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Collapsing Farts posted:They probably had the big beats planned out (robbits escape, robbits take over world, apocalypse) but had no idea how to connect the dots I think the big flaw here was that robots needed to really earn taking over the world. Instead it was "hey we invented a mind control parasite" that poo poo was just ludicrous since most of the tech was grounded in reality. But it allowed the show to skip over the hard part of taking over the world, so they went with the short cut.
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Jan 7, 2023 20:49
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To me it was crazy how quickly they skipped over the “Dolores killing rich folk who definitely deserve it” part of early season 2. We get like one or two scenes there and the bit in the finale of S1 and then it’s right back to robots vs robots for most of it with a bit of robots vs very incompetent military men again in the middle.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:00
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They had such a good setup that they halfway followed through on. Season 3 set up that the world was secretly run by a godlike algorithm. Plausible and interesting so far. The robots/Doloreses somehow let people know about this/destroy the god. People are angry that their society was built on oppressive control and now that the force controlling society is gone. This is something that fits with the world established and is interesting from a human perspective. Season 3, for all its issues, had a plot that made sense and moved things in the right direction. But you need to follow through with what the humans do next. The robots have made their move and pulled out a vile but vital piece of human society. Narratively and thematically what needs to happen next is society collapses. The next season needed to be a real-life sci-fi wild west with robots running around. You get an opportunity to look at what is miserable and what is actually appealing about the freedom of the wild west. The chaos and destruction are obviously bad, but maybe people come together and form communities. Maybe people find it in themselves to be heroes who help people. Just look at the shattered remains of the human experience, while the evil robots are plotting and building their new forms of control, and the good robots try (and fail) to stop them. Then you introduce New York City as a bizarre incredible gleaming gem built in the lawless wasteland- the culmination of the evil robot's plans. That part of season 4 can happen more or less like it did and that's fine. Williambot deciding to turn the denizens of New York City into killer zombies to unleash on the tentative newly rebuilt post-apocalyptic societies humans have developed can still be the nihilistic ending implying this conflict is going to literally destroy the world. I feel like this may have been part of the original plan, as there are a lot of elements of it in season 4, but it never really comes together. The human resistance should be an important development, but it's never really given enough focus. The show isn't concerned with showing what their world is actually like. Just one scene of a classic Western town, with people living, hiding from their oppressive robot overlords would have made a huge difference. Instead we got a diner that makes no sense in retrospect, entirely disconnected from the rest of the world that we learn about later. Searching for an ancient futuristic weapon in the desert is a really cool motif that could have gotten a lot more focus- and the fact that it was Maeve actually made sense and was neat. Except... they then never used Maeve's abilities. But instead they needed to establish that Caleb had a family so society needed to be "normal" for enough time to pass for his daughter to grow up so the revolution at the end of season 3 had to be quietly swept under the rug. Westworld after season one is plagued by good ideas and bizarre, unsatisfying execution. I remember saying out loud after season one, "Even if everything that follows is garbage, this one season will always be amazing in isolation" and I still believe that. I knew that the story was going to have to shift gears hard after the first season for the story to make sense, and the transition might be rough. And to their credit, they tried. I appreciate how different season 3 and 4 were from the initial premise. But the transition was indeed very rough. Oh well. I'm glad I watched it all. There's a lot of neat ideas in this series.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:16
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Eiba posted:They had such a good setup that they halfway followed through on. I was gonna suggest this causing a schism between good and evil robots, but actually it might be more interesting to have host society split apart in more ways than that - less a simple good/bad division, more different philosophical/practical approaches to the question of human-host relations. Like, there are plenty of options here. Some hosts might decide to just live as regular humans, having come to see the two as being essentially the same, others might go hermit because they're sick of all the bullshit, while others see this breakdown of society as evidence that it is their moral duty to reestablish a strong paternalists state to shepherd humanity - and possible help some "ascend" if they prove themselves of sufficient moral character. And others still see this as a chance to have fun and get back at humanity, or evidence that humanity deserves extinction. All of which can set up interesting conflicts between characters with understandable motivations, where there might be humans and hosts on multiple sides in a conflict, and loyalties can be a bit more fluid without personalities needing to change. If you want a Bad End to that and to accelerate the story to a (near) post-human final season, the obvious solution over mind control nano machines is clearly the tried and true nuclear war. The societal controls that Dolores brought down were literally put in place to prevent that, so it would be a fitting conclusion to society unraveling afterward, even if it was not an inevitable outcome but rather the result of the bad robots tipping the scales. Then, if you still want the "mind controlled humans in New York City" scenario, I think it'd actually be more interesting to have oppressors be replaced rather than the oppressed. Basically, the evil robots end up creating a society of Westworld-style controlled hosts, subservient to the "original and true hosts who earned their independence from humanity".
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Jan 7, 2023 22:19
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They just used mind-control flies because people remember Dolores smashing the fly in the first season. It’s so loving lazy. The whole series is a lesson in wasted potential.
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Jan 8, 2023 02:16
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I AM GRANDO posted:They just used mind-control flies because people remember Dolores smashing the fly in the first season. It’s so loving lazy. The whole series is a lesson in wasted potential. There could have at least been a flashback to cities being overrun with fly swarm. Give the viewer an idea what a horrific even it was.
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Jan 8, 2023 06:09
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Season Two should have been "Escape From Westworld" where the narrative is split between humans trying to avoid the murder robots and escape the island, and awakened hosts trying to deal with the fact that most of their kind are still just complex automata with their buttons flipped to "kill"
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Jan 8, 2023 11:30
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Season Two should have been "Escape From Westworld" where the narrative is split between humans trying to avoid the murder robots and escape the island, and awakened hosts trying to deal with the fact that most of their kind are still just complex automata with their buttons flipped to "kill" And without the stupid mystery poo poo they tried to pull because it worked in season 1.
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Jan 8, 2023 18:15
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A mystery isn't that bad as long as it doesn't actively interfere with the story. You could mix up the timeline in season 1 because both stories were about how lifelike the hosts are and were working towards the question of if the hosts could be sentient. It also led to the good moment when you realize that William's story is in the past because you can see that Dolores is an automaton, not an organic robot. For season 2, everything being jumbled up made absolutely no sense. The story was people trying to escape from the island, and then another story where they came back to the island to figure out what happened. Those two things are completely opposite, and you can't intermix them or it becomes confusing.
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Jan 8, 2023 21:43
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Westworld, a confusing mess with distracting and tone deaf mystery boxes? Heh, good sir, you must be mistaken.
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Jan 9, 2023 02:51
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Entropic posted:The creators were saying back around season 1 that they supposedly had it all planned out for 5 seasons, which, lol, lmao Why do showrunners even say this anymore? Its always a lie, and it doesn't earn anyone any good will. Just don't say anything at all, because obviously everyone is writing everything one season at a time. It's so weird how quickly WW dropped off the map. People joked that GOT disappeared from cultural relevance after its last season (and that's been revised since HOTD which has been surprisingly good), but man, after season 2 of WW it completely dropped off my radar and absolutely no one in my social circle has ever mentioned it. And season 1 and 2 each were appointment television for myself. I don't even think Season 2 is that bad, its just bizarre and a huge mess. It has two really great episodes, but it made such baffling decisions that it felt like each episode was written the week before it aired. I don't know how they did that. I'm kind of morbidly curious to check out season 3 and 4, but I dunno....I dunno.
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Jan 9, 2023 04:24
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Mike N Eich posted:I'm kind of morbidly curious to check out season 3 and 4, but I dunno....I dunno. People hate on them, but seasons 3 and 4 are just mediocre imo. They mostly stop trying to be a mystery box.
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Jan 9, 2023 08:27
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Two is just bafflingly and confusingly bad. three and four are frustratingly mediocre because truckloads of creativity and effort are on display everywhere but the syfy-level writing
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Jan 9, 2023 08:47
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I wonder if it’s related to GOT outpacing it’s source material. Somehow they did a worse job on this.
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Jan 9, 2023 12:14
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Season 3 starts really great: hey, turns out working class people outside of the parks are exploited just as the robots are in the park! And then it swerves into some mystery box, except less interesting (is it really charlotte or is it delores as charlotte?) As for why it declined, I don't think there is a big mystery there. Season 1 had huge name actors, gorgeous scenery, massive set pieces that happened frequently, with lots of either action or nudity throughout, and a mystery box that while not obvious, was not impenetrable either. Like, the stuff on the screen still made some sense if you didn't realize there were 2 timelines. By season 3, it's mostly people talking about the nature of their reality and corporate mergers.
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Jan 9, 2023 17:45
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I don't know I felt like Season 3 also had huge name actors, gorgeous scenery, massive set pieces, and did a good job of being futuristic without looking dumb or cheap. They just got too far up their own rear end with Delores.
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Jan 9, 2023 18:11
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Mike N Eich posted:Why do showrunners even say this anymore? Its always a lie, and it doesn't earn anyone any good will. Just don't say anything at all, because obviously everyone is writing everything one season at a time. That's before taking into account that something being planned out is different from being set in stone. It might still get changed based on (perceived) audience feedback and trying to trick Reddit. Which might be fine with the right writers/showrunners, but it could also result in the original plan no longer making sense but the people making the show not realizing it, resulting in a show that seems far less planned out in the end. That said, I do agree that it doesn't really help anyone to claim to have it all planned out. Either the show doesn't need that assurance, or people are going to look at it and just think less of it for apparently intentionally being what it is.
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Jan 9, 2023 18:38
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"It's all planned out for X seasons!" is a cover for having a lovely middle season that'll get you canceled. It's a fake promise to keep the checks rolling when your plot points are a jumbled mess and the fans are roasting your amateurs' hour writing that "it'll all make sense in the end"
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Jan 9, 2023 20:04
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How I Met Your Mother has entered the chat.
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Jan 9, 2023 20:15
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Planning out multiple seasons is a necessary evil when trying to make a show that isn't British (34 years, 17 episodes) in our glorious nuAmerican season format.
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Jan 9, 2023 22:49
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More seasons you plan out, the more they get back when they cancel it
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Jan 9, 2023 23:10
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Mike N Eich posted:Why do showrunners even say this anymore? Its always a lie, and it doesn't earn anyone any good will. Bulky Bartokomous posted:How I Met Your Mother has entered the chat.
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Jan 10, 2023 00:58
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The hosts were created by man...
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Jan 10, 2023 01:33
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LividLiquid posted:
I brought up because it is a good example how planning things out is no guarantee for success because it’s hard to predict how audiences will react to things over time.
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Jan 10, 2023 03:02
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:I brought up because it is a good example how planning things out is no guarantee for success because it’s hard to predict how audiences will react to things over time. So I m remembering a decade old article I read in sci fi magazine the offical magazine of the sci fi channel. it was about farescape and how the creator had the idea for calling the show "space chase" and it was about this dude being being chased around the galaxy. The ariticle ended by saying that from the very first episode the creator knew what the ending would be. Then the show got cancled. And then they made the two tv movies to wrap poo poo up. They werent very good
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Jan 10, 2023 07:49
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They were good, just extremely time compressed. It was better to have the miniseries than not.
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Jan 10, 2023 09:07
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SCheeseman posted:They were good, just extremely time compressed. It was better to have the miniseries than not. They rushed to the end of the worm hole weapon. Yeah its nice there was a ending. But if you watch the not a 3 parter but it was a 3 parter when they blow up the scaron base magic flower you see it was at it best when the show had time to breath. They also had to get ride of the blue lady cause the makeup was killing her so they adjusted that. they also never got to tie up the whole grey ladies brother was fighting the establishment after learning they were gonna spread a plague etc.
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Jan 10, 2023 09:24
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LividLiquid posted:Because after the endings of high-profile mystery box shows like Battlestar Galactica and LOST disappointed so many (myself thankfully not among them; I loved both,) and Game of Thrones, etc., showrunners often need to convince their audience that they won't be wasting their time to invest in a longform story with a lot of dangling mystery plots, and "we have a plan" is a lot more convincing to people who aren't terminally online than those who are, and sounds better than "we'll make something up when we get there," which is ironic as hell, because that's how Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Venture Brothers work, and those shows never once fell on their face tying things up with a bow. LOST is the bigger/more popular one, and it has more to do with how the show was spinning its wheels in the middle when it had no idea where it was going or what anything meant because Abrams had to Abrams. Once the writing staff wrote an actual game plan for the end, it kind of course corrected. So yeah, people are basically saying they aren't pulling a LOST/Force Awakens/etc. where there is just random stuff thrown out there with them making things up as they go and nothing will be coherent. Doesn't mean that the details of the writing are going to be good, of course, just means its supposed to all be leading up to something instead of just making up everything as we go. This is more of a big idea sci-fi/fantasy concept situation. People don't need long planned endings when a show is a pure character study like Breaking Bad or a society study like The Wire or something. It's reserved for shows that purposefully give you questions - as people generally want those questions to be answered. "What is the island and what happens to the occupants," "What happens at the end of the robot war" and "What happens at the end of the robot war also who are these secret cylons and gods" are things that should have answers when you write the question.
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Jan 10, 2023 20:20
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Bulky Bartokomous posted:I brought up because it is a good example how planning things out is no guarantee for success because it’s hard to predict how audiences will react to things over time. Darko posted:
There's even a part toward the start of the series where head six straight-up says "I'm an angel sent by god" or something to that effect. LividLiquid fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 10, 2023 |
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Jan 10, 2023 20:25
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BSG was another case of reality not living up to many people's expectations. Like the Matrix movies, too. The Wachowski Sisters made a bit of fun of the people who didn't like the ending with that Path of Neo video game, which I thought was pretty dang funny. I'm not sure what some people want, I guess. I'm not arguing that any given thing is a masterpiece, mind you, I'm just commenting on expectations.
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Jan 10, 2023 21:29
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LividLiquid posted:
Yeah the God stuff is there right from the hop, it's just everyone assumed it was bullshit or the Cylons meant an AI, or something. Which is not to say you have to like where the show ended up necessarily (though I did) but they definitely didn't pull it out of their rear end.
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Jan 11, 2023 00:20
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My biggest issue with the course BSG took, being a massive nerd, is how all the spaceships flew about with semi-realistic physics at the start and like regular planes at the end  That and the more we learnt about the cylons in charge the less compelling they became for me.
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Jan 11, 2023 00:50
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I feel like this assumes "planned out" will result in good and coherent TV. Even if the outline makes perfect sense, it's entirely possible for bad editing, dialogue, direction or acting to rob a story of its potential by cutting out important connective tissue or undermining emotional moments. A big thing that it also helps with is legacy. I think of Mr. Robot and there's a big reveal at the end of that series. People go online and say things like "oh my god, look at the little clues that were there all along!" Then the "clues" are just broad moments that could have meant anything at the time and are only re-contextualized after the reveal. It doesn't actually make the show better or smarter, but idiots think it does, so they spread good word of mouth for a series that sucked after its first season.
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Jan 11, 2023 01:47
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Captain Splendid posted:That and the more we learnt about the cylons in charge the less compelling they became for me. If they'd have not loving "AND THEY HAVE A PLAN" every gods damned episode, it would've landed a lot better with the viewers, because they emphatically did not.
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Jan 11, 2023 03:45
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LividLiquid posted:
Yeah this is what hosed it up for me. I was watching tv rips at the time and they left that promo poo poo in.
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Jan 11, 2023 04:01
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DamnGlitch posted:Yeah this is what hosed it up for me. I was watching tv rips at the time and they left that promo poo poo in. That was on the DVDS and all. Explainer*, followed by previously, followed by pre-credits, then credits, then that little montage of clips from later in the episode. I liked it, but it was such a ritual, goddamn. *sci-fi shows nearly always have explainers, they're so lame, even if they're just ominous words fading in at the start of the first episode. I don't imagine anyone ever tries to shove them in front of dramas like This Is Us or A Million Tiny Things, despite those shows being almost as complicated if not more so. BSG is, I think, the only not-lame one out there.
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Jan 11, 2023 04:22
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It's on every release. It's on the Blu Rays. It's effectively a second intro for the show, which is weird. I've not encountered too many shows with those. Quantum Leap had one, Buffy had one for a season or two... things with a premise that needs to be explained quickly for new viewers, I suppose. But this one was just out of place and really set expectations entirely in the wrong direction.
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Jan 11, 2023 04:22
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All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again.
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Jan 11, 2023 06:30
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:BSG was another case of reality not living up to many people's expectations. The God stuff wasn't what got to people, it was the secret six or whatever it was so obviously being an asspull that nobody bought it and people starting to tune out right around there. That was so obviously never planned from the beginning, and when the show says "everyone is a Cylon," it lost its point and balance. Kind of like "everyone is D" in Westworld. At some point it just becomes ridiculous, but a little worse with BSG because that twist was just dumb and even trying to make it fit underlies what happen before in the show.
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Jan 11, 2023 14:45
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My head canon is that Westworld, and Battlestar Galactica, are in the same world.
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Jan 11, 2023 21:56
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