to the max, all the time, just delivering cruelty to characters in order to shock the audience and leave a long lasting impression. i don't care for that: it only reduces credibility, cheapens the story, and makes me feel like i'm being fed with a spoon.
Brooker's stories were as good as ever, btw. it's only the fully realized plot arcs built over them that always suffered the same faults, at least to my tastes. the first episode, about new social media made an all-consuming social hierarchy tool, is just a chilling idea, that might very well become very real in 10-20 years, or maybe even a lot sooner. the webcam episode - panic inducing idea, that could happen to everyone. the horror game episode. the military visual system episode (this was the best episode of the season for me). all fucking solid stories, all are fresh and original, all are horrifying ideas from top to bottom - but all were executed and fucked up in exactly the same way.
now, i don't claim to know where the Brooker storyline ends and the production faults begin; it's just that from previous seasons, i think i got a sense of what made his stories great, and the subtlety and restraint that were present in the British production only made the episodes much better.
well. it wouldn't be the first time americans destroyed something good because they failed to demonstrate some restraint.
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