@nessisonett There's someone in the IGN comments section under their Roiland article replying to every right wing chud banging on about women ruining men's careers by making false accusations with "read the leaked texts" and then watching them STFU. It's pretty funny, actually.
Seeing as I’ve subscribed to HBO for The Last of Us’ run, I figured I’d try to get culturally caught up on a few shows while we have it. Time is limited, so after some humming and hawing, we settled on Game of Thrones. I’m excited to finally see what all of the hype is about. Watched the first episode last night and, well, that was something anyway. We’ll see what it all builds into.
“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” C.S. Lewis
@Jimmer-jammer I'm on a "GoT" repeat run-through - I'm midway through Season 3 just now. If you're not hooked by the end of the first season then the show definitely isn't for you, but I'd recommend giving it that long, at least. If it doesn't click for you, then follow the advice of @Kidfried and watch "The Wire" instead. It's the best TV show I've ever seen.
@Kidfried@LN78 Thanks! Only HBO I’ve really seen is The Sopranos and Chernobyl, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and a bunch of True Blood, which I did not. Anyway, if it’s as good as you’re both letting on, I might just try and squeeze it in regardless of what happens with GoT.
“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” C.S. Lewis
@Jimmer-jammer If you enjoyed The Sopranos, I'd be fairly confident you'll love The Wire.
The Wire is genuinely my favorite show of all time, and still remains a joy to re-watch! Even the weaker seasons (#2 and #5, IMO) are much stronger than most things on TV today. Seasons #3 and #4 , especially #4 (!), are just immaculate.
What's also cool about the Wire is that there are so many actors who are today deemed 'mega-stars'.... and these guys are basically starting their careers in The Wire! Idris Elba, Dominic West, Lance Reddick (of Horizon fame lol!) and a very young Michael B Jordan (Creed). Aidan Gillen (Irish actor, played LittleFinger in GoT) and Michael K Williams RIP also!
I ranked my top #5 of all time and list looks like this....
#1 The Wire
#2 Dark
#3 Succession
#4 The Leftovers
#5 The Shield
I'd also recommend 'The Leftovers' which is genuinely one of my most surprising experiences, and this stayed with me long after I'd concluded the final season.
(honorably mentions include GoT, Breaking Bad, Justified, Lost, The Sopranos, Chernobyl, Watchmen, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men)
@Jimmer-jammer
There's alot of HBO shows I would recommend. Just some examples:
•Barry
•Boardwalk Empire
•Perry Mason
•The Wire
•The Leftovers
•The Deuce
•Deadwood
•Carnivale
•Band of Brothers
•The Pacific
Have fun.
Born too early to explore space and born too late to explore Earth, but born just in time to explore memes.
@CJD87 That's some immaculate taste you've got there, mate - I'd probably have every one of the shows you mentioned somewhere in my own personal Top 20. @PegasusActual93 That's another great list - congratulations on making it through "The Deuce" without killing yourself. That show was so, so bleak.
@LN78 Thanks man! I'm currently watching 'The Bear' on Disney+, which is shaping up very nicely and a tremendous show (also very different to other things I've seen). How would you rank your own top 5?
@LN78
Some of the characters in the Deuce didn't have very happy endings admittedly but there was still a great message at the end about the future and how it's possible to completely change your life for the better.
Born too early to explore space and born too late to explore Earth, but born just in time to explore memes.
@CJD87 That's a tough call but I'd have "The Wire" at the top followed (in no particular order) by "The Sopranos", "Breaking Bad", "The Leftovers" and "Twin Peaks".
@PegasusActual93 Poor Emily Meade. She ended up with the exact same fate in not one but two HBO series! Interesting thing about "The Deuce" - apparently it used tons of the 70s/80s NYC sets and costumes that HBO had already built and made for "Vinyl" but weren't going to get screen time because of that show's early and unexpected cancellation. Great to know that all that hard work didn't get thrown in the bin.
@CJD87@PegasusActualt93 wow, thanks! I guess I’ve seen more HBO than I thought, as Band of Brothers and The Pacific were both great. I really liked the first season of Dark but, as always with TV shows, fell off after that. I’ve been woefully behind on the TV front as it’s just so hard for me, between my wife and I, to commit that much time to a show. Films work much better in this regard, and game time is my time so no worries there. For what it’s worth though, we’re making the effort recently to get through some content! Thanks again for the recommendations.
“Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.” C.S. Lewis
Watched both episodes of The Last of Us and… I’m a little disappointed. It’s good, mind you, but it’s not great. I promise I’m not trying to be a troll, but it’s not living up the hype yet for me. But I’ll definitely stick with it.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@LN78 It’s a difficult one to put my finger on. There’s definitely some good performances (and some mediocre ones) and there’s a reasonable amount of care taken to its production, in that HBO kind of way, but some of the mojo is missing from the show. I think most of the issues are the age-old challenges with transferring a story from one medium to the next. We haven’t really seen a lot of video game to TV / movie adaptations that are very good when they try to recreate the same storyline. In fact, I’d go so far as to support the notion that this is probably the best attempt (judging from only two episodes) that I’ve seen, although I’ve not come close to seeing all of them — not even close. But the best straight adaptations I’ve seen are probably the latest Vikander Tomb Raider and maybe Uncharted was passable for a low level of empty enjoyment. From a TV perspective, I really liked Arcane. It was one of the best animated shows I’ve seen in a while, but apparently its connection League of Legends is in name only and shares almost nothing narratively with the game. I still haven’t watched The Witcher yet, but it’s on my to-do list this year.
So to say The Last of Us is the best show adapted from a video game is a low bar, indeed.
Watching the TLoU show feels a little bit like what I experienced last year playing Marvel’s Avengers. You certainly feel like you’re getting a knock-off version of the characters, only with TLoU it’s in reverse with the game coming first and the live-action version coming later. Nothing against Pascal and Ramsey, but it feels like cosplay with them doing their versions of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, in an ironic way like Baker was doing his weird version of Bruce Banner in Marvel’s Avengers when my brain is programmed to hear and see Mark Ruffalo.
But the actor swap aside, I’m not as impressed with the visuals and effects in the TV show as I was led to expect. The clickers also just feel a tad ‘cosplay-ish’. Good costuming is hard to do in the 4K era where detail can be seen so easily, and there’s something slightly off about the infected which is borderline ‘B-movie’ looking. The clicker actors clearly have headpieces on that come across plastic-y. The clicker sounds are spot-on though, and the dilapidated world is pretty well done, (although on this week’s episode some of the close up shots also were a giveaway and looked like a set designer just threw some plants and roots on top of an old car and called it good)
I’ll be curious what you think because I know you hold the game in high esteem. If there were games that should be compatible with live-action TV retelling, it should be the Naughty Dog games. They don’t come more cinematic than those. So this doesn’t fare well for some of the other adaptations coming.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution I'm amazed - my brother used that exact "Avengers" analogy. He said he felt like he was watching Poundland (I think you call them Dollar Stores) Joel and Ellie. What I'm concerned about is that this sort of story has been done and done so well in recent movies - "Logan" and 'Children of Men" specifically - that (combined with how cinematic the game itself already is) the series will seem either completely derivative or even just artistically redundant to me. It's such a slight plot, as well. Colour me dubious.
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