Eh, it was okay. Nothing outstanding, but it was definitely better than other demon-fighting TV crap like Constantine and Helstrom. It kinda reminded me of that R.I.P.D. movie as well. Yeah, that was way, waaaay worse. For what it's worth, The Bondsman is a decent mix of supernatural thriller, action, drama and comedy. I expected it to be non-stop gore comedy, but the dramatic elements of the show were handled rather competently. The villain was interesting too, in that he tried to stop doing evil; in a way, he was kind of an anti-villain. What pissed me off, though, was the music. There were a lot of moments where they set these gruesome murders against the backdrop of silly pop or country tunes. It would've been okay once or twice, but once it started happening in every episode, it was just too much. They clearly thought this some kind of a fresh, groundbreaking, hilarious idea, like we didn't have Kingsman in 2014 or, hell, Reservoir Dogs back in 1992. The same goes for the country numbers. It's as if the creators just googled 'royalty-free country songs' and that was that. The music supervisor, or whoever else was responsible, clearly put in very little effort. All these moments could have been so much better if they had just bothered. The pacing could have been better, too. The last two episodes are easily the weakest. They really dial back on the jokes and action, leaving only the drama. While this show has benefited from the occasional infusion of drama, it just doesn't work as a full-on drama. It's as if there were an entire Breaking Bad episode in which Walt and Jesse just told jokes and riffed off each other. While it worked moderation, an entire episode of that would just be ridiculous. Even the demons in those last two episodes are lame. One is a boy who does virtually nothing and is only on screen for about fifteen seconds. The second is a chick with wings who relies on that stupid shifting effect that was really popular in horror movies about 25 years ago. Overall, I'm not surprised this was cancelled after just one season. While it is competently made, it lacks an identity of its own and probably would've worked better as a movie. The entire season is less than four hours long, so with a little trimming here and there, it could easily have been a film. The jokes are easily the weakest part of the show anyway, so remove them and make it a more serious film in the style of Keanu Reeves's Constantine, and it could have been something. As it is, though, I don't regret wasting my time on The Bondsman.
Legit one of the worst comic-based shows I've ever watched. The plot is boring as hell. The writing ****. Everything looks grey and uninteresting. Except for Robert Wisdom (Henry), the acting is pretty awful across the board, especially when it comes to the female lead, Ana, who looks constipated in every single scene. The two leads in general is the show's biggest problem. These are some of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever seen. All they ever do is whine and complain about everything. Flawed heroes can be done interestingly, but this is so not the case here. I don't even feel like writing a proper review. I'd rather do laundry than watch this show, and I hate doing laundry. Just don't watch it.
No idea why this season got worse reviews than the first one. It's the exact same formula. Starts off interesting, then meanders for quite a while, then goes out with a bang at the end. Only this time the season's longer, so it meanders for a little longer, but there's more of a payoff as well. Actors do certainly carry this show. There's a lot of kinda uninteresting scenes with boring monologues where nothing happens, but the likes of Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins and Common manage to elevate the material through sheer, genuine emoting. Sure, that whole subplot about the other silo took forever to take off, but it's somewhat remedied by what is easily Steve Zahn's best performance ever.
Otherwise, everything's the same as before. It has a pretty decent detective mystery thing going on. The audio/visual atmosphere is pretty nice, although I would really appreciate if the whole thing wasn't so friggin' dark all the time. I had to literally squint during certain scenes.
Drip-feeding the viewers with interesting details, meanwhile dedicating 75% of the screen time to some petty squabbles, usually between side characters you don't even care all that much about, still remains my biggest complaint with this series. But with only two more seasons to go, there's at least hope for some narrative acceleration down the line.
All in all, I'm looking forward to season 3. Despite all the flaws, this is still one of the better sci-fi series today.
Aside from Emily Watson, Mark Strong and Olivia Williams, who can pretty much sleepwalk through any kind of movie or series and still be great in it, It's been a while since I've seen acting this bad. Like, I genuinely broke out with laughter at how bad it was in almost every scene.
This series obviously has a lot of production value but, I'm sorry, I just can't take any of it seriously when almost all actors are as expressive as a plank of wood with a human face painted over it.
P.S. What's up with everyone at this sisterhood being so ugly? Is this some kind of subtle meta-messaging? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what message that is.
They turned one of the most iconic mangas of all time into a mediocre horror anime. It has a fairly unique visual style and an interesting soundtrack, courtesy of avantgarde maestro Colin Stetson, but aside from that it's a complete failure. It's not scary. The narrative is disjointed and is comprised of almost standalone stories that lack any sort of cohesion or logic to them. Plus it's cut super short, with a runtime of just around two hours. You're telling me THIS is what they've been working on for five years? What a joke.
A strong start, but by the end of the season the show is drowning in superficial philosophizing and an overabundance of cliched melodrama. There are also a lot of logical screwups that make it unrealistic. Policemen chasing the criminal, ramming the car even though there are innocent children in it - children they are supposedly trying to save. The protagonist literally wasting completely innocent people (scene after a hanged robot explodes in Misaki's face) and sometimes even their friends (Malcolm kills his comrades after they discover Misaki's prototype) with little to no justification. The list goes on. Just because it's sci-fi doesn't mean they can get away with such outrageous things. I didn't particularly like or root for any of the characters. Each of them comes across as either extremely selfish or simply a cold-blooded killer. The writer clearly doesn't understand that no amount of "I'm a living being and they tried to kill me!" or "I have to protect these children!" can justify literally killing innocent people. I think in this series, the Terminator, the supposed "bad guy" of the story, kills fewer people than our so-called protagonists, with whom we are supposed to empathise. Another big problem with Zero is the creators' desire to cram in as much sequel bait as possible. Despite its limited runtime of around 3.5 hours, it has enough characters, locations and lore for at least three seasons, and that doesn't do the series any good. Imagine if Ghost In The Shell, the very first original 1995 full-length anime, had featured all the characters and events from both its sequel and the Stand Alone Complex series. That's pretty much what happened with Terminator Zero. Despite being almost three times as long as that film, there simply wasn't enough time to flesh out all the characters and express the significance of all the events. The last episode is particularly bad in this respect, as it's basically just one big teaser trailer for season 2. I also didn't like the soundtrack. It's too soft, almost mushy at times. Although Brad Fiedel's soundtracks from the original films occasionally dabbled in more chill, atmospheric tracks, it was never the focus, and most of the time the music underlined the urgency and drama of the situation perfectly. The Terminator Zero soundtrack, on the other hand, is so 100% chill that you could mistake it for a Youtube sleep music compilation. Just compare Brad Fiedel's timeless main theme with Zero's main theme and you'll hear the difference instantly. All in all, the series has potential, but the creators need to balance its elements. Make it more thriller and less soap drama. Make it more hard sci-fi, or at least semi-believable sci-fi, and less middle school philosophy class fantasy. And please, for god's sake, if you are going to make the protagonists kill innocents, at least give them a good reason for doing it.
They should've focused on epic battles, gore and magic instead of trying to pass off this collection of childish squabbles as some sort of profound drama.
The animation is pretty good, but there's only so much the visuals can do to enhance a story as immature as this one.
X-Men '97 got off to a strong start, with good action and nicely revamped animation. Unfortunately, the series quickly descended into cheap soap melodrama. I know Cyclops has always been a bit of a crybaby, but here they take it to a whole new level. I want to see him laser people and do other badass things, not spend two episodes watching him whine about his marriage and his baby. The series is also, of course, being a Disney show, very female-centric. All the women in the show show strong agency, willpower and the ability to get things done. Almost all the men (with the exception of Magneto) are reduced to whiny crybabies. Gambit is basically the same as Cyclops, except he also makes painfully unfunny jokes and remarks. And, of course, he doesn't have the balls to confess his love. If there was one thing from the old series that the Disney writers wanted to capitalise on, it was of course this trait. Wolverine is almost a supporting character here. And of course, his unrequited love for Jean now becomes his entire personality. Yes, it's not as if we've already seen this storyline played out in the original X-Men film trilogy. Let's just pretend that nothing has happened since 1997 and people are still invested in it somehow. All in all, just a sad attempt at a cash grab. They should have called it Soyjack-Men instead.
My god, why did they have to drag Kingpin and Murdoch into this? I swear to god, disney are hellbent on destroying every single piece of intellectual property they own.
Quite likely the worst TV series I've seen in a long while. The only reason I've watched it till the end is because the creators stated its events will be extremely important to the plot of the 4th season of The Boys, and I regret every second I've wasted on this woke garbage.
Such a waste of potential. The visuals are gorgeous, the action is stunning. But the blatant wokeness of the show ruins everything. Maybe I could've bought it had the story been interesting, but it's not. It's extremely boring, and the forced drama that gets shoved down the viewers' throats is insufferable to the point of being obnoxious.
Somehow the creators expected us to empathize with these characters that basically have zero setup and don't do anything particularly interesting.
Remember how in the original Castlevania series the characters of Trevor, Alucard, Sypha, Carmilla were gradually expanded upon, revealing their complexity and difficult morals behind their every decision, scene after scene, episode after episode, season after season? Yeah, forget about all that. Here, the creators quickly establish some characters and expect you to immediately empathize with them just because some of their relatives died and/or they were enslaved at some point.
The real world parallels are just awful and show these almighty vampire supervillains in an extremely cartoonish, childish manner.
Overall, just everything aside from the visuals is a major downgrade from the previous series. I'm glad that, unlike critics, at least the viewers were able to see this series for what it really is, which is woke garbage.
With a solid budget and a grandiose scale, The Sandman had a huge potential for becoming one of the biggest, most memorable series of the decade. Unfortunately though what we got is a subpar fantasy detective, at times carried by solid performances by Sturridge, Holbrook and Thewlis, but sadly even their combined talents couldn't've turned this into something sensible and worth watching. Also there's a HUGE amount of SJW propaganda, which, without exaggeration, truly is the series' M-O. Almost every character that isn't gay or black is either an **** or just stupid and irrelevant. Dream is an obvious exception, but for some reason pretty much everyone around gives him a flak. Despite being incarcerated for over a century, everyone gives him **** as if he voluntarily abandoned his kingdom. More than that, the creators contradict themselves on numerous occasions, such as with Johanna. Her character is introduced to us as this strong, independent type woman, who cares a lot about money and very little about what others think of her. Yet, within the very same episode, we see her waking up at her home in the middle of the night with a full make up on and an impeccable hairstyle, which not only makes no sense whatsoever, but is also clearly aimed at appeasing straight male audience. The series has some good aspects about it. The aforementioned trio of actors is great, the music is fine, the visuals are ok too. But there's not much to it beyond that.
