Things I Have Watched
Jan. 22nd, 2025 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynThe Time Traveller's Wife. I am watching the Theo James/Rose Leslie mini series version of this in what is increasingly a state of fixed horror where I feel I must see this through, despite the nausea in my belly.
I'm just gonna say it. Adding a gentle veneer of soft sci fi with the time travel thing does not take away from the essential awfulness of a plot in which a 7 year old girl meets an adult man and is groomed to be his perfect wife for her entire life. It is not romantic. It is never romantic. And all the scenes with 30-something Theo James (who is a very attractive and charismatic actor, doing his best with the horror that he is being given) playing board games with his tiny child future wife just reinforce the essential wrongness of the whole story.
There's another plot going on too about how he sees his future death and is haunted by his mother's death but it's frankly overshadowed by the deeply creepy child bride plot. I will see it through to the end. And then I shall add this show to Twilight as 'troubling narratives around children and romance that somehow still exist in this world'.
*
Uglies.
It is a film. On Netflix. I know it is a film because it has moving pictures on a screen and actors who say stuff. This makes it a film.
Things it does not have:
A plausible premise
Realistic world building
Convincing characters
A compelling narrative
Extra note - if your entire plot is '16 year olds are taken away and given massive amounts of surgery to make them beautiful but a few rebels run into the woods to live free and ugly' then you might want to maybe cast your super attractive actors as the 'pretties' and the plainer ones as the 'uglies' and not the other way round.
Also, the massive surgeries you're doing that kills people and leaves lesions on the brains seems to only actually provide the pretties with a blonde dye job, contact lenses, and a lot of bronzer/foundation/shonky contouring. Well, except for Laverne Cox who is kind of genius casting as the chief baddie as she's both very attractive, but obviously has had a bunch of plastic surgery and so has a very 'created' look.
Finally, the 'rustic forest encampment' where the rebels live is clearly beautiful modern architecture. No one built that with their hands. It's super swish. They also get fancy Boden style clothing as to the weird cheap polyester futuristic clothing via Temu that the Pretties get. I feel like what you're actually secretly setting up is a dichotomy between 'rural old money' and 'trashy working class club kids' and I don't think that's what you meant to do.
*
1899.
Better on a re watch.
My rage at Netflix for denying me my basic human right to a second series of this show has not abated.
*
The Crow Girl.
Why is Wales now the 'go to' for gritty cop dramas? I don't know when this happened but this is the third I've recently seen.
I mean, I'm not objecting. All have been quite good shows. It's just an unexpected trend.
I'm just gonna say it. Adding a gentle veneer of soft sci fi with the time travel thing does not take away from the essential awfulness of a plot in which a 7 year old girl meets an adult man and is groomed to be his perfect wife for her entire life. It is not romantic. It is never romantic. And all the scenes with 30-something Theo James (who is a very attractive and charismatic actor, doing his best with the horror that he is being given) playing board games with his tiny child future wife just reinforce the essential wrongness of the whole story.
There's another plot going on too about how he sees his future death and is haunted by his mother's death but it's frankly overshadowed by the deeply creepy child bride plot. I will see it through to the end. And then I shall add this show to Twilight as 'troubling narratives around children and romance that somehow still exist in this world'.
*
Uglies.
It is a film. On Netflix. I know it is a film because it has moving pictures on a screen and actors who say stuff. This makes it a film.
Things it does not have:
A plausible premise
Realistic world building
Convincing characters
A compelling narrative
Extra note - if your entire plot is '16 year olds are taken away and given massive amounts of surgery to make them beautiful but a few rebels run into the woods to live free and ugly' then you might want to maybe cast your super attractive actors as the 'pretties' and the plainer ones as the 'uglies' and not the other way round.
Also, the massive surgeries you're doing that kills people and leaves lesions on the brains seems to only actually provide the pretties with a blonde dye job, contact lenses, and a lot of bronzer/foundation/shonky contouring. Well, except for Laverne Cox who is kind of genius casting as the chief baddie as she's both very attractive, but obviously has had a bunch of plastic surgery and so has a very 'created' look.
Finally, the 'rustic forest encampment' where the rebels live is clearly beautiful modern architecture. No one built that with their hands. It's super swish. They also get fancy Boden style clothing as to the weird cheap polyester futuristic clothing via Temu that the Pretties get. I feel like what you're actually secretly setting up is a dichotomy between 'rural old money' and 'trashy working class club kids' and I don't think that's what you meant to do.
*
1899.
Better on a re watch.
My rage at Netflix for denying me my basic human right to a second series of this show has not abated.
*
The Crow Girl.
Why is Wales now the 'go to' for gritty cop dramas? I don't know when this happened but this is the third I've recently seen.
I mean, I'm not objecting. All have been quite good shows. It's just an unexpected trend.
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Date: 2025-01-22 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-01-23 09:41 pm (UTC)