G&G Review: Netflix Original - Altered Carbon

Q
Feb 5, 2018
3 min read

Seeing as I was bedridden with a cold all weekend, I thought that I would catch up on my Netflix. So when I logged in, the first thing that popped up was the newly released (Feb. 2) ALTERED CARBON.

If you've never heard of either, the show or the novel, see below what Wikipedia has to say:

Altered Carbon is a 2002 hardboiled cyberpunk science fiction novel by Richard K. Morgan. Set in a future in which interstellar travel is effected by transferring consciousnesses between bodies ("sleeves"), it follows the attempt of Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. elite soldier turned private investigator, to investigate a rich man's death for him.

I'm just gonna rip the band-aid off, and come out with my opinion of the entire Season 1 of Altered Carbon...

If the entire production team, including Netflix, would have spent as much time and consideration on their story development, cohesiveness and fluidity as they did the Guerrilla Advertising; this would have been an fully realized & complete attempt at intellectual story telling.

The first two episodes were had to get through. Then the story started to pick up, but the character interactions or dialogue, I should say, never hit the mark for me. Maybe because one of the characters (Martha Higareda played Officer Kristin Ortega) had such a thick Latin accent, I found myself rewinding just to understanding what she was saying. And she has a lot of ton of freakin' lines man. I'm still trying to figure out if that is why they added all the Spanish subtitles in order to hide the fact that her accent was taking away from the audience's understanding. I don't know. I just felt as if I kept missing something in the conversations about what was actually going on, especially with all the elements of combating parties within the show.

The rich staying rich and being able to afford the best clones that money could by.
The poor that would either die in their original bodies or try to afford another body that might not be what they'd prefer physically, but hey, they'd get to live another day.
And the soldiers that fought against the world-wide practice of "resleeving" or transferring your consciousness to another body to live longer.
Law enforcement wanting devout religious individuals that were victims of murder to stand against their murders in a court of law.
And lastly the Christians that believed it was wrong to come back after dying because the soul is gone from the original body.

Now that's a lot to try and break-down in 10 episodes. But Netflix (like always) through a dart at it, and missed the bull's eye.

I truly believe that if they would have either 1) split all these multiples of story plots into two seasons, or 2) made more episodes, this would have allowed enough time and explanation for the audience to understand what the hell was going on.

And from what I am told, this was the same problem with Netflix movie BRIGHT. Just doing to much, with not enough time.

So many wonderful plot branch-offs and not enough patience to slow it down and produce quality content for the viewer to be able to digest it properly.

Because of this, I also feel that the creators may have sealed up the ending tight with a bow, just in case they don't get a Season 2, and left just enough dangling out just in case they do.

I will say that the cinematography was visually outstanding! And I did in fact feel like I'd be transported to another time and space; which was a good thing since I was starting to get a little cabin fever from being sick. I also don't want to forget to mention and every scene had its on color palette if you pay it attention. A very neon look to it all. But not trashy. Like Atomic Blonde.