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Reviews
One Piece (2023)
A felicitous One Piece speed run
I have watched a couple of hundreds episodes as teenager which is not enough to call myself a fan.
The story is very much the same as in the anime but without endless recapt, theme song and staring contests during battles. They cut out just the right stuff and kept the background of each character.
This reminded my why the series is popular. It is not just about fighting super heroes but about complex characters with deep motivations and high goals.
One flaw I would like to mention is the action. The essence of One Piece is that most of the heroes and opponents are extremely fast and strong. Unfortunately, it does not work in the live adaptation. The choreography of the fights is good. But in real-life you cannot swing a huge axe very quick without appearing it to be very light. Ultimately, the fights are less fantastic and less "wow".
Nonetheless, there is a lot of potential for great fights in the coming seasons (if they fund the CGI properly). I would love to see more of the characters.
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)
Stopped after 4 episodes
Yes, the series is better than the damned movie but still bad. I anticipated the live adaptation is less funny. But why did they cancel the love?
The series suffers a common curse of stories with young characters. The actors are not good and often over-expressive. I don't want to blame the actors. What can we expect of a 14 year old protagonist?
The world building is an up and down. There are great sceneries but then the costumes look really cheap. A major disappointment is that the world feels so small because of the short travel duration.
Although I am a fan of the original series, I accepted that the writeres made deliberate changes. However, there are some miserable character introductions (e.g. Ozai and Azula) and also some significant differences in the personal motivations which alter the characters and the long-term course of the adventure. (e.g. Aang missed the 100 years because he went for a walk?!)
But the biggest flaw is that many events or decisions happen out of the nowhere whithout explanation or introduction. As I said my perspective is biased.
The visual effects are okay but do not turn the tides.
Sin límites (2022)
3y reduced to 5h
Boundless is a historical adventure series which depicts the first circumnavigation by Magellan and Elcano in the 16th century.
Unfortunately, 6x45 minutes of playtime face three years of travel time. Therefore, the series feels like a collection of the most important events during the journey. The temporal and spatial distance between two scenes is often incomprehensible, and many months are often summarized in a few minutes.
The characters are simple with usually one defining motivation. Hence, there are conflicts between them but not within. Beyond the two main protagonists, the crew is an indistinguishable mass of men. That leads to a lack of sympathy and a low engagement in the story.
Finally, due to the historical nature of the series it is known what happens, and consequently, the level of excitement is low. But dependent on the prior knowledge, there might be a few unexpected events for each viewer, and hopefully, everyone will have learned something new after they have watched the series.
The Boys (2019)
Marvel meets Trump!
On the sinking wave of the MCU, Stephen Schwarz presents a super hero series which questions its own genre.
The series revolves around a team of superheroes, the Seven, which is basically the Justice League from DC. Indeed, no creativity was wasted into inventing new superpowers because the pool is already humongous. Soon, it becomes apparent that the Seven and the embracing enterprise Vaught are not as gallant as they appear to be, but actually corrupted by their obsession with power and money.
Opposed to them stands the group of not-super not-heroes who try to bring them down.
Between all those antiheroes and antivillains, there are Annie and Hughie. Two adorable names for an adorable young couple whose pure teenage love should not exist. Their genuineness draws all the sympathy to them. Annie, alias Starlight, is a young superheroine who was supposedly abused by her mother in the youth - just like it happens in the course of beauty pageants - and suffers now sexual harassment. Hughie is an ordinary tech salesman who experiences bizarre forms of violence.
The series is very entertaining with lots of good action and very creative gore scenes. I am still fascinated by the baby with laser eyes who has been directed like a gun to the bad guys. At the same time, the series is hitting some serious notes about lobbyism, populism and chauvinism. All of that is carried by an interesting set of characters. Each one of them has unique traits and motivations that are discovered in the course of the series.
The series ends with a surprising cliffhanger. Are they now in heaven, or hell, or in reality. And where are they going with Aquaman, sorry, the Deep??? I am looking forward to the next season. Quote: "Sequel after sequel after sequel."
Edit after season 3:
It was a pleasure to watch season 2 and 3, and my review from the 1st season is still valid. I want to devote a little add-on to Homelander, the main antagonist of the series. The character reminds me of Geoffrey in Game of Thrones in terms of unlikeability but with an edge.
First and foremost, I want to give credits to Antony Starr who did a great performance in depicting the multiple layers of Homelander's personality. The publicity most often sees him smiling and confident; towards his team and staff he is very strict with a stone face; but when he is alone we see a vulnerable "human" side of him. In the course of the series we see how the walls are breaking and the layers are intertwining. All of that is well portrayed.
The most basic trait (and only weakness) of Homelander is his pursuit of love. From the beginning and throughout the series, he is concerned about the opinion of the publicity and his share price. But we discover that this need is caused by a lack of parental affection during his childhood being raised without parents in a laboratory. This becomes most obvious in his affair with Madelyn Stillwell who not only pleases him sexually but also breast-feeds him. This is not the only occurrence in which his pursuit of love gets exploited. Stormfront has an easy game tempting him too.
Homelander desperately seeks relationships and if his targets are not willing he uses his dominance to oppress them. He seems genuinely surprised and upset when he hears that Maeve was never truly in love with him, but instead scared of him. However, it is hard to believe that oppressive behavior happens unconsciously. More likely, he just did not care about Maeve but only about his ego.
After reflecting on the relationship with Maeve, Homelander forces Annie into a relationship but this time very consciously. Relationships have become a means of public approved control.
It is existential for Homelander's character to be in control. There is an interdependence between being in control over the situation, others and himself. A crack in each of these pillars impairs the stability of the whole building.
It has already been established that Homelander uses relationships to keep people close and under his control. This tactic is accompanied by intimidation and stalking (with his super hearing and x-ray view). Apart from that Homelander often threatens with physical violence against his opponents, their partners or whole cities. These threats are not empty as he actually did kill Supersonic.
Homelander often appears in talk shows or other public events and demonstrates his power by ensuring to the audience that the situation is under control and all is good. Indeed, security is his main political leverage too. His name and outfit is not random. Homelander portraits himself as a kind of father of the nation who is wise and leads his family through difficult times.
This claim demands him to be supreme over everybody else. There is definitively physical evidence to that claim. Homelander is introduced as the apex predator and up to now nobody could seriously match him in a one-to-one. From his physical perfection Homelander derives that he is flawless in general. He expresses a god complex when he compares his abilities to Jesus'.
Of course in reality, Homelander is not in control over anything. When he is not in control over the situation, he lies to the public. In his efforts to suppress any feelings apart from anger (and sometimes horniness), he wears a mask of no emotions; and when he loses a fight he covers his bruises with makeup.
To close up, why is Homelander so unlikeable? He himself says that he is a superhero but also a human. While the audience desires a human who has faults with faults and flaws to sympathize with, Homelander tries to eradicate exactly these parts of his character. What is left behind is a plain superhero who does not need to be courageous because he is too tough to be truly in danger, and who does not need to train his skills because he already cuts people in half with the blink of his eyes. In terms of unlikeability, Homelander is a masterpiece.