Revolution

It's up on Hulu.

They really spoiled the whole episode in that trailer, but anyway.......it was okay. I'll judge it when I've seen some episodes I didn't already know the outline of.

Finding out the nerdy guy was a plane owning multimillionare Google employee was funny.

edited 4th Sep '12 4:04:38 PM by occono

I figured that the trailer spoiled everything. I also saw the 2 minute extended trailer during the Olympics and I'm pretty sure I figured out the plot of the first season.

Edit: no, no. That's beneath me. Also not very funny.

Edit 2: More thoughts when I have them.

Edit 3: So the title's ironic, right?

edited 5th Sep '12 7:38:12 AM by Nicknacks

So is it any good?

I'm 11 minutes in the pilot, and I'm liking it. Of course, it's always fun to watch good ol' Giancarlo.

I expected the Beatles song to somehow appear in the show. Eh.

Only if you've not seen much of this kind of thing before. It's typical JJ Abrahms school of shallow characterisation, and the mythology's lacking any of the "OMG Polar Bear" moments that have begun to characterise this kind of long-form genre.

So, it's not entertainingly spectacular, and neither is it thoughtful. It could get better though — something being better than nothing and all that.

edited 5th Sep '12 7:15:22 PM by Nicknacks

Oh boy...well is Giancarlo Esposito awesome enough to keep it entertaining?

I thought it might be an enjoyable show, somewhat "Postman"-esque (the book not the film). I was looking for a light thought-free show to replace Terra Nova. Then I saw the scene in the trailer where the power goes out and THE PLANE DROPS OUT OF THE SKY IN A TAILSPIN :-$ I hate when Hollywood forgets Newton's basic laws of physics. Planes do not drop like dead pigeons just because the engines stop. The pilot episode does somewhat redeem itself by showing landed planes and some clever characters.

Esposito, naturally, is quite awesome. He does get bogged down probably the worst plot line of the pilot (which is basically stalling busywork, something strange and bad for a pilot to be engaging with) and spends most of it giving fairly derivative speeches that are in turn exposition, or threatening exposition. He's also part of the most potentially interesting plot going into the series, so I guess the good balances out the bad. Plus, the villains are inevitably the best things about these, since they're proactive and usually holding all the cards.

So I'm guess I'm saying that the series could get a lot better.

As it stands though, the entire thing feels like a bit of a one-trick pony that rings of the environmental polemics that characterised so much televised fiction in the 90's — only this time it's also embracing technological dependence as well. It's not really saying much about either of these, other than "hard work is hard", and "isn't ice cream great!" and seems to placing the same priority on surgical medicine that Lost did (though likely because Lost found it to be such a useful dramatic tool. Instant drama, just add/remove appendix!)

It seems ambivalently nostalgic both for pre-industrial agriculture and current middle-class trends, and it expresses this, — and this is the only way the show's currently distinguishing itself from any of the other examples I'm going to making in this post — is through object fetishisation. It's a combination of the kind of mechanical love that JJ Abrahms has always expressed in his love for planes or elevators, combined with an in-story culture that's become slightly obsessed with the absence of stuff, combined with a viewer-culture that loves historical object-da (like one-shot rifles and so forth that the characters use) and aesthetics*

Speaking of visuals, Revolution represents its world as a weird mash-up of Fallout and Xena: Warrior Princess, with the occasional I-pod shining through, except in its eschewing of the Mad Max/50's stylings in favour of Confederacy era visuals. It's also probably not borrowing from the structure of the road-movie, unlike those two examples of Kripke's Supernatural, and is centrally based around a bar, channeling both a Western and the teen show. (Which, yeah, this show's a veritable Frankenstein's monster of conglomerate influences).

I'm not saying that any of these influences are bad, or can't work together. The pilot doesn't do much justice to any of these, and doesn't really have much of a take on them other than thinking the combined aesthetics could be cool. Like I said, it's all about objects and surface detail.

Partially that's in the limitations of the medium. An episode of television, especially a pilot, is usually going to express shallower characterisation and depth of world than a book, and long form content is the way this is opposed. But there's something about the way this show only cribs from other sources and only in surface detail, and the way that objects and visuals are so prioritised without having the style that someone like Tarantino would employ, that renders this a really frustrating experience.

If you're looking at interesting genre TV, Shadow Scythe, it's probably worth checking out Last Resort. I know you can handle militaristic stuff, so that's the main hurdle jumped already.

edited 5th Sep '12 11:43:10 PM by Nicknacks

Watched the trailer...that Crossbow looks...really strange.

But apparently it IS a thing. Going back to Leonardo Da Vinci in fact. Huh. The more you know.

How EFFICIENT a compound system is 15 years after the factories for exchange parts died is another question though (not to mention that if the Compound bow in my achery club is any indication, you'd need fletches, plastic feathers, not real feathers for compound mechanics and getting them might get difficult over time)

And replacement arrows...you cannot really shoot wood arrows with compound as far as I know so, you'd have to have either aluminium or carbon. I've lost 5 carbon arrows over the summer only on the shooting range alone...must be a great stockpile they have.

Also, I laughed at the leather covering the connections at Militia-Boys Recurve Bow. Because a reverse compound crossbow is okay, but having a visible three part recurve bow is not? Give the man a hunter recurve or better a longbow :) Oh. And maybe its the video, but he could use some Arrowheads on his arrows too.

But I Digress.

Will probably give the pilot a shot...even if its strains my Willing Suspension of Disbelief a bit.

edited 6th Sep '12 3:00:06 AM by 3of4

Everyone should be dead. The premise is that the entire industrial infrastructure goes bye-bye, by what appears to be magical fiat. But most of the western world is at population levels that can only be sustained with industrialized agriculture, refrigiation, industrial nitrogen fixation, phosphate mining, mechanized tilling, ect, ect. So the logical consequence is that the world gets eaten, yhea even unto total ecological collapse, with everyhing that can be caught by hundreds of millions of starving people going extinct via cookpot until everywhere suffers Haiti levels of damage to the ecosystem, and any surviors would be post-traumatic stress basketcases schrounging amoung piles of skulls that only made it through the population crash via cannibalism.

...honestly, if you are going to steal a plot device from SM Stirling in order to start a tv series about modern people trust into a low tech world, it would have been infinitely more sensible to steal the Nanchuket Event from Island in the sea of time.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:08:59 AM by Izeinspring

The premise isn't exactly logical. Quite why everyone's so keen on muskets when desert eagles (or whatever) are still around is beyond me. Presumably they evaporated along with all the electricity.

Well, Muskets are considerably more easily to manufacture without high tech and therefore probably easier to maintain. Which however brings in the Fridge Logic concerning compound bow weapons.

Btw if we have Confederacy Style Militias in Chicago, what about the Illinois Nazis?

edited 6th Sep '12 6:15:48 AM by 3of4

No. Just no. Okay, unpacking - Muskets are mussle loading black powder weapons. They must be kept dry, cleaned regularily and fire either via a flint mechanism - that needs replacing regularily or with a lit taper, which means you must know how to make a fuse. Keeping a musket in operational condition is an entire mechanical skillset, which only renactors and museum curators currently posses. Okay, it is not a difficult skillset, But if I just hand you one, you will break it in < a week. Since it is loaded by hand, the most *likely* way for you to break it is by using too much gunpowder, and having it explode in your face. By contrast, the Glock seventeen fires any nine-millimeter round you can lay your paws on (and the stockpiles are insanely enomous) and will continue to to go bang reliably if you dont maintain it for fifteen years, throw it out of an airplane and routinely hide it by burying it in wet sand. And it has greater range and accuracy than the musket too.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:23:37 AM by Izeinspring

Also there is the problem that muskets fire because of small controlled explosions

Not unlike car batteries.

... you mean engines? Altough that is a point - rigging a diesel to work without electricity would not be particularily difficult. Starting it would be a pain (Yhea old time crank handle) but..

Lets just accept that the Fridge Logic entry of the series will be somewhat substantial :)

I know as much about science as... well the guys making this series, I guess.

started to watch the pilot. As for the question about Desert Eagles, seems that Militia Officers have semi-automatics.

Which make some sense, as if your underlings only got single shot weapons and you have a semi-automatic your authority will be much less questioned...

Did militia-boy shoot at someone with a frakking arrow to save someone who is hold directly in front of the target? -.- I see this will be a show were what our trainer says will not be observed. Or maybe his bow is just ridiculously weak...

and btw:

A Wizard Did It. Somehow the White Council (or the Black) screwed up big time and extended the Wizards Techbane field over the whole world.

edited 6th Sep '12 4:44:56 PM by 3of4

Yeah, it makes sense that the militias would gather up as many of the good guns as they could find and only dole them out to the people they trust.

Question, where was Charlies bow all the time they were traveling? And how could they be so stupid as not to set a guard and or some kind of alarm (even one as simple as a sting of cans across the threshold when they were sleeping in the plane. I'm not saying their precations had to be that good but they should have taken some.

Like former IT millionaire, just hope he doesn't descend to the level of Plucky Comic Relief.

Like whatisname, the guy chasing them. Also Uncle Miles and Mysterious Black Lady.

All in all good enough to keep me watching for now.

edited 7th Sep '12 4:43:25 AM by tricksterson

The only character I find myself really liking is the former IT millionaire.

Btw this Pilot has convinced me to add Insurance Workers right up there with lawyers who go first against the wall.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" - Henry VI part two.

Oh wow that was really cheesy wasn't it?

Esposito makes an otherwise boring storyline that doesn't really go anywhere fun and entertaining but the main arc is rather bland with some really cliched moments.

Might give it a couple more episodes but if it doesn't improve I'll give it a miss.

Sure, I'll check it out when it starts airing. The premise sounds interesting.

I'm not really sure why everyone who knows about this show keeps bringing up the "guns work but cars dont? Impossiburu!" thing. It's really quite simple: guns set off a miniature explosion by creating a spark through friction. Guns don't require electricity to work. From what the pilot says, the lack of guns is due to the militia controlling the guns. Also, I'm sure twelve or fifteen years with no manufacturing or infrastructure has probably depleted their ammo stores considerably, hence why only high-ranking officers within the militia get access to repeat-fire weapons.

As for cars, they use a battery (read: electricity) to make a spark to set off their miniature explosion. This is why you can't start a car with a dead battery. Now, it is possible to have a gasoline engine that runs without electricity, but there won't be very many of them (again, no manufacturing or infrastructure). I expect that if the show continues, we might see a few working gas engines, but given the lack of extra parts, the probable scarcity of gasoline, and the fact that most people do not know how a car engine works (it's one of the most complex pieces of machinery in existence), they are going to be very rare things.

edited 10th Sep '12 5:36:42 PM by badassbookworm92