TV/Movies Megathread

[crazy canuck]

Finished Masters of the Air.
My girlfriend who usually isn't one for war stuff at all really liked it. A little bit of crying at the end maybe.
Thinking to rewatch Band of brothers soon. It is the better show. Though Masters of the Air is very good nonetheless, certainly much better than The Pacific.
Though I'm thankful I won't have to watch those credits again. Interesting how it has some vibes of a pre-streaming cheesy American TV show despite being made today- such a shame its so soon after the last of the guys died.

I liked the heroics of the credits because it's a nice break from all the grimdark and cynicism.

Agreed on BoB>MotA>Pacific, although I appreciate The Pacific much more on my second watch of it, since by then I have accepted I won't be watching something living up to BoB.

Agreed, I hoped they would do the credits that way, and they didn't disappoint.

[HVC]

Re fallout mystery boxes. Most get explained. Plus some new ones added in after the opening the also get explained.

There is one thing I think they kind of left unanswered, or at least not explicitly explained but I don't think mamy finished the show so I won't go  into it.

[crazy canuck]

What I don't like about this way of organising series is its so formulaic and obvious.

Episode 1- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 2- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 3- monster of the week
Episode 4- lets look at that something mysterious in a bit more detail!
Episode 5- monster of the week
Episode 6- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 7- develop the something mysterious! Woo!
Episode 8- weird comedy episode that doesn't fit in at all and is either amazing or awful
Episode 9- monster of the week, with a big mysterious cliff hanger
Episode 10- quick wrap up that the mysterious thing is actually really boring and easily solved.

Early on it should often be a mystery what the big mysterious thing even is. Have several possible threads. Have sub-conclusions where real progress is made and directions completely change.
Maybe there's no obvious villain at all till the very end where he points out some not at all obvious things were connected to him (in a way that makes sense, not just added in after the fact).

I dunno. Its like...there's this big demand from modern TV to have an overall series plot whilst at the same time they want to pull in a old style stand alone adventure direction.
Strange New Worlds manages this quite well I think. It has a few B-level big plots going on whilst it focusses on its central stories. When the big bad pops up at the end of the series it feels organic, it was just one of the B plots which has blown up.

I don't understand this criticism, I thought everything was tied up together quite nicely.

It's almost as if you didn't watch closely enough to pick up the underlying themes, and you expected it all to be explained to you.

You can certainly watch this show on a surface level, but then you end up like Yi who didn't understand the time in the first season of Westworld.

[Syt]

Finished Fallout. Overall very happy with it. There'll be some complaints about lore accuracy, I'm sure, but I think they nailed the tone and feeling of the games quite well.

Actually, the story plays out much like a Fallout game. Here's the main quest, but you'll be sidetracked and stumble across additional distractions along the way. And there's plenty skeletons with environmental storytelling. And they certainly didn't pull punches on the violence, gore, crass/gross out humor. And roomba brain was great (I guess that's vague enough not to count as a spoiler ).

And I liked the "Vault 33 mystery." And the Brotherhood as LARPing knight wannabes was fun

Not sure how I feel about the amount of flashbacks, though. Overall, I thought the wrap up of the main plot was fine (the code being 101097 - release date of Fallout 1 - was a nice touch). And the final scene and the end credits were nice to see - didn't expect it here (let alone so changed).

Then aghain, the timeline of the games is:
- 2102 - 2104 (Fallout 76)
- 2161 (Fallout 1)
- 2241 (Fallout 2)
- 2277 (Fallout 3)
- 2281 (Fallout New Vegas)
- 2287 (Fallout 4)
- 2296 (Fallout TV show)

So it would make sense that locations have changed since we last saw them.

Anyways, I'm glad season 2 has already been confirmed. I might have to install FO3/NV again, plus the Begin Again modlist for Tale of Two Wastelands.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/79547

Video overview of the modlist:

[crazy canuck]

Been watching Fallout a bit more and one thing annoys me, it's not just a Fallout thing, but it's a good example.

Spoilers ahead for the first three episodes of Fallout


I don't like the mystery box. I think Lost popularised it back in the day. Present a mystery to the viewer, the viewer gets an interest to know the answer and therefore will continue to watch. Lost made the mystery the thing, there was nothing there, we never got to know why there was a Polar bear, it was just an empty mystery to keep viewer interest. There was no Babylon 5 style payoff in the last season, it was just an empty gimmick.

This is what I felt with the father and the scientist in Fallout. The father knows secret shit, he gets kidnapped by some super famous external woman that then inexplicably lets the rest of the vault live. The whatshername girl then has to go out into the real world to find her father. Mystery #1.

Then she meets the scientist, he has some weird shit going on and everyone hunts him. Instead of explaining what it's about, why he's hunted and the importance of his mission and the consequences of everything we get him eating poison explaining jack shit, and then we're presented with the fact that he knows the girls name. Mystery #2.

We might get presented with the answer later in the season, who knows, I just think it's so lazy writing. This is not how human beings behave. A leader of ruthless raiders capturing an intact vault filled with loot and slaves would not just let them live undisturbed for weird reasons, she has lost a lot of loyal followers, some of them just sleeping and she just leaves them after winning? She would lose all respect of her followers and presumably get killed post haste if she would show such a callous disregard for her followers lives. That's how humans behave, leaders get to be leaders because they keep the loyalty of their followers. Needlessly wasting their lives because she does not feel like waiting for them to wake up from sleep is a surefire way of getting deposed. She would presumably be expected to share the loot and the slaves with her followers, Germanic king style.

And then the girl walks with the scientist for hours and hours. Or at least for a good while. Are we to expect that they don't say anything for all that time? That she would not overwhelm him with questions as to everything they just went through? Questions on the history and politics of the world that's entirely new for her? Are we to expect that all they talked for all that time was a minute just so he could have time to be mysterious and not at all helpful?

It's just so lazy writing, it annoys me.

On the other hand the amount of candles seem credible so far.

When you watch the rest of the show, you will understand. There was no way the scientist was going to tell her what he was carrying.

[Syt]

Oh, also some unexpected guest appearances: Dale Dickey (last seen smashing her bf's head under an ATM in Breaking Bad), Matt Berry, Chris Parnell, Fred Armisen, Erik Estrada, ...

[Josquius]

What I don't like about this way of organising series is its so formulaic and obvious.

Episode 1- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 2- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 3- monster of the week
Episode 4- lets look at that something mysterious in a bit more detail!
Episode 5- monster of the week
Episode 6- monster of the week, with a side mention of something mysterious
Episode 7- develop the something mysterious! Woo!
Episode 8- weird comedy episode that doesn't fit in at all and is either amazing or awful
Episode 9- monster of the week, with a big mysterious cliff hanger
Episode 10- quick wrap up that the mysterious thing is actually really boring and easily solved.

Early on it should often be a mystery what the big mysterious thing even is. Have several possible threads. Have sub-conclusions where real progress is made and directions completely change.
Maybe there's no obvious villain at all till the very end where he points out some not at all obvious things were connected to him (in a way that makes sense, not just added in after the fact).

I dunno. Its like...there's this big demand from modern TV to have an overall series plot whilst at the same time they want to pull in a old style stand alone adventure direction.
Strange New Worlds manages this quite well I think. It has a few B-level big plots going on whilst it focusses on its central stories. When the big bad pops up at the end of the series it feels organic, it was just one of the B plots which has blown up.

I don't understand this criticism, I thought everything was tied up together quite nicely.

It's almost as if you didn't watch closely enough to pick up the underlying themes, and you expected it all to be explained to you.

You can certainly watch this show on a surface level, but then you end up like Yi who didn't understand the time in the first season of Westworld.

What show are you talking about here?

[crazy canuck]

Funny, I was going to make the same quip to your post but opted for more of an explanation.

[Josquius]

Funny, I was going to make the same quip to your post but opted for more of an explanation.

You're saying whenever a show does this STD/Dr who style thing there's always underlying themes and it's a lot smarter unfolding the mystery than it seems?

[crazy canuck]

Funny, I was going to make the same quip to your post but opted for more of an explanation.

You're saying whenever a show does this STD/Dr who style thing there's always underlying themes and it's a lot smarter unfolding the mystery than it seems?

No, I'm saying that your post demonstrates that you didn't understand what was going on in the fallout show.

[Josquius]

Funny, I was going to make the same quip to your post but opted for more of an explanation.

You're saying whenever a show does this STD/Dr who style thing there's always underlying themes and it's a lot smarter unfolding the mystery than it seems?

No, I'm saying that your post demonstrates that you didn't understand what was going on in the fallout show.

I've not watched fallout yet.
I've no idea if it falls into this usual pattern or not.

[Josquius]

On masters of the air. One question stands out to me. What the hell happened with Sandra?
They show a scene of her on a tram in Paris then going into a backroom to meet other spies then... That thread just vanishes.
She left a note in her room but... Why show the Paris stuff? It goes nowhere. The second scene especially seemed to suggest a subplot.

[crazy canuck]

Funny, I was going to make the same quip to your post but opted for more of an explanation.

You're saying whenever a show does this STD/Dr who style thing there's always underlying themes and it's a lot smarter unfolding the mystery than it seems?

No, I'm saying that your post demonstrates that you didn't understand what was going on in the fallout show.

I've not watched fallout yet.
I've no idea if it falls into this usual pattern or not.

Well, that explains it I thought you were commenting on the show.  Now I don't understand what the point of your post was if you haven't even seen the show.

[Syt]

Huh, some of the ruins in Fallout, half buried in sand (inside and out) reminded me of abandoned towns I've seen in documentaries about Namibia - turns out scenes were filmed in the Kolmanskop ghost town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmanskop

[FunkMonk]

Watched The Holdovers. They're right when they say they don't make many movies like that anymore. 4 teachers of Antiquity out of 5.