Honestly, I still lament the lack of a good replacement for Warren Ellis. Castlevania was a show that, while it still modified parts of the original games, still had multifaceted characters and insanely good dialogues, sometimes marred by conversations chock-full of expletives. At least the second season ended in a high note before third and fourth crashed and burned.
And now, the best way I can describe Nocturne is "All flat talk and no substance".
Honestly, if the writer of this show had just delivered a straightforward action series, I wouldn't have minded at all, but the big problem is that there are pompous but poor attempts imitate its predecessor, and if you stop to look at anything at all for just a second, everything reveals how shallow the storytelling is, how flimsily everything is connected and how badly they missed great opportunities for grand storytelling. Everything, the french revolution, is just window dressing for a by-the-numbers plot. The lack of good dialogues just make the expletives sound even more childish, and nearly everyone being an asshole without depth makes me lose interest.
Like puppets, many have only one single trail of thought that they will repeat over and over and will never develop or delve deeper into it. Maria keeps repeating the word 'freedom' and 'revolution' and about how important it is, but nothing deeper comes from this. No mention of the philosophers, illuminism or even the Women's March on Versailles, and when she clashes against abbot Emmanuel, its just 'Freedom is good and church is bad' versus 'church is good and revolution is bad' over and over and over, no talks about philosophy or reasonings from either side, making everything just disappears in comparison to the church 'we love you' scene of the original or Dracula talking to Isaac about nature of trust.
Annette is now a runaway slave and freedom fighter... that comes to europe to teach the monster slayer about those who creates monsters... what? Why couldn't Trevor already know that? Anyway, while I absolutely loved that they referenced Candomblé and Orixas, I felt that everything was weirdly disconnected from the main quest. She just shows up to demonstrate that, yes, being a slave was absolutely awful, and is guided by a mãe de santo to show up on Richter's door because plot demands, that's it. I didn't feel she had a good chemistry with Richter because of ye olde slap-slap dynamics for kiss-kiss later (and we already had that with Trevor and Sypha), her flashbacks and solo scenes are long repeated speeches eat a lot of time that could serve developing the plot and her getting mad at Richter for losing control and running away made me feel like she was kind of an hipotritical bitch, after all, she lost control herself and ended with her best friend killed. And Richter was there to console her. She could have been tied to the plot far better, for example, the vampire who murdered her mother could be the big bad, or said vampire could be trying to deliver the big bad the blood of Sekhmeth and Annette wants to stop it, but he barely shows up outside of the flashbacks to be killed or why not get the castlevania in the Americas? It would be awesome to use something akin to the first part of 'Interview with the Vampire' with a bunch of vampires fleeing Europe to try to establish a domain on the colonies and she requiring specialized help, tying better with Olrox.
Olrox feels like a poor man's Isaac from the first series, to be the 'not so evil anti-villain', except that he has no good dialogues, no chemistry with his new paramour because of repeated slap-slap dynamics and is also a hypocrite. He complains about Richter's mom killing his love just because he was a vampire, but has no qualms about killing a person because they were a noble. A noble that literally just gave money to a beggar And when its time to open his mouth to talk about his loved one, the 'freedom' is repeated again instead of a heartbreaking speech about finding love after aeons. Make us interested in the characters, please!
And this keeps repeating over and over, vampires don't have any meaningful time or development besides 'we are vampires and somethingsomething natural order', while I like Franka Potente, her acting Erzsebet Bathory was as flat as her character, and for some weird reason she already starts with the mcguffin, making me ask why the hell didn't she block the sun from the getgo right from Russia another wasted opportunity. And everyone has a really sad traumatic story! Everyone! If everyone is miserable, it just makes me jaded. bringing Julius just to make him miserable in an insanely contrieved coincidence didn't help at all
But honestly? It's not all bad, and I will stick around for season 2. I still liked the action scenes, Edouard singing for Maria was a really touching moment (I wish they invest more in him next season), Richter showing frailty and crying in despair was also quite good (even if it led to an awesome-looking but flimsily justified scene of him just getting his powers back out of nowhere after a flashback and a another f-bomb and saying something to Julius more in tune with Marvel movies instead of something really deep. Again, I just wish the writers didn't try to punch out of their weight and deliver something enjoyable instead of pretending to be deep by repeating 'freedom' over and over.
Out of genuine curiosity, why talk about the French revolution and freedom without going deeper into the topic? Lack of interest in research? Fear of bumping into topics like socialism?
Screaming 'Freedom' all the time doesn't replace good dialogues, or plot, or characterization.
Honestly, I still lament the lack of a good replacement for Warren Ellis. Castlevania was a show that, while it still modified parts of the original games, still had multifaceted characters and insanely good dialogues, sometimes marred by conversations chock-full of expletives. At least the second season ended in a high note before third and fourth crashed and burned.
And now, the best way I can describe Nocturne is "All flat talk and no substance".
Honestly, if the writer of this show had just delivered a straightforward action series, I wouldn't have minded at all, but the big problem is that there are pompous but poor attempts imitate its predecessor, and if you stop to look at anything at all for just a second, everything reveals how shallow the storytelling is, how flimsily everything is connected and how badly they missed great opportunities for grand storytelling. Everything, the french revolution, is just window dressing for a by-the-numbers plot. The lack of good dialogues just make the expletives sound even more childish, and nearly everyone being an asshole without depth makes me lose interest.
Like puppets, many have only one single trail of thought that they will repeat over and over and will never develop or delve deeper into it. Maria keeps repeating the word 'freedom' and 'revolution' and about how important it is, but nothing deeper comes from this. No mention of the philosophers, illuminism or even the Women's March on Versailles, and when she clashes against abbot Emmanuel, its just 'Freedom is good and church is bad' versus 'church is good and revolution is bad' over and over and over, no talks about philosophy or reasonings from either side, making everything just disappears in comparison to the church 'we love you' scene of the original or Dracula talking to Isaac about nature of trust.
Annette is now a runaway slave and freedom fighter... that comes to europe to teach the monster slayer about those who creates monsters... what? Why couldn't Trevor already know that? Anyway, while I absolutely loved that they referenced Candomblé and Orixas, I felt that everything was weirdly disconnected from the main quest. She just shows up to demonstrate that, yes, being a slave was absolutely awful, and is guided by a mãe de santo to show up on Richter's door because plot demands, that's it. I didn't feel she had a good chemistry with Richter because of ye olde slap-slap dynamics for kiss-kiss later (and we already had that with Trevor and Sypha), her flashbacks and solo scenes are long repeated speeches eat a lot of time that could serve developing the plot and her getting mad at Richter for losing control and running away made me feel like she was kind of an hipotritical bitch, after all, she lost control herself and ended with her best friend killed. And Richter was there to console her. She could have been tied to the plot far better, for example, the vampire who murdered her mother could be the big bad, or said vampire could be trying to deliver the big bad the blood of Sekhmeth and Annette wants to stop it, but he barely shows up outside of the flashbacks to be killed or why not get the castlevania in the Americas? It would be awesome to use something akin to the first part of 'Interview with the Vampire' with a bunch of vampires fleeing Europe to try to establish a domain on the colonies and she requiring specialized help, tying better with Olrox.
Olrox feels like a poor man's Isaac from the first series, to be the 'not so evil anti-villain', except that he has no good dialogues, no chemistry with his new paramour because of repeated slap-slap dynamics and is also a hypocrite. He complains about Richter's mom killing his love just because he was a vampire, but has no qualms about killing a person because they were a noble. A noble that literally just gave money to a beggar And when its time to open his mouth to talk about his loved one, the 'freedom' is repeated again instead of a heartbreaking speech about finding love after aeons. Make us interested in the characters, please!
And this keeps repeating over and over, vampires don't have any meaningful time or development besides 'we are vampires and somethingsomething natural order', while I like Franka Potente, her acting Erzsebet Bathory was as flat as her character, and for some weird reason she already starts with the mcguffin, making me ask why the hell didn't she block the sun from the getgo right from Russia another wasted opportunity. And everyone has a really sad traumatic story! Everyone! If everyone is miserable, it just makes me jaded. bringing Julius just to make him miserable in an insanely contrieved coincidence didn't help at all
But honestly? It's not all bad, and I will stick around for season 2. I still liked the action scenes, Edouard singing for Maria was a really touching moment (I wish they invest more in him next season), Richter showing frailty and crying in despair was also quite good (even if it led to an awesome-looking but flimsily justified scene of him just getting his powers back out of nowhere after a flashback and a another f-bomb and saying something to Julius more in tune with Marvel movies instead of something really deep. Again, I just wish the writers didn't try to punch out of their weight and deliver something enjoyable instead of pretending to be deep by repeating 'freedom' over and over.
Out of genuine curiosity, why talk about the French revolution and freedom without going deeper into the topic? Lack of interest in research? Fear of bumping into topics like socialism?